Renewed a Generation Later

After that, an incident happened later on, a few decades after the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) passed away. It happened between al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, the son of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, and al-Walīd ibn ʿUtbah ibn Abī Sufyān, who was the governor of Madīnah. Because al-Walīd was the governor of Madīnah, he was taking advantage of his position, and he had taken away some property that belonged to the son of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, al-Ḥusayn. And al-Ḥusayn — what he did is he went to al-Walīd and told him, "You either give me back what belongs to me, otherwise I'm going to walk into the masjid and invite the people to help — al-Fuḍūl. I'm going to remind them about Ḥilf al-Fuḍūl."

ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Zubayr was with al-Walīd at that time, and he said, "And I too swear by Allah that if he does invoke it, I'll draw my sword and stand there with him until he gets his justice, or we'll all die together." And then some other people heard about that — al-Miswar ibn Makhramah, and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿUthmān ibn ʿUbayd, and others — and they gave similar statements. So now it was picking up, and al-Walīd realised that it could become quite dangerous, so he gave al-Ḥusayn back what belonged to him.

This incident is included here, even though it happened well after the Sīrah, the life of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), to show that Muslims wouldn't allow wrong to happen in front of them. Here you have people who are living under a particular leader, al-Walīd ibn ʿUtbah, and nevertheless they stood up and they protected their brother, who was a descendant of the Prophet, even if they had to give up their lives. So a Muslim should stand up for what is right.