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| Nadia Yassine, 2006-09-16 |
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| A Very Heavy Heritage |
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| Such is the conjuncture of circumstances that leads up to spectacular turning points in history. These cardinal moments, these tumbling instants, these axial points in the progress of history suck you in and knock you off balance in a movement no one can stop, no one can avoid. The axial period in Muslim history is rightly described as al-fitna al-kubrā, which can be translated literally as “the greatest ordeal.” |
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| As our critical sense has been anesthetized by centuries of despotic practice, we Muslims no longer grasp the disastrous and decisive effects of this crucial period. Our current illiteracy does not help matters. Our minds have been glossed over by the erosion—or rather, the corrosion—exerted on us by our political systems that stand in stark contrast with shūrā. We have been tamed so as to have no opinion. The more the centuries passed and our community grew in number, the more its spirit of initiative and creativity shrank away. |
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| The more the times advanced, the more we have submitted to the political logic of a system in which one is everyone, and everyone is but one serving the vices and (very rarely) the virtues of those self-defined demigods who successively came to power to deaden our minds. Decadence inevitably awaited the chance to trip us up—and humanity as well, since we were supposed to pass on to humankind the Great Message that gives meaning to life and death, to the passage of mankind on this planet. We have failed in our role. The entire earth suffers from it, even the biosphere that energetically protests and reacts. |
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| Our habitual minimizing of the deviation that took place at the level of power has proved the complete success of the Fardiya (power of one person) inaugurated by the Umayyads. Having long germinated in our side-tracked minds, this mystifying ideology has completely prevailed, since it has become an insurmountable taboo to call into question the current political regimes of our day, the exclusive preserve of one man or a few people. In the long run we have accepted being the docile subjects of tyranny without feeling the least moral ill-being. |
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| It is true that the most efficient weapon in the hands of any usurping system is systematic terror. The machine is now so well oiled that the Muslim world is no longer even in need of fierce doorkeepers at the pay of its despots to set it on the “right” path, the path of unconditional submission to the ones holding power. Even¬tually, we totally internalized sacred obedience to a system of divine right. We now practice self-censorship without the tyrant having to call us to order. Dictatorship does not even have to use its huge means; we are all candidates to mediocracy, ready to cooperate in a fashion more despotic than the despot. |
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| Such deviant power assassinated shūrā. A few years after Ali, there was no more room for the dynamic initiated by the Rightly Guided Caliphs at the epoch when the participation of the citizen was the rule, when the freedom of expression was in place. There remained on the scene of Islam only such torturers as Zyad Ibn Abih, al-Hajjāj, Ibn Hubeyra and other sadists serving a very ambitious regime, resolute and with no other principle than that of enduring. With thousands of skeletons in its closet, absolutism endured, biting into the flesh of the community, leaving indelible marks in the depths of the popular soul, and wreaking havoc. Al-mulk al-‘ād [morda¬cious monarchy] was announced by the Prophet in one of his premonitory hadīths. |
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| Thus the community passed from massacre to massacre, from abdication to remission, from torture to treason. So great was the psychological upheaval that even today in the 21st century we still feel its intensity in our flesh. In the depths of the hearts there exists an eternal funeral oration: “Hussayn! Hussayn! Hussayn!” the Shiites still sing today in tears. “Hussayn! Hussayn! Hussayn!” the hearts of the Sunnis echo, as they know full well the immense love of the Messenger (grace and peace be upon him) for this grandson given him by his daughter Fātima az-Zahrā’ (God bless her). |
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| The recognized biographers of the community report the touching image of the father, the grandfather—the Prophet (grace and peace be upon him)—full of goodness for his grandchildren. They report how quietly he continued his prayer with his granddaughter, Umāma, who was playing and climbing on his shoulders while he was prostrate. He kept her perched on his holy shoulders. |
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| They also report that God’s Messenger (grace and peace be upon him) loved to kiss Hussayn and Hassan and to clasp them in his arms, to his very holy chest. The Companions noticed the gleam of love in his eyes when he watched them playing and moving in front of him. |
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| The Sunnis, not only the Shiites, know that the recommendations of the Prophet are very clear concerning Āl al-Bayt, his descendents. Say (to the faithful), no reward do I ask of you (for my revelations) except the love of my relatives (and descendents), the Qur’ān says. |
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| For this reason, the assassination of the Prophet’s grandsons has left indelible marks in the hearts and collective memory of the umma. Bloody Karbala remains alive in each Muslim conscience, in letters of fire, in pain and in bitterness. Unspeakable Ordeal! Great Ordeal! |
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| In 680, having just withdrawn from Mecca, Hussayn headed for Kūfa after he had refused to swear allegiance to Yazid, whom his father Mu‘āwiya had imposed on the community. He had supporters and sympathizers in the Iraqi city, and he decided to go to them with all his family and some friends in order to lead the upris¬ing against this regime that enjoyed no legitimacy. |
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| On October 10, 680, after having vainly conducted a week of bargaining with the commander of the Umayyad troops that hurried to stand in his way, Hussayn, the grandson of the Messenger (grace and peace be upon him), was massacred and fell as martyr to the great cause. |
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| Many of those who pretended to support him retracted. Their excuse is per¬petuated in the records of human high treason: “Our hearts are with you, but our swords are in the service of Yazid,” they said. |
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| Their swords mercilessly pierced the body of our beloved Hussayn, the grand¬son of the Messenger, the son of Fātima az-Zahrā’ and Ali. His striking physical resemblance to his highly venerated grandfather did not prevent his enemies from bringing back on the point of a spear, like a vulgar hunting trophy, his severed head. The women of Hussayn’s family, the beautiful Hashemites, were brought back with their heads uncovered. In their torn hearts lay the endless pain of having lost all the males of their family. They experienced the immense humiliation of seeing the eyes of slave traders gazing lustfully at them. They could not imagine for a moment who they really were. |
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| Divisions |
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| The funeral procession still haunts our history, having eternally fixed the atrocity of that day in our imagination. 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 seg¬ments 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 al-Azāriqa, the Zanādiqas, 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 Shi¬ism and Sunniism. |
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| The Sunnis are in the habit of drawing a discreet veil over this period, abstain¬ing 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 inde¬structible 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?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 be¬loved 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 Mu‘āwiya, 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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| *From the Book "Full Sails Ahead" (available online at www.jspublishing.net). |
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| 1. The Muslim chronicle relates that one of the champions of the Umayyad cause was struck by a pebble thrown by one of the faithful while he was delivering the Friday sermon (which, then as now, consisted in praising the “caliph”). He closed the doors of the mosque and cut off the fi ngers of all those who had come to pray.2. Literally “People of the House.” Salman, the converted Persian who became a Companion particularly appreciated by the Prophet, was declared a member of al Lbayt.3. Qur’ān: S. XLII. 23.4. This was an insufferable affront, an act of aggression towards a Muslim woman as serious as rape. Souha Béchara, celebrated author of Résistante [resisting woman] and a Muslim woman who does not wear the veil, stated this fact in a Swiss program in which she was asked what was the worst suffering of the Palestinian women tortured in the Israeli prisons.5. Lwazīr (2000) supports a highly interesting argument that accuses the despotic regimes of having invented these two notions by manipulating the interpretation of history. The link between Sunniism and the four imams generally considered to be its founding fathers is the pure fabrication of the Abbassid regime, which had taken over manipulation and demagoguery from the Umayyads. The reality was more complicated; the relationship between the Sunni 218 and the Shiite imams was much more intimate than they wished it to be known. Imam Abu Hanifa (God bless him), for instance, supported Imam Zayd and militated all his life even at the cost of it in favor of the descendents of Ali and the Prophet.6. I wish to emphasize that Shiism is a vast philosophy of history and of islam that meritsmuch more attention. Such designation applies to a range of very varied attitudes. Beyond the major branch of the imāmates of Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, and an important diaspora, Shiism is a loose conglomeration that ranges from the Ismaeli sect with its quasi-pagan practices to the Zaydi doctrine (very close to Sunniism) and even includes a group that does not recognize the Prophet as Messenger and accuses him of having usurped this role from Ali. |
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