without right, a deed that drags its perpetrator into the Fire—may Allah protect us—and its doer is certainly not a martyr. Yet if someone carries out such an act based on a mistaken interpretation, thinking it permissible, we hope he will be spared sin, though the rank of martyrdom will not be recorded for him, for he has not followed the path that earns martyrdom. Nonetheless, he is excused from sin because he acted on an interpretation, and whoever strives to reach the truth and errs still receives one reward.
At the close of this tremendous ḥadīth, which offers a lesson to all who would take heed, we read that when the unbelieving king—who commanded the people to worship him—learned that the masses had declared, “We believe in Allah, the Lord of the boy,” the forces of wickedness and malice toward faith and its followers came to him and said, “O King, the very thing you dreaded has taken place: the people have believed in Allah.” He was a tyrannical oppressor, so he ordered trenches (ukhdūd)—deep ditches like irrigation channels—to be dug at the entrances of the streets and alleyways. Then he instructed his soldiers: “Whoever approaches and refuses to renounce his religion, hurl him into them,” for he had filled the trenches with roaring fires—Allah’s refuge is sought.
The people came forward, yet none of them recanted their faith, so the soldiers threw them into the flames. Everyone who refused to abandon his true religion—faith in Allah—was cast into the fire. But when they were hurled into it and consumed, they merely passed from the abode of deception and ruin to the abode of bliss and permanence, for the angels received their souls in purity, saying, “Peace be upon you; enter Paradise for what you used to do” (Q 16:32). No form of patience is greater than this: a person sees the fire blazing before him and leaps into it, fearing only for his belief and resolved to safeguard it.
Then a woman arrived carrying a nursing infant. On beholding the flames, she hesitated to plunge into the fire with her child,