Accusation and Character Assassination

Number three: accusing the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) — or what could be called character assassination. They would try to attack the character of the Messenger to destroy the message. So they would accuse the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) of being a magician. They said, "Oh, you were receiving the revelation — you are insane."

The marketplace wasn't strictly for business — it was also the cultural centre. That's where the speakers would come, rather like Hyde Park; speakers from all over Arabia would go and congregate there — although there was a difference: in Hyde Park you don't necessarily get the best, but in Sūq ʿUkāẓ you would get the best. The best speakers of Arabia would go to Sūq ʿUkāẓ and present their works, their poetry and their speeches, and the best of these poems would be hung on the wall of the Kaʿbah — they are called al-Muʿallaqāt, the hanged poems.

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) would enter these marketplaces and speak to the masses. In a hadith narrated by Imam Aḥmad, Rabīʿah ibn ʿIbād says: "I saw the Messenger of Allah in the market of Dhū al-Majāz," or the fair of Dhū al-Majāz, and he was saying, "O you people, say there is no god but Allah, and you will prosper." That was his message to the people: qūlū lā ilāha illā Allāh tufliḥū — say there is no god but Allah, and you would be successful. And he would repeat that message again and again, walking and meeting different people.

Rabīʿah said: there was a man following him, and whoever the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) would speak to, this man would go and speak to and say, "Don't believe him, he's a liar." So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) would speak to a group of people and tell them, "Say lā ilāha illā Allāh," and you would succeed. When the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) left, Abū Lahab would come in and tell the same people, "Don't believe him, he's a liar." Rabīʿah wasn't from Makkah, so he asked who that man was; they said, "This is his uncle, Abū Lahab." Imagine how difficult this is — Abū Lahab undoing whatever was being done by the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). Whatever the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) would do, Abū Lahab would go behind him and destroy it.

We gain encouragement by seeing the fruits of our efforts. We have to be rewarded one way or another, otherwise we wouldn't have the motivation to go on in our work. Unless there is some kind of reward, it would be impossible for us to work, and we are rewarded in different forms — one of them is financial: you're being paid for it.