Two Righteous Men

Fa-qumtu, wa thāra rijālun min Banī Salimah fa-ttabaʿūnī fa-qālū lī: wa-llāhi mā ʿalimnāka kunta adhnabta dhanban qabla hādhā, wa la-qad ʿajazta an lā takūna iʿtadharta ilā Rasūli Allāhi bi-mā iʿtadhara bihi al-mukhallafūn, qad kāna kāfiyaka dhanbaka istighfāru Rasūli Allāhi lak. Fa-wa-llāhi mā zālū yuʾannibūnanī ḥattā aradtu an arjiʿa fa-ukadhdhiba nafsī. He said: so I left, and some men of my clan followed me, and they told me: we never knew you to have committed a sin before this; this is the first time. Why did you not give an excuse to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), just as everybody else did? The istighfār of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) for you would have been sufficient for you — because for those who came before, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) asked Allah to forgive them. So they told him: if you had come up with an excuse, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) would have asked Allah to forgive you, and that would have been enough to wipe out your sin. And he said: they kept on blaming me until I thought about going back to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) and making up an excuse.

But then I asked them: hal laqiya hādhā maʿī aḥad? — did anybody else say the same thing and get the same response? Qālū: naʿam, rajulāni qālā mithla mā qult, fa-qīla lahumā mithla mā qīla lak — they said: yes, two men said what you said, and they were told the same as you were told. Fa-qultu: man humā? — I said: who are they? Qālū: Murāratu bnu al-Rabīʿ al-ʿAmrī wa Hilālu bnu Umayyata al-Wāqifī — they said: Murārah and Hilāl. Fa-dhakarū lī rajulayni ṣāliḥayni qad shahidā Badran, fīhimā uswah — they mentioned to me two righteous men who had been present at Badr, in whom there was an example for me. So therefore there was somebody else who had done the same thing he had done, and so he decided that he was not going to go back.

And this shows that when we find company, that gives us support. So when he saw that he had company in what he had done in telling the truth, that encouraged him to carry on. And this shows the importance of having good company around you, because of the pressure of society. He was pressured to go back and make up a lie, and he almost did. So the pressure of society is very strong, and therefore you need to surround yourself with like-minded people who will support you in doing good — especially those who are living in rotten environments, in environments of disbelief and environments of fitnah. It is very important not to trust your own abilities to survive, and to realise that you are a weak human being: khuliqa al-insānu ḍaʿīfā — man was created weak (4:28). We are weak, and therefore we need good company. It is very important to have like-minded people who will support you and advise you: al-dīnu al-naṣīḥah — the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) says that religion is sincere advice (Muslim 55). So you need to have people around you who will encourage you to do good. Anybody who is not in such an environment is strongly advised to change his environment immediately, because if you are strong today, you may become vulnerable and weak tomorrow, and you never know how deep you might fall. And in a time like this, there is no end to how low a person can sink: some people can keep on descending, and descending, and descending, getting deeper and deeper and deeper, until they become a disbeliever — until they become murtadd. So it is a very dangerous thing; do not underestimate the effect of your environment on you.