The Woman of Makhzūm

Then there is another incident, and this is the incident of the woman from Banū Makhzūm who was caught stealing. Banū Makhzūm were a prominent family in Quraysh — the family of Khālid ibn al-Walīd — among the leaders of the society. And a member of this clan, a noble woman, committed the ḥadd offence of stealing. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) ordered that the punishment of cutting off the hand be applied to her. Her people and Quraysh were very concerned about this. They were used to the fact that the weak, the slaves, the people who had no protection, were punished; but if you belonged to the nobility, there were ways out: we can sort out a deal; find a way out for her. So they wanted to appeal the punishment.

So they wanted somebody to speak to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), and the person they chose was the son of Zayd ibn Ḥārithah, Usāmah (may Allah be pleased with him). They knew that Usāmah ibn Zayd was very close to the Messenger of Allah: the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) used to love his father, and the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) loved Usāmah greatly after his father, Zayd ibn Ḥārithah, became a shahīd at the Battle of Muʾtah. So because of this strong relationship between the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) and Usāmah ibn Zayd, they chose him to speak to the Messenger of Allah. Usāmah ibn Zayd agreed, and he spoke to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) about it. The face of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) changed: you speak to me about a ḥadd, a punishment from among the punishments of Allah? Usāmah said: O Messenger of Allah, seek forgiveness for me.

And that day the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) stood and gave a khuṭbah, and after praising Allah, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: what destroyed the people before you was that when the noble man among them stole, they would leave him, and when the weak among them stole, they would carry out the punishment on him. By Him in whose hand is my soul, if Fāṭimah, the daughter of Muḥammad, were to steal, I would cut off her hand (al-Bukhārī 4304). And the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) ordered that the hand of that woman be cut off. And it says in the hadith that she repented after that, and she got married; and ʿĀʾishah would say: she would visit me after that, if she needed something from the Messenger of Allah, and I would speak to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) on her behalf.

So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) is telling us of a law that governs the life of men: if in a particular society there is a double standard in applying justice, where the weak are punished while the strong are spared, Allah will destroy such a society. Nowadays, not only is there a double standard in applying the law of Allah; we do not have the law of Allah altogether. So if Allah would destroy a society, and take away the barakah from such a society — take away the blessing from it — just because they have a double standard in applying the law of Allah, what does one think will happen to us now, when we do not have the law of Allah at all?

There is a hadith that says that applying one ḥadd of the ḥudūd of Allah — the ḥadd is the criminal law in Islam — applying one ḥadd is better than forty days of rain (al-Nasāʾī 4904). There is more blessing in applying the ḥudūd of Allah than in rain for forty days. How much barakah are we missing now? And that is why our life is in a mess. We have a lot of resources; we have wealth; we have such a wide expanse of land — look at how large the Muslim world is — but there is no barakah in life. That is because we do not have the ḥudūd of Allah applied.

And we have never tasted the blessing of living under an Islamic system, to compare; that is the problem. But there were those who experienced both the Jāhiliyyah and Islam. For example, there was an old woman who went to Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq (may Allah be pleased with him) when he was caliph, and she asked him: how long will this affair last? — she was speaking of the great life they were living under Islamic law. So she asked Abū Bakr: how long will this last? Abū Bakr told her: mā istaqāmat bikum aʾimmatukum — as long as your leaders keep to it. As long as the leaders follow al-ḥaqq, you are going to enjoy the blessings. And this woman was a Bedouin; she did not have knowledge. So she said to Abū Bakr: and who are these aʾimmah? Abū Bakr told her: they are the leaders among you (al-Bukhārī 3834). So we should all make it an objective of ours to try to establish the law of Allah (ʿazza wa jall) on earth — to try to establish the Islamic system; to try to establish the khilāfah. This is a responsibility on every Muslim. We want to live the blessing of the Islamic system.