Alhamdulillah, we are going to start another new episode of the biography of Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) and the topic of our episode today is how did our prophet Khattab write about his governors, how did he supervise their work and if there were any complaints about them, how did he control and deal with them? At the end, we discussed something about the fact that our prophet Ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) considered Iraq as part of his own work. It was part of the management to supervise the work of all the people he appointed as governors, as commanders, or in various government jobs, to follow up on their work and to take account of various matters from them. This was a part of the management. If any ordinary Muslim wanted, if there was any complaint against any important person, he could present it to the Caliph.
Some of the complaints raised about the governor are being discussed in our episode today. In the first part, we are going to talk about Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas (may Allah be pleased with him). During the time of Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him), he was the governor of Kufa. Some people from Banu Asad came to Ameerul Momineen Umar ibn Al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him). And they complained about Saad ibn Abi Waqqas (may Allah be pleased with him). Saad ibn Abi Waqqas (may Allah be pleased with him), we know, was one of the ten companions who were given the glad tidings of Paradise. They complain about such a person in the order of the Muslims’ acceptance of Islam and the time when they came and complained to the Caliph. That time was also a very significant and interesting time. At that time, the Muslims were preparing for a war against the Persian Empire. A very critical time. At such a time, the complaint against the governor was being presented to the Caliph. Umar ibn Al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) naturally emphasized the issues that would be raised at that time since the war against the Persian Empire was to be waged. One of them is to maintain the unity of the Muslims before the war. If there is any division among the Muslims, no one wants it. When there is discord among the soldiers or among the subordinates or there is tribal division or any kind of gossip, sedition, division, etc., such a time is not a suitable time for war. Before the war, any commander or leader wants to make sure that the hearts of his subordinates are united. Before the war, when they came and presented their complaints. Umar ibn al-Khattab, through his intuition that there were some problems in this regard, even though he was the Caliph, listened to their complaints and he said, I understand that the purpose of your complaints is not good. Because you have chosen a time when you know very well that we are preparing for war with the enemy. They are preparing for war with us. I say, but even then, I will seriously consider the matter that you have presented to me, investigate and investigate. He decided to investigate the matter. He sent Muhammad ibn Maslama (may Allah be pleased with him) to the area as the general inspector. He would go there and investigate and after the investigation he would come back and present the final report to the Caliph. We know about Ibn Maslama (may Allah be pleased with him) that he was one of the prominent companions. His name is mentioned repeatedly in the most important events of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). Especially the incident when the leader Ka’b ibn was killed on the orders of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), Muhammad ibn was the head of the operation team. To investigate in Kufa, he narrated that Muhammad ibn Maslama used to go to every mosque with Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas. He would organize an open public meeting to gather the common people there. When he went there, he would announce in front of everyone and say, “Do you have any complaint to make against Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas?” Tabari says that at that time, no secret or undisclosed investigation was being done in this regard. Public investigations were being conducted openly. So there was no such thing as a secret investigation and the person against whom the allegations were made would be called secretly and given a private censure, so that his honor would not be damaged or he would not be hurt. Such things were not being done there. Because they were public figures. They were governors of people in charge of the people.
Those matters were not being considered but were being investigated publicly. And it was being verified whether there were any complaints. They were going to mosques one after another but in no mosque was any person making any kind of negative, bad, negative presentation. No complaint was being made. The people of this tribe went to the Caliph and they submitted a report against him but they did not have the courage to say anything publicly. In that case it would be revealed and the identity of the person making the false complaint would be revealed. Then he went to another tribe and went to their mosque. There Muhammad ibn Maslama said to everyone that in the name of Allah, if you have any complaint about Saad ibn Abi Aqqas then stand up and present the complaint. At that time a person named Ibn Qatadah stood up and said if you really say that we will say in the name of Allah then I will say in the name of Allah. Such a person, squanders wealth and he himself does not join the fighting force. He is a coward. He stays behind. Hearing this accusation, he said, “O Allah, if this person is lying or if he is making these accusations to show people and to show off, O Allah, destroy his eyesight. Make him blind. And make him dependent. Fill the house with coldness and cover his face.” Through misleading trials, through testing, Sa’d ibn, when such clear false accusations were being made against a companion like him, let alone answering the accusations, he filed a complaint with Allah. He prayed to Allah. What was that prayer? The person who made the false accusations, when he became old. In his old age, he lost his eyesight and became blind, and he had ten daughters in his house. They had to take care of him in that state. His house was covered with dependency. Not only that, he prayed that the person, O Allah, be covered with a misleading trial. When that person was old, in his old age, he would do things that were never befitting for a person. In his old age, he used to chase women on the streets, they used to do it. And he used to behave in an unbearable manner with them. The old man was blind, such an old man, whose eyelids were stuck together. His eyebrows had fallen. He would then regretfully say that the bad prayer of a righteous person had fallen on me. The prayer of Saad ibn Abi Waqqas had affected me. The tribe of the Kufa against whom they had falsely accused. Saad ibn Abi Waqqas, peace be upon him, also prayed. He prayed against the people of that tribe. He prayed and complained to Allah and said, O Allah, make their lives difficult. From the next incident, it is seen that the people engaged in internal conflict and strife among themselves and they started fighting each other and they all had to be brutally killed. They killed each other with swords. So in this incident we see that Saad ibn Abi Waqqas, when he was oppressed, slandered, he complained to Allah about it, prayed, and does Allah accept the prayer of a righteous person? They made more complaints against those who made all those false sayings. Against Saad ibn Qasi, he does not know how to pray? He is busy with hunting animals and other things besides praying. Saad ibn says that I am the one who shed the blood of a polytheist in the history of Islam, and they accused him of being a coward. He does not go to war. He stays behind. Saad says that I am the first person in the history of Islam to shed the blood of a polytheist. And he says that I am the only person about whom the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said that my father and mother should be sacrificed for you.
Amr ibn al-As (may Allah be pleased with him) was the governor of Egypt. A complaint was made against him and a common soldier of Egypt complained against Amr ibn al-As. Amr ibn al-As (may Allah be pleased with him) was the governor and the commander-in-chief of the army. He said that Amr ibn al-As had accused him of being a hypocrite. Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) summoned him to Medina. He came to court. He was presented. The complaint was investigated and it was found that Amr ibn al-As (may Allah be pleased with him) had indeed accused the common Muslim soldier of being a hypocrite. Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) gave the soldier a stick as compensation and said, “Take revenge for what he said against me. You punish him.” Amr ibn al-As asked, “Who will save you from me now?” Subhan Allah, the One in whom there was no pride, replied, “Okay, you go ahead and do what you are commanded.” He said, “I forgive you for the sake of Allah.” The matter is settled. The laws of Islam protect five things fundamentally for man. They provide security in five things. The first thing is, a person’s Islam. The second is his life. The third is his thoughts and his intellect. The fourth is, a person’s wealth and the fifth is, a person’s honor.
My father, may Allah be pleased with him, was with his father, Amr al-Khattab, and he narrated the incident. He said that we were riding a camel. We were going in one direction. At that moment, I saw a man running towards my father. Umar ibn al-Khattab saw that scene and said that this man seemed to want to talk to me. So Umar ibn al-Khattab stopped. The man came and came to Umar ibn al-Khattab and ran. When he saw Amr there, he immediately started crying, burst into tears. He asked him what had happened? The man said that I had committed a crime. I had drunk alcohol and then your governor, Wali, punished me, flogged me. Then he took me around the city. He publicly exposed my sin, humiliated me. He announced to everyone that everyone should boycott me. They did not eat with me, did not sit with me or even talk to me. So all the people boycotted me, ostracized me. I was so disappointed that I thought that I would kill Abu Musa Al Azhari secretly or that I would leave this city and go to another place where no one would recognize me. If necessary, I would leave Darul Islam and go to Darul Kufr among the infidels. When he heard the accusation, he also started crying and Amar was overcome with emotion and said that you would leave the area of Muslims and leave Islam and go to Darul Kufr? Then he wrote a letter to my Abu Musa Alai Salam and wrote a letter saying that if you have exposed his sins and wrongdoings in front of people and have humiliated him and punished him, then I also want to punish you publicly. If you are giving that punishment secretly, then I want to punish you secretly and then he wrote to Abu Saleh and if you want to know how seriously I consider this matter then you can do the same thing again and then you will see what action I take. Amr ibn al-Khattab gave the man some clothes to comfort him and said 200 dirhams as a gift and you should go back to your area. The summary of this incident is that when a person commits a wrong, the Muslim governor has the authority to enforce only the punishment that Allah Almighty has prescribed in Islamic law for the wrongdoing, and no more.
Now we are going to the fourth governor, Saeed ibn Amer, may Allah be pleased with him, and the allegations that were made against him. They were quite surprising and quite mysterious. Saeed ibn Ahmad was a very high-ranking companion among the companions. Saeed ibn Amer was one of the few companions who were most famous for their detachment from the world and were on a completely different level. He was appointed by Umar. From there, a delegation came to meet Umar al-Khattab. When Umar learned that they were from Homs, Syria, he asked them how is your wali? How is he as a person? The delegation said that we have no complaints against him except for four things. Number one, he comes late to work, number two, we do not find him at night when we need him. When they come at night for any need, knock on his door. When they call him, he does not respond. He does not come out at night. Number three, every week there is no news of him, he has disappeared and we have no idea where he has gone. And number four, as an allegation, they say that sometimes he faints in his office and faints. He loses consciousness. Omar Khattab was upset. He was very worried when he heard the allegations. Because the idea he had about Saeed ibn Amir, he saw that Saeed was one of the best. He was very worried when he heard these allegations, he called Amir. He came from Syria and Omar Ibn Al-Khattab started taking accountability from him. I asked him his opinion on the first question that he was late for work. Omar Ibn Al-Khattab said, O Saeed, what do you have to say? Saeed said, forgive me. Forgive me, meaning he was going to avoid this issue. He did not want to answer. Omar Ibn Al-Khattab said, of course you have to answer it. I have to tell you the reason, but I will say it reluctantly. The real reason why I am late is that I do not have a servant, a servant to do the necessary household chores. I have to prepare my own breakfast, so if he makes bread. And finally, I have to cook. He says that I am late for this work, I have to prepare my own food. Omar ibn Khattab said. Regarding the second complaint, the complaint was that he never came out when called at night. Saeed said, “What is Ameerul Momineen for?” I have allocated my day time, I have allocated the night time for Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala. So Saeed ibn Amr divided the 24 hours in half. Half of the day he will work for the people, and the night time he has allocated the entire time for worshipping Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala. Saeed says, “I have to pray, recite the Quran and make dhikr. You do not come at night.” The third complaint was. That he disappears one day every week, vanishes. He is nowhere to be found and people have no idea where he has gone. First he said to the Caliph that Amirul Momineen forgive me, forgive me but Amirul Momineen he says that you must answer for this. Saeed said I have no servant and I only have one shirt to wear. When I wash that, I go out and wait until the wet clothes dry. I put on the clothes and come back. Fourth Complaint What do you say about that, The fourth complaint was that people said that Saeed used to lose consciousness at home, in the office or in his court. Saeed then told them the story of a new chapter in his life. Saeed, he said, Amirul Momineen was now a young man, a young man. And I was in Mecca. As a polytheist, I saw the events of that time. The companion Khobayb ibn Ali Ansari. He was a prominent companion among the companions of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). He was arrested by deception and brought to Mecca and there he was punished and killed in a very painful way. The death sentence was carried out. He was hanged, hanged. Saeed ibn Namar was not a Muslim at that time. He was a polytheist. He was an eyewitness to that event and whenever he remembered that event, even after such a long time, he would lose consciousness and faint. Saeed ibn Amer narrated the incident and said in the court of Umar, I saw that scene. This feeling arose in me and now I am losing consciousness and I think that Allah may not forgive my crime at all. Saeed ibn Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) was an eyewitness to the whole incident, how Khubaib Nadi was being tortured, imprisoned and killed. Saeed ibn Amer felt guilty and said that I think Allah will not forgive me for this crime. We would like to talk about this mentality of Saeed ibn Amer and his statement for some time. Subhan Allah The first thing is that Saeed ibn Amer was not a Muslim person when he witnessed that incident. He was a polytheist.
We are going to tell you an incident about Ibn Mas’ud who was appointed as a governor. When he was appointed as a governor, he moved his house and his wife and he moved to a new house with him. When they went there and started making trouble, the wall that was there was a mud wall. So if you sat on the mud wall or leaned on it, the mud would stick to your body. The mud would stick to your clothes or clothes. So he covered the wall with a kind of cloth. His wife was putting cloth on the wall. A very simple decoration. It is not actually a kind of decoration. It was not any kind of decoration. Omar Khattab heard about this incident and sent a written letter to the governor. When Mujahid Mas’ud received the letter from him, he was in such a state, there were several people around him and he received the letter in their presence. After receiving the letter, his face changed color after reading the writing. When the people noticed it, they asked what happened? He said, “Come with me, all of you.” He went to his house and after going home, he told his wife to get out of the house. I am in a problem because of you. He took her out of the house and ordered the people present to tear off all the clothes that were hung on every wall and finally they were taken off. A normal Muslim could have earned his living by doing some business or trade, then he could have lived a much easier life. He could have lived a much more comfortable life. If he had become a governor or a part of the government of Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, then he would have had a very controlled life. That is why it is seen that many governors’ wives who were there did not want their husbands to become a part of the government of Omar Ibn Al-Khattab.
