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dazzled, "If you do what you just promised, there is no wonder about it, for you are a foolish imposed
ruler."
However, despite his strength and bravery, he remained cautious until his last days, never playing a
role in the armed civil strife and refusing to lean towards either of the parties.
Abu Al-'Aaliyah Al Barraa' related: I was once walking behind Ibn `Umar without his realizing it. I
heard him saying to himself, "They are holding their swords, raising them high, killing each other, and
saying, `O Ibn `Umar, give us a hand!'?"
He was filled with sorrow and pain seeing Muslims blood shed by their own hands. As mentioned at the
very beginning, he never awoke a sleeping Muslim. If he could have stopped the fight and saved the
blood he would have done that, but the events were too powerful; therefore he kept to his house.
His heart was with `Ally (may Allah be pleased with him), and not only his heart but it seems his
firm belief, based on a narration of what he said in his last days: "I never felt sorry about something that I
missed except that I didn't fight on the side of `Ally against the unjust party."
However, when he refused to fight with Imam Ally, on whose side truth was, it was not because he
sought a safe position, but rather because he refused the whole matter of the dispute and civil strife and
refrained from a fight not one in which Muslims fight disbelievers, but one between Muslims who cut
each other into pieces.
He clarified this when Naafi' asked him, "O Abu `Abd Rahman, you are the son of `Umar and the
Companion of the Prophet (PBUH) and you are who you are. What hinders you from that matter?" He
meant fighting on Ally's side. He replied, "What hinders me is that Allah has forbidden us to shed the
blood of a Muslim. Allah the Mighty and Powerful said: "and continue fighting them until there is no
more persecutions and GOD's Religion prevails "(2:193) and we did that. We fought the disbelievers
until Allah's religion prevailed, but now, what is it we are fighting for? I fought when the idols were all
over the Sacred House, from the corner to the door, until Allah cleared the land of the Arabs from it
(idolatry). Should I now fight those who say, There is no god but Allah?" That was his logic, argument,
and conviction.
Thus he did not refrain from fighting, nor abstain from taking part in battle to escape fighting, nor
did he passively refuse to determine the outcome of the civil war within the Ummah of the faithful rather
he refused to hold a sword in the face of a Muslim brother.
`Abd Allah lbn `Umar lived long and witnessed the days in which life "opened its gates to the
Muslims." Money became more abundant, high positions more available, while ambition and desires
spread. But his magnificent psychological capacities changed the rules of his time. He changed the era of
ambition, money, and civil strife into an era of asceticism, humility, piety, and peace. He turned
persistently to Allah and lived according to his worship, firm belief, and humbleness. Nothing
whatsoever could affect his virtuous nature shaped and modeled by Islam during his early years.
The nature of life changed within the beginning of the Umayyid period. This change was inevitable.
It was a period of expansion in every aspect of life, in the ambition of the state as well as the ambitions
of individuals.
In the midst of the excitement of temptation and the agitation of an era lured by the idea of
expansion with its pleasure and booty, stood Ibn `Umar with his merits, occupying himself with his
excellent spiritual progress. He gained from his great excellent life all that he desired, so that his
contemporaries described him by saying, "Ibn Umar died while being like Umar in his merit."
Moreover, dazzled by the glitter of his merits, his contemporaries liked to compare him with his
father `Umar saying, "`Umar lived in a time when similar ones could be found, and Ibn `Umar lived in a