Ruinous Victories: The Difference Between Momentary Triumph and Lasting Gain in Light of Sūrat al-Anfāl

Occasion: Transcription of a Fajr khatira delivered on 9 May 2026 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

Whenever Sūrat al-Anfāl passes before you, a flood of questions is renewed within you about the difference between momentary victories and lasting victories.

Two Situations: What Looks Like Gain and What Looks Like Loss

What does that mean? There is a situation or a battle you enter in which you overcome a person, yet this person turns out to be the one able to control your fate many years later; so your victory here is momentary, and your loss afterward is lasting or total. And there is another situation in which you are humble, lower your wing, calm down, take your time, hold firm and feel at ease, so that you appear before people, or before the one who holds the decision, to have lost this deal or this situation, yet in the long run you are the one who gains.

The Home: The Clearest Example

The clearest example of that is marital disputes. In them a person feels he has triumphed over the other party: he subdued him, overbore him, raised his voice, and prevailed by his authority. But with the accumulation of days and times you see what we often witness: a woman asks for divorce, and you ask her: why? She says: I cannot continue. You say to her: do you have a clear, direct reason? She answers: no, it is a very long time. And when you ask: and what happened in the end? She says: there is no solution.

And the analysis of the situation is that our man felt throughout the time that he had triumphed; he imposed his authority, dominated the situation, and pressured those around him, but the accumulations of time made him the loser, or made her the loser in turn. And apply this talk to the children: complete, constant pressure and a momentary victory, then after a while they leave the bond entirely and disown any bearing of further responsibilities. So which of them was the victor and which was the defeated? The great problem is that in both examples there is loss on both sides; the son is not dutiful to his father and mother, nor did the father feel the gain of time in having his son around him, and likewise the husband and wife, both lost.

The Lesson of Badr

The Noble Qur'an teaches us this lesson, and the examples are very many. The Muslims rejoiced at a victory at Badr. And my question: was the victory of Badr momentary or lasting at the level of the entire nation? It was a dazzling victory in length and breadth at the level of all creation, and yet the Noble Qur'an follows it with a warning: beware the intoxication of momentary victory, lest you enter battles in which you lose yourself and those around you. What happened? A dispute over the spoils: who would take more?

So if you have a goal, hold firm to it. And what is my goal? The uprightness of the home, to the degree that makes my husband respect me to the required extent and me respect him to the required extent, so that we all come out with gains. And these gains are called: the children; the spoil of time, the spoil of the age.

That is why the Lord of the worlds, Glorified and Exalted, says in this tone and with this force: ﴿فَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ وَأَصْلِحُوا ذَاتَ بَيْنِكُمْ﴾ (So fear Allah and set right that which is between you).^[1] And what is meant here? The cohesion of this rank, the unity of this entity, the brotherhood of these people, and the bond of kinship of religion. You have no choice in it; it must remain. But the dispute that arises, whose cause is Satan, or into which desire has entered, or which the self has come to dominate, or which one of the appetites has taken over, is a momentary victory: I won you in this round, but I lost your brotherhood forever, and I lost what is between us until the Day of Resurrection.

Brothers and Inheritance

Two brothers disagree over a piece of land, or a sum of money, or a dwelling in a particular place. What happened? I triumphed over him and took what I wanted. So what resulted from that? My children and his children hate one another. Why? Because the inheritance taken was accompanied by rancor, spite and psychological provocation over the days.

Look into your memory and review your dealings with people, and reflect on the situations in which people triumphed over you: so-and-so triumphed over you in this situation, and review what remains with you toward him; you will find that his balance with you is zero. Why? Because he did not give regard to a moment in which he would do you justice against himself, give you your right, or humble himself before you.

And when our Lord, Glorified is He, named the Muslim society, He said: ﴿أَذِلَّةٍ عَلَى الْمُؤْمِنِينَ أَعِزَّةٍ عَلَى الْكَافِرِينَ﴾ (humble toward the believers, firm against the disbelievers).^[2] And the moment in which your brother sees a moment of weakness in you and seizes it and humiliates you with it, raises his voice with it and exposes you among the people, is a moment of momentary victory; he exploited a situation and made use of an event, whatever it was.

When the Prophet ﷺ Stayed Silent and Gave the Man His Greatest Gain

And in our Messenger ﷺ we have the highest example, and one thing reminds of another. One day news came to him from heaven that so-and-so among his Companions was betraying the whole Muslim society. Imagine: a revelation coming from heaven informing the Messenger of Allah ﷺ that so-and-so is committing treason, and his treason is against the whole Muslim society; he had sent a letter to Quraysh informing them of the movements of the Muslim army. This is military treason, and its punishment in all the constitutions of the world is one, without dispute: execution, his neck struck before the people by any means.

But the Prophet ﷺ did not like this momentary victory, although some people imagine that it is a victory for legislation, an application of the prescribed penalties, an instruction for the nation, and a placing of people at their proper sizes and positions, and very big slogans come out. But the Prophet ﷺ preferred the greater gain. And what is it? That this man remain a member of this religion, this idea, and this cause. So he ﷺ preferred that the whole society be silent, that he raise that man's standing, and that he remind the nation of his former glories, and that he had witnessed Badr, and that Allah looked upon the people of Badr and said to them, in the sense of: do what you wish, for I have forgiven you.^[3] And instead of being in the eyes of all the people a traitor, with people talking about his life and name, and his name being mentioned on tongues only in contexts of exposing him, belittling him, and obliging him to this and that, the Prophet ﷺ turned the whole rudder in that man's favor.

And this does not mean the error no longer had any landmark, but the expression came in an educational formulation whose gist is: ﴿يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا لَا تَتَّخِذُوا عَدُوِّي وَعَدُوَّكُمْ أَوْلِيَاءَ﴾ (O you who have believed, do not take My enemy and your enemy as allies).^[4] A gentle rebuke and kind words, and complete calm in the wording of the words I address to my brother. And then he came back once again.

Rebuking the Son: Words Are Enough

And your son whom you triumph over by subduing him: he was late one day, or went to such-and-such a place, or said such-and-such, or spent a sum of money. Mere words that make him ashamed before himself would have sufficed. For in many situations we forget something very important: the sentence "my own rebuke of myself is enough for me." Try this: that a person makes a mistake and then realizes he made a mistake. Because the fitra is sound in its constitution, built from the beginning upon uprightness, so I find myself before a rebuke: how did this come from me? So between me and my Lord, in the seclusion of the night, there is a reproach that no one knows but Allah, Glorified and Exalted. Then the other comes and presses very hard, and breaks this barrier, and a kind of breaking loose occurs: enough, you have broken the last bond between me and you. And here the person puts full stops: idea, cause, content, religion. And some people leave the very root of the religion because of this pressure.

Broad-Mindedness With the Followers of Schools

And we learned that while dealing with the followers of other schools. We have creedal schools: this one is a Māturīdī, this one an Ashʿarī, this one a Ḥanbalī. And we have juristic schools: Ḥanafī, Shāfiʿī, Mālikī and Ḥanbalī. And we have behavioral schools: this one is a Sufi, and this one is on his own way. So we learned how to take in all these people, and how to treat what they have in a way that ensures for us the soundness of their uprightness in the future.

You say to me: this may take very long. Yes, it may take long with you as you treat people's souls. And I have gone on at length with you, so forgive me. This subject may take a long time. A son who is not upright, for example, and you say: either I throw him out of the house or he gets disciplined? You say to him: just calm down. And likewise your brother in the mosque prays differently from your school, and in what he knows he has his own standing, and he draws near to Allah by it, and you also draw near to Allah, but you are not patient with your disagreement with your brother in this school-based difference, so either you keep away, or you shun him, or you expel him. So what happened?

The Qur'an Did Not Tire of Reminding

Come, let us make a very simple review from the beginning of the Noble Qur'an to its end: did the Qur'an stop reminding the disbelievers again that Allah is One, the Only? Did the Qur'an fall silent about that at any moment of your reading it? Did you sense that Allah, Glorified and Exalted, stopped calling people and left them? I seek forgiveness from Allah, exalted is Allah, Mighty and Majestic, above that. Did you feel that the door of respite had been closed to them? Allahu akbar! So why does this patience issue from the All-Powerful, the Omnipotent, who: ﴿وَلَوْ شَاءَ رَبُّكَ لَآمَنَ مَنْ فِي الْأَرْضِ كُلُّهُمْ جَمِيعًا﴾ (And had your Lord willed, all who are on earth would have believed, all of them together)?^[5] One word: "Be," and it is.

And we have an experience, you remember: ﴿وَإِذْ نَتَقْنَا الْجَبَلَ فَوْقَهُمْ كَأَنَّهُ ظُلَّةٌ﴾ (And when We raised the mountain above them as if it were a canopy).^[6] No objection and not a word; imagine, not under threat of weapons, but under threat of the mountain. The Lord of the worlds, Glorified is He, commanded the mountain and it rose above their heads, and they were looking at a mountain about to fall: "At your service," there is no choice other than that, or the mountain would collapse upon them. So the Lord of the worlds shows us a practical experience before our eyes that had He willed, all who are on earth would have believed, all of them together, but He, Glorified is He, did not want that; so it is neither right nor useful for us to force people to believe by compulsion.

How to Control Yourself in Situations

From these points, then, we moved on to a very important question: how do you control yourself in situations? How do you learn lasting gain and lasting loss? And how do you avoid momentary victory?

One says to himself: I will say two words to her that will hurt her now, she will sleep tonight crying. So what happened the next day? Imagine that a real situation happens on the ground: a man speaks to his wife with what hurts her psychologically, and she goes to sleep and does not wake up. He had felt what he did, but he saw the next day something beyond his ability, and that the matter had exceeded the limits of human domination and control, so the divine command came and took that woman from him. So look at his reflections as he sits, how he rebukes himself that he killed her; killed her with his tongue, killed her with his word, killed her with his harming.

And another example: a woman kept pressing into the children's heads that their father does and wrongs and belittles. Until at one moment she found her son hitting his father, and this situation was the reason the father left the house and did not return. And the one who hit his father in front of her turned to her and slapped her, and she no longer had a voice in life after that. So who gained? Satan. And all the momentary victories that the Qur'an governs at this point warn us against the victor being Satan. So in all your disputes with people, review them: who is the victor? And to where do things continue? And what is the end?

Relationships: What Lasts and What Is Severed

And all the disputes between you and those close to you in particular; we have relationships whose basis is continuity, relationships whose basis is severance, and relationships in between. I have relationships called relationships of blood kinship, and the relationship of kinship of religion is stronger. And there are relationships in which there is no bond between me and their holders except bad character and practices that lead to the Fire; these are relationships that must be cut off at once. And there are relationships in the middle, like your friend or colleague or a shaykh, for example: if you reconcile, praise be to Allah, and if you do not reconcile, may Allah make it easy for you, and the basis of the relationship remains.

So look and review, and I ask Allah, Glorified and Exalted, to grant us wisdom, to grant us wisdom. Reactions must be bound by the rein of reason. A text message comes to you and you reply to it in a second: I'll show you who I am! Calm down a little, and recalculate before something issues from you that you regret all your life. I ask Allah, Blessed and Exalted, to grant us good understanding of what He intends.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Anfāl, verse 1; at its beginning the spoils of war are mentioned. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Māʾidah, verse 54; the speaker did not mention the sūrah; the attribution is according to what appears from the wording. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: The story is that of Ḥāṭib ibn Abī Baltaʿah (may Allah be pleased with him), and the ḥadīth in its context is agreed upon (al-Bukhārī and Muslim); the speaker did not mention the name or the attribution, and what is conveyed here is by meaning as he gave it. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Mumtaḥanah, verse 1 (the speaker confined himself to the beginning of the verse); its continuation is: ﴿تُلْقُونَ إِلَيْهِمْ بِالْمَوَدَّةِ﴾ (you extend to them affection). ^[5]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat Yūnus, verse 99; limited to what the speaker uttered; connected to it is the saying of the Exalted: ﴿أَفَأَنْتَ تُكْرِهُ النَّاسَ حَتَّىٰ يَكُونُوا مُؤْمِنِينَ﴾ (Then will you compel the people until they become believers?). ^[6]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Aʿrāf, verse 171; its continuation is: ﴿وَظَنُّوا أَنَّهُ وَاقِعٌ بِهِمْ خُذُوا مَا آتَيْنَاكُمْ بِقُوَّةٍ﴾ (and they thought it was going to fall upon them: "Take what We have given you with strength"); the wording came inconsistent in the transcript, so it was limited to the beginning of the verse.