Dhū al-Khuwayṣirah

Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī says: we were with the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) while he was distributing some booty, and he was approached by Dhū al-Khuwayṣirah, a man from Banū Tamīm. And he said: O Messenger of Allah, be just (al-Bukhārī 3610). Subḥān Allāh. This man is speaking to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), the messenger from Allah, and he is telling him: be just. This man who until quite a short while before had been a disbeliever, making sujūd to an idol, is telling the best of creation: be just. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: woe to you! And who would be just, if I am not just? ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb said: O Messenger of Allah, allow me to strike his neck. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: leave him, for he will have companions. You will belittle your ṣalāh next to their ṣalāh, and you will belittle your fasting compared with their fasting. They will recite the Qur'an, but it will not leave their throats; it will not go beyond their throats. They will leave the religion just as an arrow leaves its target: you look at the blade, and there is no blood on it; and then you look at the binding, and you find nothing on it; and you look at the rest of the arrow, the shaft, and you find nothing on it.

There is an explanation of what this is. If an archer is strong, and he shoots the arrow with such force, the arrow can hit the game and pass through it so fast that the archer cannot even tell that the target was hit. And then he goes to pick up the arrow, to see whether there are any traces of blood on it, and he finds nothing: he looks at the blade — there is nothing; he looks at the binding that joins the blade to the shaft — he finds nothing; then he looks at the shaft itself, and he finds nothing. This is an analogy the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) gave of how fast these people would leave the religion: they are so extreme that they would leave the religion so swiftly that one could not even recognise it. And this is a very interesting analogy the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) gave about these people, because they pray — and the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) is saying that they pray more than the Companions — and they fast, and they fast more, and they recite the Qur'an; but it does not leave their throats. Why? Because they are not following its meanings: it is just a voice coming out of the throat, with no effect.

And then the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: and their sign is a dark man, one of whose arms — he does not have a full arm; he just has the stump of an arm — looks like the breast of a woman. So Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī said: I bear witness that I heard these words from the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), and I bear witness that ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib is the one who fought them, and I was with him. And he ordered that we search for that man, and we found him, and we saw that the description the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) gave fitted this man exactly.