fulfilling his promises, at the same time asking Divine forgiveness for the people who would then enter Islam. For the truth is, not only were those people guilty of the gravest atrocities against the Holy Prophet, but they had also wrought many other wicked deeds, and deserved to be severely punished by the Lord; but as the Holy Prophet himself forgave them all their tyrannies against him and his companions with a magnanimity of which history cannot present another single instance—the victor passing over all the atrocities of his cruellest oppressors just at the time of the greatest excitement, the hour of victory, when all those tyrants lay at his mercy, and when the most humane general could not but punish those who had spent their whole lives in striving for the utter extinction of the victor and his followers—at such a moment, when the Holy Prophet was to lay open the unique vastness of his compassionate mind in forgiving his deadliest foes, he was further required to ask Divine forgiveness for his very oppressors. "Forgive thine enemy" is an easy injunction to utter, but let history be searched if it can present another instance of the forgiveness of one’s deadliest enemies under such circumstances; a forgiveness not only of their crimes against the Prophet and his companions, but also a forgiveness, through prayer to the Lord, of all the enormities and sins which those enemies had committed against the Divine Being, and for which Divine punishment would surely have overtaken them, had it not been for the Prophet’s intercession, which he is here commanded to exercise on their behalf. And how peaceful the end of one who departs from this world not only with the satisfaction that he had achieved the great goal of his life and raised his friends and followers to the highest position to which man can aspire, but with even a greater satisfaction than that, that he had not taken revenge upon his oppressors, but had forgiven them without uttering a word of reproof, and even interceded on their behalf! Here is an example of intercession not on behalf of friends but on behalf of foes! Does history present any other single instance of this kind?
