like him.”

The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, illustrated the infant’s suckling by placing his own index finger in his mouth and drawing on it, thereby making the report vivid and unmistakable.

The child then said, “O Allah, do not make me like him.” Afterwards they came upon a slave-girl—a woman being beaten while people shouted at her, “You committed fornication! You stole!” She kept repeating, “Hasbunā Allah wa niʿma al-wakīl” (Allah is sufficient for us, and He is the best Guardian). Seeing this, the child’s mother—while nursing him—prayed, “O Allah, do not make my son like her.” The child released the breast, looked at her, and said, “O Allah, make me like her.”

A conversation followed between the toddler and his mother. She said, “I passed by—or he passed by me—this man of fine appearance, so I prayed, ‘O Allah, make my son like him,’ but you said, ‘O Allah, do not make me like him.’” He replied, “Yes. That man was an overbearing, stubborn tyrant, so I asked Allah not to make me like him.

“As for the woman, people are accusing her of fornication and theft while she keeps saying, ‘Hasbunā Allah wa niʿma al-wakīl.’ Therefore I said, ‘O Allah, make me like her’—that is, make me innocent of fornication and theft and let me entrust my affair to Allah, as she has done with her words, ‘Hasbunā Allah wa niʿma al-wakīl.’”

In this is a sign among the signs of Allah: that an infant could feel, observe, reflect, think, and be endowed with some knowledge—enough to say of the man, “He was a tyrannical rebel,” though the child was still in the cradle, and to say of the woman, “O Allah, make me like her,” recognizing that she was oppressed, innocent of the charges, and had placed her trust in Allah. That such awareness should exist in a baby is itself one of Allah’s signs.

In sum, Allah is capable of all things, and thus there may occur