Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

ʿazza wa-jall
) and 
āyāt
came responding to him, he’s no
ordinary enemy of Islam. Some people confuse his story because he was also a
poet, and he made filthy poetry about Muslim women by name. Not just poetry
against the Prophet (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
) which is bad enough, but on
top of that the women of the Muslims. Now you and I imagine if somebody
made dirty poetry about my daughter, about my sister, about my mother, how
would I respond? And then some people confuse his story and say, ‘Well it’s
because he made this poetry that the Prophet (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
)
said: 
man lī bi-Kaʿb
—“Who is going to get rid of Kaʿb for me”; and then a
Ṣaḥābī
got up and Kaʿb was finally killed, he was actually executed. It’s because
he made poetry, see, now we have justification’. You cannot just say whatever

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you want—this person made poetry and the Prophet (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-
sallam
) commanded that he should be killed? Hold on a second!
This is the same man who actually attempted to kill the Messenger of Allah
(
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
) by poisoning his food—the idea of poisoning the
food of the Prophet (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
) came from him. There are
multiple occasions on which he made attempts to assassinate the Messenger of
Allah (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
) including a secret conspiracy he had with
Abū Sufyān, before he became Muslim, right after the loss of Badr. He went and
had secret counsel with Abū Sufyān, among other instances. And, by the way,
when he is living in Madinah and he is attempting to kill the Messenger (
ṣallā
Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
) by any means, then you know what that means? That
means he attempted to assassinate the President. That is what you consider an
enemy of the state and the penalty for that is death, in any state.
To take all of his career, and all of his animosity against the Messenger of
Allah (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
), and to confuse that with: ‘This guy made
poetry, that’s why we have to kill him’; and therefore anybody who says
anything about Islam, anything about the Prophet (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-
sallam
), anything about the Qur’an, we need to kill them. This is craziness.
This interestingly is an insight into how limited the thought process of the
Muslim has become. Because the Qur’an and the legacy of all prophets is so
huge but you want to take one story, which you don’t even fully understand, and
use that to decide whether you can take someone’s life. The entire legacy of
prophets is of them being made fun of—
ustuhzi’a rusul min qablik
—
‘messengers have been made fun of before you’. When Allah says they were
made fun of that must not be a small joke, there must be some disgusting things
beings said about messengers. Muslims have been made fun of before—
yasūmūnakum
—they would blacken your faces, the expression in Arabic
suggesting the worst kinds of insults being hurled towards someone.
… you will certainly hear many hurtful things from those who were
granted the Book before you, and from those who have associated
others with Allah in His Divinity. If you remain patient and

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Godfearing ...
(Āl ʿImrān 3: 186)
You’re going to get to hear a lot of painful things from the People of the
Book and the people that have done 
shirk
. They’re going to say some hurtful
things towards you. By the way, that