King Muawiyah Part 4, by Imam Al Asi (db) Options

KING MUAWIYA (4)
We ask Allah to guide us on a straight forward path to Him and not to be distracted by temptations, selfishness, any type of false group solidarity and any of the isms that have taken Muslims away from this As-Siraat Al-Mustaqim with roots in history and with interests currently. We will continue with the help and the light from Allah to go into some of the sources of what can potentially become, if our ignorance continue, a bloodbath among our own selves. Just in this past week, there were hundreds of Muslims that were killed in Iraq and the impression that is meant for our attention is that Muslims are killing Muslims. An informed impression is Sunnis are killing Shi's and Shi's are killing Sunnis. This is meant to increase in momentum, this is planned to spread to out to the rest of the Muslims and it falls within a strategy to bleed us to surrender. If we are equipped with more-or-less accurate information that we can trace back all the way to the source of this issue, we will spare ourselves unnecessary casualties, untold misery, unbridgeable divisions and further occupations and invasions–all of this can be done if we regain a confident grip on the source of the disinformation and the false impressions of what happened in the early generation of Muslims. Muslims- in the plural, inclusive of everyone, regardless of school of thought or background information, this is a statement that applies comfortably to maybe more than 90% or 95% of the Muslims- have a difficulty in delineating an early political rupture that happened with the 1st kingdom or monarchical administration in our history post Allahs Prophet, not in our history that goes back to the beginning of human intelligent life. Many Muslims want to equate kings and monarchs with khulafa' and imams. This is still used in todays wording and this is not accurate and it is not the truth. Muawiya has to become a common understanding among the Muslims as being the 1st king that has been inflicted onto our history. By saying this, we do not take away from the Islamic motivation of the Ummah. We do not try to give credibility to certain rulers or to take away credibility from certain Muslims- you see- the Muslim mind has a problem and we have to word ourselves like this because there are two sides to this mind at looking at the kings that were to rule that had no legitimacy to rule, but they did it. You can have rulers who are ruling, who to a certain extent are genius in their own make up, but you can have a genius who's going down the wrong path and that's what we had in this case because it wouldn't have been possible for this deviation to last this long, for over 1,300 years without there being some type of information that was given to the public to make the political deviation last for this extended amount of time.

This post has been edited by Nafs-az-Zakiyah: Jan 4 2008, 04:04 PM

Muawiyah's rebellion equal to the disagreement of Ayesha, Talha and Zubair ?



One of the parts of this overall informational body that has taken hold in the Muslim mind is that you can't question these events or personalities, because in this Muslim literature- let us be frank for those who cannot catch on- the Sunni and the Shi'i literature refer to Muawiya as a khalifa. It took a lot of work by Muawiya to have gained that title that doesn't belong to him. He had to work very hard on equating As-Siffin with Al-Jamal because he wanted to enter into thecompany of A'isha, Talha and Zubair (radiAllahu anhum). He worked on this aggressively, and this you can only know when you go back to the source books, whether they are history, seerah, fiqhi. There are many references to unidentifiable sources. You will encounter inthis literature the words Jumhoor Al-Muslimeen which means like today, Muslim public opinion, the Muslim masses. There's another word, Jumhoor As-Sahaba, the public opinion of the Sahaba and then you will find that word Qalu, they said. These do not refer to any particular identifiable source. No one can come and say that Jumhoor Al-Muslimeen thinks this or Jumhoor As-Sahaba thinks this, or Qalu, they said. These are frequent words that are used in this literature to try to put in credibility for a person who is ruling as a king but wants to get away with ruling as a khalifa.

This post has been edited by Nafs-az-Zakiyah: Jan 4 2008, 03:32 PM

Muawiyah refusal of Baiyah justified due to Imam Ali delay in bayah to Abu Bakr ?

In this literature, they try to equate the reluctance or the with-holding of Muawiyas bai'ah from Ali (radi Allahu anhu) with Ali initially withholding his bai'ah from Abu Bakr (radi Allahu anhu)- whether it was a matter of six days or six months- we're not going to go and become judgmental on how long that was- and both of these numbers are used in this literature and everything in between. They come and say that Muawiya didn't give bai'ah to Ali and he wasn't the 1st one to act like this because if you think there is no precedent to what he did, look at what Ali did. He didn't give the bai'ah, to begin with, to Abu Bakr. But if you trail this type of logic, you can respond to it in at least a couple of ways. Eventually, Ali gave his allegiance to Abu Bakr, but it wasn't that eventually Muawiya would give his allegiance to Ali- so the analogy doesn't work. It doesn't work now because we can look back at it and sort it out, but it worked for people, at least those 1st generations to begin a public campaign that raised Muawiya to the level of khalifa. Another way of responding to this is that Ali, for his own reasons, for a short time period did not give the bai'ah or did not pay allegiance to Abu Bakr, but he wasn't alone. Saad ibn Ubadah (radi Allahu anhu), who is very well known among all Muslims without question for his status among the supporters of the Prophet, Al-Ansaar, also didn't give the bai'ah and he went on and finished his life without giving a bai'ah to Abu Bakr. So, why doesn't the literature that wants to give legitimacy to Muawiya as a khalifa dwell on Saad ibn Ubadah? Why do they dwell on Ali to make their point? The answer is simple- they want to try to draw legitimacy from the person who has it and then confer it on a person who doesn't have it.

This post has been edited by Nafs-az-Zakiyah: Jan 4 2008, 03:40 PM

Result of Disagreement With Imam Ali and Disagreement to Muawiyah



When there were people who did not offer Ali the bai'ah- they were very few and they were on the opposing side- Ali didn't say or write into law that they are wanted, targeted, suspected, persons of interest or enemies. None of that occurred, but what do we have occurring with a person who refuses to give his bai'ah to Muawiya? He's there, in that geography and he says "I don't agree with you, I'm not going to pay my allegiance to you as a leader." Muawiya turns around and kills this person, Hajjar ibn Adi. You see- you have two different psychologies at work. This is a rupture and a break that was represented by the Umawi dynasty from the standards of the khilafah.

Khalid bin Walid and Umar



Look at the two opposing sides- during the time of the khilafah, we had selfless Muslims, we didn't have opportunistic Muslims the way we had them after the khilafah. Imagine, you have the highest ranking individual in all the armed forces, Khalid ibn Al-Walid (radi Allahu anhu) who was like the head of the joint chief of staff, the high ranking general, in todays language, of the Islamic armed forces and word comes down from Al-Medinah to him at the war fronts, "You are demoted or relieved of your high rank.Now, you're just a regular soldier." If we were looking at someone who is selfish or opportunism or someone who is trying to make political capital out of this, he would have gone around and tried to look for supporters against Umar (radi Allahu anhu) who gave that order from Al-Medinah. He didn't do anything.He went down from being a commander or the highest ranking military officer and became a private, just like any other soldier. We don't find this happening in the military commanders or anything equivalent or parallel to it happening among the military commanders in an era of opportunism when the khilafah was no longer a khilafah and became a monarchy.

This post has been edited by Nafs-az-Zakiyah: Jan 4 2008, 03:45 PM

Pacifist Muslims



Brothers and sisters, one of the details of this history is,which hasn't been identified very clearly by us, even though we have hundreds of years behind us to take a thorough look at this issue is that we have people who are pacifists, and we're always going to have these types of people. Even if they see that one opposing side is wrong and the other side is right they will always say we will not participate in what they consider to be an Islamic "civil war". They cannot see that this primarily was not an Islamic "civil war", but it was a struggle by a faction to be in control of the Islamic governance or to change the Islamic administration from a khilafah to a monarchy. They couldn't see it that way. There was Abu Musa Al-Ash'ari and there were about 16 who belonged to that circle of people who were close to Allahs Prophet who refused to participate in the battles that went on, which we spoke about in previous khutbahs- they just refused. Do you think that this is a part of history that is gone? Any time that we have the same dynamics, factors and details at work, we're going to have this segment of people. Has anyone thought ahead of time and tried to say how we can try to convince them of taking a principled position against a political deviation that is happening inside our own political house. It hasn't been the case because our minds have been absent from this area for a very long time.

This post has been edited by Nafs-az-Zakiyah: Jan 4 2008, 03:48 PM

Media Used to Spread Propaganda

The 1st king in Islam was busy putting out propaganda. There was no television or radio- the media that exists today didn't exist then, or else he would have had the governments seize the TV and radio broadcasting stations and then begin to play with public opinion- that wasn't the case, so how do you do it at that time? At that time, one of the instruments of propaganda- you go to the Masaajid where there were story tellers. You see, this is off the Muslim mental radar. We don't know that existed at that time, yet it did exist. There were story tellers or narrators in the Masjid who used to put together some events, sometimes accurately and sometimes with intruding information or information that's not true. This is one of the doors that it is said that we have Israeliyaat in our Islamic literature, we have Israeliyaat concerning the tafseer of the ayaat of the Qur'an and we have Israeliyaat that have been elevated to the degree of hadith. How did these Israeliyaat enter our Islamic sources and our Islamic literature? One of the doors or entrances was these full-time story tellers who were in the Masaajid. The order comes from the highest office that you should begin to present the issue of Al-Jamal and Siffin from the governmental perspective and that's what they began to do, so we had a public opinion Besides, when the Muslims had their 1st king, one of the 1st things that was legislated and put into law in the Masaajid was the condemnation of Ali and his family. This became a weekly denunciation of the opposite political side that was institutionalized in the Masaajid for years and years.

Umar bin Abdul Aziz's(ra) Reform

When Umar ibn Abdul Aziz (radi Allahu anhu) who can beconsidered the 6th khalifah, not a king, came and he found that thepropaganda and the rumors that were spreading by officials that was nowstandard procedure was not Islamic behavior- remember, we may have slipped, all of thisposition that the 1st king in Islam institutionalized that became a pillar of themonarchical establishment was attributed to an ayah. They had to have some misinterpretation of an ayah to extend all ofthese deviations to, and that ayah was concerning the death or the murder ofUthman (radi Allahu anhu), And, whoever hasbeen killed or murdered without a basis of justice, then WE have allocated to his guardian 1st of kin, an authorization(Surah Al-Isra' verse 33) They stopped here,the ayah says He should not beexcessive in taking corrective measures for a person who was killed without justice (Surah Al-Isra' verse 33) So, all of this wasextended to give a veneer of legitimacy to the vile language that was used to condemn Ali and his family.Imagine, a khutbah just like this during jum'ah, and then someone would come usewords that we cannot use- these were official words and public pronouncements,and then when Umar ibn Abdul Aziz came, he didn't say that in his khutbah. Hedidn't say any of these institutionalized statements that have been repeatedfor years and generations and then someone stands up and tries to remindthis Muslim who is trying to follow his conscience and tells him "Youshould be following the sunnah" Meaning the Sunnah means you should becondemning Ali and his side; and Umar ibn Abdul Aziz said to him "An innovation! AnInnovation!" and he obliterated or put an end to this type of policy and theseofficial statements from the Mimbar and he replaced it with something that isstill used today- it doesn't come from the time of Allahs Prophet- when you go tothe conventional andtraditional type of Masjid, you hear every khutbah ending with Verily, Allah ordersJustice and that you be patient and dutiful totally for His sake and that you be forthcoming to kin and He forbidsevil deeds and the things which are prohibited and aggression and oppression.Allah admonishes you so that you may take heed. (Surah An-Nahl verse 90) That was not the waythe khutbahs ended during the time of Allahs Prophet. This is the way it began to end when Umar ibn Abdul Azizreplaced those condemnation statements with this ayah from the Qur'an andwe still have it today. People who are not aware of these details think thatthey are saying something that belongs in the time of Allahs Prophet. No!They are saying something that can be traced back to correct what the 1stking in Islam did.

From Calipate to Monarcy
Then, of course, to gain some type of legitimacy a kingwould need a class of scholars around him. We are not going to be any where nearexhaustive, but we will mention some names and we hope the case will increase and we will have more Muslims who will go back to some of this literature andfamiliarize themselves with some of the names that you are exposed to.Az-Zuhri, Ash-Shaa'bi, Al-Awzaa'i- and there are others, but we justmentioned these names of those who were to become the circle of courtscholars around the king who will try to have the text of the Qur'an or the hadith fit the new establishment that has broken away from the model and thestandards of the khilafah. What did he do when he became the king? The peoplewho were supportive of his adversary, viz.Ali, who up until then usedto have a revenue from the Islamic treasury, that revenue was cut-off and thepower of the state turned against those who we call today the opposition ordissidents, people who don't agree with theofficial line- we had this monarchy turn and use the instruments of state against them. Since that time, thepotential Islamic opposition has developed a culture of accommodation with therulers and powers that be. It thrives amongst us. Today, we have Islamicscholars who live in a culture of accommodation with usurpers of power- they havemany titles today- presidents, kings, emir, sultan, the sole leader, Az-Za'inAl-Qa'id etc. This culture of accommodation and submission to power can betraced all the way back to this circle of scholars who were around the 1st king inIslam.

King Muawiyah uses a Christian poet to Disassociate the Muslims from Imam Ali .

The Kiing in Islam at that time tells a very well known poetto compose poetry, which was a very effective means of public communicationthat was used to formulate public opinion, to use his poetic talent against his opponent, Aliand his side. Who does this poet turn out to be? A person by the name ofAl-Akhtal. Many people who haven't read Arabic literature or haven't heard the name before areprobably not familiar with this. There were three major poets during this time-frame when Muawiya became king-Al-Jarir, Farasdaq and Al-Akhtal. Muawiya turned to Al-Akhtal, who happens to be aChristian- he's not even a Muslim- and he tells him to put together all thispoetry against his opponent. You would think that people who don't belong tothe rest of the masses would be very cautious, but somehow there's someguarantees and we still have this right now. We still have Christians amongst us whowill do the speaking for the powers that be, even if that means goingagainst the Islamic public opinion. So, if we had it about 1,300 years ago andif our minds have not taken an analytical, sharp and penetrating look at thisculture around the rulers, then how are we going to free ourselves from thecondition that we are in today.



Muawiya and his camp made a big deal about twisting the
ayah- And, whoever has been killed or murdered without a basis of justice, then WE have allocated to his guardian 1st of kin, an authorization (Surah Isra'verse 33) they wanted the perpetrators, murderers and culprits of Uthman and they used the incident of Al-Jamal and they fought the war ofAs-Siffin and they gained the power.

What happened to avenging Uthmaan's death after Muawiyah came into power ?

Why is it that after they gained the power they did not goafter these murderers for which they had launched this Islamic"civil war" through-out all of those years? Now, their primary concernwas their adversaries or opponents- the Islamic opposition withinMuslim society. That became their obsession. They targeted anyone who disagreedwith them. Compare that with what Ali used to do. Those who became known asAl-Khawaarij, (we looked at some of their developments) some of them used tocome and pray in the Masjid with him; they had all of their rights guaranteed;their testimony was accepted in Islamic courts of law; they had their full civilstatus preserved. There was no-one trailing them, spying on them, taking awayprivileges and freezing their salary from Bait Al-Maal if they were due anyof that, but during and after thetime of Muawiya, the 1st king in Islam, these were to become facts of life. The state spied; the state could killand get away with it; the state could launch aggressive military campaigns;the state could go to Makkah and kill its opponents around the Haram and the statecould even destroy the Ka'ba- that's what we had and some people come and tellus that this is a khilafah!?

Muawiyah In comparison to Umar

We took a look at the way Muawiya treated those whopolitically disagreed with him- with-holding their pay, excluding them from thestate- it's like treating them like 2nd class citizens and these are sincere,devout, struggling and sacrificing Mulsims. For those who have a littlesensitivity with comparing Muawiya with Ali, let's compare Muawiya with Umar. A personwho killed Umar's brother comes up to him and Umar could not tolerate lookingin his face, so he said "Why don't you look the other way?" Thisperson said to Umar "Does that mean that you are going to take away my rights?" Withall the emotionalism inside of him, he said "No." Meaning, these werenot the words that were used, but the body language was "I can't tolerate you becauseyou killed my brother, but even thought that's the case I will not be able to takeaway a fraction or scintilla of your right as a citizen of an Islamic state andauthority. This man, this Muslim, who had his full rights said "I havenothing to worryabout now." We're paraphrasing what he said- he said "there's no lost love between you and me." The Arabic expressionfor that is "Only women wail when it comes to lost love." It may be consideredprobably politically incorrect today in certain quarters to express somethinglike people, but we try to tell you what happened. We're there people who wereprone to oppress women at that time? Yes, there were people. Was thisofficial policy of the Islamic state? No!






Brothers and sisters, committed Muslims, if we are not able to take a confident look and liberate our thoughts from layers andlayers or tradition and go back and extract our concepts and our world view fromAllah and His Prophet and from the Qur'an and the Sunnah, we will continueto function, function is a larger word- rather, we will continue to actas traditional Muslims who are vulnerable to those who are coming to us andsaying that Sunnis are killing Shi's and Shi's are killing Sunnis. Some of us,in our ignorance, will even find a thread that can connect todays killingswith the historical killings of over 13 centuries ago when there is noconnection at all. When foreign, occupying, invading powers ignite sectarian amongstus, they don't do that because they understand these details of history, theydo that because they understand that we are ignorant of these details ofhistory, and this ignorance will give fire power to sectarians to kill eachother and there is no sectarianjustification for this type of behavior in the Qur'an or in the behavior of Allahs Prophet

Bro - that was such a good read but you gotta serialise these things - break it down into pieces and let people read it over a few days piece by piece so that they look forward to the next bit rather than read a chunk and forget to come back for the end.

Why is this in the Sunni corner? This is not what the majority of sunnis believe and what the majority of the learned sunni scholars teach.

Well it was posted four months ago and you are the first sunni to post a comment against it so I guess the sunnis are indifferent towards Mawiyah.

Why is this in the Sunni corner? This is not what the majority of sunnis believe and what the majority of the learned sunni scholars teach.

Keekee if you have no knowledge then please keep your comments to your self. This is the true sunni view of Muawiyah.

Bro - that was such a good read but you gotta serialise these things - break it down into pieces and let people read it over a few days piece by piece so that they look forward to the next bit rather than read a chunk and forget to come back for the end.

I did break it down. As for the futher break down you can see that the majority of the people here have no interest or are too sensitive to digust the truth. When we as sunnis praise the Ahlul Bayt all i see most of the time is shias comnig for the support. What more can i do ?

This post has been edited by Nafs-az-Zakiyah: May 2 2008, 01:37 PM

so many bubbles to bust. for your information brother dear, i am in my final year of islamic scholar course, my father is a well known scholar and i know some of the most reliable and respected sunni scholars there is.

Hadhrat Muawiya never called himself king. he was the amir ul mu'mineen of his time, Amir Muawiya.

http://ahmed2004uk.blogspot.com/2005/06/ab...-kholani-ra.htm
http://www.robert-fisk.com/sheikh_hudhaifi..._mar13_1998.htm

so many bubbles to bust. for your information brother dear, i am in my final year of islamic scholar course, my father is a well known scholar and i know some of the most reliable and respected sunni scholars there is.

That doesn't make you a scholar. Also tell me which university you father went to in order to become a scholar. Tell me under what scholars he learned under.

Hadhrat Muawiya never called himself king. he was the amir ul mu'mineen of his time, Amir Muawiya.

Yes he tried to decieve people by showing them that his rule was legitimate. As for being a king it was the sahabi Saad ibn Abi Waqqas who gave him this title.

You have broken it down but each part could still be further broken into another 5 or 6 parts to make it more digestable

As for what more you can do - not much more at all to be fair other than becoming a shia and posting the useful info on the shia corner!

My intention is not to criticise - i understand it requires a lot of effort to break it up even further and remember to post the bits every day - but you would get more readers that way and Insha allah the sunnis who are not aware of Mawiyah would read the digestable smaller parts and learn the truth.

The rest of the Sunnis do not share your thinly veiled dislike for Hadhrat Muawiya trust me Nafs.
My Father is graduate of Deoband, Nadwatul Ulama. A VERY OLD graduate.


We already know Muawiya's (r.a) position in Islam Moostee, one thread won't really make a difference-