This is a serialization of the book titled ‘Crisis in Islam’. The full book and its Endnotes may be accessed at:
My friend wrote to me saying: “….. But for the Imāmate and Caliphate to be a political issue is better than being a religious issue.”
But this is the essence of what I aim to achieve here. What I want to show is that the history of Islam as it exists today is a political history and not a religious one; that the Caliphate was political and not religious; and that the Shari’a was not a result of any Divine assignment, but instituted by the fuqahā and politicians to serve the state. I do not, however, mean in any of this that they were all wrong, but I want to state that these policies were not necessarily religious and that we must stop brainwashing peoples’ minds as we have done for the past thirteen centuries, telling them that it was all Divine assignment for the good of ‘the best nation produced for mankind’ and all is of the essence of religion itself. This recognition will allow us to deal rationally and objectively with our history without hiding under a religious cover, attributing every happening, no matter how significant or insignificant it is, to Divine assignment to the Muslims in order to amend this world and whoever is in it.
If this were to happen, it would in turn stop the destruction and killing and devastation carried out today by the gullible among the Muslims, who have been indoctrinated by the history they study in schools and hear in the mosques, which tells them that there is glory in killing people, and there is right in looting their wealth and desecrating their honour, believing that they are doing the right thing. Those gullible simpletons, who are motivated by “…devils from mankind and jinn, inspiring to one another decorative speech in delusion.” (Al-An’aam 6:112) rely in their mobility on the animal instincts of eating, drinking and fornication in a fictitious promised paradise!
We Muslims may not succeed in achieving what we seek, but we could at least succeed in identifying some serious faults. If we do not try to do even that, we will remain stripped of dignity at the bottom of the list of human beings, and our adversaries will continue to afflict us with the worst abuse. Those ignorant of our rulers will continue to control our lives as long as there are hypocrites, who stand preaching at prayers, glorifying and invocating, in the name of religion, for rulers who not only have nothing to do with religion, but because of their corruption, even the devil is no longer able to find excuses for them!
I will continue from where I finished in the previous chapter.
In essence: The conflict in Islam was and still is between those loyal to the house of ‘Ali and those loyal to the house of ‘Aisha.
It is important to clarify what I mean by these words, and how this fact has influenced our history and what we are today, in order to try to find the way, if any, out of this fateful crisis.
My assertion above does not mean that ‘Ali or ‘Aisha founded a political project which was followed by others. That could not have happened. I do not mean that there was an ideological conflict between ‘Ali and ‘Aisha in interpreting the religion, because of the impossibility of making a comparison between the two. ‘Aisha, according to Islam, could not be asked for an advisory opinion in religion; did not have the right to sit in judgment between people; her view of the piety of one man is not acceptable; and could not lead people in prayer: all of which are open to ‘Ali.
However, the undenied truth is that there was no lost affection between the two. This is not a new discovery of my invention, but narrators who lived through that period unanimously agree upon it. A number of those narrators were wary of the fact that one was the Prophet’s cousin, son in law and his minister, and the other his wife. Out of concern for the nation, they tried not to engage in this matter nor give it a large space in the narrations. But this did not diminish the reality of the lack of affection between the two from reaching us.
Led by Banu Umayya, those Qurayshis, who were enemies of Banu Hāshim and greedy for power, and who had not been able to challenge Muhammad, whom his Lord had reinforced with the words of truth and with five thousand distinctly marked angels,[i] realized that the only option was to attack the second symbol of Banu Hāshim: ‘Ali. But ‘Ali’s contributions to Islam cannot be refuted or ignored even by its most powerful enemies. What was there to be done then?
They started by attacking his father, Abu Tālib. They created Hadiths and wrote stories of his Polytheism and his immortality in hell despite, as they claimed, the Prophet’s pleadings with him to enter into Islam.[ii] They filled pages with such fabrications, at the same time when they did not bother to write more than a few lines about Abu Bakr’s father and his rejection of faith, even after the succession of his son. We may find an excuse for some of those writers who were of non-Arab origins, which fact made it difficult for them to comprehend Arab identity even after their conversion to Islam. But Arabs consider poetry the interpreter of their identity, and before the Qur’an they had only poetry, which was the memory of the Arabs and the mirror of their lives, and it was and continues to be the source of their language and the reflection of their identity.
Abu Tālib was a poet, and all his poetry was in praise of the Prophet. Several collections of his poetry have been published, and I made a similar attempt over twenty years ago when I published his poetry which I collected only from Sunni sources.[iii]
How do we judge every Arab poet from his poetry and exempt Abu Tālib? Was there a single polytheist who said poetry in praise of the Prophet and remained a polytheist? Hassān Ibn Thābit and Ka’b Ibn Zuhayr praised the Prophet only after converting to Islam, both having insulted him before that.[iv]
If Abu Tālib had not said anything except what he said of the Prophet Muhammad:
Luminous, with a face that invokes rain from the clouds
Orphans’ refuge and guardian of widows
that would have been enough to guarantee him entrance to paradise.
History did not convey to us that Abu Sufyān had said a single good word of Muhammad, even after the announcement of his conversion to Islam, which only occurred after the conquest of Mecca and the imposition of political reality with the triumph of Muhammad on the polytheists of Quraysh.
The political reality of the conflict between some clans of Quraysh and Banu Hāshim gets further backing when the scribes of history and Hadith collectors were quick to blacken pages with stories of how Abu Sufyān (the leader of Banu Umayya) converted to Islam after the conquest of Mecca, and how he became a ‘good Muslim’. That is because narrators of Hadith and scribes of history think they alone have the right to decide who of the people became a ‘good Muslim’. They have not seemingly read the verses of Surat Al-Munaafiqoon (the hypocrites): “When the hypocrites come to you, [O Muhammad], they say, “We testify that you are the Messenger of Allah.” And Allah knows that you are His Messenger, and Allah testifies that the hypocrites are liars.”(Al-Munaafiqoon 63:1); “So do not claim yourselves to be pure; He is most knowing of who fears Him” (An-Najm 53:32). “He knows that which deceives the eyes and what the breasts conceal” (Ghafir 40:19)
More important is that, in the midst of their fabrications and compositions, they missed Allah’s words: “Indeed, those who have believed and emigrated and fought with their wealth and lives in the cause of Allah and those who gave shelter and aided – they are allies of one another. But those who believed and did not emigrate – for you there is no guardianship of them until they emigrate” (Al-Anfaal 8:72). Needless to say, Abu Sufyān did not emigrate!
The enemies of Banu Hāshim found in the animosity between ‘Ali and ’Aisha another opportunity to pounce on ‘Ali and insult him, and through him to insult the Prophet. All of that was political because politics to them was more important than religion. With the triumph of Islam they had lost the authority they had before it, and they had to play politics to recover power from the family of Muhammad. They, therefore, gathered around ‘Aisha, inventing sayings and attributing them to her to discredit ‘Ali and derogate the Prophet. It was not love for ‘Aisha that motivated them but hatred of ‘Ali, for whoever hated ‘Ali hated the Prophet, just as much as whoever hated Āron hated Mosses. This is because whoever rejected the Prophet’s actions hated the Prophet, and the Prophet did not raise anyone’s position higher than he did ‘Ali’s.[v] Therefore, Banu Umayya gathered around ‘Aisha, but not everyone who grabbed the reins of the camel loved her,[vi] because it has been reported that she called for the killing of the Umayyad ʻUthmān Ibn ʻAffān.[vii]
However, there is no doubt that everyone who grabbed the reins of the camel hated ‘Ali.
This is how politics were instituted in Islam; starting with the opposition of the clans of Quraysh to Banu Hāshim before Islam and evolving after its triumph to fighting Banu Hāshim, in the person of ‘Ali and those around him. The massacre of his son Hussein and seventy two members of his family and companions is but one example.[viii] It continued in the form of slaughtering and killing his sons and their followers and culminated with cursing ‘Ali for decades from the minarets of mosques in the land of Muslims during the Umayyad dynasty’s rule.[ix] This policy had nothing to do with religion. The Message is inseparable from the Messenger; whoever fights the Messenger is fighting the Message, and any attempt at justifying this is flimsier than a cobweb!
The political conflict erupted when the Umayyad Mu’āwiya Ibn Abi Sufyān rose against ‘Ali. The reason was a quest for authority and power. Mu’āwiya’s character raises more than one issue in the history of political Islam. Muslim Sunni fuqahā tried to avoid wading in it in an attempt to protect the nation, out of comprehension that there is not much room to defend him in his rise against ‘Ali. There is no possibility to hold a comparison between the two, though these fuqahā may be excused because their desire to protect the nation took precedence over historic accuracy. In addition to that, they were, first and foremost, not interested in studying history.
Today we have a different situation. A group of semi-literate men from the scholars of the Wahhābi sect,[x] who have made it their goal to promote Mu’āwiya in a desperate attempt to make his political behavior seem like belonging to the essence of religion, by finding excuses from fabricated Hadiths to allow what Allah and His Messenger did not allow. But they all, perhaps deliberately, eschewed taking a stand at the verse: “But whoever kills a believer intentionally – his recompense is Hell, wherein he will abide eternally, and Allah has become angry with him and has cursed him and has prepared for him a great punishment” (An-Nisaa 4:93). No words are above Allah’s words and no judgement after His. Mu’āwiya Ibn Abi Sufyān killed ‘Ammār Ibn Yāsir, the first believer promised paradise by the Prophet at a time when Mu’āwiya, his father and his mother were worshipping stones and idols. The Prophet told ‘Ammār: “You will be killed by a wicked band of men”[xi]. None of the followers of Banu Umayya dared say that the Prophet promised Mu’āwiya or his father or mother paradise. ‘Ammār was not of Banu Hāshim and not even of Quraysh. His only crime was standing with ‘Ali because he was one of the most knowledgeable people of ‘Ali’s stature with the Prophet.
If someone were to say that ‘Islam effaces previous misdeeds’,[xii] then that can be refuted in two ways. Firstly, killing ‘Ammār happened after Islam and not before it. Secondly, and more importantly, is that Allah’s eternal order to prohibit killing a believer cannot be ‘effaced’ by anything. That is because killing His name ‘the mu’min’, and the believer (mu’min) is His name, is a sin eternally and forever.[xiii] Allah ordained that a mu’min could not kill another mu’min except by mistake making it impossible to happen intentionally. “And never is it for a believer to kill a believer except by mistake.” (An-Nisaa 4:92). Thus the murderer of a mu’min cannot himself be a mu’min.
Before moving away from Mu’āwiya’s period, it is necessary to give an indication of the political nature of his rise against the guardian, ‘Ali. There was an exchange of correspondence between ‘Ali and Mu’āwiya that reveals much of the political nature of the conflict. That exchange can be found from history books, should anyone want to learn more. I will quote some sentences from a reply of ‘Ali to Mu’āwiya:
“As for your demand to me to (hand over) Syria, I cannot give you today what I denied you yesterday. As regards your saying that the war has eaten up Arabia save its last breath, you should know that he whom right has eaten up goes to Paradise and he whom wrong has eaten up goes to Hell. As for our equality in (the art of) war and in (numbers of) men, certainly you cannot be more penetrating in doubtfulness (of belief) than I am in certainty (of belief), and the people of Syria are not more greedy for this world than the people of Iraq are for the next world.
As for your saying that both of us are sons of ‘Abd Manāf, it is no doubt so, but Umayya cannot be like Hāshim, nor Harb like ‘Abdul Muttalib, nor can Abu Sufyān be like Abu Tālib. The muhājir (emigrant) cannot be a match for him who was set free Tulaqa’ (on the day of fall of Mecca), nor can one of pure descent be a match for him who has been adopted, nor the pursuer of truth be a match of the adherent to wrong, nor a believer be a match for a hypocrite. How bad are the successors who go on following their predecessors who have fallen in the fire of Hell! “[xiv]
Any observant can read in the sentences of the above correspondence the gist of the reality of the political conflict that began between Hāshim and Umayya before Islam and lasted more than a thousand years, emerging today as a political struggle between Wahhābism and those loyal to the members of the Prophet’s House manifested in the mobilization of the simple Muslims to fight the Zionist war destroying the Arab world under the gusie of fighting Shi’a Islam.
This also renders the accusation that Abu Tālib did not embrace Islam basesless as ‘Ali clearly differentiates between Abu Sufyān and Abu Tālib, with the former in the camp of non-believers and the latter in the camp of believers.
We must pause here to understand the reason for Mu’āwiya’s political stand aganist ‘Ali and his family. Mu’āwiya only declared his conversion to Islam after the conquest of Mecca at the age of 23 years. This means that he spent nearly twenty years in the house of polytheism, hearing his mother (Hind bint ‘Utba) and his father (Abu Sufyān Ibn Harb) cursing Muhammad and defaming everything he represented. He saw his mother crying for her father and her brother after the Battle of Badr, including the Prophet’s uncle, Hamza Ibn ‘Abdul Muttalib, and ‘Ali Ibn Abi Tālib in her curses. He then witnessed his mother’s joy with the killing of Hamza Ibn ‘Abdul Muttalib in the battle of Uhud,[xv] hearing his father singing the words of their poet gloating after killing Hamza:
We have killed the master of their lords,
and straightened the balance with Badr.
Any person raised up in such a house could not but be affected by this hatred of Muhammad and ‘Ali and the people of their house. Thus, we see that the reason for the political stand of Mu’āwiya with ‘Ali and that of his son, Yazid, with Ali’s son Hussein, is that of venom and hatred towards the house of the Prophet, extending from Muhammad to his Minister and to their descendants afterwards.
The succession of Yazid Ibn Mu’āwiya marked the first politically disastrous precedent in Islam. The bequest Abu Bakr made leaving the Caliphate to ‘Umar after him was carried further, when Mu’āwiya bequeathed the Caliphate to his son Yazid, making it the tradition in Islam until the end of Ottoman rule. Where is religion in all this? Where is the Shura they claim? And where is the bay’a of the Umma of which they talk? Is the Muslim obliged anymore to pay allegiance to a guardian in whose appointment or removal he has no role?
Is that not exactly the policy that has turned religion into a tool, making the bequeathing of the Caliphate the rule, with the Muslim fuqahā calling on people to follow and obey the guardian in whose appointment those Muslims had no role?
Yazid Ibn Mu’āwiya opened his rule with one of the biggest massacres in history against a single family, when he slaughtered Hussein and his family and a group of his supporters in Karbala in Iraq in the year 61 AH; an event that has become the symbol of martyrdom upon which the Shi’a Ja’fari jurisprudence was built. I’m not about to hold a comparison between Hussein and Yazid because I believe that such an attempt would be denigrating Islam and its Message, and a show of contempt of the Prophet and what he did and said.
What is of importance in all this is its political dimension and its impact on the history of Muslims?
Yazid decided then – with the apparent concurrence of many Muslims in Syria at the time, and the betrayal of the people of Iraq of Hussein and the mobilization of the people of Syria to kill him – that it was permissible for a Muslim to slaughter another Muslim if he disagreed with him. They also accepted the permissibility of killing Muslim women and children who were not party to the political power struggle. Should we wonder today if we found some Muslims issuing fatwas of the permissibility of killing people and raping their women and robbing them of their money,[xvi] as long as they glorify what Yazid did under the pretext that he was the guardian who had the allegiance of the people, without telling us who had pledged allegiance and how that allegiance was achieved?
Should we be surprised if the Muslim mob commits murder, slaughter and rape today under the guise of supporting Allah’s religion? Yazid’s murder of the last grandson of the Prophet and his family begs the question: If that was what Muslims did to the household of their Prophet in order to acquire autocratic power, what would they do to other non-Arab nations whom they violated? Supporters of the ‘Islamic State’ today can easily remind people that they are doing no more than following precedents set by Yazid and some of the Caliphs that followed.
Setting precedents started early in Islam. Yazid Ibn Mu’āwiya, the second Caliph in the Umayyad Dynasty ruled for three years. In the first year he killed the Prophet’s grandson; in the second he destroyed the Prophet’s town of Medina; and in the third he burnt the House of Allah in Ka’ba!