THE VOICE WITHIN

THE VOICE WITHIN

Sultan Murad IV, who ruled over the Ottoman empire from 1623 to 1640, would often move incognito among his subjects to see how they were living. One evening, as he was travelling anonymously with the head of his security forces, they came to a busy thoroughfare and found a man lying on the ground. The Sultan prodded him but he was already dead.

All this while, the people were going about their own business, paying no heed to the dead man. The Sultan then called upon everyone nearby. Failing to recognize him, they asked what he wanted. He said, “Why is this man lying dead on the ground and no one seems to care? Where is his family?”

They replied, “He is so and so, cursed drunkard and fornicator!”

The Sultan said sternly, “Is he not from the Ummah of Prophet Muhammad? Now help me carry him to his home.”

The people with the Sultan carried the dead man to his house, and then they left hurriedly. The Sultan and his assistant remained. When the man’s wife saw his dead body, she began to weep. She said to his dead body, “May Allah have mercy on you! O friend of Allah! I bear witness that you are from the pious ones.”

Bewildered, the Sultan asked: “How is he from the pious ones when the people say such nasty things about him? So much so that no one even cared he was dead!”

She replied, “I was expecting that. My husband would go to the tavern every night and buy as much wine as he could. He would then bring it home and pour it all down the drain. He would say, ‘I saved the Muslims a little today.’

“He would then go to a prostitute, give her money and tell her to close her doors till morning. Thereafter he would return home and say, ‘Today, I saved a young woman as well as the youth of the believers from vice.’

“The people would see him buying wine at the taverns and then going to the prostitutes and they would consequently talk about him. One day I said to him, ‘When you die, there will be no one to bathe you, no one to pray over you and no one to bury you!’

“He had then laughed and replied, ‘Don’t fear, the Sultan of the believers himself, along with the pious ones, shall pray over my body’”

Hearing this, the Sultan began to cry. He said, “By Allah! Your husband said the truth, for I am Sultan Murad. Tomorrow we shall bathe him, pray over him and bury him.”

Thus it was that the Sultan, the scholars, the pious people and the masses prayed over the pious man.

And the holy Quran teaches: “O you who believe, abstain from many of the suspicions. Some suspicions are sins. And do not be curious (to find out faults of others), and do not backbite one another. Does one of you like that he eats the flesh of his dead brother? You would abhor it. And fear Allah. Surely Allah is most relenting, very merciful.”

— the harbinger

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