Strength for the Camels and Rain for the Return

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

❧The duʿāʾ over the camels

On the way back the water they had taken from Tabūk ran out, and the animals were failing. The men complained: "O Messenger of Allāh, our animals cannot carry us." He felt pity for them and said, "Bring your animals to me." They brought the camels in a line, and he passed his hand over them and prayed: بِسْمِ اللهِ, "In the name of Allāh. O Allāh, cause these to carry those who are in Your path, fī sabīlik; for You are the One who carries upon the weak and upon the strong, upon the wet and upon the dry."

The narrator is Fuḍālah. He said that by the time they reached Medina the camels were so strong and so full of energy that the riders had to struggle to hold them back. And he added that he had puzzled over the wording: the wet and the dry he understood, but the land and the sea? How does one supplicate for the sea? Then Syria was conquered, and after Syria, Cyprus: ʿUthmān began the naval effort and Muʿāwiyah completed it, and Cyprus was taken in the time of the Companions and held for three centuries under the Ṣaḥābah, the Tābiʿūn and those after them. Fuḍālah said that when he stood and saw the ships, he understood at last what the Prophet ﷺ had asked for at Tabūk.

❧Rain, and who gets the credit

They ran short of water again, and he ﷺ prayed for rain; that night it poured. In the morning after Fajr he delivered what is recorded in Bukhārī and elsewhere as a ḥadīth qudsī: Allāh said, "This morning some of My servants woke as believers in Me and some as disbelievers in Me."

What had happened was that some of the hypocrites, rather than mocking outright, had trivialized it, this is no miracle, they said: مُطِرْنَا بِنَوْءِ كَذَا, "we were given rain by such-and-such a star." They had a zodiac of sorts, an expectation that at a certain time of the month a particular star brings fortune. So he ﷺ said: as for the one who said, "It has rained by the grace of Allāh," he is a believer in Me; and as for the one who said, "It has rained by such a star," he is كَافِرٌ بِي مُؤْمِنٌ بِالْكَوَاكِبِ, a disbeliever in Me, a believer in the stars.

❧A ḥadīth of theology

The shaykh treats this as a central text of ʿaqīdah: we do not ascribe blessing to other than Allāh, and to ascribe independent benefit to a created thing is major shirk. To believe a star grants your rizq, or that a stone or talisman or amulet will keep you from an accident, is to make of it an idol, and every culture has its charms, its horseshoes and rabbits' feet.

He adds a careful distinction. If what a person carries is Qurʾān, that cannot be shirk, since the Qurʾān is the speech of Allāh and His speech is an attribute of Him, not something separate. Scholars differed only over whether it is appropriate, some said it shows disrespect to keep a muṣḥaf in a glove compartment among one's things, or to hang Āyat al-Kursī from a mirror. Seeking blessing through the Qurʾān is permitted; the question is one of fiqh and reverence, not of theology, and those aḥādīth about charms do not apply to it.