If It Were Not That Your People Are New to Islam

Muhammad (peace be upon him) says in this hadith—he is talking to ʿĀʾishah—"Don't you know that your people had insufficient funds for the expenses? If it weren't for the fact that your people were only recently unbelievers, I would have torn down the Kaʿbah and made for it one door on the east and another on the west, and I would have included the Ḥijr area within it." When Muhammad (peace be upon him) opened Makkah, he was thinking about reconstructing the Kaʿbah on the original foundations. But then he told ʿĀʾishah that the reason he's not going to do this is because her people had just become Muslim; their Islam is soft, their īmān is weak, and it might be a fitnah for them, it might cause them a problem if he reconstructs the Kaʿbah. So he didn't do it.

There's an important lesson to learn from this hadith, and that is that the dāʿī needs to take the condition of the people into consideration. Even though Muhammad (peace be upon him) wanted to do this, he didn't, because he was worried that it might affect the īmān of the people. A person calling to Islam needs to take into consideration the condition of the people that the message is directed to. ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd says that telling people something that is beyond their comprehension or understanding or īmān might be a trial for some of them; it might cause a backlash with some people. Sometimes information is put out on a particular subject which is absolutely true and valid, but because the people aren't ready for it yet, because their īmān is weak, it causes a backlash with them. Some things people just are unable to grasp.

Now, Muhammad (peace be upon him) said that Quraysh—the reason why they made the door of the Kaʿbah high is because they wanted to have control on who would go in and out. It was an issue of power. They didn't want to make the door low so that it would be accessible to anyone; they made it high so that they could control who would go in and out. It's a matter of influence, having authority. So the door of the Kaʿbah was raised. And Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, "If I would rebuild it, I would lower the gate, and I would make for it two gates, so that people could come from one side and leave from the other, rather than having to come in and out from the same door."