The Piety Thugs Strike

 

 

THE PIETY THUGS STRIKE 

 

By a ‘piety thug’ I mean a Muslim with a misguided zeal which causes him to denounce other Muslims as unbelievers or apostates. He may then begin to persecute them even onto death.  The first victim of such thugs was no less than the noble if naïve, (doubly) son-in-law of the Prophet sws, namely Uthman.

 

Uthman’s RA very high standing with the Messenger of Allah sws caused his equally noble peers among the sahaba to prefer criticising Uthman RA rather kindly and in a well-meaning way. None wanted much to depose him or harm him physically. His intense critics and haters, mostly concentrated in Iraq and Egypt where great military garrisons were maintained since Umar’s RA time, could not be as charitable and patient as Uthman’s noble peers among the ashab; nor would they listen to the latter’s advice for patience. In both Iraq and Egypt an increasingly coordinated and unified full-blown revolution was brewing with all the underground structures and operations in place and awaiting the critical moment of eruption. Eventually the revolutionary party converged on Medina, occupied it and cowed the inhabitants into passivity.  None, including Ali RA could do much to save Uthman RA; Ali RA tried to protect Uthman RA both by advice and sending his two sons to guard the rebels’ access to him. The rebels did not dare to hurt the Prophet’s sws grandsons; instead they found another route to Uthman’s RA quarters and martyred him mercilessly.

 

Very unfortunately for Ali RA, his elevation to the caliphate created more problems than it solved. Having no other organised armed force around him, he had to employ the rebels as his initial army; he could not afford to antagonise them, especially when they met his election to the caliphate with approval.  Still, many ashab including Aisha RA, Talha RA and Zubair RA were unhappy with Ali RA for various reasons and interpreted his unhelpable dependence on the rebels as unforgivable and formed another party to lead it against Ali RA in combat. Ali RA won the battle famously called the episode of the Camel (on account of Aisha RA directing it from the back of a camel), both Talha RA and Zubair RA were killed despite Ali’s orders that they should not. This was another misfortune for Ali RA caused by his unhelpable dependence on thugs. 

  

More tragedies had to follow of which the culmination was the tragedy of Karbala where and when our master Hussein b. Ali RA and his entourage were massacred by Umayyad’s own mercenary thugs who even did not bother to lay claim to piety. Long before then Ali RA was martyred by a new sect called the Kharijites, which was formed by some disaffected supporters of Ali RA.  Unlike the Umayyad’s plain and frank thugs the Kharijites could not protest their piety more; in actual fact they were very thorough learners of Islam as well as its very scrupulous implementers but all this with a very narrow mind and shallow understanding.  Had Rasulullah sws lived, they could even find fault with him to say the least.  That is because while Rasulullah sws was enlightened and informed by deep understanding of men and motivated by compassion the Kharijites were embittered by men’s unhelpable failings and motivated by hellish revenge so typical of all too idealistic persons who are so devoid of spiritual insight and practical wisdom.

 

 

THE CURSE OF POLITICAL AMBITION

 

Can you believe it, among inordinate desires for this world’s pleasures political ambition is almost certainly the most dangerous and bloodiest? At its extreme, absolute political power over a vast society can do harm to people as much as any natural disaster-  the Second World War was mainly the mischief of a few absolute dictators and caused the destruction of more than twenty million souls and two thirds of human settlements and economic facilities in Europe alone.

 

What is political ambition?  It is an obsessive, almost organically or genetically based urge to attain power for controlling as many people as possible no matter what those people want.  Under this broad definition then comes, on a small scale, the ambition of a dominant father or mother or child in a family who cannot stop seeking ways and opportunities to make their will to prevail; on the largest scale is the ambition of a man like Alexander or Genghis Khan or Hitler who wanted to conquer the whole world if possible at all costs. 
At this point we must pause and admit that some degree of political ambition is healthy and necessary if we are to have competent and enthusiastic rulers. What is more, there are some great services renderable to humanity which can only be by political action. We need both competent and charitable rulers. We in fact have been fortunate many a time in having good rulers. Such good rulers are not softies though; they are adequately harsh towards wilful or repetitive offenders but take extreme care not to hurt the innocents. The supreme political ruler has been none other than the Messenger of Allah who did not hesitate to punish bad enough offenders with bad enough punishments but outside such few exceptions was very compassionate and charitable.  You see, there are all kinds of people in this world and some are simply unable to understand and benefit from compassion and forgiveness and for the safety of all must be dealt with adequate severity.  We of course except mental illness.
What is inordinate political ambition is the ambition of a person who wants political power to satisfy a practically insatiable desire for indiscriminate and irresponsible control over others. It is this type of person who lies at the bottom of all tyrannical regimes. If you ask me why Allah often seems to allow such tyrants to succeed in their nefarious ambitions and even successfully ward off totally justified looking rebellions the answer is not with me but Allah and His Messenger sws who are telling us that a community get the kind of leader they deserve. Some countries are chronically ungovernable as many of us know while some regimes are too corrupt and these two factors may meet in a given society. I do not want to give names lest I cause offence to the named.  I can only quote some symptoms of it. It is that in such countries tribal or general political factionalism is very variegated and intense and admits no cure. Tribe raids tribe, party subverts party resorting to whatever crime it takes, blood is shed and booty is stolen; political faction subverts political faction and even assassination is employed to eliminate rivals. However sincerely tried democracy is hampered by corruption, nepotism and even armed infighting. Then comes the relief in the form of a brutal top dog seizing power and imposing his will on all. Or a weak ruler appoints a strongman to sort out the mess with the ruler’s blessings.  Whether the strongman remains loyal to the ruler or replaces him is another matter. 

 

Such a case of loyal strongman occurred in Ottoman times.  In the 17th century the Ottoman Empire had become ungovernable; both the army and bureaucracy had become dens of thieves and bandits; sultans and viziers were made and unmade in quick succession; at each instance the new appointees had to reward their installers from the public purse despite the bankruptcy of the regime and also line his pockets considering his own very likely fall.  He  therefore had to steal  whatever he could.  With boring regularity this is how all empires throughout history declined and fell.  From Babylonia to Persia and from Rome to the Ottoman the same scenario was enacted. And the Qur’an explains all national falls likewise.

 

In the Ottoman example it was unsafe even at daytime for vulnerable people to walk in the streets let alone travel in the country. Both official governors and self-styled local potentates as well as tax-collectors had turned into tyrants and robbers and taking advantage of this seemingly mortal symptoms and in true vultures fashion the Venetian navy was forcing the straits of Dardanelles to access Istanbul and occupying it bring down the  once great Muslim empire.  At the last minute the queen mother prevailed over his son the sultan Muhammad IV and persuaded him to appoint a retired vizier aged 80 and named Koprulu Mehmed Pasha to sort out the mess (1576).  He duly appeared before the sultan and had the luxury of dictating to him his own tyrannical terms; neither the sovereign nor anybody else would  interfere with Koprulu’s rule which should be absolute except for Koprulu usurping the throne. Aged 80 and strictly honest and honourable he was trusted and got the official seal of the sultan in hand. He began with a great purge of all offenders among both the military and the bureaucracy taking care to be just as far as practicable if also adequately ruthless. Within a few months the empire was under control at the expense of many moving to their underground resting places. Under competent and honest tax inspectors and collectors massive amounts of wealth stolen from national treasury were forcibly recovered while tax arrears were equally done so.

 

Koprulu appointed best available competence and honesty to all offices and commands, disciplined both the army and the navy and easily chased off the Venetians. He lasted only five years but with universal appreciation and acclaim brought back the glorious days of the empire as it was under Selim I and his son Suleiman I when the Ottoman Empire was decidedly the superpower of the age.  What is more he suggested his equally brilliant and worthy son Fazil Ahmed Pasha to take over after his death and the son proved even better a ruler. He won against both the German empire in the West and the maritime empire of Venetia; he wrestled from the latter the big and strategic island of Crete in the middle of the Mediterranean.


Surely the reigns of this father and son dynasty was an exceptionally benevolent one; it is far more often the case that Allah disciplines His corrupt and cruel servants with tyrants more corrupt and cruel than themselves and in fact in many Muslim countries today are or until yesterday were under such tyrants.

 

But corruption and cruelty need not go hand in hand with outward religious impiety; outwardly impeccable looking religious persons can also make terrile tyrants not an inch better than totally impious.  Let us see why.

 

 

THE IDEOLOGICAL FANATIC

 

There is a morbid if totally sane personality type with the following symptoms:

 

1.
He has a too literally operating mind which is blind and too much reluctant to see what could possibly be metaphorical or motivational in doctrinal statements, especially the religious statements.  For example,  Allah says “Wherever you turn to there is Allah’s Face” (). The literal minded may insist that all you see is parts of the Face of Allah or Allah and the material universe is one and the same.  He will not accept that the statement is metaphorical. Or When Allah says “Do not despair of Allah’s mercy; He forgives all sins without exception” () the literal minded may take it to mean full licence to do what he wants. He cannot see that this is a motivational statement designed to avoid total despair in somebody who thinks he sinned too much and his repentance, however sincere and decisive will do no good to him.

 

2.
From above follows another symptom: The ideological fanatic feels left out from the possible spiritual insights of more mature people;  he cannot stomach the possible inferiority status and feels compelled to hit and hit hard and punish all whom he thinks are looking down on him.  He only too badly needs self-assurance and self-righteousness and cannot cope with uncertainty and exclusion from an apparently knowing better group. He then raids the Scripture and tradition to supposedly expose the wrongs of the spiritual and psychological interpreters of religion and may agitate for their condemnation and punishment-  in the case of Islam by ‘tradition’ I mean not only the Hadith but the consensus of experts over ages.  Not that expert consensus is necessarily infallible. It is that one must come up with better evidence for his thesis than the said experts collectively brought. The only fully infallible evidence is the Qur’an, provided of course it is correctly understood. 

 

3.
He may obey all commandments far better than all others and may thereby project an image of perfection in the sight of many not too insightful people, yet, when it comes to tolerance of others with different interpretations which may even be supported by other parts of the Scripture or Tradition or expert opinion the fanatic cannot do it. He sees and wants blood.  And he will not hesitate to impose his views whatever the cost, whether with precedent or unprecedented in historical practice.  For example, the Prophet sws always avoided to shed blood unnecessarily even the blood of idolaters; the fanatic can slaughter a whole Muslim town if they refuse to embrace his view of Islam. 

 

4.
Lastly, all ideological fanatics share in this intolerance of others with other beliefs and in the worst case will not hesitate to destroy whole towns and villages and massacre their inhabitants in cold blood. In the modern age both nationalists and communists have been guilty of this intolerance of and brutality towards people they saw as the other, the enemy.
Cambodian dictator Pol Pot alone massacred twenty million of Cambodians to create the mad utopia he believed in.  Before them some (not all) Catholic missionaries accompanying the Spanish conquistadores to the Americas often approved if not always provoked the mass slaughter of the natives they came across along their lines of penetration of that continent. In one case a soldier asks the ‘holy father’ whether he is supposed to kill the babies; the holy father rules: Better to send it to the embrace of the Father before it possibly grows up in the wrong faith!

 

 

THE CASES OF THE SINCERE AND THE INSINCERE FANATIC

 

It is certainly one thing to have a defective mind and taking all religious statements resent the subtler interpretations of others and then go ahead and try to punish those others.  It is quite another thing to notice the power of religious (or secular ideological) belief on a big section of people and make plans to exploit them.  The themselves unbelieving souls out to exploit the beliefs of others I am calling the insincere fanatics.  Both are equally dangerous though and in practice it is neither easy to tell them apart nor necessary.  We must just be able to diagnose them and avoid or treat them as circumstances allow.  I suspect that in between the two types there is a third hybrid type who is both sincere and mad. Allah knows best.

 

 

THE FANATIC AS THE PERPETUAL INNER ENEMY OF ISLAM

 

Sincere or not a man playing the most committed and scrupulous Muslim from a narrow point of view and to exacting standards is bound to clash with more reasonable and realistic Muslims whether he wanted and planned it or not.  He will detest and look down on others and they will feel it and be either embarrassed or resentful.  If he thinks he is knowledgeable (which he often does) he will be unable to contain himself too long and begin to criticise others with increasing frequency and vehemence.  If he makes converts or find similarly minded comrades they may form a party and preach and recruit.  Because they increasingly offend the moderates who always form a majority they also offend the public authorities; these not only become increasingly worried about the public order breaking down but also find that they as authorities get the most bitter criticism-  as  both our masters Uthman RA and Ali RA had.

 

The worst offenders in this respect are the fringe or blasphemous groups who throw up extremely ruthless leaders on both the bad and mad side, mad but sane I mean. One of the more notorious was Hassan Sabbah, the legendary leader of the Assassins sect, an offshoot of Ismailism who themselves descended from the Fatimids of Egypt.  This said Hassan made himself a god in the sight of his devotees whom he chose and recruited from among the most impressionable, literal thinking and hysterical youths.  He was using Sufi methods at their most extreme without being a Sufi in the least. Basically a degenerate Shia sect Ismailism has been a survival of the Gnostic tradition reaching back to millennia but unlike its sister Christianity it did not bother to adopt and develop a universal and highly moral perspective. Like in all Shia, it maintains that its leaders are infallible and again like all Shia it rules over tax-paying subjects with the power of life and death. Because it makes such sharp a contrast with freedom-loving and easygoing Sunni Islam which 90 % of Muslims belong it both fears and hates Sunni Islam.  To service this fear and hate Hassan Sabbah had organised a terrorist network from his impregnable castle the Alamut in the Caucasian range and began hunting down and assassinating selected Sunni leaders until he and more so his successors became plain contract assassins killing Muslim notables at the behest of Christian (Crusader) leaders as well as Christian leaders at the behest of their Muslim enemies for a price.  In other words they were the top mafia organisation of the age albeit under an age-appropriate religious cloak.  These Assassins were the scourge of Muslims between late 11th to mid 13th century until they were conquered and exterminated by the Mongols who could entertain no fools.
Even earlier and worse than them and more typical of Islamic satans were the Carmathian heretics of the same Ismailite kind.  One of the Ismaili leaders, namely a certain Abdullah b. Qaddah died (874) an Iraqi peasant, later popularly known as Qarmat became the Ismaili leader and famous as the leader of an openly rebellious sect called the Carmathians (Qaramita).  He taxed his increasing subjects at 20% of their gross income and thereby funded a campaign of terror Islam never saw before or after.  He declared for communism under a Sufi cloak giving the Qur’an a totally arbitrary allegorical interpretation in which there was no place for the Islamic commandments and laws as known to the mainstream Muslims.  Both property and women were common to all men. Soon they founded a state about where Kuwait is now and in 900 they exterminated an army sent by the caliph of Baghdad. In 902 they rolled over Syria up to Damascus and by 924 they had sacked and plundered Basra, Kufa and lastly Mecca carrying away even the sacred black stone. Like all too rapid and dazzling movements it soon exhausted itself in its excesses but left a legacy of religious terrorist tradition which has since fitfully plagued Islam and generated various
terrorist movements among both Shia and later on among the Sunni populations.

 

The success formula employed by the Carmathians was simple: Assemble an ever-growing group of literal minded and power hungry fanatics indoctrinated with most radical heretical religious beliefs and motivated by world-domination oriented and gloating in martyrdom ideas and ideals which heretics would regard their leader god except perhaps in name and then unleash these mad and bad men on the world as much as they can go. This magic formula is much older than Carmathianism and its roots are lost in the mist of the distant past. In 19th and 20th centuries this formula was dusted off and secularised by both the Communists and the Faschists who threw up leaders with almost divine authority and fought against the world with incredible ferocity and often stunning rapid success as well.  Lenin took over Russia for his communist party within a few years following a forcible overthrow of the Tsarist order and barely two decades later Hitler rose to absolute power within a decade of his political life.  Both benefited from superbly indoctrinated and organised fanatic followers who could kill thousands at the drop of a hat on the leader’s orders. The disease soon spread to China and then Viet-Nam and Cambodia, succeeded like hell and claimed millions of lives-  only to fizzle out and make way for the old capitalist order as its victims called the normal regimen of the world at large.  The rapid eventual failure of fanatical movement after a brief spell of spectacular success has been proven time and again and historical examples reach back both to classical Greece and Rome.  Islam took its own share of this acute disease and today remains almost alone to suffer from new outbreaks of it.

 

 

THE MAIN LESSON FROM THE HISTORY OF FANATICISM

 

Without exception all fanatical movements briefly succeeded like hell and came to nothing as quickly and abruptly, of course on the scale of historical time. The metaphor of acute disease (like measles) is an apt one: Onset is rapid, symptoms alarming but so is a rapid and total nearly recovery.  There is no future for fanaticism nor a glorious place for the fanatics in an eventual and lasting sense.  Its fiery temper and destructiveness can only indicate the Satan as its instigator and mentor and not Allah at all.  Which means any movement purporting being Islamic revivalist or renewalist must be viewed with deep suspicion and contact with it avoided like plague. This world belongs to Real Allah and works from realities Allah put in it and never otherwise.  Idealism, even in Islam is unrealistic delusion and acting on such promptings of such idealism either fails or enjoys a brief success at an unacceptable cost to all parties involved.  Allah WANTS this world to be a mixed bag of good and evil, for He only made it to try and test us and not intended it to b paradise under any circumstances. In fact the very opposite is true: Bad must always exceed good so that no sensible person will attach himself too deeply to this world. People must be disappointed and often;  you correct one part only to see another part crumble. 


Fanaical people are like quacks thinking that they are professors of Medicine. They think that by preaching and then cutting and burning they can remodel the world to fit their simplistic fancies. The Kahrijites were angry with Uthman RA and his Umayyad clan; they destroyed Uthman RA and promoted Ali RA only to destroy him as well within five years after Uthman. They accused each of these great sahabas of blasphemy and inequity and acting as all- prosecution, judge, jury and executioner they cut them down.  Ironically they could do nothing to the Umayyads who went from strength to strength. By destroying Ali they unwittingly rendered an excellent service to the Umayyads they were supposed to bring down.  Thus Allah deceives and frustrates the self-deceived who cannot understand neither Allah’s or His saints’ ways and go out to correct all outside themselves while it is they themselves who are the most lost.  Unfortunately recently we are having more of the fanatics and not less.

 

 

MODERN FANATICS 

 

As Islamic power declined, colonialism invaded Muslim countries and Western ways began to affect or challenge, Muslims search for responses of variously resistance, adaptation and accommodation began.  In this respect the impact of Western superiorities like science and technology as well as organisation of government were reacted to by mainly two alternative responses, sometimes overlapping whatever the incompatibilities.  In other words some technical Westernisation had to go hand in hand with a refusal to accept some Western values (some of which were scandalous in fact).

 

In India while some Muslims tried to play it cool and cooperate with the English occupiers in mutually profitable ways found the English willing to play the game.  These cooperative Muslims went as far as to update their education by accepting some English education, sometimes in England.  Additionally hybrid schools teaching both Islamic and Western subjects sprang up in India itself.  While some mutual accommodators remained faithful to Islamic traditions despite their additional English education some became abject apologists for Islam trying to justify it against the challenging views of both Western secular and Christian criticism diredcted against Islam.  I am saying ‘abject’ because these apologists betrayed a subtle doubt about Islam’s superiority to Western or Christian ways by implying or sometimes outright admitting defects in Islam’s evolution under its classical savants and jurists which defects were not usually there. 

 

For example, obviously jealous of Islam’s unprecedented success in establishing the Prophet’s Sunna through the science of Hadith, the Western orientalists were generally deprecating and dismissive of Hadith.  They simply said that almost the whole body of Hadith were fabricated through the fabrication of that most important ‘isnad’ or transmission chain.  Some Muslim apologists lapped this accusation up and tried to base all Islam exclusively on the Qur’an.  This faction came to be known as the Qur’aniyyun (Koranists) and denied the validity any legal or theological ruling not directly based on the statements in the Qur’an and instead made almost exclusive use of Hadith or opinion of some famous savants.  Having dismissed Hadith the Qur’aniyyun found themselves unable to justify even the form and times of salat,  yet they obstinately stuck to their guns unable to satisfy either their fellow Muslims or Christian cheer leaders.  In short Indian Muslims became even more confused by the day while their Christian overlords continued to rule over them directly or through their Muslim appointees and vassals.

 

Although unhappy, Indian Muslims did not throw up any consistent or systematic challenge to the English;  they could not because not only they were the minority in India as a whole but also most Indian rulers who initially tried to resist the English were petty Muslim sultans while the Hindus were in general happier for having the English whom they saw as doing more harm to Muslims (as ex-rulers of India) than they the Hindus.  India a very vast and even more vastly divided country could not resist the English occupation.  As a result Muslim response to the apparently invincible English domination took mainly peculiar Islamic forms.  In one instance a certain Ghulam Ahmad conceived an original idea of totally spurious origin;  he apparently aspired at uniting all India and possily the whole world under him as a new and universal prophet of God.  He accordingly declared his Mahdiship, Christship and Krishnaship for some reason forgetting Buddhaship, Confuciusship etc. if the coinages can be forgiven. 

 

He was only locally and tribally accepted and since then his sect enjoyed a long-stretched, modest success of expansion in India and recently in the West thanks to its adoption of a single part of the classical success formula of all spiritual pretenders, heavy taxation of the subjects.  With funds overflowing and brains methodically washed one need not to be a real man of God to succeed by systematic and persistent propaganda and proselytising;  in this world all commodities find customers simply because there are so many kinds of minds and needs and delusions to satisfy.

 

In fact from 18th century onwards we see all over the world a race for throwing up new spiritual masters and movements,  as much in Christianity as in Islam.  All the recent false prophets saviours and mahdis appeared in the last two centuries or so; in the West we had the likes of Joseph Smith and his Mormonism and C.T.Russel and his Jehovah’s Witnesses; from the East came the Korean Messiah Moon  who eventually triumphed in America with his Moonies.  In the East Ghulam Ahmad was not alone as the Islamic renewer; the competition was big; From Arabia came Abdulwahhab and his Wahhabi sect while in Iran Abdulbaha founded Bahaism as a new universal religion.  From the periphery of Islamdom rose Muhammad Ahmad who claimed Mahdiship.  It was Muhammad Ahmad of Sudan and Abdulwahhab of Arabia that were far enough from the power centres of the world to resort to armed struggle on top of preaching.  Both were able to impose themselves on their locals by sword; the Wahhabis took about half a century to triumph in Arabia at the cost of great local bloodshed and Islam-wide apprehension while Sudanese Mahdi’s success was more rapid but equally rapidly came to an end when his ‘caliph’ Abdullahi’s forces were massacred by an English led force deploying modern arms including modern canon and machineguns.  Otherwise the Sudanese Mahdi had promised to conquer the whole Islamic world and occupying Istanbul deposing the universal Muslim caliph sultan Abdulhamid of the Ottoman Empire.

 

To sum up and bring into focus the Islamic scene of the last two centuries or so we can say that spurious renewal movements took two forms, one peaceful and the other warlike. The peaceful movements were Ahmadism and Bahaism and the warlike were Wahhabism and Mahdism.  It is these last two which are more concerned with our essay in that they include tyrannical persons out to impose themselves on Muslims by essentially unnecessary claims. To renew Islam neither insulting criticism nor rebellion or insurrection are necessary; what is necessary are three: One, scholarly and spiritual competence as given by the Creator and enhanced by study and practice; two, exemplary character which even non-Muslims can admire and endorse;  and three, patient and tactful preaching and excellent example-setting.  If Allah wants to change His servants He will do so thanks to His gifts to this pious servant of His, which servant’s work will be blessed. Otherwise making big claims as well as big accusations and then resorting to angry propaganda, wanton terror and unrealistically heroic warfare can only meet the same success as the Assassins, Carmathians, Leninists, Maoists and Pol Pot attained-  extremely brutal and bloody,  disastrously disappointing and quickly extinguished. The longest lifetime of such quasi-religious warlike movements are about two centuries maximum and often far less.  Leninism lasted about 80 years, Maoism 50, Pol Pot 20.  Wahhabism is still alive but is an empty shell now having to bow to the realities of the world.  It can preach but for about a century now it cannot fight. Obscene luxury, corruption, duplicity and sloth characterise today’s Wahhabi state and neither its ideology nor it military prowess can do anything about the realities of even the Middle East.

 


 

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