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| "Full sails ahead" By Nadia Yassine |
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| The funeral procession still haunts our history, having eternally fixed the atrocity of that day in our imagination. |
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| This major event was behind Islam’s great schisms. It is this crucial moment that has triggered every kind of extremism. A veritable madness seized certain segments of the community. As islam is a comprehensive system that intricately links the political domain to the other domains, these political upheavals inevitably became theological upheavals. |
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| There has been an extraordinary embroidery of theological opinions around a political event around which positions might have been limited. But as times of unrest are always favorable to opportunists who love to fish in troubled waters, currents of thinking developed, ranging from the most sensible to the most harebrained. If in this wave of replicated revolts some were justifiable and sensible, many others were the expression of inordinate emotional reaction. The latter gave rise, for instance, to such extremist groups as Murjism, the Azraqits, the Zanadiqas, and many other forms of extremism, one begetting another, one rising in answer to the other. |
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| It is not the object of this chapter to list these diffractions, so much the more that the manipulation of attitudes concerning them for political ends is certain. The particular matter at hand here is to emphasize that this period has played a decisive role in the configuration of current concepts and attitudes that in turn determine the Muslim thinking. |
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| The Great Ordeal! The painful, heartbreaking Ordeal! Two trends would emerge in this implosion that occurred in the face of the deviation of power, namely Shiism and Sunniism. |
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| The Sunnis are in the habit of drawing a discreet veil over this period, abstaining from discussing it other than with tortuous verbosity. |
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| Conditioned by the laudable enough concern to remain neutral about what happened between the Companions of the Prophet (Grace and Peace be upon him) for his sake, certain Sunnis have chosen a sort of silence that verges on foolishness and plays into the hands of unscrupulous despotism. |
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| Muslim ethics is essentially based on respect: self-respect, respect of the other, respect of the environment, and particularly respect of our Prophet (Grace and Peace be upon him), his Companions, and those who have preceded us in the Path of God. This reverence for the ancients testifies to the union of hearts throughout the ages, combined with what we now feel across borders with all Muslims. Our faith is indestructible with this spiritual fusion. There resides the heart of our Muslim ethics. |
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| The question that the Sunnis ought to ask themselves is this: where do ethics stop and politics begin ? |
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| The Shiites, on the other hand, adopt an attitude opposite to that of the Sunnis, excluding all the Companions from the spiritual circle that joins the last generations with the first in a mystic alchemy. They recognize no ancestry to the Companions save Ali and a limited number of the friends of the Prophet (Grace and Peace be upon him), thus depriving themselves of so many sources of spiritual light that emanates from those holy men. |
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| The very strong emotion aroused by the assassination of Ali, particularly beloved by the Prophet (and by the Sunnis as well), and his two sons, the grandsons of the Messenger, has turned the logic of love into one of hatred. They hate Yazid, the son of Moawiya, and they retrospectively curse all those who preceded him in power, even when it comes to such giants as Omar and Abu Bakr. Disconsolate from the tragedy of Karbala, the Shiites express their grief by indiscriminate rejection of all the Companions, of whom, in their opinion, very few may be excused. |
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| We must say that the emotional shock was so intense that the intervening centuries have failed to alleviate the pain. The Shiites, who beat their chests with grief in their religious feasts, mourn the one we all mourn: Hussayn, the illustrious descendant of our Prophet (Grace and Peace be upon him). Among them are those who still punish themselves, after all these centuries, by mortifying themselves in blood and tears for having failed to defend him. |
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| Shiite mysticism is one of anger, anger vented against all the Companions, and it regards the family of the Envoy (Grace and Peace be upon him) as sacred and sometimes as divine. It is again here the expression of that spiritual fusion of the umma that challenges the temporal dimension. Yet the sentiment of hatred for the Companions, inherent to the Shiite faith, spoils the purity of their love for the restricted family of the Prophet. Against what the Sunnis regard as sacred (the Caliphate, which ought to have been a temporal function like any other), the Shiites erect the spiritual power of the Imams, whom they regard as sacred. During all these past centuries they have set the power of spiritual suggestion against the power of the sword. |
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| That is where we are still now. To think that one day a complete synthesis might be made between Sunniism and Shiism is a facile fiction, since our wounds are of the kind that leave big scars. Yet an attempt to come closer by taking advantage of the strong points on either side remains possible to a large extent. Sunniism has a treasure to offer: that unconditional love of the Companions; Shiism offers a capital of dissidence that might breathe new life into the purring spirit of the Sunni masses. It is certainly not by mere accident that Hezbollah belongs to Shiism, and that the Iranian revolution is Shiite. |
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| If Sunniism goes hand in hand with capitulation before despotism, Shiism is first and foremost the incubation of a devastating anger. A third path must now be sought. Meanwhile we continue to suffer, today more than ever, the burden of our very heavy historical heritage. |
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| Full Sails Ahead (avaible online at www.jspublishing.net) |
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