The Consequences of Muslims' Captivity to their Tragic History

By Jacob Thomas
FaithFreedom.org

It’s Friday, the 13th of June, the news from Iraq is getting from bad to worse. ISIS, the ultra-radical Islamist group seeking to establish a Caliphate in Iraq and the Levant is advancing toward Baghdad, after seizing Mosul. The army of the Kurdish Province in Northern Iraq has occupied Kirkuk. The U. S. Government has been caught off guard, and its leadership is wondering about the next step. It is certain that the United States would not send its troops into Iraq to defend the regime. In the meantime, the forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran are ready to enter Iraq to defend Baghdad and the holy cities of the Shi’ites south of the capital. The Western media are doing their best to keep us informed about the unfolding tragic events, enabling us to see thousands of Iraqis fleeing from Mosul, and the advancing ISIS “rag tag” army toward Baghdad.

My purpose is to show that Muslims, (both Sunnis and Shi’ites,” remain captive to their tragic history that keeps up propelling their past conflicts into the 21st century. The civil wars of the early days of Islam are being re-enacted as we watch masked men, riding on pickup trucks, armed with machine guns and rushing triumphantly into battle!

In June, 632 A.D., Muhammad passed away after a brief illness. The Islamic Umma in Medina faced a serious problem since the Prophet had made no arrangements for his succession. It was understood that he was the last Messenger sent by Allah to guide mankind. However, when Muhammad migrated to Medina in 622, he became a Political leader as well. He governed the local community of believers, and led them in campaigns against his Meccan enemies. By 630, he had vanquished all opposition, and entered Mecca triumphantly. Upon his death, the Muslim Umma urgently needed another head of state.

Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s father-in-law, came up with a solution; he proposed that a Khalifa (Caliph) be chosen by the leadership of the Umma. That was accepted, and he was chosen as the first Khalifa. When he died two years later, another Caliph was chosen: Umar ibn al-Khattab. The Futuhat (Conquests) continued vigorously under his leadership with the occupation of Syria and Egypt, and Persia. Umar was assassinated in 644, and was succeeded by Uthman ibn ‘Affan, who presided over the further expansion of Islam to the East.

In 656, some disgruntled Muslim soldiers who had participated in the campaign for the occupation of Egypt, returned to Medina and assassinated Uthman. Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad succeeded him. Unfortunately for Ali, there was no consensus about his choice. Muawiya, a cousin of Uthman and governor of Syria, charged that Ali was involved in the plot that resulted in the death of Uthman; war broke out between the two. Ali’s side was winning, when he was prevailed upon to accept arbitration and seek a peaceful solution of the conflict. Some within Ali’s army were outraged by this decision, since victory was at hand; they left his side, and assassinated him in 661. They are known as the “Khawarej” (Dissenters.) Ali’s death marked the end of the period of the “Rightly Guided Caliphs.”

Muawiya assumed the position of Caliph, moved the capital of the Islamic Umma to Damascus. He sought appeasement with Hassan and Hussein, the two sons of Ali. Hassan accepted a settlement with the new Caliph, and retired to Arabia; however his young brother Hussein refused any compromise. He became the leader of Ali’s Party. In Arabic, the term “Shi’a” signifies “party”, so his group was first called “Shi’ite Ali” and eventually was abbreviated into “Shi’a.”

Muhammad, Ali, and his two sons, were members of the Hisham clan of the tribe of Quraysh in Mecca; while Muawiya was member of the “Umayya” clan that had vehemently opposed Muhammad. This fact gave a solid reason for Hussein and his followers not to accept the legitimacy of an Umayyad to become a Caliph. Those Muslims who acquiesced to the rise of the Umayyad Dynasty were called “Sunnis,” but Muslims who sided with Hussein were known as “Shi’ites.” They remained an active underground opposition movement for years to come.

In 680, Hussein arrived with a small group of his followers at Kufa, in Iraq, hoping to make it a center for an active opposition to the Umayyad Caliph Yazid. He was met by a superior force, was defeated, and killed at Karbala. The martyrdom of Hussein is now celebrated annually at Karbala, and at other centers of Shi’ism such as at Nabatiyya, in south Lebanon.

For some time, the Umayyads felt that they had secured the leadership of Islam. In 710, they invaded Spain, and by 732 they reached southern France where they were stopped by Charles Martel, at the Battle of Tours, near Poitiers.

However, several factors conspired to bring to an end the hegemony of the Umayyads. The Shi’ite Underground, the disgruntled Mawalis (non-Arab converts to Islam) and followers of Muhammad’s uncle, Ibn ‘Abbas, all combined and contributed to the fall of the Umayyads. The revolt began at Khorasan, in eastern Persia, led by Abu Muslim al-Khorasani, who defeated the governor of the province and marched westward. The end of the Umayyads came in 750 when all the members of the caliph’s house were killed, leaving a young son who managed to flee the carnage, and made his way to Andalusia (Arabic name of Spain) where he established a rival Umayyad caliphate at Cordoba.

All hope for the descendants of Hussein to inherit the Caliphate were dashed. The Abbasids succeeded the Umayyads by establishing their own dynasty. The Shi’ites remained on the sidelines, regarded as a despised minority. During the 800s, Baghdad the new capital of the Abbasids became the cultural center of the Muslim world. Several important events or accomplishments took place: such as the compilation of the Hadith, the establishment of the Four Sunni Schools for the interpretation of Shariah, and the rise of the Mu’tazilites, an intellectual elite that dealt with theological themes such as the nature of the Qur’an. Eventually, this movement lost its appeal, and a noted philosopher, al-Ghazzali, put an end to “Ijtihad” (theologizing.) Thus, the “door of Ijtihad” in Sunni Islam remained closed ever since!

The leader of the Shi’ites is called an Imam. Ali is considered as the First Imam, Hussein is the Second Imam. The Twelfth Imam disappeared mysteriously; most likely he was murdered by the authorities. However, in Shi’ism, he is considered as still alive, hidden, to return at the end of time. In the meantime, his representatives, the Ayatollahs assume the role as guides of the Shi’ite community. In Sunni Islam, an Imam is any leader in charge of the Salaat i.e. Prayer (worship) at the mosque.

Sunni – Shi’ite Rivalry in Islam
While Iran is today a stronghold of Shi’ite Islam, it did not achieve this position until the 16th century during the Safavid dynasty. Other concentrations of Shi’ite communities live in Iraq and southern Lebanon. The Ottoman Turks were champions of Sunni orthodoxy, and sought to limit and often, to interdict any Persian influence among the Shi’ites of Iraq and Lebanon. That policy intensified the animosity between Sunnis and Shi’ites, keeping past disputes between the two groups very much alive.

The situation did not improve after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. Britain governed Iraq for several decades, and enthroned Prince Faisal, son of Sherif Hussein of Hejaz, as king. Sunnis continued to dominate the Shi’ite majority. The same happened in Lebanon, where the French gave primacy to Christians and Sunni Muslims, with the third place given to the Shi’ites.

After WWII, the region underwent radical changes. Iraq witnessed a bloody coup in 1958, when the army murdered King Faisal II and his family, installing a succession of republican regimes, culminating with the rise of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Iraqi. Soon after the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Saddam launched an attack on his neighbor, in a war that lasted for several years, occasioning the death and maiming of thousands of Iranians and Iraqis.

The leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran began to influence their coreligionists in Iraq and Lebanon. They sponsored the formation of Hezbollah, a Shi’ite Militia in Lebanon, a move that alarmed the Sunni powers in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

The civil war in Syria began in mid-March, 2011, when the Syrians rose up against the forty-year Assad dynasty’s regime. As the war dragged on, Iran gave orders to Hezbollah to join the side of Bashar Assad, seeking to bolster a dictator whose connection to Shi’ism is dubious. The Assad family comes from an obscure Syrian sect of Islam that is neither Sunni, nor Shi’ite. The French honored them with the title of “Alaouites” conferring legitimacy upon them as if they were a branch of Shi’ite Islam! The leaders of Iran saw to their advantage to help the Assad regime, and sent units of their Revolutionary Guards to help Assad fight his own people, most of whom are Sunnis!

It is extremely unfortunate at this time in world history that this dangerous confrontation between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims is happening. Both groups are shackled by their attachments to historical disputes that should have been forgotten in order to allow them to face the challenges of the present and the future. Instead, we are witnessing the systematic destruction of such great and historic centers as Damascus, Hamah, Homs, and Aleppo, in Syria.

In Iraq, the drama continues, and gets worse by the hour. The soldiers of ISIS, by flying their Black Flags imagine they are on par with Abu Muslim al-Khorasani who unfurled his black flags in his revolt against the Umayyads in 750. Da’esh (the Arabic acronym of ISIS) regard themselves as the vanguard of a 21st century caliphate that would resemble the early Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates. Try hard as they can, their utopian dream is unrealizable; history doesn’t repeat itself; but historical mistakes happen and happen again. Is it not high time for rational Sunni and Shi’ite leaders, both religious and political, to call for an end to their old controversies, and bury their past conflicts forever?