embracing the faith until Allah brought him into it against his will. This was unlike Muāwiya, from whom nothing of the sort was ever known, nor from his brother Yazīd.

This poem is unquestionably a fabrication against Muāwiya, for it contains the line:

Death is easier than hearing the slanderers say to us,
“Let Hind’s son forsake al-Uzzā—he has indeed grown afraid.”

It is well known that “after the conquest of Mecca, the people embraced Islam and al-Uzzā was destroyed. The Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—sent Khālid ibn al-Walīd to it, and he began chanting:

‘O al-Uzzā (1), I renounce you and do not glorify you;
I have seen that Allah has indeed brought you low.’”

It stood near Arafat, so neither al-Uzzā nor anyone who would reproach them for abandoning al-Uzzā remained there. It is thus evident that this was fabricated and placed on Muāwiya’s tongue by some liar. He is a liar (2), an ignorant man who did not know (3) how events had actually unfolded.

Likewise, what he mentioned concerning Muāwiya’s grandfather, Abū Umayya Utba ibn Rabīa; his maternal uncle, al-Walīd ibn Utba; his mother’s paternal uncle, Shayba ibn Rabīa; and his brother Hanzala is something he shared with most of the Quraysh. There was no one among them (4) who did not have unbelieving relatives who were killed as unbelievers or died (5) as unbelievers. Was their embracing Islam, then, a disgrace?!

Ikrima ibn Abī Jahl and Safwān ibn Umayya embraced Islam and were among the finest Muslims, although their fathers were killed at Badr. Likewise, al-Hārith ibn Hishām’s brother was killed on the day of