The Ummah
Divided
It is
reported that God’s Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, said: ‘My
ummah will be divided into 73 sects (firqah), all of them will be
in Hell except for one that will he saved; and every one of them will claim to
be that one’. The hadith has been reported in many different versions. In one
of them the text states that the saved sect is the one that follows the way of
God’s Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, and his Companions, may
God be satisfied with them. In another it is said that
all these sects will be saved except one that will perish, but this report
appears to be weak (da‘if).
The hadith states that each of these
sects will claim that it is saved. The claim of every sect that it alone is the
saved one is only natural: only a madman would insist on following a sect that
will perish. The members of each of the sects have tried hard to prove that
they follow the truth and are on the right path, the one followed by Messenger
of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, and his Companions and that all
others have strayed from the way of God, in both doctrine and conduct.
The imam (Muhammad ‘Abduh) has
examined this hadith and debated the claims of each sect and the proofs offered
by it to show that it is the saved sect. He then demonstrated that they are
equally likely to be on the right path according to God or on the wrong one.
His conclusion was mat none of these sects can be the saved one, since that is
the one that follows the way of God’s Messenger, may God bless him and grant
him peace, and which is divided among all the sects. They are the believers who
are not misled by the sayings of mere mortals and who do not follow the ways of
error and who only hold onto the guidance of the protected one and his
Companions, who are like the stars, ‘whichever of them you follow you shall be
guided’.
What the learned imam said is of
value and his understanding of the inner values of the Islamic Shari‘ah in this
age, his attachment to the truth, defense of God’s religion reminds one of the
earliest age when truth was the utmost goal of the believer, searching for it
wherever it leads and standing by it wherever it appears.
The Saved
and the Damned of the Sects
On the
face of it the hadith that we mentioned about the division of the community in
its different versions suggests that 72 of the Muslim sects will perish and
only one be saved. If we take this as is, and suppose that Muslims were indeed
divided into 73 sects and that this number is real and finite, can
we look into this matter from a different perspective?
Every one of these sects contains millions
of Muslims, only God knows their number. All these millions vary in their
levels of knowledge, education, intellect and religious consciousness to an
extent that cannot be measured or defined.
Within each of the sects the number of people who have concerned themselves
with the origins of the doctrinal principles upon which the community became
divided, such as predestination, divine justice and the attributes of the
Creator, is a very small minority.
As for the remainder of those who
conform to one or other of these sects, they know next to nothing about these
profound questions that require special qualifications.
They perform their religious duties according to the manner in which they were
taught to do so, believing in God and His Messenger, peace be upon him, and
what he brought with him as a whole and in its details, seeking closeness to
God through their deeds, and not having the educational qualifications
that would allow them to discuss Qur’anic verses or study the question of the
‘clear’ and ‘obscure’ verses of the Holy Book. Their limited intellectual
capacity does not permit them to access the sort of research carried out by the
scholars of theology (‘ulama’ al-kalam). It would never occur to the
common
Ash‘ari,
Ibadi or Mu‘tazili to inquire into the problem of predestination; he naturally
believes that nothing in this universe takes place without God’s will. The
common man from among these sects does not comprehend terms like ‘Essence’ or
‘Attributes’, or if the ‘Attributes’ are identical with the ‘Essence’, and
other issues that require knowledge and sharp wits. Can all these Muslims of
different sects who believe in God and perform good deeds be of those who go to
hell? For, on the face of it the hadith divides Muslims into 73 sects,
consigning 72 of them to hell.
Many jurisprudents have milked about
the faith of old women, saying that their approach to faith should set the
example for Muslims, since, it is a faith in God that cannot be shaken nor
succumb to any uncertainty, however great it may be. This believer is, despite
his naivety and simplicity, a strong believer. It is said that some of the
Companions asked a woman once in the presence of God’s Messenger, may God bless
him and grant him peace, about God and she replied, ‘He is in the heavens‘. He,
peace be upon him, then said, ‘Leave her alone, she is a believer’. He did not
ask them to give her a long lecture about the impossibility of the Creator, exalted
and glorified is He, being contained or indwelling
(in some created thing), since her intellectual capacity does not allow her to
absorb such issues. Are all these old women — who get away with their faith unscathed,
who know their Lord, perform their duties, preserve their religion, and avoid
what God has forbidden — bound for hell, just because they belong to one of
those sects which the hadith, on the face of it, has condemned to painful
chastisement? Does Islam require that all the followers of the sects, men and
women, investigate the origins of these sects and their doctrines, in order to
discover which is the saved one and enter it, in order that the mercy of God
and His satisfaction may enfold them?
I think that such an obligation is
beyond human nature and that the tolerant nature of Islam would not require
such an arduous task, one that would not be within the ability of the average
Muslim who believes in God and thinks of Him when going about his work, and who
fears Him and obeys His prohibitions.
What God‘s Messenger, may God bless
him and grant him peace, said (‘he will be successful, if he has spoken the
truth') about the man who swore that he would not perform any acts of worship
beyond the obligatory ones, provides an example of the tolerance of Islam and
its forbearance and its acceptance of a believer’s deeds without any requirement
that he delve into questions of philosophy or the divisions between schools of
thought.
God is satisfied with
Islam as a religion for the community of Muhammad, making it the last of His
messages to (the people of) the earth. He has made this community the best
community brought form for mankind. The community of Muhammad is the community
that shall have fulfillment: those of the community that are
true to the religion of God — whatever sects they belong to — hope for God’s
mercy and they fear His torment, and they are the ones most worthy of God
encompassing them with His mercy and enclosing them in forgiveness, except
those that persist in disobedience or bury themselves in discord.
Before concluding this section, I
think it appropriate to cite some selections from Abu Ya‘qub’s sayings about
the division of the community and the way to reconcile God’s saying, exalted is
He, You were the best community brought forth for people... [Al ‘Imran,
110], and the hadith of the 73 sects (‘My community shall be divided into 75
sects. . . ’). He said: Judging by what we have seen of this community’s
extension into the eastern and western limits of the earth, and provided that
God, exalted is He, protects them from idol-worship and taking other than Him
as Lord, and that there will always be people of the right path among them,
then salvation is [their] natural destiny, except for two classes: those that
innovate in the religion of God, may He be magnified and
glorified, and
those that persist in disobedience to Him and are distant from Him: neither of
these two have any chance of going to Paradise.
In another place, he writes: Bid‘ahs
are many: the bid‘ah that seeks to destroy the foundations of Islam
is the worst in general, since it is all-encompassing, affecting the young and
old; as for the one that is limited to reports and does not aim to destroy the
foundations of Islam, for example, disagreement over the (application of) terms
such as mu’min or muslim, kafir or fasiq, mushrik or
munafiq in Islamic law, or over the Qur’an and the divine attributes. Since
these concepts for the most part harm the person that speaks them and not the
one that hears them, as long as he does not believe them as a religion for the
worship of God, exalted is He, or as a way of cutting off the excuse of a
Muslim who differs, or with the intention of destroying a principle of Islam:
in such instances, no excuse for him. As for the one who restricts himself to
the principles of Islam: the profession of the faith (shahada), prayer,
the alms-tax, fasting, and, if he is able, the pilgrimage, then perhaps,
perhaps . . . (he will be excused). Similarly, for the one confined to remote places
in enemy territory, whose imam conveyed to him only the basic pillars of Islam
and did not convey anything of the disputes within the ummah, and did
not explain (all that), he cannot be denied the profession of the faith or
opinions against other men. As for women, dependents, the simple-minded and the
very young, they are not affected by this. Similarly again, Islam was not
preached to the people of Africa until 500 years after the Hijrah, and so they
were not acquainted with the disputes and divisions between the doctrines and
sects: God’s compassion and mercy is beyond that He requite one for another’s
sin. He has said, exalted is He: No soul shall bear the burden of another
[al-Isra, 15].
Reference:
Ibadism in History, Volume I: The
Emergence of the Ibadi School, By Ali Yahya Mu'ammar, pg: 32-36.
If Africa Islam started 500 years after its revelation But in Zanzibar started during the first hijra to Habbash
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