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The conceivable ways of unity for the Muslims
By: Allamah Sayyid Sa'eed Akhtar Rizvi
The unknown author has blackened many pages against what he calls “False Slogans of Unity and Brotherhood”. He reviles “the ignorant supporters of the Shi’ahs among Ahle-Sunnah” who “expect the Ulama to raise slogans of brotherhood and to fabricate a common basis and a common platform of fraternity” with the Shi’as.
This is the real purpose of this booklet; and it is the common aim of all the hundreds and thousands the books, booklets, articles and fatwas which the Wahhabi press churns out every day in Arabic, Urdu, English, Turkish and scores of other local and regional languages.
They claim to be followers of the Qur’an; and they are spending billions of petro-dollars to stop the Muslims of the worlds from joining hands together, while Allah Subhanahu wa Taa’ala says: And hold fast by the rope of Allah all together and be not divided.1
And obey Allah and His Messenger and do not quarrel, for then you will be weak in hearts and your power will depart, and be patient; surely Allah is with patient ones.2
It is a tragic fact that in spite of so much emphasis on Unity, the Muslims are divided into so many groups. Nevertheless, we have to salvage whatever we can from this onslaught of disunity and strife. The clarion call of Iran to the Muslims of the world to unite is based on this divine order. Unfortunately, the enemies of Islam have twisted its meaning to frighten the unsuspecting Muslims by imputing false motive to this sincere ideal.
There are three conceivable ways of unity for the Muslims. Two of them are:
1. Unity in belief: That all Muslims should adopt a single set of beliefs; and
2. Unity in rulings of shari’ah: That all should follow a single set of rites of worship, as well as personal, social, financial and penal codes.
Obviously both these methods are impossible to adopt. The unity of belief and shari’ah will not be achieved until the re-appearance of Imam Al-Mahdi (a.s.).
Now there remains only the third way of unity, and that is the Unity in face of the enemies of Islam. It means that all Muslims should stand shoulder to shoulder to defend Islamic values, Muslims’ lands, Muslims’ honour and Muslims’ lives. They should forget their sectarian differences in face of the Zionists, Communists and Capitalists. If they will not stand together, surely they will hang together. See what is happening in Kashmir and India, how Bosnia is being obliterated from the map of Europe. Millions of Bosnian civilians have been massacred by Christian Croats and Serbs, thousands of Muslim women have been raped. But the usurpers of petro-dollars spend this Muslim wealth in protecting the London Zoo from closure! Animals are more precious than the Muslim masses - the victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing - of Bosnia, Kashmir, Burma and Azerbaijan.
Squandering millions of dollars in one night on gambling tables of Las Vegas is more important than alleviating the sufferings of the helpless Muslims in Iraq, Bangladesh, Somalia and Albania. The fact that Tajikistan has fallen again in the hands of the hard-core communists creates no discomfort for them.
Unfortunately, the Wahhabis - or rather the ruling families of the Arabian Peninsula (wrongly named ‘Saudi Arabia’), Kuwait and Bahrain do not care what the Qur’an and the hadith say about a Muslim’s right on other Muslims. The alpha and omega of their endeavours is to save their Kingdoms and Sheikhdoms from the wrath of their people. They know that no Muslim worth his name can support their debaucheries, their drinking orgies and their gambling sprees.
They are fully aware that no man worth his salt can approve of their oppressions, their tyrannies and their systematic crushing of the non-Wahhabi Muslims. Propelled by this realization, they seek refuge with their Western mentors. They ignore the warnings given by Allah not to incline to the Jews and the Christians, not to seek their help, but rely solely on Allah, as the following verses spell it out clearly: And the Jews will not be pleased with you, nor the Christians until you follow their religion. Say: Surely Allah’s guidance, that is the (true) guidance.3
Oh, you who believe! do not take My enemy and your enemy for friends; would you offer them love while they deny what has come to you of the truth...4
Let not the believers take the unbelieves for friend s rather than the believers; and whoever does this, he shall have nothing (to do) with Allah...5
Oh, you who believe! do not take the unbelievers for friends rather than the believers; dOh, you desire that you should give to Allah a manifest proof against yourselves?6
Oh, you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend , then surely he is one of them. surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.7
But these Wahhabi rulers have sold their souls to Reagans, Bushes and Clintons: and what is more tragic they have heavily mortgaged the Arabian Peninsula to those open enemies of Islam.
Since last ten centuries, the European (and American) powers have been announcing that Islam was their enemy No. 1. After the collapse of the Russian empire, the Sunday Times (London) wrote in May 1991 in an editorial that as the West has accomplished this task, “now” it should concentrate its energies “on Middle East” (Read, against Islam). What happened soon after that was an eye-opener for those who might have been under the illusion that the Western countries stand for “democracy” and “human rights” and defend these values.
America has openly condemned Islam as its enemy No. 1. Archbishop of Canterbury, Rev. George Carey, in his recent visit (July, 1993) to Tanzania blasted “Muslim fundamentalists” as being a threat to the world peace.
And the U.S.A. and its allies are encouraging their puppets in Middle East and agents everywhere to wipe out the Islam and the Muslims from the face of the Earth. Of course, they add the epithet, ‘Fundamentalist’ before “Muslims” to lull the masses to sleep.
These petro-shaykhdoms have the strongest whip to make the west bow down to their will; as Imam Hafiz Ismet Saphic of Sarajevo (Bosnia) - whose three daughters were killed while waiting in a bread queue - has said, “If the Muslim countries that are dealing with oil stopped their tankers just for one day, the West would start acting in a different way.”8
But they have no courage to use this God-gifted weapon against the West, because they are fully aware that their survival depends on the sweet wish of the U.S.A.
These Wahhabi rulers think the Western-nations are the friends of the Sunnis. Nothing can surpass this folly. These powers are neither the Sunnis’ friend nor the Shi’as’ enemy. They are friends of only their own interests and enemies of all who pose slightest danger to their interests.
If they love Sunnism, then why did they order the Turkish army to usurp power when Arbaken (a religious Sunni Muslim) had won the election? Why did they instigate Algerian military to annul the election when the victory of Islamicists appeared certain. Why John Major allegedly wrote in a letter that he did not want any Muslim government (of Sunni Bosnia) in Europe?
I do not want to linger on the political side of these anti-people shaykhdoms. But what they are doing against Islam in general is more heart-wrenching.
In their zeal to please their lords in the White House and the White Hall, they are indulging in such activities which may bring down the citadel of Islam.
This current “fitnah” of anti-Shi’a propaganda is one such example. The Wahhabis think that if they accuse the Shi’as of, let us say, believing in the Tahrif of the Holy Qur’an, it will tarnish the image of the Shi’a faith; they do not realize that it is shaking the foundation of Islam (which is the real aim of their Western patrons). Let us look at this case in order to understand this Western game in its true perspective.
The Muslim ‘ulama, Shi’a and Sunni both, did not believe that there was any alteration in, addition to, or omission from the Qur’an. No sensible ‘Alim of either sect has accused the other sect that it believed in tahrif of the Qur’an.
Of course there have appeared from time to time some ‘ulama on both sides who indulged in mud-slinging against the opposite sect, not realizing that presence of ahadith in a book does not necessarily mean that the people of that group really believed in it. Such traditions, i.e. of Tahrif, remained more of less buried in the books and they were not propagated for the simple reason that nobody based his belief on them.
Things abruptly changed in February 1979, when the Iranian nation, under the guidance of the late Ayatullah al-Khomeini (May Allah’s mercy be on him) succeeded in establishing the first truly Islamic government on Earth, centuries after the days of the Imams.
Had the Islamic Revolution in Iran resulted in a satellite government following the line of the Western or the Eastern ideology, it would have been gladly accepted - or at least, tolerated - by the self-appointed guardians of “democracy”. But, contrary to the conventional wisdom, it chose to follow the line of Islam. Then it raised the slogan of lslamic Unity. By standing against all un-Islamic “isms’: and not bowing before anyone except Allah, Ayatullah Khomeini and the Iranian leadership gained unsurpassed popularity in the Muslim ummah throughout the world, from Morocco to the Phillipines and from Europe to Americas. Down-trodden masses saw with their own eyes that unarmed bare hands had defeated the mightiest war machine in the Middle East. It gave a new heart to the oppressed people even in non-Muslim countries, like South Africa. This rapidly spreading influence of “Khomeinism” alarmed the U.S.A., “the paramount chief” of the Westen “tribes”. They started fighting against Iran, through the proxy war, through news media and in political fora.
On another front, they made their clients in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait believe that the call of Islamic Unity was a mortal danger to their crowns. Ordered by their masters, the Wahhahis started an intensely hateful propaganda against “Khomeinism’: Iran and Shi’ism. Hired pens began churning out books, articles and tracts against the Shi’as, saying that the Shi’a were Ka.fir, they were mushrik , they had their separate Qur’an, and believed this Qur’an of the Muslims to be altered and incomplete. Some of their top employees were Ihsan Ilahi Zaheer in Pakistan and Manzoor Ahmad No’mani and Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi in India. The last-named case was interesting. Long before the Revolution, he had posed as a champion of the Islamic unity. He was the Chairman of the Muslim Personal Law Board in India with a Shi’a ‘Alim as his Vice- President. But he was also a recipient of the “Faisal Award” of the Saudi dynasty. And no sooner was the slogan of “Neither East nor West, Islam is the Best” raised from Iran, than he aligned himself with the anti-unity forces.
It seems that the sound coming from their mouths is their master’s voice and the Zionism’s dagger dipped in Muslims’ blood is used for their pen.
A book written by these agents might be written in Urdu, Arabic or any other language; but within a few months it is translated in all major languages of the Muslim world, and made available everywhere as well as freely distributed to the hujjaj.
Ostensibly, these agents of American Islam are doing it to weaken Iran and prevent the Iranian Revolution from influencing the “Muslim Youths” - as Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi himself had admitted in the preface of a book. But is this the actual motive of their Masters - the Judea-Christian enemies of Islam? Obviously, “Not:’ The manipulators of the American Islam have exhumed some Shi’a traditions of tahreef buried in the books, with the sole aim that the Shi’a would retaliate by publicizing the similar traditions found in the Sunni books, and thus the validity of the Qur’an would be questioned, Muslims’ faith in this Last Divine Revelation would be destroyed and, as a result, Islam would lose its power.
This demeaning polemics will provide the Christian missionaries with effective arms and ammunitions to shake and rattle the Muslim’s faith in the Qur’an. They hope that in this way many Muslims would easily be persuaded to embrace Christianity, and even those who would not convert, would not remain truly Muslim, nor would they follow a Book whose authenticity was doubtful.
Gladstone is reported to have once stood up in the parliament with a copy of the Qur’an in his hand, and declaring that as long as the Muslims followed this Book, the British could not subjugate them. He advised his people to use every subterfuge to shake the Muslims’ belief in the Qur’an.
That strategy of Kufr has succeeded in Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and many other so-called Muslim countries where a special hybrid variety of Muslims has been hatched which seems to be allergic to Islam and the Qur’an. It was about to succeed in Iran too, thanks to the Pahlavi regime. But the plan failed, because of the religious leaders under the guidance of late Ayatullah al-’Uzma Khomeini, and because of the religiosity of the Iranian masses. Now the enemies of Islam are using this propaganda of tahreef to achieve that goal.
This is what they have planned. But Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala says, They desire to put out the light of Allah with their mouths, and Allah will surely perfect his light though the unbelievers may be averse.9
To sum it up, Wahhabis oppose the unity of the Muslims - which Allah has so much emphasized, and they have taken the Jews and the Christians as their friends and helpers - which Allah has so forcefully and in so many places forbidden.
1. Qur’an, 3:103.
2. Qur’an, 8:46
3. Qur’an, 2:120.
4. Qur’an, 60:1.
5. Qur’an, 3:20.
6. Qur’an, 4:144.
7. Qur’an, 5:51.
8. The Muslim News, London, 30/7/1993.
9. Qur’an, 61:8.
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