بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا
كُونُوا قَوَّامِينَ لِلَّهِ شُهَدَاءَ بِالْقِسْطِ
وَلَا يَجْرِمَنَّكُمْ شَنَآنُ قَوْمٍ عَلَىٰ أَلَّا تَعْدِلُوا
اعْدِلُوا هُوَ أَقْرَبُ لِلتَّقْوَىٰ
وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ
إِنَّ اللَّهَ خَبِيرٌ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ
Yā ayyuhā alladhīna āmanū kūnū qawwāmīna lillāhi shuhadāʾa bil-qisṭ.
Wa lā yajrimannakum shanaʾānu qawmin ʿalā allā taʿdilū.
Iʿdilū huwa aqrabu lit-taqwā.
Wa-ttaqū Allāh.
Inna Allāha khabīrun bimā taʿmalūn.
“O believers! Stand firm for Allah and bear true testimony.
Do not let the hatred of a people lead you to injustice.
Be just! That is closer to righteousness.
And be mindful of Allah.
Surely Allah is All-Aware of what you do.”
Sūrat al-Māʾidah 5:8
There are stories that expose the soul gently. And there are stories that expose it sharply.
This is one of those stories.
Not because the outward event is large. No kingdom falls. No army moves.No public trial takes place.
Only a person dislikes another person.
Only a saint notices something in his own heart.
The Prophet ﷺ appears in a dream. And suddenly a hidden fault is brought into the light.
Ibn ʿArabī tells us that he was in Tlemcen in the year 590 AH.
He had heard of a man who spoke against Shaykh Abū Madyan.
This mattered to him.
Abū Madyan was not an ordinary name in the heart of Ibn ʿArabī.
He was one of the great knowers of Allah.
One of the masters whose light had reached Ibn ʿArabī even though the two had not met physically.
Through Abū Madyan’s disciples, especially Shaykh Yūsuf al-Kūmī, Ibn ʿArabī had entered more deeply into spiritual discipline, adab, and the inner training of the soul.
So when Ibn ʿArabī heard that this man disliked Abū Madyan, something in him turned against the man.
This is understandable. Yet dangerous.
Understandable, because love has loyalty. Dangerous, because loyalty can become unjust.
That night, Ibn ʿArabī saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in a dream.
The Prophet ﷺ asked him: Why do you dislike this man?
Ibn ʿArabī replied: Because he dislikes Abū Madyan.
Then came the correction. Does he not love Allah and love me?
Ibn ʿArabī admitted that he did.
Then why, the Prophet ﷺ asked him, did you dislike him for disliking Abū Madyan, instead of loving him for loving Allah and His Messenger?
What a question. So simple. So piercing. So capable of ruining our false pieties.
The Prophet ﷺ did not tell Ibn ʿArabī that Abū Madyan was unimportant. He did not tell him that loyalty to the righteous has no value. He did not tell him that criticism of the awliyāʾ is harmless. But he put the matter back in its true order.
Allah first. His Messenger ﷺ next. Then every other love beneath that light.
Even the love of a saint must remain obedient to Allah. Even the defence of a teacher must remain inside justice. Even loyalty to the people of Allah must not make us unjust to someone who loves Allah and His Messenger.
This is where many hearts fail.
Not in hatred alone. But in religious hatred.
Not in loyalty alone. But in loyalty that forgets the Scale.
A person criticises someone we love. A scholar. A teacher. A parent. A movement. A community. A lineage. A way of thinking.
And suddenly we no longer see the person.
We see only the offence.
We forget his prayer. We forget her sincerity. We forget their tears. We forget their service. We forget their love for Allah.
We reduce a whole human being to one wound they caused us, or one wound they caused someone we honour.
This is not justice.
It may wear the clothing of loyalty. It may speak the language of truth. It may even seem like zeal.
But it is not justice.
The Qurʾān does not tell us to be just only when our hearts are calm.
It does not tell us to be just only with people we already like.
It says:
Do not let the hatred of a people lead you to injustice.
This means the real test of justice is not how we treat those we love. The real test is how we treat those we dislike. The one who agrees with us. The one who praises us. The one who honours our teachers. The one who belongs to our circle. Being fair to such a person is easy.
The harder test is the person who irritates us.
The person who has spoken wrongly. The person who has misunderstood someone dear to us. The person whose tone offends us. The person whose presence awakens an old hurt.
Can we still see their good? Can we still admit their love of Allah? Can we still refuse to lie about them? Can we still keep the Scale straight?
This is the moral secret of the story.
The Prophet ﷺ did not allow Ibn ʿArabī to make Abū Madyan greater than the command of Allah.
This is love with adab.
To love the awliyāʾ without turning them into excuses for injustice. To defend truth without betraying truth. To honour our teachers without making our teachers into walls between us and fairness.
A teacher of Allah would not want to be defended through disobedience to Allah. A saint of Allah would not want his name to become a reason for ugliness in the heart. The friends of Allah are not honoured by our cruelty. They are honoured when we become more truthful, more merciful, more just, more awake.
When Ibn ʿArabī awoke, he did not merely admire the dream.
He acted.
This is important.
Some people collect spiritual experiences. The people of sincerity are corrected by them. He took a valuable gift and went to the man’s house. He told him what had happened.
The man wept.
He accepted the gift. And he understood that the dream was also a warning for him.
Because he, too, had a wound.
Ibn ʿArabī wanted to know why this man disliked Abū Madyan. The answer was painfully human. He had once been with Abū Madyan in Béjaïa. It was ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā. Sacrificial animals had come to Abū Madyan. Abū Madyan distributed them among his companions. But he gave nothing to this man.
That was it.
A missed portion. A forgotten share. A wound of not being included. And from that wound grew criticism.
How many grand objections begin like this?
Not from truth. But from injury. Not from principle. But from feeling unseen. Not from careful judgement. But from the memory of being passed over.
A person says, “I am only concerned for truth.” But beneath the concern there may be an old humiliation.
A person says, “I am only warning people.” But beneath the warning there may be envy.
A person says, “I am only defending the Sunnah.” But beneath the defence there may be a need to win.
A person says, “I am only being honest.” But beneath the honesty there may be the pleasure of wounding.
This does not mean every criticism is false.
No.
Truth must remain truth. Wrong must remain wrong.
But the heart must be examined. Because the nafs can hide inside noble sentences.
It can turn a personal wound into a public principle. It can turn resentment into scholarship. It can turn jealousy into advice. It can turn disappointment into doctrine.
This is why the story corrects both men.
Ibn ʿArabī is corrected for disliking a man because of his dislike of Abū Madyan.
The other man is corrected for allowing an old wound to become dislike of Abū Madyan.
One heart is trapped by excessive loyalty. The other by old resentment.
Both need the Prophet ﷺ. Both need the Qurʾānic Scale. Both need justice.
There is something deeply merciful here.
The dream did not humiliate them publicly. It healed them privately.
The correction did not make Ibn ʿArabī smaller. It made him greater.
Because true greatness is not never being wrong. True greatness is accepting correction when Allah sends it.
Some people defend their mistakes because their image matters more than their soul.
Ibn ʿArabī repented immediately. He did not say: But my intention was good.
He did not say: But I was defending a saint.
He did not say: But the other man started it.
He said, in meaning: I slipped. I was heedless. Now I repent.
This is the speed of the sincere.
They do not negotiate with guidance. They return.
And this is a lesson for us.
We live in a time of camps. Religious camps. Political camps. Family camps. School camps. Intellectual camps. Even spiritual camps.
Each camp has its heroes. Each camp has its enemies. Each camp has its approved language. Each camp has its forbidden names.
And once someone is placed outside the circle, we give ourselves permission.
Permission to exaggerate. Permission to mock. Permission to ignore their good. Permission to attribute the worst motives. Permission to turn one mistake into their whole identity.
But Allah does not allow the Scale to tilt because our group is offended. Allah does not allow injustice because our teacher was criticised. Allah does not allow falsehood because our feelings are hurt.
Allah says:
Be just. That is closer to taqwā.
The Qurʾān is not interested in slogans that do not survive emotion.
It wants justice at the moment hatred rises.
It wants truth when the nafs has a reason to bend it.
It wants taqwā when the heart has been provoked.
The story of Ibn ʿArabī in Tlemcen is not only about one man and one saint.
It is about every heart that loves something good and then uses that love badly. It is about every wound that grows into judgement. It is about every loyalty that needs to be purified. It is about the danger of becoming unjust while thinking we are defending the righteous.
So let us ask ourselves:
Who is our Abū Madyan? Whose honour makes us lose balance? Which teacher, group, idea, institution, or memory do we defend so fiercely that we forget justice?
And who is our al-Ṭarṭūsī?
Whom have we reduced to one fault? Whose love for Allah have we ignored because they offended someone we love? Whose good have we hidden because their criticism hurt us?
These are not small questions.
They are questions of taqwā.
May Allah protect us from injustice disguised as loyalty.
May He protect us from resentment disguised as principle.
May He protect us from defending the people of Allah in ways that displease Allah.
May He make our love for our teachers obedient to our love for the Messenger ﷺ.
May He make our love for the Messenger ﷺ obedient to our love for Allah.
May He give us eyes that see the good even in those who wound us.
May He give us hearts that repent quickly when corrected.
May He keep the Scale straight in our hands, our words, our homes, our schools, and our communities.
And may He never allow our hatred of people, or our love of people, to lead us away from justice.
Āmīn.
Source note:
The retelling draws mainly on Ibn ʿArabī’s al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya, chapter 560, where he places the dream in Tlemcen in 590 AH, says he disliked a man for speaking against Abū Madyan, reports the Prophet’s ﷺ correction, and then describes visiting the man with a gift; the same passage gives the man’s reason for resentment: in Béjaïa, sacrificial animals were distributed among Abū Madyan’s companions, but he received nothing. (The Single Monad Model of the Cosmos) Claude Addas identifies the man as Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṭarṭūsī and notes the Tlemcen setting in 590/1194, citing al-Durra al-fākhira and al-Futūḥāt. (Internet Archive) Addas also explains Ibn ʿArabī’s deep link with Abū Madyan: although Ibn ʿArabī did not meet him physically, Abū Madyan became one of the masters most often mentioned in the Futūḥāt, and Ibn ʿArabī came under his influence through disciples such as Shaykh Yūsuf al-Kūmī. (Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society)
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