So You Have Put Down Your Arms?

Now the Battle of the Trench was over. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) heads back home, and he takes off his armour and he takes a bath. ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her) said, in al-Bukhārī (4117): "When the Prophet (peace be upon him) returned from the Trench, and he had put down his arms and taken a bath, Jibrīl came to him and said, 'So you have put down your arms? We have not done so, I swear by Allah. Go forth to them.' The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said, 'Where to?' Jibrīl said, 'Over there,' and he gestured towards Banū Qurayẓah."

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) and the Muslims suffered a lot during the siege of the Trench. They were exhausted, cold, hungry, and now finally they can take some rest. And Jibrīl comes to Muḥammad (peace be upon him) and says: put your armour back on, pick up your weapons, and go and fight. So, no rest.

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) felt that the matter was so urgent that he told the Ṣaḥābah (may Allah be pleased with them): Lā yuṣalliyanna aḥadukum al-ʿaṣra illā fī Banī Qurayẓah, "None of you should pray ʿAṣr except at Banū Qurayẓah." The matter is urgent; you have to leave now.

So the Ṣaḥābah left, but sunset was approaching, and they hadn't yet reached Banū Qurayẓah. So they discussed the order of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), lā yuṣalliyanna aḥadukum al-ʿaṣra illā fī Banī Qurayẓah: you shouldn't pray ʿAṣr except at Banū Qurayẓah. Some of them said that we have to pray ʿAṣr now, because it's already sunset, and what the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) meant by that statement is that we should rush and hurry up. The others said, "No, we're going to pray over there, just as the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said." So both of them wanted to follow what they understood to be the meaning of the hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him).

When they returned, they brought the matter up to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). He didn't reprimand any one of them; he didn't disapprove of anyone (al-Bukhārī 946, 4119). And this shows that disagreements in issues of Sharīʿah do occur. They occurred in the time of the Ṣaḥābah (may Allah be pleased with them), and you don't have to have one party necessarily wrong. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) approved both of them, because they did their best in understanding what the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) wanted, and they did it with the best of intentions. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) laid siege to Banū Qurayẓah.