What ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb Would Have Been Without Islam

There is the account of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (may Allah be pleased with him) — he was once seen crying and laughing, and he was asked, "Why were you crying, and why were you laughing?" He said, "The reason why I was laughing is I remembered, in the time of jāhiliyyah, in the time of ignorance, I was travelling and I wanted to pray. But then I remembered that I forgot to bring my god with me. So what I did is I tried to think of a way — I want to pray. So I had some dates with me. So I moulded — I moulded the dates into the form of an idol, and I worshipped it. Later on that night, I became hungry, so I ate my idol." He said, "That's why I'm laughing." And now, looking back, he says, "What, what was I doing? How could I do that?"

This shows how Islam changed him — how Islam changed them. This is who ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (may Allah be pleased with him) was, and who he became after Islam. These giants, the Ṣaḥābah, read about today for their wisdom — this is where they began. This shows how Islam had the power to change them from being nothing to being the best, how Islam transformed them in a very short period. That is a miracle. That is a miracle of Islam, that it had the capacity to bring such a people, and to bring about in their lives such a change, and make out of them these giants, and ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb.

Who was ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb without Islam? ʿAbbās al-ʿAqqād asked that very question in his book about ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb: "Who was ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb without Islam?" He answers that maybe he could have grown to become the leader of his clan, his family of Banū ʿAdī, which were a very small branch of Quraysh. "Or maybe he could have been one of the prominent leaders of Quraysh. Or if we extend it further, then he might" — be the head of Quraysh, which is a far-fetched assumption, because the other clans of Quraysh who held power in the past would never allow such a thing to happen to start with. It would be stretching things too far to say that he would become a leader over Quraysh.

But, al-ʿAqqād continues, the most likely scenario was that ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb would die at a young age. He used to drink a lot before Islam, so most likely he would have died at a young age, and ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb would have been an obscure figure of history. But with Islam — not only did he become a leader of Quraysh or Arabia, he became the ruler of two-thirds of the world at that time. One of the greatest men that ever lived in history. That is the transformation that Islam brought in their lives.