An example of this is someone who has tasted hunger and then the satisfaction of eating his fill, illness and then health, or fear and then security. His love and desire for health, security, and having enough to eat, and his aversion to hunger, fear, and illness, are greater than those of someone who has never suffered these afflictions or known their reality.

Likewise, someone who joined the people of religious innovation and wickedness, but to whom Allah then made the truth clear, granting him sincere repentance and enabling him to strive in His cause, may surpass others in explaining their condition, shunning their evil practices, and striving against them. Nuʿaym ibn Hammād al-Khuzāʿī, who was stern towards the Jahmiyyah, said: “I am stern towards them because I used to be one of them.”

Allah Most High has said:

“As for those who emigrated after being persecuted, then strove and remained steadfast—your Lord thereafter is surely All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.”

This verse was revealed concerning a group of the Companions whom the polytheists had persecuted into forsaking their religion. Then Allah turned to them in mercy, and they emigrated to Allah and His Messenger, strove, and remained steadfast.

ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb and Khālid ibn al-Walīd, may Allah be pleased with them both, were among the fiercest opponents of Islam. Yet when they embraced Islam, they surpassed people who had preceded them in accepting it. Some who had preceded them were below them in faith and righteous deeds because of the excellence of their striving against the disbelievers and their support for Allah and His Messenger. And ʿUmar, being more complete in faith, sincerity, truthfulness, knowledge, discernment, and light, further removed from the desires of the soul, and loftier in aspiration