Go, You Are Free

Makkah fell almost without a fight. The Prophet ﷺ had ordered his commanders to enter peacefully and shed no blood except in self-defence, and they did. He entered the city he had been driven from eight years before not in the posture of a triumphant warlord but in humility so deep that, riding his camel, his head bowed until his beard nearly touched the saddle, in thankfulness to Allah, reciting Surah al-Fath.

He went straight to the Ka'bah. Around and atop the house of Ibrahim and Isma'il (as) stood three hundred and sixty idols. He touched each with his staff reciting, truth has come and falsehood has vanished; falsehood is ever bound to vanish, and they were thrown down, and the house was cleansed and returned to the worship of the One God for which it had been built. Bilal (ra), once tortured in this very city for saying Ahad, climbed atop the Ka'bah and called the adhan over Makkah.

Then came the moment the city dreaded. Quraysh, the people who had persecuted him for thirteen years, mocked him in prostration, starved his clan in the valley, killed his Companions, mutilated his uncle, and marched army after army to destroy him, stood gathered before him, entirely in his power, awaiting his judgement. He asked them: O people of Quraysh, what do you think I will do with you? They answered, hoping: a noble brother, and the son of a noble brother. And he gave them the words that echo as the summit of mercy in human history: go, for you are free.

It was the same forgiveness Yusuf (as) gave his brothers, which he quoted to them: no blame upon you this day; may Allah forgive you. The man with absolute power and every earthly reason for vengeance chose, in the hour of total victory, to pardon. Hind, who had eaten Hamzah's (ra) liver, was forgiven and became a believer. Ikrimah, son of Abu Jahl, was forgiven. Wahshi, who killed Hamzah (ra), was forgiven. Even the man who had been writing revelation and then apostatised was, after intercession, spared.

On that day the verse came that the Companions understood as the seal of the long struggle: when the help of Allah has come, and the victory, and you see the people entering the religion of Allah in crowds, then glorify the praise of your Lord and seek His forgiveness. Victory, in the Qur'an's framing, was not an occasion for pride but for humility and istighfar. Makkah, the heart of Arabia, was now the heart of Islam, taken not by the sword in the end but by mercy.