As the army surrounded the city and began to enter, he shut himself in his house. He was, however, not so innocent. He was captured by this army once before. One of the commanders sought permission to kill him, but it was denied; so he asked for permission to pull out his teeth so he couldn’t debate and argue, but he still wasn’t given permission. He was told, “Maybe you will see out of his mouth, things that make you happy.”

He was once the aggressor. He tortured his own son, he argued and debated against Muslims, and he was the negotiator for the Meccans at the Treaty of Hudaibiyah, and then he took part in violating that treaty. But it was now time for Sohail ibn Amr to accept Islam at the hand of the army’s general. He called for his son, the same son he tortured. He could barely look into his eyes out of shame, but his son interceded on his behalf to Rasoolullah.

The lesson of today’s post isn’t in his conversion, but the drastic change he went through. Once Abu Sufyan complained, “I have never been humiliated like today, he gave permission to these people while we are still waiting.” Ameer ul Mo’mineen, Umar Al-Khattab, called in Ammar b. Yasser before them, he was not from the nobility of Quraish. Sohail replied, “if you are angry, be angry with yourself. When Rasoolullah called, he called for all of us. He called them and called us. They hurried to him, and we delayed. What will we do when they are called to paradise and we are left behind? Then you’ll be angry with yourself. You want to precede them into the house of khaleefa, what they have preceded you in is much better and honorable then what you are fighting for.”

Questions, Lessons and Applications

Question 1: How can we increase our ability to think critically?

Lesson: Sometimes, the way we see the problem is the problem. Abu Sufyan saw the situation as a problem in one way, that he was being dishonored by the khaleefah. Sohail saw the problem in a different light, that it was because of his own shortcoming that they missed out on this honor. All of us have lenses that we see through. These lenses filter out light, distorting what we see. These filters could be how we were brought up, the people we hang out with, the experiences that we have lived through and so on.

Application: Break the chains of measurements and measure progress with a different criteria. You limit the solutions by limiting the way you measure the impact; but there isn’t only one way to measure the impact. Don’t just look at the external responses, look at the internal actions that bring about those responses.

Action: Define the problem. Define the measurement being used. Define a new measurement. Brainstorm ideas that can be implemented based on the new measurement. Make the measurements external and internal, objective and subjective, emotional and logical.

Question 2:How can arrogance stand in our way of moving towards progress?

To be continued …