A Fight Kindled by a Line of Poetry

The Jews would attempt to disunite the Muslims. Ibn Isḥāq said that Shās ibn Qays, an old Jewish man, was — as Ibn Isḥāq says — deep in kufr, bitter against the Muslims, and full of hatred for them. He saw that the Aws and the Khazraj were united, that they were now sitting together in the same gathering — these were people who had been at each other's throats before Islam, people who had been enemies of one another, and now, because of Islam, they were united, they were one. This Jewish man was not very happy, and he said: "The chiefs of the Banū Qaylah have gathered in this land; by Allah, we have no place here as long as they are united" — the Aws and the Khazraj are united in this land, and, in the name of Allah, there is no place for the Jews as long as they are united. Their survival as Jews in Madīnah was based on the disunity of the Arabs, and as long as they were united, they were at risk. So he tells a young Jewish man who was sitting with the Aws and the Khazraj in the same gathering to start reminding them about their days of war: bring up the Day of Buʿāth, bring up the battle of so-and-so, bring up the battle of so-and-so, narrate some of that poetry, and instigate a fight among them.

So this young man sits between them, and he starts bringing up some lines of poetry that talk about the heroic acts of one tribe against the other, and slowly he is able to cause a shouting match between the two parties. After that, they stood up and challenged each other to combat, and they agreed that they would meet at al-Ḥarrah — in such-and-such a place — and go and arm themselves. So war was about to start all over again. See how words can cause so much harm — a war could start because of one word. That is why Allah (swt) says:

So a Muslim should be very careful about what he says.

News was delivered to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), and he rushed forward while they were making an appointment about where to meet to start the war all over again. He said: "O Muslims, fear Allah! Are you to resume the enmity of ignorance when I am still among you? Are you going to bring back the Jāhiliyyah while I am still alive and living among you, after Allah has guided you to believe in Islam and submit to Him? Do you forget Allah's blessing, as He has saved you from ignorance and disbelief and planted love and friendliness in your hearts instead of hostility?" He was reminding them that this unity was a favour from Allah — do not throw it behind your backs. Allah brought them together, Allah sent them His messenger, Allah made them love each other; the love that then existed among the Companions was unsurpassed. How could they throw that behind their backs and go back to the time of the Jāhiliyyah? They knew how bad the Jāhiliyyah had been, and now that they had tasted īmān, they would know how evil and bad kufr was. A person will only taste the sweetness of faith, as the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said, if certain things are true of him — one of them being that he would hate to go back to kufr as he would hate to be thrown into the Fire.

These words had so much effect on them that they started hugging each other. These men who a moment before had just been thinking about going to war were now hugging each other and asking each other for forgiveness.