The Strong and the Trustworthy

This daughter went to her father and gave him wonderful advice. One of them said: O my father, hire him. And she gave the reasons why he should hire him. It is said that this woman was very wise. What did she say? The best man to hire is the strong and the trustworthy.

These are the two qualities you want to look for in someone you employ: strength and trustworthiness. What does strength — qawī — mean? It depends on the kind of job to be done. If it is a physically demanding job, strength means being physically strong. If it is intellectual work, you need to be strong in your mind. To summarise: you need to be very strong in your field. That is what is meant by qawī, strong.

And al-amīn, trustworthy: it is not enough to be strong, because you could be strong and use your strength against your organisation — using it for your own benefit and harming others. So you have to be trustworthy too.

That is why Abū Bakr, when he appointed ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb to be the Khalīfah, told the Muslims why he appointed him: the best man to appoint is the strong and the trustworthy. They learned their rules from the Qur'an. Abū Bakr did not go through any political science classes or degrees; he learned the politics of Islam from the Qur'an. So when he wanted to appoint someone to the position of khilāfah, he had a whole generation of Companions before his eyes, all of them righteous. Righteousness was common to all the Companions, so how could he choose among them? He looked for these two qualities: quwwah and amānah, strength and trustworthiness.