One day, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was sitting with a group of Qurayshi women. The women were very animated, asking questions and talking freely with him. Their voices could be heard from outside the small room they were sitting in. While they were in mid-conversation, Sayyiduna Umar bin al-Khattab called out, asking permission to enter. When the ladies heard Umar’s voice, they immediately went quiet and quickly went behind a curtain that divided the room.
The Prophet ﷺ told Umar to enter, and when he did so, he saw the Prophet smiling.
Umar said: “May Allah always keep you smiling, O Messenger of Allah!”
The Prophet said by way of explanation: “I was amused by these women who were with me. As soon as they heard your voice, they immediately rushed behind the curtain!”
“It is more fitting that they fear you than me, O Messenger of Allah,” Umar said.
Then Umar called out to the women: “You are your own worst enemies! Are you in awe of me and not the Messenger of Allah!”
“Yes”, they replied, “because you are much harsher than the Messenger of Allah, may peace and blessings be upon him.”
“O son of al-Khattab,” the Prophet ﷺ said to Umar, “I swear by the One in Whose hand is my soul, whenever the Devil comes across you on a certain path, he immediately takes another path!”
(Sahih al-Bukhari No. 3294 and Sahih Muslim No. 2396)
Here we see the openness of our beloved Prophet ﷺ . He allotted time to certain individuals and certain groups of people. He gave women time and access. He sits patiently with this group of Qurayshi women, which probably included some of his wives and relatives. He gives them the space to ask their questions and continues to answer them. They clearly felt very comfortable in his presence, and each woman had something to say. When Sayyiduna Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) came, the atmosphere changed completely. Umar’s voice was enough to make the women scatter and flee behind the curtain. The Prophet ﷺ was amused by this scene and smiled. The Companions loved to see the Prophet happy and smiling and would often pray as Umar prayed: “May Allah always keep you smiling.” When the Prophet explained why he was smiling, Umar rebuked the women. His point was a valid one. The Quran teaches us to honour and venerate the Prophet: to address him properly, not to raise our voices above his and not to treat him as any ordinary person. If you were to witness his status in the sight of his Lord, you would be in such a state of awe of him that it would be difficult to look at him, let alone speak to him. But the beauty of the Prophet’s character and his warmth and charm would make even a stranger feel at home. As Sayyiduna Ali said: “When someone saw him initially, they would be in awe of him, but when they spent time with him, they would love him” (Tirmidhi, No 3638).
Thus it was no surprise that these women felt so comfortable in his presence, especially when he was manifesting the qualities of beauty. Umar, on the other hand, manifested qualities of majesty and rigour. His very presence struck fear into people, even if they had done nothing wrong. The women explained that they feared Umar because of his harshness, whereas the Prophet was not a bit harsh. Allah says to His Beloved: It is out of Allah’s mercy that you have been lenient with them. Had you been harsh or hard-hearted, they would have certainly abandoned you (3:159).
The Prophet ﷺ taught that there is a time for softness, but there is also a time for rigour. We are gentle with those we love and those we want to teach but we are not gentle with our enemies. The Devil is our avowed enemy and should be treated as such. The Prophet loved the fact that Umar’s very presence struck fear into the Devil. The light of truth shone so brightly from him that the Devil was unable to bear it. The qualities that he possessed before becoming Muslim were refined by the Prophet and channelled in the best way. The Prophet may have also been conscious that Umar’s feelings may have been hurt when the women called him harsh. So he had the last word: that yes, Umar does have a harshness to his character that perhaps needs some refinement, but when that strength is directed in the right way, it is a blessed thing.
This hadith is most often quoted as evidence of the great station of Sayyiduna Umar, and rightly so. But we should also take from it the absolute perfection and beauty of the Beloved’s character: the gentleness, the openness, the smile, his choice of words and his praise of his beloved Companion. We should also bear in mind that the Prophet is infinitely harder on the Devil than Umar. If the Devil meets Umar on a path, he takes a different path. But the Devil would not even be able to set out on the same path as our Prophet ﷺ . We are told that those who opposed him would start to fear him, even though there was a month’s travelling distance between them and him. He had the perfect balance between the attributes of beauty (jamal) and rigour (jalal). May Allah allow us all to attain something of that perfection.
Image: verse 3:159 (mentioned above) downloaded with thanks from freeislamiccalligraphy.com