“Islam is the learning of mercy.”

Commentary:

If the bearer of the Sunna is ‘only a gift of mercy’ (Hadith), and is ‘sent only as a mercy to the worlds’ (21:107), and if he is ‘the purpose of creation’ (Contention 20), then we begin to see why every sura but one begins with the names ‘The Compassionate, the Merciful’. Instead of an evocation of opposition, of the dialectical interplay of the Names with which the Book sets up other cosmic principles, these names monopolise the basmala. (See Contention 78)

Justice, Rigour and Majesty are not rivals to the divine mercy. Instead, they are indications and prefaces to it. For justice, there must sometimes be war, and the perfect human encompasses this possibility: the warrior-saint, the Zen samurai-type, represents a high calling. But the culmination of the Sira is evidently the Conquest of Makka; here the Companions are taught the point to which long years of training have led.

The pagan Quraysh had insisted on deleting ‘the Merciful’ from their treaty with the Holy Prophet ﷺ. Mercy was not in their vocabulary. So when the Muslim army entered the city Sa’d ibn ‘Ubada cried out: ‘This is the day of slaughter! The day when the inviolable shall be violated!’ But the Holy Prophet ﷺ indicated otherwise: ‘This is the day of mercy! The day on which Allah has exalted Quraysh!’ He stood looking out over them from the door of the Ka’ba, and asked them: ‘What do you think I shall do to you?’ And then he announced: ‘I say as my brother Joseph عليه السلام said: “There shall be no reproach this day. God forgives you, and He is the Most Merciful of the Merciful”‘ (12:92).

Shaykh Abdal-Hakim Murad

Source: Commentary on the Eleventh Contentions, Contention No. 33, Pg. 60