Thinking Long Term

Also, in this statement the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) is thinking long term. ʿUmar said, "Let me kill him." What did the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) say? "No; I don't want people to say that I'm killing my followers." And then Ibn Isḥāq said, "Thereafter, if anything bad happened, ʿAbdullāh's people would blame and reproach him. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), having been informed that they were treating him this way, asked ʿUmar, 'Well, ʿUmar, what do you think now? I swear, if I had killed him the day you suggested it, there would have been much resentment.'" And probably a better translation than the word "resentment" would be — because in Arabic it said la-urʿidat lahu ānuf — many people would fight for him out of pride and out of nationalism, because he's one of them. They would fight for him, and they wouldn't be happy with what the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) did. Why? Because ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy wasn't exposed yet.

But since the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) dealt with it with such ḥikmah, now his own people — the same people who would have fought for him then — these people are now against him, and they are the ones reproaching him. Why? Because over time the character of ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy was showing up; he was showing his true colours. So now people were realising that he's a munāfiq. See, don't think that everybody then knew that he was a munāfiq like we know now. This is something that grew over time. Now we know that ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy was a munāfiq, so we're assuming that everybody knows that. That's not the case: his people would think otherwise. But since the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) left him alone, ignored him, now his own people were turning against him.

Previously, whenever the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) would walk towards the pulpit to give khuṭbat al-jumuʿah — towards the minbar — ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy would stand up and would say, "This is the Messenger of Allah; support him and help him." He wants to stand up and speak, and he wants to give himself authority, as if to say, "I'm the one telling you to support the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him)." But after his nifāq was showing up, when he would stand up, his people would pull him down and say, "You sit down," because they know that he's lying. So this is the ḥikmah of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said, "But if I were to order his death today, they would all kill him." ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb said, "Yes, Messenger of Allah, I realise that your decision is better than mine."

Also: thinking long term, and the benefit of leniency, rifq. See, being lenient with your followers is important, and Allah (swt) said that if the heart of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) was harsh, and if he was dealing with his people in a rough way, they wouldn't have followed him:

But because Allah (swt) made his heart soft and his dealing with others lenient, that is how he established this ummah (peace be upon him).