By
Syed I Husain
August 25,
2020
The schism
between the two forms of Islam was in the process of forming upon the death of
the Prophet Mohammad pbuh. Different branches of the same religion are the
exception more than the rule, and they have had a profound impact upon history.
Soon afterwards the death of Prophet Muhammad pbuh, those who believed in a
special place for the role of the Prophet’s family became the Shias, while
those who believed that all Muslims were equally capable of ruling became
Sunnis.
The Muslims
have continued to debate this matter; the Prophet and the Quran are ambivalent
about it. On the one hand, there is a firm assertion of the equality of all
Muslims. On the other hand, there are a number of hadith that the Shia holds up
to support their claims about Ali Ibn Abi Talib’s special status as the heir of
the Prophet Mohammad. The most significant one is the event of Ghadeer Khumm.
On 18 Zil al-Hijrah 10 AH, while returning from his Farewell Pilgrimage,
Prophet stopped at Ghadir Khumm to make an announcement to the pilgrims. Prophet
Muhammad gave the famous proclamation “Anyone who has me as his Mawla, has Ali
as his Mawla”.
Ultimately,
upon Prophet Mohammad’s death, Abu Bakr became the first Caliph, subsequently
Umer Bin Khattab second, Usman Ibn Affan third and Ali Ibn Abi Talib fourth
Caliph. After the death of Ali Ibn Abi Talib, his son Hassan Ibn Ali was
declared Caliph. Meanwhile, Muawiyah Ibn Abi Sufiyan pushed hard, bringing
first Egypt and then larger areas of Arabia under his dominion. Muawiyah broke
from the traditions of the Rashidun by not simply declaring himself Caliph, but
the position would be passed down within his family. After Muawiyah’s death,
Yazid became Caliph and at the refusal of allegiance to his Caliphate by
Hussain Ibn Ali, his army killed Hussain Ibn Ali along with his family and
companions at Karbala. The use of force by Umayyads, first against Ali Ibn Abi
Talib when he was Caliph, then against Hassan ibn Ali and then the barbaric use
of force against Hussain Ibn Ali at Karbala fuelled the unending divide and
hatred between Umayyads and the House of Prophet pbuh.
The Umayyad
dynasty lasted for only 89 years, but during this time, they held the single
Muslim Caliphate together as a political entity and extended its borders into
Spain, Portugal, Maghreb in Northern Africa, Sindh, and the Caucasus Mountains,
making it one of the largest empires the world had ever seen. But the Berber
Revolt opened a full point of increasing instability and weakness, leading to
increased taxes, declining central control, and finally the Abbasid Revolution
of 750.
At its
pinnacle, the powerful Shia Fatimid Dynasty was the only true challenger to the
Sunni political domination of the Islamic world after the death of Ali. The
Fatimid reached their peak in 1069, when they held all of North Africa, the
Sudan, the Levant, and the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, and within this
region, they held a remarkable level of religious tolerance, including allowing
Sunnis to rise to political office. The Fatimid established the mosque and madrasa
of Al-Azhar in Cairo. This essence of learning drew upon not only Muslim
traditions, but also Greek Christian scholars from Alexandria and eventually
Jewish scholars as well. It became the most important centre of learning, but
after Saladin Ayubi’s conquest of the city, it was converted over to Sunnism.
Nevertheless, the Fatimid power was weakened by the betrayal of the Berbers to
the Abbasids, the Crusades, and Turkic invasions of the Levant. They ultimately
fell to the Sunni Sultan Saladin Ayubi in 1174, and Saladin recognized the
Abbasid’s religious authority.
For the
Abbasids, the Shia Imams always presented an existential threat, but unlike the
Umayyad, who justified their rule based upon military victory, the Abbasids
relied upon the Shia argument that their stock within the clan of the Prophet
Muhammad and direct descent from his uncle Abbas gave them special authority to
rule. At the same time, it was undeniable that the Shia Imams held the better
claim to rule by being descended directly from the Prophet via his favourite
daughter Fatimah and his beloved, pious and gallant son-in-law and cousin, Ali.
Therefore, by arguing for their own legitimacy, the Abbasids also made a strong
case for the legitimacy of the Imams.
The
Sunni-Shia conflicts that characterized this period ended abruptly in 1258, the
year the Mongols invaded the Abbasid Caliphate and conquered the city of
Baghdad. The previous collapse of the Fatimid Dynasty meant that in that
location was no powerful Shia political force to move into the vacuum. This
invasion shook the Sunnis in particular to the nucleus, as it was the first
time that their Empire was seriously threatened by a non-Muslim force and the
first time that they could not point to the military successes of the Islamic Empire
as evidence of God’s grace.
In the far
north of the Islamic world, in the city of Ardabil near the Caspian Sea, a
semi-secret order of mystical Sufis called the Safaviyya had existed since the
late 13th C. The Safaviyya Order grew in prominence throughout the region and
slowly transformed from promoting Sufism to Twelver Shi’ism. In the 1400s, the
Order gained a militant aspect and set about to build a territorial base for
itself, and in 1501, Ismail the leader of the Order which had been an inherited
position for centuries eventually declared himself Shah. His new empire was
Twelver Shia in character, and the resulting dynasty was called the Safavids.
The
Safavids went about recreating the territory of the ancient Persian Empire that
had been conquered by the early Rashidun Caliphate, and at their peak, they
controlled all of today’s Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, as well as large areas
of Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Georgia, parts of Turkey, Syria, Pakistan and
Turkmenistan. After centuries of Arab political control, the Persians
enthusiastically embraced the new identity and, after a time, were willing to
fuse their ethnicity with the Shia religion.
As the
Safavid dynasty emerged, the Ottoman Empire as the standard bearer of Sunni
Islam. The Ottomans reached the status of world power in 1453 when they seized
the city of Constantinople and set themselves up in the heartland of the old
Byzantine Empire. This situation was reinforced in 1517 when the Ottomans
conquered Egypt, deposed the Abbasid Caliphs, and claimed the Caliphate and
control of the holy cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem for themselves. Their
first real war was fought from 1532-1555, and they continued to spar regularly
until the early 19th century, when European colonialism forced them both onto
the defensive.
The most
significant development in the differences between the Sunni and the Shia in
modern history has been the development of a new school of thought in Sunni
religiosity: Salafi or Wahhabi Islam. The Wahhabis date their history back to
the mid-18th century. The Wahhabi Saudi troops took advantage of the
pandemonium of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I to seize
control over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
Shia,
Sunni, or Wahhabi agrees on the basic principles of Islam, such as believing in
one God, Prophet, and the Holy Quran. They pray five times, fast during the
month of Ramzan, perform Hajj and Umrah, and celebrate Eid ul Fitr and Eid ul
Azha, but choosing Ali or Abu Bakr after the Prophet pbuh doesn’t make one
non-Muslim. You may concur or disagree with me, but in my views the divide
between Muslims is more political than religious.
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Syed
I Husain is a traveller and freelance writer based in UK
Original
Headline: Shia-Sunni: The divide is ….
Source: The Daily Times, Pakistan
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