A Modern Understanding Of Islam
A MODERN UNDERSTANDING OF ISLAM
INTRODUCTION
This essay represents an effort on my part to update the interpretation of Islam so as to enable those who are worried about the implications of their adopting Islam as their world view and implementing its commandments as their way of life. Of course I am aware that most Islamic believers and practicers are of the opinion that what classical ulama (Islamic scholars, singular ‘alim’) did in explaining and codifying Islam is the last word on the subject and any tampering with it (as they would put it) amounts to a pretension to a Luther-like reformership if not to apostasy (naudhu billah- God forbid). I believe that is not the case in the slightest and I feel my heart happy and satisfied with Islamic faith and Islam’s commandments (mutma’innun bil iman- alhamdu lillah). In fact when any critics read what I am about to write, provided their hearts are perceptive of and respectful towards the deeper truth buried in the words of the Word of Allah as well as in the dispositions and tendencies of the Messenger of Allah (sallallahu alaihi wa sellem= sws/ peace be upon him pbuh) they will only be happier than before and not less.
Let’s face it. We muslims are facing the most persistent, intense and dangerous reactions from the rest of the world public a lot of whom tend to see us as dangerous delusional reactionary fanatics worthy of condemnation and perhaps even some occasional putting down. Nothing could express this general frustration with too serious and intense-looking muslims than the recent military intervention into Afganistan on the part of the US-led UN forces. It is easy to accuse both US and UN as anti- Islamic and it may contain a lot of truth but couldn’t some of our muslims be less categoric and bloody-eyed to render such interventions less likely? And is it only the non-muslims that have been at the receiving end of such too categoric and intense persecution by the fanatics amongst us? From traditional monarchic regimes to peaceful sufi orders fanatics destested and persecuted. The understanding they represent is not new however. It goes back to the earlier days of Islam and its first victim was none other than the Prophet sws himself! That is next.
THE PATHOLOGY OF FANATICISM
People are not only created with different talents and handicaps but they also fall into a broad spectrum of of typologies some of which are palpably abnormal. In psychological terms normalcy consists of successful adaptation to a social mainstream environment where any ideological differences do not cause a believer to physically attack others. In other words, however sincere and committed is a believer in something he confines his criticism or exhortation of the rest to peaceful argument and motivation. For their part the rest are supposed to show toleration of the believer and at the worst only politely ignore him.
But things do not turn out like that always. Depending on the unconventionality of the claims made by the believer as well as the intensity and degree of consolidation of the beliefs of the mainstream or the members of a rival ideology physical clashes of varying severity, involving at least some members on each side take place. Both Jesus Christ and Muhammad (peace be on both) were reacted against by their audience and in both cases violence became part of it. Nor the modern democratic societies are free from ideologically motivated violence. From Klux Klux Clan to Animal Liberation groups many groups of unconventional believers resort to and are occasionally reacted to by violence on the part of opposing ideological groups as well as the forces of law. Arrests and convictions are always on the cards. But is that a mark of the error of the beliefs held?
For one thing almost all reforms of the society involved some violence and coercion at the beginning at least. Western democracy itself has no less a bloody phase of imposition than Islam and Christianity or the Russian and Chinese Communism earlier the last century the 20th. The English Civil War (1640’s) as well as the American (1860’s) and the Great French Revolution (1789) were every bit bloody and brutal. Had these battles not fought and won with the ruthlessness they were there could be no Western democracies, at least as early as has been the case. So resorting to violence alone is not enough to condemn any ideological struggle as sign of psychological abnormality of its champions or that only evil can come from it. But there do exist only too many ideological struggles which are based on the abnormality of its champions and lead to evil basically.
Many splinter religious or ideological groups who champion palpably unrealistic ideas and put forward atrocious demands and prepare for and resort to extreme and indiscriminate violence are reprehensible. Among such groups we find recent examples in the likes of the Branch Davidians and the Temple of the Sun movements as well as extreme Faschist groups like Klu Klux Clan and Marxist groups like the Shining Path. All these share some identical features like these (not all features in all people. Also varying degrees of each):
Extremely unrealistic and unconscionable (unfair) demands on their adherents and often also on the government and the general public. People either submit to the demands or face the atrocious consequences. The demands on the believers may be as extreme as killing ones near on top of the innocent members of the general public and dear and/or committing suicide. The demands on the public may be for them to submit to the group at its most or the public let them be at its least. In the second case they protest the freedom of belief and worship and want to be allowed to commit mass suicide along with their innocent children who cannot be expected to understand things and make up their own minds. They take their formulation of faith as literally true and any injunctions fully applicable whatever the circumstances. Both the adherents and the members of the general public deserve radical punishment if they dare to question or oppose the teachings.
To that end they are prepared to take every measure and step whatever the legal justification or bars to them. They are in absolute right and all the rest and their laws may go to hell. This must be abnormal whatever is at stake, musn’t it?
So what makes some people an initiator or victim of such beliefs and demands? In my humble opinion it is only a pathological type of personality which combines features from Sadism, Masochism, Sociopathy and Autism of the high IQ sort. Let’s us briefly look what these basically mean. Each case has different levels of them. Sadism is the trait of enjoying inflicting pain on others. Masochism is its opposite- enjoying pain being inflicted on oneself. These two perversions have a strong sexual basis to them and may be seen as denatured representation of sexual assault on the part of the sadist and desired sexual victimization on the part of the sexually repressed virgin. Often the same person suffers from both perversions together. As a result the actors sexual anatomy share a large part of the pain inflicting.
Sociopathy (also called Psychopathy) is the trait which makes its owner have very little conscience (the ability to put oneself in the shoes of another). The psychopath’s selfishness borders on the reptilian- he will attack and bite at the drop of a hat so to speak. His demeanor is often deceptive. Because he has no conscience he is in peace and his relaxed face and body language and ready silly smile may make him to look a nice charismatic chap to the unwary and uninformed. Additionally they are often intelligent as well and can stalk their victim innocuously until the opportunity comes for the deadly pounce. For example the naïve girl friend will be pampered with generous gifts and entertainment only to be killed in cold blood if she is thought to become a liability like a potential witness to her lover’s case in a possible or actual police investigation. In other words a lover is seen as a living toy and perfectly expendable if necessary. AND SO ARE ALL RUTHLESS POLITICIANS, especially those flourishing in a totalitarian ideological movement. Stalin was only one example of an extremely intelligent and skilful political operator with a very strong psychopathic trait. He could be equally ominously icy cold and warmly charming (as at the Yalta Conference with Roosevelt and Churchill) but all with the same inner brutal selfishness which make all psychopaths tick. As soon as he found somebody in his way he would liquidate him or her no matter whom. He is held responsible by many for the liquidation of his wife and expending his son whom he could not loath more.
But this does not mean that Stalins do not know how to apply carrot as well as stick. They are hypocritical masters of that game. Obviously whoever drinks anything from their hand drinks from a poisonous chalice and must come to a bitter as well as undignified end (like from the Satan). In fact Allah call all intelligent psychopaths as human devils (shayatin al ins). And Stalin is only one of the brilliant geniuses of political self-promotion in history. For once we dare say that almost all ‘great’ kings became ‘great’ mostly on account of the strength of their will to rule and the extent of ruthless and unscrupulous behavior they were prepared to go. Some even killed fathers, mothers or sons to get the throne or keep it. Mothers getting sons assassinated aren’t unknown. Byzantine history, for example, is especially instructive about such abominations. There has been so much brutality and lack of scruples in the political arena that we may consider the history of fanatical groups as history of attempts on the part of political outsiders to seize power one way or another. I believe this perspective is so very important to always keep in mind when we consider these groups that I would like to dwell on it a bit more. But that after explaining the ‘autism’ bit.
‘AUTISM’ IN THE FANATIC
By autism I do not mean the modern definition of a kind of person born with a psychiatric condition which disables him for life. Such autistics are always total innocents, incapable of even telling a lie. Instead I mean the older definition (before the term was applied to mentally severely defective children by Dr Kanner in 1960s). This older definition reads
like this in (Merriam) Webster’s Dictionary:
“Absorption in self-centered subjective mental activity (as daydreams, fantasies… ) …accompanied by social withdrawal”.
Of course as all definitions this represents an overall summary of the condition and will not fully describe even a single person suffering from it. For our study we refine it to the following type: A person who takes himself too seriously and feels that others must bow to his will because he is created for a lofty destiny. Because he is too pre-occupied with his supposed mission he fails to study life first hand and well-enough. This failure is equally caused by a parallel failure born of the self-absorption. The autistic will not socially mix well and make enough number and type of friends and acquaintances but will try to learn about life from books. So he is usually (not always) an avid reader. Now none of these are crimes. A man with this trait usually ends up a socially lonely but otherwise quite mild and harmless and often also a likeable fellow. But when this trait is combined with some or all above traits we have the recipe for disaster. Take the example of a recently notorious Eastern guru who had his followers poison gas the public in a great metropolis in the East.
Police made many arrests and investigations. What emerged was mind-boggling. The guru was a self-absorbed, brooding and pontificating gargantuan ego who wanted first to destroy the world and then re-form it in his own image. Like all similar genius madmen he found the world totally wrong and burned with the desire to right it according to his own prescription. What is worse, for the grandiose autistic only himself is real and important, all the rest are illusory transitory existences which he may manipulate to cast into a total new form that will serve or rather worship him. In other words he thinks he is a god and the world is his toy room to play in. He will just imagine a new world where he alone is in charge and persuade other lesser autistics to help him to destroy the world that is and build the new one he proposes. The power and means must be readied and these take forms like large funds, gathering of intelligence and spreading propaganda and building up a terrible arsenal and hitting strategic targets to spread terror and confusion.
The single most crucial trait of the autistic is the literalism of his mind. For him words can only mean what their most common meaning means and therefore he can neither understands nor appreciates a metaphor. Taking the case of a religious autistic this literality of mind not only results in his fanatical obsession with the most literal meaning of verses of the scripture and terrible anger when a metaphoric interpretation is offered but it also makes him unable to appreciate a joke. He therefore often takes jokes as insults and feels deeply hurt keeps to grimly serious talk devoid of all humor and hell-bent on causing hardships. If hardships and blandness are not caused for him the situation is one of impiety. Any pleasure except the perverted pleasure coming from inflicting and suffering hardship is an unforgivable sin. In fact it is autism which is behind most ascetic monastic thinking and practices and it why the Prophet’s Islam disowns and bans both. Islam is about humble living and not hard living. Islam asks us to render charity and begin charity at home- rendering it to ourselves and our family first.
We must live lives compatiple with good health and adequate social integration and responsibility and also a lot of tolerance of others defects and shortcomings. Yet some muslims, apparently thanks to their autistic traits could not escape the perverted attractions of hating ease and harmony and loving hardship and discord and ending up as spiritual and also sometimes as political rebels. The Prophet sws and his best disciples could live as normally as they liked. Our autistic saints would have none of it. The three autistics we told about above, who had questioned and found wanting the Prophet’s standards of ascetism and were disowned by the eminently sensible Prophet sws were re-incarnated in all the subsequent generations of muslims in the forms of Uthman’s and Ali’s assassins, in the form of extreme ascetics who took as their model not the Prophet sws but Christian monks and Indian yogis. What they achieved by their extreme self-deprivation however was not the destruction of their egos as they claimed to be their holy aim but the emergence of a new and fully grandiose autistic ego which looked down on prophets and even replaced God. “What common people believe isn’t the true God” they meant to say. True God we are and ours is direct perception and not faith”. So were the Yogis’ who could not condone more the abominations like the cast system and the burning alive of widowed wives in the same pyre as their husband’s corpse. It was not for nothing that such perverted Sufis declared themselves above law (shariah) and were soundly condemned by true Sufis as a result.
In such perverts we discern many symptoms recognized by modern psychiatry by whose standards a degree of mania and schizophrenia may be diagnosed. For such psychoses cause certain absolute convictions which look to normal people mad, like believing himself to be God or something nearly as great or important. And no doubt the poison gas guru must be one such semi-psychotic.
But not all cases of religious perversion are as severe as these. Lesser cases abound among modern muslims. Persons with a religious bend of mind but also born with a hunger for power combine the two traits to build themselves up into a serious power-seeking system. The reason why they love God is not because He is so kind and gracious but because He is so powerful and terrible and they want that side for themselves. Why not claim God’s associateship and share in His censuring, dominating and terrorizing others? They look around hungrily to see if anybody is enjoying his life (or rather enjoying life in the opinion of the God’s would be associate) and then spoil his joy as completely as possible. It does not matter to what extent the other muslim is practicing Islam. Is he enjoying himself or not, that is the crucial question. If the self-appointed censor thinks he is than he is a target for his condemnation and ’nasiha’. I was once visited by three Islamic ‘missionaries’ who, when learned that I also as a muslim were shocked to notice a few dolls and figurines embellishing some table tops and shelves, all bought by from jumble sales or presented to my children. They perspired from shock and revulsion for finding a muslim’s house defiled by idols and declared that angels would not enter my house. They raved and ranted for more than an hour until their time to go came and we achieved nothing. They neither knew nor wanted to hear that dolls were in both the Prophet’s and companions houses for their young to play with (our mother Aisha had a few rag dolls from her childhood which wasn’t to far in the past).
Also one hadith depicts the Prophet asking Aisha to remove a piece of textile adorned with bird figures from the wall he faced during his salat. He explained that ‘it was distracting his mind’ (and nothing else). These and many other reports show to the discerning that the Prophet banned certain things only partly and temporarily based on the wisdom of the case. So long as people were as simple-minded as to regard a painting or statue as a god worthy of worship and praying to such needed to be banned. But paintings and statues not taken seriously by anybody, which the children’s dolls and figurined textiles were not, the Prophet sws left them alone. Another example of the transitoriness of certain bans is the intitial ban on visiting the graves of and praying for the souls of a dead parent who died before Islam. The Prophet sws avoided to visit his mother’s tomb which was in Medina itself and pray for her rest. But he later said that Allah had granted him permission and he hurried to visit her grave and pray for her. Later, great ulama opted to tolerate many things muslims adopted from other civilizations on the grounds that they were useful innovations.
It is necessary now to return to the autistic trait. The literal minded wants extremely clear-cut definitions for everything and absolute satisfactions of what those definitions indicate. This is the mind of the scientist and the engineer and no wonder scientists and engineers dominate modern fundamentalist Islamic movements. But this mind is also an autistic mind and as much as it is an asset in scientific pursuits it is a serious handicap in the spiritual. For spiritual and scientific could not be more different. Science is about the investigation of structured, observable and measurable system which the physical world is. Spiritual on the other hand is about an inner world of unquestioning, non-analysing faith associated with most profound emotions and highest possible values none of which are amenable to either structural analysis or mathematical quantification and formulation. The autistic scientist (most aren’t) reads the Qur’an as if he is reading a scientific text book or technical operation manual.
Each word means one and only one thing and it is the literal meaning and nothing else. There can be absolutely no formalistic contradictions in the Qur’an, nothing to read between the lines and no metaphors are intended. It is like the meter is defined as “the length between the notches on a bar of a bar made of an alloy of platinum and iridium and kept in a glass box in the International Bureau of Weights and Measures” in Paris. So Hell means fire and smoke and molten metal and boiling water and eternal torment with them where the food is the zaqqum tree’s fruits shaped like devil’s heads and where terrible angels of Hell apply chains exactly seventy cubits long to the condemned whom they shower with boiling water from head down and from whose throats they force pus for them to drink. The pus is the same substance as in this world and it consists of foul blood plasma clogged with dead leucocytes six thousands to ubic milimeter. It must contain exactly the same amount of salts and proteins as the pus in this world’s hospital wards.
Similarly the Paradise can only mean the literal senses of words in the Qur’an- date palms and grape orchards, rivers of milk and honey, lovely girls and boys for company and occasional look into the Hell with consequent revulsion and vengeful conversation with faces recognized in there. Allah may have repeatedly state and imply that there He put into the Qur’an many metaphoric/allegoric verses. It simply does not register with the autistics and I am afraid Allah also better takes care and not be a target of their wrath for not respecting scientific precision and unambiguity. I am afraid they have more admiration for and loyalty to the secular scientific tradition than the Prophetic eloquence and spiritual tradition which defies definitions and cataloguing.
These fundamentalists then formed and motivated and enslaved by their literalist conceptions and conventions and autistic demands for controlling a world they cannot understand with in an iron fist manufacture theories about what ‘real’ Islam should be and build and run organizations to see that it is implemented- exactly like the Marxist revolutionaries whom they often both greatly admire and emulate. Cell-structured underground organization, armed propaganda (i.e spectacular acts of assassination and indiscriminate mass terror) and even bank robberies and extortion for raising funds follow exact Marxist guerrilla models so conspicuous and notorious until recently.
POLITICAL HUNGER
Legend has it that Jenghis Khan, that greatest of world conquerors in history to date, was born with blood in his palms. His tribe’s fortune-tellers interpreted this that he was destined to conquer the world with great bloodshed. Starting from the humble status of the membership of one of many Mongol tribes he ended up in a couple of decades or so as the absolute ruler of the greatest land area anybody ever conquered. When his sons completed the work the Old World was theirs from the Pacific in the East to the Alps in the West. In their wake Mongol conquests all but wiped out the Muslim Empire except its Western fringes, a disaster which many see as lying at the bottom of muslim political and social decline. There is a saying among the Turks, the other Central Asian race with similar martial inclinations which describes the irrepressible ambition among born would-be ‘jihangirs’ (world conquerors). “Ya devlet basha, ya kuzgun lasha”.
This is a motto which means “Either I get myself a kingdom or ravens eat my corpse”. Both Turkish annals and folk stories are full of heroes of extremely humble origin who, because they are born with the desire of getting themselves crowned at whatever cost by whatever means abandon hearth and home on an Odyssey to absolute political power. Of course historically many don’t make it but in the course they account for a lot of bloodshed and other mischief. Getting the throne the most wolfish way was so ingrained among Turks that they created no institution of peaceful dynastic succession to a throne and brother princes were left to devour each other until the top dog remained to claim it. This was so much the hallowed tradition that Fatih Mehmed (the Conqueror 1431-1481) the Ottoman sultan who captured Istanbul from the Byzantine Greeks in 1453 made the rule into law that any male descendant of his who would have the good fortune of inheriting the Ottoman throne would have to put all his brothers to death for the sake of the security of the state. This policy was implemented for about two centuries after which a more peaceful but no less disastrous method (the Cage) was substituted. Of course if Turks were guilty of such traditions and practices others were equally guilty of their own and no race can declare its hands to be less bloodied. Only the forms of barbarism change which barbarism may even be justified by the realities of the times. Conquest and colonization of the New World and Africa etc. on the part of modern European have been one of the most brutal and no doubt the Nazi and Marxist atrocities can easily claim the all-time championship of brutality among all historical brutalities. Only yesterday Pol Pot was excelling Jenghis Khan in building castles from skulls in his Killing Fields in the name of humanitarian revolution!
Historically speaking almost all large-scale barbarities are politically motivated and carried out by fanatical believers in some faith or destiny as led by leaders who are out to play God. The belief in question may be religious, political (“I am destined to conquer the world” or “I must be the king” kind) or ideological like Marxism which category is again religious in its true nature despite detesting traditional religions. The sad fact remains that politically speaking the history is more or less made by fanatics while the rest of the humanity had to put up with a terrible lot because of these wild self-appointed gods. What is more most it is highly likely that human beings given the opportunity wouldn’t do better. What keeps their hands relatively cleaner is the fact that they lack the ability and cannot not find the opportunity to oppress others. How rats and mice can rule and terrorize a landscape where lions and wolves are the big players?
The fact remains however that from the local gang of thugs to the tremendously-egoed third world dictators every corner and region of settled earth has to content with creeping thuggery no amount of national or international policing can eradicate. Big or small the thugs make their threats and demands and grab what they can no matter who thinks or does what. They think others owe them things just because they burn with ambition and greed of one sort or another and if the ‘flocks’ don’t deliver the expected wool and meat nicely the thuggish believers in their ‘divine’ rights know how to take them together with the skin however. Now I believe the reader is ready to read the the next.
THE RELIGIOUS FANATIC
Because it has or used to have such a great influence on souls of most people religion has been one of the star attractions for self-seeking souls with larger than life egos. They may or may not have a religious background but faced with religion’s undeniable power to capture souls and subdue the masses the big-ego people come to eye it as the most lucrative prospect for their political investments. By political I mean something to do with social control and not necessarily holding formal and official political power. A guru with a very large following can easily impress any regime who wants to avoid risky trouble to be taken seriously and placated with favors and respects. These enable the guru to exercise a quasi-governmental control over the population despite that population being officially ruled by somebody else. Even the ruler may fall for the ‘holy father’ (remember Rasputin and Romanovs) in which case he has an even nicer time. In fact Rasputin did not have a large following at all but entirely rested upon the empress’s faith in his miraculous powers as she saw them. Imagine what he could do if most Russians of all classes had the same faith in him as their empress!
Now let us look around us from the Pacific to the Atlantic. All lands between them are dotted by gurus big and small. While some have only been able to charm a village or a small local temple folk others wear robes and crowns of gold and jewels and move hundreds of thousands if not millions by a single flick of their bejewelled staffs. Some are official heads of traditional universal churches (patriarchs, popes etc.) while others founded their own DIY religions and made a lot of headway until national politicians had to take them seriously indeed. Here immigrant god-men from the East dominate. Somehow the Western seem unable either to produce similar geniuses or resist those the East export to them. But for our study the smaller gurus are the more important. More important because Islam is suffering from them more than any other religion suffers from its. I certainly nothing to say against decent and able sufi sheikhs who appear only doing good and stay away from both politics and wealth. In fact they are the spiritual inheritors of the Prophet sws and deserve every respect and support which is mainly moral and spiritual anyhow, given their aversion to riches as well as political power. But they are not the only outstanding religious figures among us. We have many times more advocates of ‘true Islam’ in many too ambitious and fame-seeking mullas and again too ambitious power-seeking politicians who base their bid on making Islam as they see it rule. All are busy with taking ‘bay’at’ from their followers so as to legitimise their future government in the name of Islam unaware or unmindful of the fact that given their great numbers as rivals none of them stand any chance against the powers that be or even if they came to power by any freak chance the fact that they shall have to face at least as strong an opposition from their rival saviors and Mahdis as from their secular enemies.
These saviors are not a modern phenomenon only however. No less and other than the Messenger of Allah sws had to guard himself them. First were the munafiqs (hypocrites) in Medina who did everything they could to make life difficult for him. They were headed by a certain Abdullah b. Ubayy b. Salul who was frustrated in his aims of being crowned as king of Medina just before the Prophet sws arrived there. He never forgave this bad turn of events for him and persecuted the Prophet sws and his sincere believers as best as he could. Then materialized a number of fanatics who believed that they understood Islam better than the Prophet sws and variousy criticized and belittled him. In one instance we are told that three ascetics visited our mother Aisha RA the wife of the Prophet and enquired her about the Prophet’s sws night vigils and fastings and commented on his marrying as a less than holy act. Apparently these fanatics were influenced by Christian practices. Especially the monastic. Then they boasted of sleeping less and praying more at night, fasting everyday and not marrying at all. He came out angry red-faced and commented. However the Prophet sws was at home and heard their conversation with Aisha RA. “I both sleep and pray, I somedays fast somedays eat and I marry. This is my way and whoever does not follow my way is not from my nation” he said.
On another occasion he was distributing war spoils and a watcher, greedy for more and unable to credit the Prophet sws for his wisdom in ascertaining the shares dared to accuse the king of the prophets sws for not fearing Allah and not being just. The Prophet was incensed and deeply hurt. Then towards the end of his life in Medina as the undisputed leader of Islam he had to face the rivalry of at least three false prophets who interpreted his success as a good example of aggrandizing oneself on spiritual pretentions and announced their own respective prophethoods. These quacks were dealt with only after the Prophet sws passed away. Which means it was not enough even being Muhammad Mustafa sallallahu alaihi wa sellem to lead Islam unopposed and unaccused.
So we must see today’s thousands of ambitious mullahs, sheikhs and religious-based politicians in the light of what the True and Real Prophet of Allah sws had to contend with in his career. Both ambitious religious fanatics and plain pretenders to spiritual powers and authority have been tearing apart the fabric of Islam and the muslim society from almost day one and they achieved their first great abomination when they invaded Medina and assassinated our master Uthman RA (the third caliph) with the accusation of being an impious and corrupt man- the man for whom the Prophet sws could not utter more praises and to whom could not confer more favors, like making him his son-in-law twice. The thugs most of whom were only recent muslims and came from as far afield as Kufa and Egypt had committed the first successful coup d’etat in Islam in the name of ‘true Islam’ which they claimed to know better than the Prophet’s earliest and best disciples. They had apparently arrived as the champions of Ali RA but once he reluctantly came to power they soon begin to criticize him as one less pious and wise as than they had expected. After a tumultuous and uneasy rule Ali was assassinated by the members of a splinter group split from his supposed supporters and those who remained supposedly loyal to him never left the scene of political unrest and bloodshed under one pretext or another.