Guarding the Reputation of the Ummah's Leaders

Another lesson: we see here that the enemies of Allah will try to assassinate the person, or will try to involve themselves in character assassination. If they can't assassinate the person, then they will be involved in character assassination. They tried to assassinate the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), as was seen with the Yahūd, and since that failed, now they are involved in character assassination, and ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy, the one who hates the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) most, was carrying the brunt of that. So we need to keep in mind that the enemies of Allah will always try to do this with our leaders.

So a further lesson is the importance of protecting the reputation of our leaders. These stories have a special appeal and lure to them, and they easily spread and are easily accepted. Subḥān Allāh, there is some magic to them, and that is because of the tazyīn of Shayṭān. So one needs to be very, very careful, because the enemy of Allah will try to design some very dangerous stories about the dangerous leaders of the Ummah, and we need to be very aware and not buy these stories, because definitely the enemies of Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, will try to do that. They did it with the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), but it didn't work, because Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, was defending him. However, with the leaders of the Ummah now, no āyāt will come in their defence. So it is the duty of the Ummah to do that, and that is the whole purpose of us learning from the actual stories of the Ṣaḥābah. So this is an incident that happened; we need to learn the lesson from it and not allow it to happen again. Āyāt of Sūrat al-Nūr were revealed talking about this issue: great lessons, very important lessons. We ask Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, to make us of those who will benefit from them and follow them.