Tariq Mehanna
In Surat Al ‘Imran, v. 119, Allah said: {“Here! You are the ones who love them, but they don’t love you. And you believe in all the Scriptures, and when they meet you, they say ‘we believe.’ But when they are alone, they bite the tips of their fingers in rage towards you...”}
A useful lesson in this verse is to develop a sense of intuition when it comes to dealings with others. It is the case that we live in a world of wolves, such that one must strike the fine balance between giving others the benefit of the doubt and not being naive & gullible, thus avoiding being taken advantage of.
There is one extreme – excessive naivety. The other extreme is to possess constant cynicism, always assuming the worst of humanity and thus exhibiting a paranoia that precludes kindness to others. The Muslim, though, follows the realistic moderate path. A glimpse at the Sirah of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه و سلم) shows us that his success as a leader was in part due to his ability to read people and deal with them based on a combination of mercy and practical intuition. He knew who to draw up treaties with & who to declare war on; who to give away piles of wealth to & who to give less wealth to; and so on. He did not always take others’ words at face value because he was aware of the pitfalls of the human personality and was able to deal with it based on its reality as opposed to its illusion. He was a realist. For example, a pagan named Abu ‘Azza al-Jumahi was taken prisoner following the Battle of Badr. Because he was a poor man who had a large family to support, the Prophet set him free with the condition that he would never engage in hostilities against the Muslims. However, just one year later, he was captured again helping the pagans fight the Muslims at Uhud, where seventy of the Companions were killed. Abu ‘Azza again pleaded to be set free on the condition that he had agreed to after Badr: that he would not engage in hostilities against the Muslims. This time, however, the Prophet’s reply was stern: “The believer is not stung from the same hole twice,” and az-Zubayr executed him, because despite the outward pleas, Abu ‘Azza surely would’ve repeated his breach of pact and once again helped to fight the Muslims. At the same time, the Prophet had given him a chance after Badr and set him free as a gesture of good will.
So, this verse draws our attention to the importance of developing a sense of intuition when it comes to dealing with those who may openly profess what is contrary to their true intentions, as opposed to unquestionably accepting their words at face value and regretting it later. A modern example that comes to mind is the naive nature of the American Muslims’ early support for Obama and the ease with which they fell for the promises of ‘change we can believe in,’ his speech in Cairo, his quotations of the Qur’an, and so forth (“... and when they meet you, they say ‘we believe,’...”), only to watch as he proceeded to exponentially increase what he claimed he would do away with (or rather, what we fooled ourselves into thinking he claimed he would do away with); for example, during his 17 months in office so far, he has personally authorized almost 100 drone strikes that Amnesty International documents have killed thousands of Muslim civilians. This is over twice the number of drone attacks that Bush ordered during his entire second term! But it came as no surprise to those who understand this verse, and are aware of history.
So, subhanAllah how a verse revealed a millennium and a half ago so accurately depicts our current reality.
