In the Dark of the Night …

Once, there was a pious Muslim merchant who used to trade cattle. He
would buy cows from Iraq or Iran and sell themin Syria. This trader
was arighteous Muslim: pious, devout and pure hearted;he would pray at
night, fast and give charity frequently.
On one of his trade journeys, as he was shepherding a herd of cows to
sell them, it began to snow heavily. As a result, the road was
blocked, the grass died, and all his cows perished,except for four.
The poor trader took his four cowsand wandered all over the place,
until one evening he reached a small village on the road from Al-Mosul
to Halab. He knocked on the door of one of the houses in this village.
The owner ofthe house answered and the trader told him that he was a
stranger who wanted to spend that night at his house until morning so
he could continue his journey and go to another village.
The generous villager welcomed the trader warmly. He let him andhis
cows in the yard of his house, and offered the trader food and fedhis
cows. In fact, this villager was poor and penniless; all his cows had
died and his lands were ruined due to theheavy rains and snow that had
been falling for a very long time over their village. The villager was
married and the father of one child, and the small family lived in
their two-room house; one room for him and his wife and the other for
their child.
The villager's family gathered around the guest for a nightly chatfrom
which the villager cam to know that the trader was carrying a sum of
money with him. After the villager and his wife had gone to bed, the
guest went to sleep in the child's room. The child slept on his bed in
the right side of the room and the trader's bed was on the left side.
The villager asked his guest if he needed anything else before going
to bed and madesure that he was comfortable. The villager's wife
whispered in her husband's ears, insinuating evil into his mind, "How
long shall we remain poor? This guest is rich and we are in dire need
of his money and cows; we may have food for aday, but would spend days
without any food. What if a famine hit the village and we have neither
food nor money? We have a golden opportunity tonight: this guest is
rich,so let us steal his money and cows so as to maintain our lives
and save our only child's life."
The villager exclaimed, "How could we do that toour guest? How can I
steal his money and cows? Will he let me take his money and cows?" The
wife answered wickedly, "Kill him and throw his body in a hole in the
middle of the valley and no one would know about it."
The villager hesitated, but the wife kept insisting and persuading him
to enforce this evil plan; to convince him and end his hesitation she
said, "This is essential to save us from certain death; indeed, in
times ofextreme necessity, even the forbidden becomes permissible."
Finally, the wife managed to convince her husband of this wicked
Satanic scheme and he made up his mind to kill the traderand steal his
money and cows.
After midnight, in the lastthird of the night when everything was
quiet anddarkness and silence had enveloped the whole village, the
villager took his dagger, sharpened it, and headed towards the room
where his guest and his son were sleeping. His wife accompanied him,
encouraging him to put his evil plan into action. The villager tiptoed
slowly, heading to the left side of the room where the guest was
sleeping. He groped for his sleeping guest until he touched his neck
in this black darkness; the villager unsheathed his dagger and cut the
guest's throat swiftly, justlike he would slaughter agoat.
The villager went back tohis wife, seeking her helpto move the body
and no sooner had they pulled the dead body out of the room, they
realized that they had slaughtered their one and only son! The
villager sobbed and his wife did the same on seeing their son's dead
body between their bloodstained hands; theyboth lost their
consciousness. Hearing the noise, the sleeping guest woke up and so
did the neighbors to find the villager's son murdered (and the
villager and his wife unconscious). The guest and the neighbors
hastened to the unconscious villager and his wife, splashing cold
water over their faces to wake them up. When they woke up, they burst
into tears and asked the neighbors to call the police. The police
arrived at the crime scene and arrested the killers.
What exactly had happened inside the bedroom where the guest and the
villager's son slept that night? In fact, the villager's son went to
the guest's bed on the other side of the room after his parents had
left the room and engaged in conversation with him; it was quite a
long conversation, and the son felt asleep in the middle of it on the
guest's bed. The kind guest did not wish to wake up the child, so he
slept in the child's bed instead. When the villager came inside the
room in the dark of the night, he was sure that his son was sleeping
in his own bed in the other side of the room and the guest was in his
bed. Therefore, he slaughtered the one whowas sleeping in the guest's
bed, not knowingthat he was slaughtering his own son with his
veryhands!
The villager wanted to kill the guest, but Allaah The Exalted willed
his sonto be killed instead. The neighbors buried the villager's son
and his unfortunate parents went to prison for their crime.