Season passed, the birds gathered again. But, this time, they gathered in a learning cyrcle. As usual, the Parrot acted as a moderator, and this time, the White-rumped shama acted as a volunteer who shared a story. The Shama began the story by saying, "O my brothers and sisters, verily, any government is in charge of the end result of all dimensions of society; it forms the basis of its customs and the framework of its manners and etiquettes. So what would be the end of this society, the basis of its customs and the framework of its manners, when it all stemmed from subjugation and sorcery?
Such a government reprents tyranny, because all types of government are a form of control over the human state of affairs. If the government is sound, it will strive to build and form the human structure, and the ruler himself will benefit if his people are sane, intelligent and strong. But if the government is ignorant, it will try to fragmant the human structure and disperse the society, because an ignorant government is after nothing more than continual control, even if it causes the destruction of society. In this situation, the ruler will benefit if the people following him are foolish, ignorant and weak.
Insofar as magic is a form of deception and falsehood, it can help achieve the goals of a tyrannical ruler. Any methodology that is not from Allah and where the people do not submit to Him, will also achieve the same results as magic; the only difference is in name and form, but what both have in common is that they desire for there to be no rational force or strong mind in society. This end can be achieved either through magic or through any man-made system of government. Magic presents itself by instigating fear and exploiting ignorance. Any man-made system that leads a person to believe that he is safe, by instigating fear that imposes the desired methodology upon him through his ignorance and weakness, has achieved the same results as magic.
And so is my story. It was said, in a land, in an earlier age, there was once a king that had employed a sorcerer. When the sorcerer grew old, he told the king, "I have grown old. Send a young boy to me so that I may teach him sorcery," so the king sent a boy to him for training.
Everyday on his way to the sorcerer, the boy would pass by a monk. One day, he decided to sit with the monk and listen to what he had to say. After sitting with the monk, he became greatly impressed by his words. From then onward, it became his habit to sit with the monk on his way to the sorcerer. However, whenever he arrived late, the sorcerer would beat him. When the boy complained about the beatings to the monk, he told him, "When you feel afraid of the sorcerer, say, 'My family delayed me.' And when you feel afraid of your family, say, 'The sorcerer delayed me.'"
While he was in that routine, a huge beast blocked the people's way, and the boy said, "Today I will know whether the sorcerer or the monk is superior." He picked up a stone and said, "O Allah, if the way of the monk is dearer to you than the way of the sorcerer, kill this animal so that the people can pass." He threw the stone at it and killed it, and the people were able to pass. The boy then came to the monk and informed him, and the monk said, "Son, today you have surpassed me. I see that your affair has reached a stage where you will soon be put to trial. If you are put to trial, don't tell them about me."
The boy then began to treat the blind and lepers, and by the permission of Allah, he began to cure people from all kinds of illnesses. One of the king's courtiers who had gone blind heard about him. He came to him with many gifts and said, "If you cure me, all of these things will be yours." He said, "I do not cure anyone by myself. It is Allah Who cures, and if you believe in Allah, I will pray to Allah to cure you." The courtier affirmed his faith in Allah, and Allah cured him. He came to the king and sat by his side as he used to do before. The king asked, "Who restored your sight?" He replied, "My Lord." The king said, "And do you have a Lord beside me?" He answered, "My Lord and your Lord is Allah." The king seized him and had him tortured until he told him about the boy.
The boy was brought and the king said to him, "O boy, you have become so proficient in your magic that you cure the blind and lepers, and you do such-and-such and such-and-such." He said, "I do not cure anyone; it is Allah Who cures." The king seized him and had him tortured until he told him about the monk. The monk was brought and told, "Renounce your religion!" but he refused to do so. The king called for a saw to be brought, had it placed on the middle of his head, and had him sawn in half. Then the courtier was brought and told, "Renounce your religion!" but he refused, so the saw was placed on the middle of his head, and he was sawn in half.
Then the boy was brought and told to renounce his religion, but he refused to do so. The king handed him over to a group of his courtiers and told them, "Take him to such-and-such mountain and climb to the top of it with him. When you reach the top, he either gives up his religion or you throw him off." So they took him to the top of the mountain, and he said, "O Allah, save me from them by whatever means You like."
The mountain then began shaking and they all fell off the mountain except the boy who came walking back to the king. The king asked him, "What happened to your companions?" He replied, "Allah saved me from them." He again handed him over to some of his courtiers and said, "Take him on a boat into the middle of the sea. Then he must either repudiate his religion or you throw him off." So they took him, and he said, "O Allah, save me from them by whatever means You like."
The boat overturned; they were drowned, and the boy came walking back to the king, who asked him, "What happened to your companions?" He replied, "Allah saved me from them."
Then he told the king, "You will not be able to kill me unless you do as I instruct you." The king asked, "What's that?" He said, "You gather the people on open ground and hang me on the trunk of a tree. Then take an arrow from my quiver, put it in the bow and say, 'In the name of Allah, the Lord of this boy,' then shoot me. If you do that, you will be able to kill me.
So the king gathered the people in an open field and hung the boy from the trunk of a tree. He took an arrow from the boy's quiver, placed it in the bow and said, "In the name of Allah, the Lord of this boy." He shot the arrow, which hit the boy in his temple. He laid his hand on his temple where the arrow had hit him and died. The people said, "We believe in the Lord of this boy! We believe in the Lord of this boy! We believe in the Lord of this boy!" The courtiers came to the king and said, "You know what you feared? By Allah, the very thing you were afraid of has just happened! The people have believed in Allah!"
The king commanded that ditches be dug along the roads. When the ditches had been dug, fires were lit in them. The people were told, "Anyone who does not repudiate his new religion will be thrown in the fire or told to jump into it." The people did just that, until a woman came with her child, and she wavered about jumping into the fire. The child told her, "Mother, be steadfast, for you are upon the Truth."
And verilly, Allah is the One Who cures. Allah is the One Who saves. Allah is the One Who gives life and death, truths that were not repeated by the boy for the sake of dialectics and words. But rather he mentioned them as eternal truths established in reality in such a way that none is able to reject or argue with them.
The King tried to remove the esteem that the people had for the boy, by trying to attribute his ability to cure them to the magic that he had learned from the King's sorcerer. This is always the reaction of those who refuse to acknowledge the truth — they try to interpret it in others ways."
The Parrot said, "Interesting story!" then he said, "O my brother and sisters, are there any of you could grasp the moral lesson of the story?" The Sparrow asked, "It was like the story of Moses and the Paraoh with the sorcerers. O Shama, was it a real story?" The Shama replied, "Yes, actually, it was a story from our beloved Prophet (ﷺ), reported on the authority of Suhayb, it was transmitted by Imam Ahmad, Imam Muslim and An-Nasa'i from the Hadith of Hammad Ibn Salamah. According to Ibn Kathir, some scholars claimed that the incident of the ditch was recurred or repeated in the past more than once. Ibn Abu Hatim said: I was told by my father after Abul Yaman after Safwan Ibn 'Abdur Rahman Ibn Jubair as saying: the incident of the ditch took place in the Yemen during the lifetime of Tubba'. And, it took place in Constantinople during the lifetime of Constantine who set the fires in which he threw the Christians who were sticking to the religion of Isa in Islamic Monotheism. It also took place in Iraq, in the land of Babylon during the lifetime of Bikhtinassar who erected an idol and ordered the people to prostrate themselves before it. Hananiah, 'Izrya and Mashayl refused and thereupon, he set a great fire and threw them into it. However, Allah saved them from the fire and caused the nine men who transgressed over them to fell into the fire they themselves made.
Ibn Abu Hatim narrated that concerning Allah's Statement that reads: "Cursed were the people of the Ditch" in Surah Al-Buruj[85]:4, As-Sadiy said: There were three ditches: one in Sham (Syria), another in Iraq, and the third in the Yemen."
The Eagle said, "This indicates that the King had employed a sorcerer to use sorcery as a means by which to maintain his rulership. Sorcery was not simply a phenomenon that happened to be present in society, but rather it was a force that presided over and ruled the society. This factor can lead us to understand the reality of that time - it was a corrupt reality founded on oppression and ruled by desire, at the head of which was a King who believed in magic and whose power lay in subjugating his people.
There is a new dimension to light here: after the sorcerer had become old and had lived out his life working to make the state of affairs advantageous to the King, he was no longer interested in personal benefits. Rather, he himself wanted his work to continue through the young boy - he had been a sorcerer all his life, and had to keep his work alive through a new life, so he requested a young apprentice. But our analysis should not stop here - we can also see that what propelled him to make this request was the shaytan that presided over all the ages of ignorance; the shaytan has experienced all stages of human existence from the beginning of time, thereby enabling him to link together all the generations of ignorance one after another so that he may utilise them in his propagation of evil and corruption."
Woodpecker said, "In this story, Allah selected the boy to be the reason his people found true faith. The divine message had become marginalised in that society and was only taught secretly by the monk. Through the boy's efforts and martyrdom the True Religion, Islam, became known to the people and many of them accepted it.
The plans of the forces of evil are not greater than Allah's plans. The evil king selected the boy to be his master sorcerer who would further strengthen the foundations of his kingdom, but Allah wanted him to be a righteous servant who would destroy the evil kingdom and guide its inhabitants to Islam.
The lesson in this is that Allah prepares people for the defence of His religion who may even grow up in the homes of tyrants. Prophet Moses is a classical example of this principle. Pharaoh was aware that an Israelite was destined to destroy his kingdom, so he had all new-born Israelite males slaughtered. Moses' mother was inspired by Allah to put her new born child in a basket in the Nile River, and Pharaoh and his wife found him, adopted him and raised him in their own home."
The swallow said, "It could not have been easy for the boy, for he was learning magic from the sorcerer at the same time as learning religion from the monk, and there is a clear contradiction between the two: religion is about clear realities and ordered thought, while magic is about deep deviancies and concocted lies; religion develops the mind, while magic murders it; religion is a cure for the illnesses of the time, while magic causes one to deviate from them; and religion builds life, while magic destroys it. Thus, it was very difficult for the boy to continue learning both religion and magic with peace of mind, and we should note that he would sit with the monk as a matter of choice, but with the sorcerer as a matter of compulsion."
The Crow said, "The boy explained to the king how he could be killed in order to disprove the king's claim to divinity, to make belief in the true God, Allah, known to the king's subjects and to provide living proof of its reality. In the story, some of the believers from the town were thrown in the fire, while others rushed into it on their own. However, their rushing into the fire was not suicide; rather it was open confirmation of their belief in Allah which enraged the king and his supporters and pleased the Lord of all the worlds.
Although, the incident of the boy and his followers has been used by some modern movements to justify suicide bombing in certain parts of the Muslim world, the circumstances are completely unrelated. The reasons are different and the lives of innocent non-combatants were not destroyed in the process."
The Owl said, "Strong faith does not necessarily take a long time to develop. Firm belief can settle rapidly in the hearts of those who accept Islam or awaken to Islam and revive their souls.
True patience is itself the product of complete trust in Allah at the time of calamity. Trust in one's Lord is the natural consequence of real faith. Since belief in Allah means accepting that nothing takes place in the universe without His permission, then only Allah deserves humankind's complete trust. For, it is only Allah's promise which is never broken."
The Stork said, "The believer should not deliberately expose himself to hardships and trials. It is somewhat extraordinary that the monk asked the boy not to reveal his name when he is tortured. He apparently did so because he was afraid that he would also be exposed to the same trial. However, when his turn came, even though he was sawed in half, he did not turn back from his religion. So, why did he request the boy not to expose him in the first place? The answer is comprised of two points: firstly, one must try to keep himself away from trials, since he cannot be sure about the outcome; and secondly he should not hope for trials because, in hoping for trials there is an element of arrogance which may invalidate his good deeds. And that is why the Prophet (ﷺ) discouraged people from hoping to meet the enemy, as stated in the following hadith: "O People! Do not wish to meet the enemy. Instead, ask Allah for safety from trial. And if you meet them, then be patient and know that Paradise is beneath the shade of swords. "
The Shama then said, "O my brothers and sisters, magic is real, and it is a science that has fundamental principles and rules. The boy went to the magician daily to learn the principles of magic. However, magic is among the forbidden sciences. Imam al-Dhahabl said, “Among the forbidden sciences are magic, alchemy, evil omens, natural magic, illusion, astrology, geomancy. Some of these are outright acts of disbelief.
In conclusion, the story includes an outcome that was actualised contrary to the means intended by man: Allah wanted the same boy that the people wanted to be a caller to evil, to be a caller to the Truth. And on the same road that boy took to the sorcerer, he met the monk, sat with him, listened to him, and was impressed by his speech.
The story includes a great outcome by virtue of simple cause: the boy killed the beast that blocked the path using a small stone. This is also the lesson we can learn from the King being defeated, and that what he feared to happen, happened due to this young boy.
The story also includes a variety of outcomes that happen by virtue of a single cause: when the boy and the King's men were on the mountain and the mountain shook causing them all to fall off, the boy went walking back to the King. Similarly, when the boy and the King's men were on the boat and it capsized causing them all to drown, and the boy again went walking back to the King.
From the sum of these truths, we can understand the saying of Allah, "Effecter of what He intends," because this verse is the Truth of all truths. And Allah know best."
References :"Cursed were the companions of the trench! [Containing] the fire full of fuel, when they were sitting near it and they, to what they were doing against the believers, were witnesses. And they resented them not except because they believed in Allah, the Exalted in Might, the Praiseworthy, to whom belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth. And Allah, over all things, is Witness." - [QS.85:4-9]
- Shaykh Rifa'i Surur, People of the Ditch, at-Tibyan Publications
- Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, A Commentary of Surah Al-Buruj, Al-Hidaayah Publishing
