Re: Islam and revolution [1]

Also published in Daily Trust

I’ll skip the usual pro-Iran slants in the above-titled article by Malam Adamu Adamu, which appeared in his regular column last Friday in Daily Trust. Yet I may still discuss them in due course, subject to space availability. For now I intend to examine the assertions made by the writer over the purported link between the 1979 Khomeini-led revolution in Iran and Islam.

First of all, to determine whether the revolution is actually Islamic or not, one has to look beyond the systematic and sustained media propaganda promoted by the regime’s propagandists and apologists, and gullibly imbibed and chanted by the gullible. Instead one has to look at it against the backdrop of the religious ideology that inspired it hence its link, if any, with Islamic religion.

Obviously Khomeini was a Shiite Imamate, one of the several sub-sects of Shi’a sect, which collectively constitute not more than 10% of the people who profess Islam. By the way, Shiism was originally a mere political tendency that emerged among Muslims in the aftermath of the assassination of the third Caliph, Usman bin Affan (RA), which also led to the unfortunate political polarization of Muslims over leadership.

The two main contending individuals were Ali bin Abi Talib (RA) whose supporters were referred to as Shiite-Ali, i.e. supporters of Ali, and Mu’awiya bin Abi Sufyan (RA). And even though the situation degenerated to the extent of bloody confrontations between the two political camps, they never differed on any of the fundamentals of Islam.

However, as the situation persisted, some hypocrites who had infiltrated the Muslims took advantage of that confusion and began to fabricate some heretical ideological and theological concepts, which essentially contradicted the fundamentals of Islamic religion, and attributed them to Allah the Almighty, the Prophet (pbuh) and his pious descendants.

Nevertheless, in the fulfillment of His assurance to preserve the intactness and sanctity of His religion, Allah the Almighty enabled Muslims scholars then to adopt some stringent scientific measures on the bases of which they kept screening out all unconfirmed and fabricated narrations attributed to Him, His messenger (pbuh) and his (i.e. messenger) pious descendants and noble companions. That practice was sustained by the subsequent generations of Muslim scholars until it culminated in the development of a substantive intellectual discipline known as Mustahul-hadeeth i.e. the Science of Hadeeth.

Yet, such fabricated narrations continued to flow anyway leading to further confusion among many Muslims. Consequently, their political differences began to take irreconcilable ideological dimensions. Meanwhile, many sects and sub-sects began to emerge, which though they were all heretical, the gravity of their ideological heresies varied from one sect or sub-sect to another. For instance, while the ideological excesses of some of such sects were not necessarily grave enough to warrant infidelity and blasphemy against Islam, the ideological excesses that defined the Shi’a Imamate sub-sect were/are particularly irreconcilable with the fundamentals of Islamic religion.

One of their worse ideological excesses is the belief in the doctrine of Imamate, which claims that, all Muslims must believe in some twelve individuals among the pious offspring of the Prophet (pbuh) who were, according to the doctrine, equally appointed by Allah the Almighty as the successors of the Prophet (pbuh), equally infallible and were indeed superior to all the prophets and messengers of Allah the Almighty.

Though some of their clerics reluctantly exclude the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), Khomeini in particular did not seem to believe in that exclusion because in his book “Al-Hukumat-Al-Islamiyya” page 52 he asserted that “It is part of the fundamental beliefs of our sect that our Imams maintain a position of superiority that no angle, no matter how favored by Allah, or prophet/messenger can attain”

Besides, according to this creed, rejecting the Imamate doctrine is tantamount to rejecting the religion of Islam altogether, which by implication means that more than 90% of Muslims are not actually Muslims. After all, according to the sect’s major books of reference like “Al-kaafi” V8 page 245, all prophet’s companions renounced Islam after the demise of the prophet, except Salman Al-farisi (RA), Miqdad bin Al-aswad (RA) and Abu-tharr Al-Giffari (RA).

Also, Sheikh Mufeed, one of the most revered clerics among the Shiites who died almost one thousand years ago claimed in his book “Awa’ilul-Maqalat” page 44 that “The Shiite Imamate have unanimously agreed that whoever rejects the Imamate status of any of the Imams and denies that Allah has made it compulsory for Muslims to obey them, is an astray infidel who deserves everlasting hell fire punishment”
Interestingly enough, the existence of such huge amount of fabricated narrations in Shiite major books of reference was due to the absence of Mustalahul-Hadeeth i.e. the Science of Hadeeth (explained above) in their literature right from the beginning. Though six hundred years later one of their famous clerics, Al-hassan bin Yusuf Al-hilly who died in the year 726H wrote the first Shiite work covering some parts of Mustalahul-Hadeeth, which was however clearly inspired by what the earlier Muslim scholars had written over the centuries.

This explains why Sayyid Kamal Al-haidary, a well-known Iraqi Shi’a cleric confessed that, at least ninety percent of Shi’a narrations originated from Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. (See video clips below)

Anyway, I am sure such quotes and many more from the most recognized books of reference in Shiism, which even equate Allah the Almighty with these Imams in almost all His exclusive attributes, may sound incredible to many innocent Shi’a Imamate adherents in Nigeria and elsewhere, who could have been misled into it through empty political propaganda.

To be continued.......