HUMAN STRATEGY, DIVINE STRATEGY

God sends His Messengers to guide the people toward His message.

The Prophet of Islam lived in Makkah for about thirteen years. During his last days in Makkah, the Quraysh decided to eliminate the Prophet of Islam. To this end, their leaders produced several suggestions. This has been mentioned in the Quran:

“Remember how those who bent on denying the truth, plotted against you to imprison you or kill you or expel you: they schemed—, but God also schemed. God is the best of schemers.” (8:30)

The enemies of the Prophet of Islam planned to remove him from the scene either by imprisonment, or execution, or expulsion. This verse of the Quran tells us that God set at naught this evil plan through a far superior strategy. What was this divine plan? History shows that this plan was executed exactly at the same time the Makkans were planning to end the Prophet’s life: two Makkan Muslims were sent to Madinah to propagate Islam there, and through their efforts, people started accepting Islam on a large scale. Very soon, the Muslims increased so much in number that they assumed the dominating position in Madinah. The situation was favourable for the Prophet of Islam to leave Makkah for Madinah secretly.

This verse clearly explains the human strategy and divine strategy. This shows that human strategy resorts to such things as imprisonment, killing, and expulsion, whereas the divine strategy works at the level of conquering hearts and minds. The last extent of human thinking is to oppose the divine mission or expel or kill the missionary, but God’s way is different. God sends his servants as the callers to His religion in different areas. He opens people’s hearts to His message. In this way, all those people become receptive to the call of truth. The power of true religion becomes so strong that no strategy by the enemy can succeed.