takes after his father, whereas if the woman’s fluid prevails, the child resembles the mother.”

Ibn Salām then pronounced the two testimonies of faith and said, “The Jews are a people given to slander; if they learn of my acceptance of Islam before you question them about me, they will surely defame me.”

They were summoned, and the Prophet ﷺ asked, “What sort of man is ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salām among you?”
They replied, “He is the best of us and the son of the best of us, our leader and the son of our leader.”
He asked, “What would you say if he were to accept Islam?”
They said, “May Allah protect him from that!”

Ibn Salām then emerged and declared, “I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.”
They immediately said, “He is the worst of us and the son of the worst of us,” and they began to disparage him.
Ibn Salām remarked, “Messenger of Allah, this is exactly what I feared.”

ʿAwf al-Aʿrābī narrated, on the authority of Zurārah ibn Awfā, that ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salām said: “When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ arrived in Madinah, people rushed out to greet him, saying, ‘The Messenger of Allah has come!’ I went out to see him, and the moment I looked at his face I knew it was not the face of a liar. The very first words I heard him say were: ‘People, feed others, spread the greeting of peace, maintain kinship ties, and pray at night while people are asleep—you will enter Paradise in peace.’” (Sound)

Asbāṭ ibn Naṣr related—from al-Suddi, from Abū Mālik and Abū Ṣāliḥ, from Ibn ʿAbbās, and from Murrah, from Ibn Masʿūd, and from several Companions of the Prophet ﷺ—regarding the Almighty’s words, “And when there came to them a Book from Allah confirming what was with them, and previously they had been seeking victory over those who disbelieved; yet when there came to them that which they recognized, they rejected it” (Q 2:89):

“The Arabs used to pass by the Jews and affront them. The Jews had found mention of Muhammad in the Torah and would supplicate Allah to send him so that they could fight the Arabs alongside him. But when what they recognized did come to them, they disbelieved in him because he was not from the Children of Israel.”