Utbah ibn Rabi'ah's Offer and Surah Fussilat

The Quraysh leaders sat in their Nādī, their senate, their circle of elders, discussing what to do about Muḥammad's صلى الله عليه وسلم growing message. They had tried to pressure Abū Ṭālib. They had tried banning public recitation. They had mocked and ridiculed. None of it had stopped the Dawah.

Then ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah spoke up. "Has any of you actually tried to negotiate with him directly?"

No one had.

"Then send me. I'll go speak to him. He's a nephew of mine. He's a reasonable man. I've known him since he was a child. Let me try to work something out."

They sent him as their representative.

The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم was sitting near the Kaʿbah. ʿUtbah came and sat beside him, and addressed him in the tone of an elder speaking to a younger relative:

"O my nephew, you know your standing in this society. You are the grandson of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. You know who you are. And now you have come with something that has caused this community real havoc. So let me ask you: are you better than your father ʿAbdullāh? Are you better than your grandfather ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib?"

These were trap questions, loaded in both directions. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said nothing. Not because he didn't have an answer, but because to answer was to lose. No young man in Jāhilī culture says he is better than his grandfather. Yet the truth was the opposite of what the question assumed. Silence was the only wise response.

ʿUtbah took the silence as concession and continued:

"I see in you a man who was the most promising of all of us. No young man of Quraysh gave us more hope than you. But you have come with something that has split our society. Arabs from outside are mocking us. We're on the verge, we're just waiting for the cry of the pregnant woman, any moment, for civil war to break out because of what you've started. So: we are reasonable people. Tell us what you want."

Then came the list:

"If you want money, we, the Quraysh collectively, will raise funds and give you more wealth than any one of us possesses. You will be the richest man among the Arabs.

If you want power, we will make you our king." And this was extraordinary: Quraysh had never had a single king. Every tribe resisted giving one person authority over them all. But they were now willing to unify under a king, if only the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم would stop.

"If you want women, choose any woman you wish, and we will arrange the marriage.

And if what afflicts you is a sickness", meaning the revelations, which they called madness, "we will hire the best physicians and spare no expense to treat you."

He finished. He had laid out everything a man of the Jāhiliyyah could conceive of desiring: wealth, authority, marriage, and health.

The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم waited. He let ʿUtbah complete everything. Then he asked: "Are you done, O Abā al-Walīd?", calling him by his kunya with full respect. ʿUtbah said yes.

The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said: "Then listen to me."

And he began:

أَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ، بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ

حم ۝ تَنزِيلٌ مِّنَ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ ۝ كِتَابٌ فُصِّلَتْ آيَاتُهُ قُرْآنًا عَرَبِيًّا لِّقَوْمٍ يَعْلَمُونَ

He began reciting Sūrat Fuṣṣilat from the beginning. ʿUtbah had leaned back in the posture of someone who had finished speaking and was now relaxed, hands behind him, waiting. As the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم recited, verse by verse, something began to happen to ʿUtbah. His expression changed. His body stiffened. He began to palpitate.

The Quran builds in Sūrat Fuṣṣilat. The rhythm, the imagery, the weight of each verse accumulates. And then came the verse:

فَإِنْ أَعْرَضُوا فَقُلْ أَنذَرْتُكُمْ صَاعِقَةً مِّثْلَ صَاعِقَةِ عَادٍ وَثَمُودَ

"If they turn away, then say: I warn you of a thunderbolt like the thunderbolt that struck ʿĀd and Thamūd." (Fuṣṣilat 41:13)

ʿUtbah jumped up and placed his hand over the Prophet's صلى الله عليه وسلم mouth. AnshudukAllāh, I beg you by Allah, stop! I beg you by the rights I have over you as a blood relative, stop!

He was trembling. The verse had broken through whatever shield he had put up. He fled back to the Quraysh.

When he arrived, his face was so changed that one of the leaders said: "By Allah, Abū al-Walīd comes back with a face that is different from the one he left with." Others made a joke and said: "Perhaps he has bewitched you as well."

ʿUtbah said: "Leave me alone. I have heard a speech from that man that I have never heard the like of before. I could not understand all of it, but إِنَّ لِهَذَا الْقَوْلِ لَشَأْنًا, this speech has importance. This speech is going to matter. Sha'n."

Then he gave them the most pragmatic assessment they had ever heard:

"If the Arabs deal with him and defeat him, your hands are clean. He's a Qurashī; we cannot touch him without shame. But if the Arabs fail and he prevails, his victory is our victory. His power is our power. He is of us."

They dismissed him: "He has bewitched you like he has bewitched everyone else."

But ʿUtbah had seen something. He never converted. He died at the Battle of Badr, fighting against Islām. He and his brother Shaybah and his son al-Walīd were killed in the mubārazah, the single combat, before the battle proper began, against ʿAlī, Ḥamza, and ʿUbaydah ibn al-Ḥārith. But before the battle, as the armies faced each other, the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم pointed toward a man riding a red camel, racing back and forth between the lines calling out: "O people! There is your brother! There is your cousin! How will you live if you kill each other?"

That was ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah, trying to prevent Badr. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said: "If the Quraysh have any good left in them, they will listen to the man on the red camel."

Allah subḥānahu wa taʿālā revealed in His Quran, about the Arabs and the Quran:

لَقَدْ أَنزَلْنَا إِلَيْكُمْ كِتَابًا فِيهِ ذِكْرُكُمْ

"We have sent down to you a Book in which is your dhikr, your honor, your mention, your legacy." (al-Anbiyāʾ 21:10). The Arabs, without the Quran, would have been a footnote in history, like dozens of ancient tribes the world no longer remembers. Because of the Quran, they became rulers of the world, from the Iberian Peninsula to Central Asia. ʿUtbah glimpsed this, and didn't act on it.