Abdullah Ibn Masud narrated that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be to him) said, “A believer sees his sins as if he were sitting under a mountain which, he is afraid, may fall on him; whereas the wicked person considers his sins to be flies passing over his nose and he just drives them away like this (the narrator moves his hands over his nose in illustration for the words ‘like this’).” The story of Thalaba Ibn Abdur Rahman is of great significance in today’s scenario where we generally do not really care about the major sins leave aside the minor ones. The story presents to us a picture of a believer and what his internal condition becomes when he commits a sin.
Thalaba was a polytheist before he reverted to Islam; however once he accepted the faith he held on to it and became steadfast in his religion. He was a young boy of 16 years and he was one of the most sincere companions of the Messenger of Allah. The Messenger used to send him most of the time to receive from someone or give to somebody things on his behalf. In short he used to run errands for the Messenger.
One day Thalaba was walking down the streets of Medina when he saw a house with its door open. Out of curiosity or perhaps inadvertently he peeped into the house. At the very moment the wind blew and the light curtain at the entrance of the bathroom blew with the wind and there was a woman inside who was bathing. It was all so sudden that Thalaba could not realise what was actually happening. However, he immediately realised his mistake and lowered his gaze but the feeling of extreme guilt and remorse surrounded him. He became so much depressed with his act that he began to think that he had turned munafiq (hypocrite). Thinking about himself, he said to himself, “How could I be of the companions, one that is close to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be to him), one who runs his errands and be so horrible as to disrespect people’s privacy?”
The feeling of guilt reached so high that he started to fear that Allah would reveal his name among the munafiqin (hypocrites) to the Messenger and hence he thought how would he show his face to the Messenger, hence he ran away and started living in some mountainous regions. There in Medina the Messenger became worried about Thalaba as he did not show up for many days. Every single day would elevate the tension levels and hence the Messenger decided to send Umar Ibn Khattab and Salman al Farsi (may Allah be pleased with them both) to look out for Thalaba. They searched the whole of Medina and even the outskirts of Medina until they reached a set of mountains in between Makkah and Medina. There were people who used to herd their sheep there and Umar and Salman enquired about Thalaba with them. When they narrated the characteristics of Thalaba, the nomads replied that they know a boy who wept and only wept and had been there for the past 40 days. When they enquired where they can meet him, the nomads said that the boy returns from the mountain once during a day and then they offer him milk which he drinks by mixing it with his tears (he used to cry profusely while drinking milk that tears would drop into the milk) and then again he goes back to the mountains weeping and asking Allah to forgive him. The two companions waited for Thalaba to come down from the mountains and they observed that he had become weak.
When he saw the two companions he got terrified and tried to run but the two got hold of him. To this, Thalaba cried, “Please! Please! Don’t take me to the Messenger of Allah, I am too scared!” He even asked them as to whether Allah had revealed that he had become a munafiq. As the two had committed to find and take Thalaba to the Messenger, they brought him even though he was very reluctant and did not want to face the Messenger fearing his sin.
When he was taken to the Messenger of Allah, he again asked him as to whether Allah had revealed that he had turned munafiq. The Messenger assured him that there is no such verse and placed his head over his lap. He was so ashamed of himself regarding the sin that he said to the Messenger, “Oh Messenger of Allah! Remove the head of a sinner away from you.” The Messenger comforted Thalaba and until he became calm and then he said to the Messenger, “I feel as though ants are walking between my flesh and bones.” He told Thalaba that it was death and his time to depart from this world had come. His head was still lying on the lap of the Messenger of Allah and he witnessed Thalaba saying the Shahadah, “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be to him) is the Messenger of Allah.”
After his soul departed, the Messenger of Allah washed his body and carried his body to the grave. While walking, Umar noticed that the Messenger was walking on his toes. He asked him as to why he was walking on toes as people had given him enough space to walk. The Messenger replied, “I could not put my feet because of the large number of the angels who were sent to escort him to his grave.”
There is a profound lesson in this story of Thalaba for posterity. It was the sense of guilt which made Thalaba repent so sincerely. We must ask ourselves how often we repent to Allah and how much weight do we give to our sins. The profound point here is that Thalaba merely just looked at the woman a little longer than what could be considered the first glance, and the glance could perhaps be inadvertent, yet he considered his sin a mountain that would fall and destroy him. He started hating himself because he could not bear as to how he could associate himself to the Messenger of Allah after committing such a sin. It is high time we realised how we view our sins. Do we view them as flies that buzz around our face and all we need to do is to just brush them away or do we view them as mountains that we would have to account for? The way we view sins would give us a category that we fall in, either we would fall in the category of the believer or we would end up being in the category of the wicked person.