Suhayb: The Great Deal

Occasion: Transcript of an Isha khatira delivered at Bayt Al-Karim on October 7, 2026 Source: Transcript of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif, watch the original video on YouTube

Tonight, God willing, we continue speaking about one of the Companions. The purpose is to inspire ourselves to imitate such people, to act as they acted, to carry the same conduct, and to draw closer to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. They were close to him physically, and we cannot be. But at least we can feel that he is with us, as God, glory be to Him, described in the Qur'an: the Prophet ﷺ is among you, and he is meant to be within you, not merely around you.^[1] How do we reach that position? When we feel that we are acting like him and imitating him ﷺ.

A son of Persia, raised in Rome

This Companion was the son of a governor. His father governed on behalf of the Persians, in the days of the war between the Persians and the Romans, the war in which God gave the glad tidings of the Romans' victory.^[2] The man belonged to the Persian side: his father was a governor working for them. The Romans came, attacked those people, and took the son as a slave. So he grew up in Rome, in what we might call the West. The Romans were Christians; the Persians worshipped fire.

After a while, someone took him and sold him to a man in Mecca, who brought the young man there, and he began to work for him. He was a very intelligent person. His name was Suhayb, and he was called "al-Rumi," the Roman. What does that mean? People saw him as a Roman because of his accent; he had grown up over there. Imagine your own children being born or raised here. When they go to Egypt, or anywhere else, and try to speak Arabic, people catch them in a second: where are you from? I'm from Egypt. Really? Where do you come from? Oh, I come from America. Something like that.

Anyway, glory be to God, when he came to Mecca he proved a capable man and a very good businessman. Some narrations say that he made his owner an offer: how much do you need to release my neck? The owner named a sum. Suhayb worked until he had earned it, paid it, and freed himself. Then he went into business until he was one of the wealthy men of Mecca.

The flight

Then the Prophet ﷺ came out and began to call people. Suhayb listened to the Prophet ﷺ and accepted Islam, and he faced what the believers faced in Mecca: they began to punish him, to make his life hard, to lay hands on him.

After a while the Prophet ﷺ decided to leave Mecca for Medina. The Companions tried to migrate, some of them before the Prophet ﷺ. Suhayb came after the Prophet ﷺ, and he kept trying to slip out of Mecca, but they caught him. Where are you going, man? I'm going to Muhammad. Seriously? You are killing us! What is wrong with you? You came to us a poor man, you gathered all this money, and now you want to take it and go strengthen Muhammad? Come on.

He said: what do you want? They said: frankly, our first option is to kill you. The second: if you want to leave, you must do something. He said: I am a good archer, you know, and I could kill every one of you with my skill. But I will make you an offer. What offer? I will tell you where my treasure is, where I left my money. He had left it behind him and was going out alone, since he did not know what awaited him. This was a smart plan, by the way, a strategic one: he kept the money hidden, and later someone could fetch it, take a commission, and transfer it to him. They said: this is a good deal for us, we will have a thousand, a million, whatever it is, and we will let you go.

So he left all his money, all his treasure, with the people of Mecca, just to bring his body to the Prophet ﷺ.

"It was a great deal"

When he reached Medina, the Prophet ﷺ said to him the famous words: it was a great deal.

What was the deal? God, glory be to Him, revealed to the Prophet ﷺ a verse about what this man had done:^[3] there are people who sell themselves. How much will they be paid? It does not matter. They are not selling themselves for the sake of this world. They are buying themselves out of the hands of disbelief, for the sake of the faith.

Where do we stand?

That is why, when we discuss staying here or leaving for another place, the answer depends on whether you feel you can practice your religion. If you can, you stay in that place, whatever its name. But it is not the same for everybody. Sometimes I see my children drifting out of the circle, out of Islam, perhaps in a bad situation, about to lose their faith. At that point I cannot practice my religion here, which means I must leave. But if I am keeping my children on the path, and we practice our faith here, praise be to God, then we sit here without asking anyone's permission. We give the call to prayer, we pray aloud or silently, we follow whatever our Sharia lays down as rules, and we keep our religion going and practice it perfectly. If we fall short, the shortcoming is from myself, not because someone pushes or forces me to do something else. This is the situation. Suhayb left Mecca just to reach Medina.

Now imagine meeting God with this verse alone. He stands there and points to it: this verse came down because of me. What dignity that man has at that moment! And the same question comes to myself first, before anybody else: what will you bring with you?

What each of us will bring

Remember what God told us about standing before Him on the Day of Judgment. Each one of us will stand before Him and know exactly what he has brought to show: this is what I did. Imagine ten people standing side by side, each holding something. Which of them will enter Paradise before the rest? Which will reach the highest level, a higher position than the others?

The Prophet ﷺ described for us the last man to come out of the Fire, who is also the last to enter Paradise. It is a long account that the Prophet ﷺ gave us.^[4] He has just come out of the Fire, imagine, and he is terribly thirsty. God shows him something beautiful, and he asks: Lord, bring me close to this one. God says: if I do that, will you ask me for anything else? He says: no, never; this is more than enough for me. God places him there. Then God raises before him something better, and he begins looking at it and asks: Lord, will You bring me to that? You promised me, and this is the only thing I will ask, I will never ask You for anything else. God gives him that too. And when he arrives, God shows him another, next to the door of Paradise, and he says: what have I done to myself? Make me close to that one. God says: did you not promise Me?

But there is a lesson in the way the Prophet ﷺ described it: God gives him an excuse, because he sees something he cannot be patient about. We need to keep this in mind for our own cases. Sometimes we are in a position where we cannot hold back, where we cannot keep away. We are not talking about the rational mind. We are talking about desire. Desire is speaking now, not reason; logic is finished, it is not there. I cannot be patient: I need it. God excuses that person because he sees something he cannot be patient enough to resist. So God brings him close to the door of Paradise, and says: now you may enter.

What would you expect the man to say? He says: of course. But then he asks: are You making fun of me? God says: Enter Paradise. He says: You ask me to enter Paradise after every person has taken his place in it, with all his things, and nothing is left? He was dealing with it with the mentality he had in this world. Imagine we have a thousand here and I tell people: each of you may come and take what he needs. You need ten, and there are a thousand; will you take just ten, or the whole lot? We see it at buffets: we come with the plate and pile everything onto it, knowing for sure we will not eat it, but just to have it. He was speaking with the same mentality he had in this world. And God told him: enter Paradise, and you will have such and such, and gave him what He had promised, again.

The point

What is the point? Each one of us will come with something. Suhayb will come with this verse and say to God: this is the deal I made in my life. Even if he had nothing but that, he was truly sincere with his religion, and that is why. Do you remember what happened when the caliph was attacked, during prayer?^[5] When he lay on his bed, he asked the Companions to let Suhayb take charge of the prayer, to lead the whole community and carry that responsibility, until they chose from among the six men he had named. That is the standing of Suhayb, again and again.

What position will I have on the Day of Judgment? What position do you want to have? Even if we repeat the same question every single time, that is more than enough for us. But we need to change something. It is not enough to listen, to repeat the words, to enjoy the speech and leave with no benefit. God, glory be to Him, gave me a chance to speak about the position, and I am giving you a chance to listen to it. If I do not change myself and you do not change yourself, we will be questioned together about the information we received. It does not matter who said it; what matters is that we have received it. If we were ignorant, knowing nothing about the religion, perhaps God would excuse us. But now we know, and that means we must act.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: The speaker seems to allude to the verse ﴿وَاعْلَمُوا أَنَّ فِيكُمْ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ﴾ [al-Ḥujurāt: 7]. The verse is not recited in the transcript, so this is an inference from the meaning. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: An allusion to the opening of Sūrat al-Rūm (verses 1-4); the speaker does not recite it in the transcript. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: The verse meant is probably ﴿وَمِنَ النَّاسِ مَن يَشْرِي نَفْسَهُ ابْتِغَاءَ مَرْضَاتِ اللَّهِ﴾ [al-Baqarah: 207], which fits the speaker's description; he does not recite it in the transcript. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: The speaker conveys the hadith by meaning and names no source. It is the well-known hadith of the last person to leave the Fire and the last to enter Paradise; the wording is not given here. ^[5]: Editor's documentation: The speaker does not name the caliph; the context points to ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, may God be pleased with him, who directed that Ṣuhayb lead the people in prayer.