GAINING HEARTS� BY GIVING GIFTS
The principle of distribution was not always based on need, justice, or merit. Muhammad had other considerations as well. �I give [at times material gifts] to persons who were quite recently in the state of unbelief, so that I may incline them to truth,� says Muhammad (2303).
To gain hearts (mullafa qulUbhum) for Islam with the help of gifts is considered impeccable behavior, in perfect accord with QurAnic teaching (9:60). Muhammad made effective use of gifts as a means of winning people over to Islam. He would reward new converts generously but overlook the claims of Muslims of long standing. Sa�d reports that �the Messenger of Allah bestowed gifts upon a group of people. . . . He however left a person and did not give him anything and he seemed to me the most excellent among them.� Sa�d drew the Prophet�s attention to this believing Muslim, but Muhammad replied: �He may be a Muslim. I often bestow something on a person, whereas someone else is dearer to me than he, because of the fear that he [the former] may fall headlong into the fire� (2300), that is, he may give up Islam and go back to his old religion. The translator and commentator makes the point very clear by saying that it was �with a view to bringing him nearer and making him feel at home in the Muslim society that material gifts were conferred upon him by the Holy Prophet� (note 1421).
There are other instances of the same type. �Abdullah b. Zaid reports that �when the Messenger of Allah conquered Hunain he distributed the booty, and he bestowed upon those whose hearts it was intended to win� (2313). He bestowed costly gifts on the Quraish and Bedouin chiefs, many of them his enemies only a few weeks before. Traditions have preserved the names of some of these elite beneficiaries, like AbU SufyAn b. Harb, SafwAn b. Umayya, �Uyaina b. Hisn, Aqra� b. HAbis, and �Alqama b. Ulasa (2303-2314). They received a hundred camels each from the booty.
Muhammad did the same with the booty of some gold sent by �AlI b. AbU TAlib from Yemen. He distributed it among four men: �Uyaina, Aqra, Zaid al-Khail, �and the fourth one was either �Alqama b. �UlAsa or Amir b. Tufail� (2319).
author : ram swarup