by Ed Husain
Amid this unrest, Imam Ali’s popularity in Medina rose. People put their trust in him as the rightful heir to the Prophet’s leadership of the community, and he was made caliph. But from now on, Mu‘awiya in Damascus and the late Prophet’s wife Ayesha, on pilgrimage in Mecca, supported demands that the killers of Uthman be brought to justice. Mu‘awiya held up Uthman’s shirt in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus in front of crowds chanting ‘Justice for Uthman!’ One of their own had been killed too – Uthman’s Syrian wife. The supporters of Mu‘awiya now mobilised to oppose Ali, while Ali appealed to them for loyalty to the caliphate and unity within the ranks of the Muslims. From Mecca, Ayesha led an army, and from atop a camel she directed troops to battle Ali’s forces. Ali behaved honourably and ensured that although the camel fell, the late Prophet’s wife was not harmed. He sent her back to Medina with a military escort. This chivalry, however, antagonised a group among Ali’s fighters, who saw what happened and resented it: to them, Ayesha should have been taken as a prisoner of war. This would be the first of the simmering grievances that the emerging Kharijites would air within the next few months.
In 657, Ali marched toward Syria with 80,000 troops to secure the allegiance of Mu‘awiya. Muslim unity was essential. Ali was the caliph, and the pledged loyalty of all his governors was vital to maintaining the cohesion of the caliphate. The weekly Friday sermons that made verbal attacks on the caliph on instruction from Mu‘awiya had to end. The two armies met on the banks of the Euphrates, at Siffin – eerily, in modern-day Raqqa in Syria, until recently the capital of the so-called ISIS caliphate.
Imam Ali offered peace and negotiations, but the Syrian army, numbering around 120,000, refused to recognise him as caliph and demanded that he hand over the killers of Uthman. The fighting began with Mu‘awiya hoping to win back power for the Umayyads and the family of Uthman. As it progressed, Mu‘awiya realised that he was losing, and that a victory for Ali would surely mean Mu‘awiya losing Damascus too. A master tactician, he therefore launched a shock assault on Ali’s deep sense of piety.
Mu‘awiya ordered his soldiers to hold up copies of the Quran on their spears and ask Imam Ali for clemency. How could Ali continue to fight and kill those who held up the noble Quran as a shield and peace offering? Ali accepted arbitration, and the decision went against him. But a group among his forces refused to recognise his decision to seek peace. How dare he stop fighting? they demanded angrily. They cited the verse of the Quran that says: ‘Hukm [rule, or ruling] is for God alone.’ To seek arbitration in his struggle with Mu‘awiya meant conceding the arbitrators’ right to provide hukm, a ruling, and that right was God’s alone.
The Kharijite boil was lanced. They were now deeply hostile to Ali. As he negotiated peace terms with the governor of Damascus, the Kharijites agitated bitterly and, as the Prophet had foreseen, they left or ‘went out’ (kharaja) – the action after which they were named. Ali was keen to bring this group of approximately 6,000 extremists back within the framework of mainstream Islam, and so Abdullah Ibn Abbas, the most learned of the surviving companions of the Prophet, offered to meet them.
Ibn Abbas is venerated by both Sunni and Shi‘a Muslims. He spent his entire lifetime in the service of the Prophet, keeping him constant company. The Prophet prayed for Ibn Abbas, and taught him secrets of the faith and the dynamics of the divine: ‘If you seek, seek only of God. Remember Him, and you will find Him in front of you.’ At first Ali was unwilling to put such a great scholar-companion of the Prophet, Islam’s greatest interpreter of the Quran, in harm’s way by sending him to meet the Kharijites, those who had left or ‘gone out’ from the Muslims. But Ibn Abbas insisted.1
Ibn Abbas wore his best, expensive, Yemeni robes, combed his hair, applied perfume oil and went to meet them as they lunched in their encampment. They had separated themselves from other Muslims and lived apart as their own community. Ibn Abbas was among the nearest and dearest companions of the Prophet. Moreover, he was a cousin of the Prophet and had seen the most pious of men, the Prophet Mohamed, in worship and yearning for God. And yet, upon meeting them, he wrote:
I had entered upon a people the likes of whom I had never seen with their extremism in worship. Their foreheads were wounded due to constant prostration in prayer and their hands were rough like the feet of camels. They wore untidy shirts with their robes or trousers very short. Due to not caring for their appearance, their faces were dishevelled and tired.
Ibn Abbas greeted them, and they welcomed him. Their first question to him was: ‘What is this cloak you are wearing?’ Ibn Abbas’s choice of clothing was not whimsical, nor intentionally lavish, but in keeping with the man he loved and learned from, the Prophet Mohamed. ‘What fault do you see in me?’ he replied. ‘Indeed, I saw the Prophet of God dressed in the best of what we find in Yemeni clothes.’ Knowing that they were not fully content with this response, he recited the verse of the Quran that says: ‘Who dares forbid the decoration and blessings of God which He has produced for His servants?’ Recognising Ibn Abbas’s conviction, and hearing his reference to the Quran, the Kharijites moved on to other questions.
‘What has brought you here?’ they asked. ‘I have come to you representing the companions of the Prophet of Allah,’ he said, ‘the migrants from Mecca, the helpers of Medina, and from Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet. Upon them descended the Quran; they are more knowledgeable about this than you. I see not a single one of the companions of the Prophet among you.’ They then conferred among themselves, and several turned to Ibn Abbas confirming their willingness to engage.
‘Come forward,’ said Ibn Abbas. ‘What is your complaint against the companions of the Prophet and his son-in-law?’ ‘Three issues,’ they responded. First, they complained that Ali had allowed men to be judges in arbitrating between warring sides in the recent conflict. This was polytheism and not God’s law. It defied the Quranic verse that says ‘Rule is for God alone.’ Second, they complained that Ali had fought Ayesha and her supporters, but had not permitted his soldiers to take captives or war booty. Third, based on the above two grievances, they insisted that Ali should change his title, ‘Leader of the Believers’, because of his errors. He was no longer a believer. He was ‘Leader of the Disbelievers’.
This was an act of Takfir on the part of the Kharijites – declaring someone to be a disbeliever, or an infidel. The Kharijites were the first to adopt simultaneously a number of troubling practices: excessive piety, separatism from other Muslims, literalism in reading scripture, and now Takfir. Soon, one more radical trait would be added to these four: intense violence. These five hallmarks of the Kharijites originated in the seventh century, and are still alive now in our times, in ISIS and others.
Ibn Abbas understood that the only language they comprehended was that of scripture. Before long, Imam Ali also realised that those who could not be dissuaded had to be destroyed. For now, however, Ibn Abbas attempted to debate, discuss and hold dialogue with them, on the agreed understanding that they would change their position and make Tawbah, or repent, if he could demonstrate their conclusions to be based on a false reading of the Quran.
On the question of God being the only ruler in matters of judgement, and human arbitration between people being a violation of God’s command, Ibn Abbas quoted from the Quran a verse on pilgrimage that forbids hunting: ‘And if a pilgrim kills an animal, then as judged by two just men among you the pilgrim should pay a penalty’ (5:95). Was this not human judgement? God could have laid down the penalty, but He delegated the ruling to humans. Ibn Abbas quoted the Quran again on conjugal disputes, where the scripture is categorical: ‘If you fear a breach between the husband and wife, appoint two arbitrators: one from his family and one from hers’ (4:35). Ibn Abbas asked the Kharijites: ‘Is it not better that men judge in matters regarding reconciliation of disputes rather than spill blood? Do you see how God allowed for human mediation between couples and so it is with other discord?’
True to the spirit of the sharia,
Ibn Abbas used logic and reason for public benefit, drawing on Islam’s primary source, the Quran. This was the normative Islam of the Prophet Mohamed at work.
As for Ali not taking captives and plunder, particularly Ayesha, as concubine according to the rules of war, Ibn Abbas asked: ‘Which of you make your own mothers permissible [sexually] to yourselves? The Quran declares: “The Prophet is closer to the believers than their own selves, and his wives are their mothers” [33:6]. If you deny this verse, you are in disbelief,’ he warned the Kharijites. The Prophet’s wife Ayesha was therefore not to be touched, he clearly meant. He asked if they had any questions, and they fell silent.
Turning then to their final grievance – their rejection of Ali as Leader of the Believers – Ibn Abbas cited examples from the life of the Prophet of how he had compromised when his enemies insisted he no longer refer to himself as the ‘Prophet of God’. If the Prophet could lay aside his rightful title for the sake of peace and security, then Ali too could compromise.
Ibn Abbas’s engagement with the separatists was the epitome of scriptural reasoning with Kharijite extremists within Islam. He persuaded over 2,000 of them to repent and return to Islam. The remainder of the radicals continued to fight Ali in the most vicious ways. The caliph’s army responded by annihilating the Kharijite fighters in the battle of Nahrawan, 13 miles outside Baghdad, in 658.
So the Prophet’s warning about extremists and secessionists came to pass in the lifetime of Imam Ali, within the first half-century of Islam. Ibn Abbas, the best of Muslim scholars, in the noblest of ways, had limited success with the earliest sectarian radicals. The Kharijites are now back and their numbers are growing, while Muslim scholars hope that theological debates and disputes will save Islam from this internal war. Those who manifest the five Khariji traits – excessive piety, separatism from other Muslims, literalism in reading scripture, declaring believers to be disbelievers (Takfir), and intense, indiscriminate violence – are called ISIS, among other names, today, but they will inevitably fracture and spawn other groups as well. Just as ISIS is in effect a breakaway from al-Qaeda, so ISIS will produce even more extreme Kharijites.
The Prophet himself said on multiple occasions that these murderers had left (‘gone out’ from) Islam. Why are today’s Muslims so reticent about saying the same and declaring ISIS as outsiders and disbelievers? Historically, some of the greatest Muslim thinkers, including Imams Bukhari, Ibn Taymiyya, Subki and Ibn Hajar, have considered the Kharijites to be non-believers. This Takfir by Muslims of the Takfiris, combined with decisive military action, has ensured their periodic cleansing, the necessary mowing of the lawn, throughout Muslim history. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan and others – both governments and religious leaders – have rightly identified the Kharijites of our time. But what will they do to win this war within Islam? On both fronts, debating and destroying ISIS and Takfiris, today’s Muslims are proving to be weak.
PART THREE
The Rise of the West and the Loss of Muslim Confidence
Why do today’s Muslims feel a loss of dignity?
How can contemporary Jews and Muslims find peace between them?
What are the challenges with the education systems of the Muslim world?
Why do Muslim women seem mistreated when compared with the West?
12
Dignity
‘If the Arabs are dishonoured, Islam itself is dishonoured’ is a popular saying attributed to the Prophet Mohamed. Scholars of hadith claim that along with thousands of other alleged statements by Mohamed, this one is a fake. Nevertheless, the attribution of this sentiment to the Prophet tells us of a deep desire on the part of the Arabs to clad themselves in the glory of God and the Islamic faith. Arab notions of pride, masculinity and honour run deep and can be difficult for non-Arabs to appreciate.
The images from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003, of a woman in the US military whipping and sexually humiliating naked men, were the first that the Arab and Muslim worlds had seen of such degradation. Before that there had been reports and rumours, but here was the evidence. Not only did the woman drag naked Arab Muslim men along on dog leashes, but American military personnel also used attack dogs to torture and frighten Iraqi prisoners. How could anyone explain such a disgrace, such deep debasement of a proud people?
In the West, words such as ‘shame’ or ‘humiliation’ have limited emotional resonance, but in Arab and Muslim societies and the wider Eastern world, including China and India, the concepts of ‘shame’ and ‘loss’ have immense power to hurt and alienate. In our time we have seen ignominy visited upon powerful Arab rulers: Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi chased out of the tunnel he was hiding in and killed; Iraq’s Saddam Hussein captured in a dark hole and hanged; and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak brought to trial in a hospital bed before a court that had no legitimacy in his or his supporters’ eyes. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the dictatorships that had been toppled, these televised images were a shattering blow to collective Arab pride.
For centuries, Muslims had always been winners. Power, glory and honour belonged to the Muslims, a people who conquered far and wide and created new civilisations in Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Constantinople, Delhi, Bukhara and Samarkand, and knocked on the gates of Vienna in the heart of Europe. Islam was an outward-facing civilisation, confident in its identity and resolute in its mission of calling humans to worship the one God and accept the Prophet Mohamed as His messenger. Yet this collective Muslim memory of a glorious past could no longer be reconciled with a powerful shared sense that Muslims had declined and become losers.
In 1948 the Jewish Haganah, a precursor to Israel’s armed forces, defeated five Arab, mostly Muslim, armies that had launched a joint attack the very day after the creation of the State of Israel. After centuries of discrimination and being driven out of European countries, and from 1939 on being systematically annihilated in the gas chambers of the Nazis, Jews had created a Jewish state of their own, a homeland. Now they had destroyed several Arab nations’ defence capabilities, as well as establishing a more formal presence in Jerusalem, Islam’s third-holiest city. What had happened to Arab and Muslim might? This humiliation became known as the Nakba (catastrophe), and every year, across the Arab world and beyond, the Nakba is commemorated with heads held low in shame. To lose is terrible, but to lose so badly at the hands of the Jews, the Yahud – a term often used almost as a profanity in many Arab countries – was a calamity.
Over the following decades, while democracy flourished in the new State of Israel, Arab populations were humiliated further from within. In Iraq, Syria and Egypt, Arab nationalist socialists staged military coups against their countries’ monarchies and confiscated the lands and homes of the wealthy. These military dictatorships, with their rural, working-class backgrounds and their left-wing politics, were not just an affront to the Arab upper classes. One set of elites had replaced another with no involvement of ordinary Arab citizens. Marginalisation of the Arab individual became the norm.
Worse still, the Arab socialists attacked the very fabric of Muslim societies, with an assault on the prestige and independence of Islamic scholarship. On Fridays, to this day, most mosques across the Muslim world are packed with worshippers. The mosque is the natural social space for most believers of all ages, and in Arab Muslim countries there is still deep veneration for the ulama (Islamic scholars) and their learning. Their status and dignity derive in large part from their independence – moral and financial – from the governments of the day.
The home of global Islamic learning, Al-Azhar Mosque and University in Cairo, one of the world’s oldest-established universities, had been independent for a thousand years, with its own financial endowment, or waqf. Traditionally in Muslim societies, when a wealthy Muslim passed away she or he bequeathed their inheritance to an Islamic charity in what was known as sadaqah jariah, continuous charity. In other words, although the donor was deceased, their good deeds in this world continued, and they gained a heavenly rewar
d. Often the bequest took the form of a waqf endowment.
Thanks to Al-Azhar’s waqf, therefore, generations of Muslim scholars had studied in its tenth-century courtyard unbeholden to rulers or politicians, and an Islam of peace, pluralism and prosperity was able to thrive. The Arab socialists changed that when, in 1953, Gamal Abdul Nasser, leader of the Egyptian coup and later president, seized the endowment of Al-Azhar. In the West, Oxford and Cambridge universities had built their own centres of learning by emulating this enlightened Muslim model. Yet here were socialist ideologues and military dictators attacking it within the House of Islam – with tragic consequences.
I visit Al-Azhar regularly for conversations, prayers and learning. My heart aches as I see the derelict buildings, neglected learning quarters, filthy toilets, poverty among the students, and low pay of the professors. Bookshops are being shut down and replaced by butchers in the ancient neighbourhoods where writers and thinkers gave birth to ideas that upheld a civilisation for a thousand years. Where is the outcry? Where are the financiers and philanthropists who yearn to revive their civilisation by endowing knowledge and ideas?
Elsewhere in the Muslim world we can see the price to be paid for pauperising scholars and forcing them to dance to the tune of their paymasters. In Pakistan there is widespread derision of the mullah, or cleric, who is seen as backward, poor, hypocritical and constantly in need of money. This is a direct consequence of clerics holding forth on controversial politics. On Fridays a bucket is circulated at the mosque for worshippers to drop in their contributions to the mullah’s weekly salary. This compromises the cleric and subjugates him to his paymasters, the congregation. Consequently, he loses the freedom to show leadership based on principled scholarship, and is instead guided by the expectations of those who pay his salary. He ends up mirroring their views.
