Fear in His Heart, Not in His Steps

And Allah (swt) says wa istarhabūhum: when the people saw this, they were afraid and terrified. So imagine the people of Egypt surrounding this stadium, this battlefield, and all of them afraid and terrified when they saw what the magicians had done. What do you think the response of Mūsā would be? And he is with them in the field. Remember what happened before with Mūsā, when his stick started moving? What happened? Wallā mudbiran wa lam yuʿaqqib — he ran away and he did not look back. And that was one stick. But now look at the response of Mūsā: seventy magicians, or fifteen thousand, throwing their sticks and their ropes, and all the people around him terrified.

Allah (swt) says: so Mūsā conceived fear within himself. Mūsā conceived fear — where? In his heart. But it did not show in his reaction; it did not show in his action; it did not show at all on Mūsā. It remained the natural human response, in the heart. And then Allah (swt) said: We said, fear not; surely you will have the upper hand.

Before, he had fear in his heart, and he acted upon it: he ran away and he did not look back. Now it was a natural human fear in the heart, but it did not affect Mūsā — and that is what īmān does. You still go through the natural human reactions and feelings — fear, doubts, all of these things that come to the heart — but the believer is able to suppress them and is able to eliminate them. And that is the difference between the believer and the non-believer. So here Mūsā only conceived a little fear in his heart, but it did not affect him whatsoever. And Allah (swt) then gave Mūsā tranquillity, so that the small fear in the heart was eliminated and taken out of his heart.