Chapter 2 – Roots of Political Schism in Islam
This is a serialization of the book titled ‘Crisis in Islam’. The full book and its Endnotes may be accessed at:
The conflict in Islam was, still is and will remain political. Most attempts at portraying what happened in the history of Islam as ideological or intellectual have not been successful. They were mostly attempts to camouflage the political struggle so as to prevent the embarrassment caused by people discovering that the damage done to Islam had resulted from a struggle for power and not as Fuqahā want us to believe, that it was an ideological struggle to interpret the will of Allah. Understanding the political conflict in early Islam will enable us to trace the cause of current events.
But in order to find the roots of that political struggle, we need to go back to the social environment in which Islam was born.