Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

particularly beautiful 
āyah
.
Allah (
ʿazza wa-jall
) revealed this 
āyah
in the context of the Battle of Uhud.
In 
Sūrat Āl ʿImrān
Allah talks extensively—sixty or so 
āyāt
are dedicated to the
discussion about what went wrong at Uhud, and this is after the fact. In other
words, Allah did not reveal these 
āyāt
before the battle but rather these 
āyāt
came down after the battle. Many of you are familiar, some of you need a
reminder; the Battle of Badr was an incredible success. In the Battle of Badr the
Muslims were able to fight against a massive army, a much more prepared much
more outnumbering army of Quraish and still annihilate seventy of their leaders.
But the Battle of Uhud was the exact opposite.
It started out just like Badr; we were winning in the beginning and then,
because of one strategic mistake made by the archers who the 
Rasūl
of Allah
(
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
) appointed on the mountain. You could call them
snipers today but they were archers back then. He appointed them to stay in their
place and he told them even if you see birds eating from our corpses, in other
words, every one of us is dead, don’t you move from there. Don’t move from
there. They, however, saw the opposite, they didn’t see the Muslims dying and
birds eating off of their corpses, they saw that the Muslims were actually
destroying the enemy.

---

Allah surely fulfilled His promise (of succour) when you were slaying
them by His leave ...
(Āl ʿImrān 3: 152)
Allah Himself says: Allah fulfilled His promise to you when you were
making the enemy feel the heat of battle, you were annihilating the enemy; you
were driving them away.
The enemy was making a run for it in the Battle of Uhud, that’s Allah’s own
description. That’s the time where there was a disagreement among the archers
and some of them decided. No, no, no, the Prophet (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-
sallam
) said don’t come down, even if you see us dying but this is the opposite
case, we’re actually winning, so it’s okay, that’s not what he meant.
So there was a disagreement among them and by the way, that’s a separate
topic, how do you deal with disagreements? That’s not my topic here. Actually if
you look at it, the disagreement among those 
Ṣaḥābah
was a legitimate
difference of opinion. It was not that some decided to disobey the Messenger and
the others did not, that’s not the case. They actually both looked at the same
statement of the Prophet (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
) and interpreted it in two
different ways. This happens on multiple occasions among the 
Ṣaḥābah
, the
problem wasn’t that they interpreted it differently; the problem was they broke
the chain of command. The 
Ṣaḥābī
left in charge, the battalion commander—his
decision was ‘we stay’. And when the Prophet (
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
)
leaves somebody in charge, you have to listen to him even if you have a
difference of opinion. That was the real problem. But that’s a separate topic.
In any case they come down, Khālid ibn al-Walīd who we say now (
raḍiya
Allāh ʿanhu
) at that time he wasn’t Muslim yet. He was an experienced military
man, so he sees from the corner of his eye that the Muslims have left their
strategic, sniper post. He rendezvouses, he comes around and flanks the Muslims
from behind and the entire scene of battle turns upside down. It’s chaos, all hell
breaks loose. The Muslims don’t know where the enemy is coming from, what’s
going on; even the Messenger (