Scouts, Borrowed Arms, and Dhāt Anwāṭ

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) had sent ʿAbdullāh ibn Abī Ḥadrad to gather intelligence for him. So ʿAbdullāh ibn Abī Ḥadrad came back to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) and told him what he had seen: he had infiltrated the army and been able to see the numbers, and to see the families and the cattle of Hawāzin. So he came back and gave the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) this report. And ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb did not like what he heard, so he rejected it. And ʿAbdullāh ibn Abī Ḥadrad told him: you might be rejecting the truth. And then the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb: you were once misguided, and Allah (swt) guided you.

Anyway, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) wanted additional arms for the army, so he spoke to Ṣafwān ibn Umayyah — Ṣafwān being one of the leaders of Quraysh and one of the wealthy among them; he had a good stockpile of weapons. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) asked him to give him — the narrations differ; it says spears and shields. Ṣafwān asked the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him): a-ghaṣban am ʿāriyah? — are you taking them by force, or are you borrowing them? The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told him: no, I am borrowing them, and I will return them to you. Ṣafwān agreed. And had the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) wanted to take them by force, he could have. And keep in mind that Ṣafwān was still a kāfir at this point, and he was a subject of the Muslim state, and the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) could have taken the arms from him if he wanted; but the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told him: no, I will borrow them and return them to you. And Ṣafwān was still in that waiting period: Ṣafwān had asked for two months, and the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) gave him four.

Some narrations give the numbers, but they differ. Anyway, after the battle, some of the pieces were lost, so the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) gave him what remained, and then the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told him: I can pay you back, compensate you financially, for the pieces that were lost. Ṣafwān ibn Umayyah said: no, do not do that, because I find in my heart now what I did not find then. What Ṣafwān is talking about is Islam: now I am close to Islam; I am beginning to come closer to Allah (ʿazza wa jall). And he refused to take any compensation for the pieces that were lost.

On the way, the Muslims passed by a tree, a large tree, and on this tree the mushrikūn used to hang their swords to get barakah, so that they would get some blessings. It was one of the rituals of the Jāhiliyyah that had no foundation — myths and superstition. But because the army of the Muslims included people who were new to Islam, who had no fiqh and no understanding of the proper ʿaqīdah, they said: O Messenger of Allah, ijʿal lanā dhāta anwāṭin kamā lahum dhātu anwāṭ — O Messenger of Allah, we want to have a dhāt anwāṭ as the disbelievers have a dhāt anwāṭ: just as they have a tree on which they hang their swords and get blessings, we want to have something similar.

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: qultum wa alladhī nafsī bi-yadihi kamā qāla qawmu Mūsā: ijʿal lanā ilāhan kamā lahum ālihah — by Him in whose hand is my soul, you have said something like what the people of Mūsā said: make for us a god as they have gods. Because the Banū Isrāʾīl, when they crossed the sea, asked Mūsā to allow them to have gods like the gods of the mushrikūn they saw in front of them. And Allah (ʿazza wa jall) says that Mūsā told them: innakum qawmun tajhalūn — you are a people who are ignorant (7:138). And then the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: innahā al-sunan; la-tarkabunna sunana man kāna qablakum, sunnatan sunnah — these are the ways of old; you will follow the ways of those before you, one by one (al-Tirmidhī 2180). In this narration, sunnatan sunnah: you will follow the ways of the disbelievers before you one by one. Meaning: everything that the disbelievers of the nation of Mūsā, the people of the Banū Isrāʾīl, did — you will find something similar to it in this ummah of Muḥammad (peace be upon him). The difference is that the evil in the ummah of the Banū Isrāʾīl became prevalent: it overcame the good and became dominant; while in the ummah of Muḥammad (peace be upon him) there will never cease to be people on the truth, holding firm to the religion of Allah (ʿazza wa jall). And this is how the religion of Allah (ʿazza wa jall) will carry on until the Day of Judgement — even if there are people who are deviant, even if there are people who follow the ways of the disbelieving nations before us.