Trying to pervert the truth
Anti-Muslim propaganda
There is a man among the people who buys discourses of destruction, amusements so he may mislead people from the way of Allah and make a mockery of it. For such people there is a disgraceful punishment. (31:6)
Tafseer books mention that this ayah is referring to a man from Quraysh called al-Nadir ibn al Harith. Whenever he heard the Prophet (peace be on him) reciting the Quran, he would turn away with arrogance as if he was deaf:
And when Our verses are recited to him, he turns away arrogantly as if he had not heard them, as if there was in his ears deafness. So give him tidings of a painful punishment. (31:7)
He wanted to stop this message. As there used to be trade convoys which went to Persia, he visited it and learned the stories of Persian kings and hired a narrator to narrate them when he returned to Makkah. This would distract them from the message of Islam.
It is the equivalent of social media in our time and the television before that. It was the means by which news and entertainment were spread. On top of this, he bought a special slave girl who was singer who would accompany the stories with her songs.
He would send them to anyone interested in Islam, who was either about to accept Islam or a new Muslim, so that they would be side-tracked from the message.
In today’s time, we have such people in different forms. There are organisations dedicated to run a smear campaign against Islam and Muslims – to promote Islamophobia, corrupt the image of Islam and spread lies.
You cannot blot out the truth
I had a friend whose brother fell in love with an atheist. When they met her, they treated her well with the kindness and hospitality that Muslims show. Someone from her country heard she was about to marry a Muslim so he warned her not to marry him, giving her books and articles to convince her that Islam and Muslims were bad. She decided to make up her own mind, so she gave herself 10 days to research it. After the 10 days, she decided to convert to Islam. And then she did not marry that man, because he was not a very practicing Muslim. Instead she married someone else who was more practicing.
You may try to distort the truth, but Allah will reveal it and make it shine. You can close your eyes but you cannot prevent the sun from shining.
May Allah enable us to see the truth and spread the truth and be among the truthful ones. Ameen
Shaykh Haytham Tamim
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Shaykh Haytham Tamim
Shaykh Haytham Tamim is the founder and main teacher of the Utrujj Foundation. He has provided a leading vision for Islamic learning in the UK, which has influenced the way Islamic knowledge is disseminated. He has orchestrated the design and delivery of over 200 unique courses since Utrujj started in 2001. His extensive expertise spans over 30 years across the main Islamic jurisprudence schools of thought. He has studied with some of the foremost scholars in their expertise; he holds some of the highest Ijazahs (certificates) in Quran, Hadith (the Prophetic traditions) and Fiqh (Islamic rulings). His own gift for teaching was evident when he gave his first sermon to a large audience at the age of 17 and went on to serve as a senior lecturer of Islamic transactions and comparative jurisprudence at the Islamic University of Beirut (Shariah College). He has continued to teach; travelling around the UK, Europe and wider afield, and won the 2015 BISCA award (British Imams & Scholars Contributions & Achievements Awards) for Outstanding Contribution to Education and Teaching.
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