THE IDEOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE ISLAM. 2nd Part.

THE SECOND TRANSFORMATION

FIRST HALF VIII CENTURY TO BEGINNING XII CENTURY

The salafist Ideology.

Salafism, from «salaf«, predecessor or ancestor, is the other ideological school of the Islam. As salaf, the Muslims call Mohammed and his disciples: the first four caliphs and the next two generations. The expansion of the Islam in the 7th century assumes to the purity of his faith. Since this brought them the Allah’s favor and support.

Since then, whenever the Moslem societies are sufering an economic, political or social crisis, prominent figures will arise that will praise a return to the Islam of the Salaf. Ibn Hanbal, in the 9th century, gives a literal interpretation of the Islam, based in recovering the ancestors and in the condemnation to the ideological innovations. Ibn Taymiyya resorted equally to her in the 14th century, when the Middle East was suffering the Mongolians invasions. These would be the initiators of this current or school.

The Imam, Ahmad Bin Hanbal - Alchemiya
IMAM AHMED IBN HANBAL

The salafist currents are renaissance movements of the Islam, through the return to the original faith, that of the «pious predecessors«. They reject everything that identify as «human interpretations after the revelation of the Prophet«. They are radical reformists movements, which condemn the practices of the «popular Islam« (accused of being superstitions) and great part of the ideological Moslem thought, considered as carrier of «innovations». That is to say, «creations of the human reason«, that move away from the divine message. The salafists reject in turn the influence of the Western civilization, particularly the democracy, the relativism and the laity, that «corrupt the Moslem faith«.

Was Ibn Taymiyyah the spiritual father of jihadists? - Teller Report
IBN TAYMIYYA

The salafists become emancipated of the tradition founded by the 3 sunnis canonical schools. And they invent another Islam, which they affirm is founded on the Coran and the Sunna. Also they seek to imitate Mohammed in all the acts of the daily life, included the way of eating or dressing.

The wahhabism or the salafism at the political Power.

The modern salafists begin with the preaching of the Arabic ulema Mohamed Ibn Abdul Wahhab (1703-1792). Who thought that the decline of the Moslem countries opposite to the West, ensues from the oblivion of the original message of the Islam. Ibn Abdul Wahhab preaches the literal and puritanical reading of the Islam, following the Hanbalist and Ibn Taymiyya traditions. Searching for «the correct way of acting in the teachings of the pious predecessors». His sermons were not well received and was expelled from his natal locality, in the Nejd region. He went to Diriyah’s city and there formed an alliance with the sheikh Mohamed ibn Saud, founder of Saud’s House. Ibn Saud promulgated the idea of the «wahhabí» Islam as the official way of practising the Islam in the country. For his part, al-Wahhab gave the religious legitimacy to Ibn Saud in his conquest of Arabia.

muhammad-bin-abdul-wahab – Vridar
Ulema Mohamed Ibn Abdul Wahhab

Finally, in 1902, the emir Abdul Aziz ibn Saud reconquered Riyadh. In 1924 occupied Mecca and Medina and in 1932, all the Saudi Arabia. This was giving them the control on the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to the Muslim Sacred Places and the opportunity to preach the wahhabism to the pilgrims from all the countries. But, the wahhabism was a minor current of the Islam until 1938, when the oil reserves were discovered in the zone. The immense incomes from this new wealth gave a great impetus to his ideological expansion for the world.

The imans near to the Saudi regime, reject the jihadist way, that tries to impose a Moslem regime by means of the violent and revolutionary action. On having considered it to be condemned to the failure. One of his great figures, from the 60s up to his death in 1999, the sheikh Mohamed Nasiruddin al-Alabani, was declaring that «nowadays, it forms part of the good politic, to leave the politic». For al-Albani it was necessary to follow a strategy of purification of the education: on one hand, to regenerate the faith, purifying it of ideological «innovations», that remove it from his origins; and to educate the Muslims in this regenerated faith, in order that they leave his religious «corrupt» practices.

Pin on Y Chromosome
Sheikh Mohamed Nasiruddin al-Alabani

The «Jihadist salafism» or Qutbism.

This current of the school makes the Jihad one of his activity centers. The jihadism seek to accelerate the liberation of the Moslem countries of any foreign occupation. It is based on Sayyid Qutb’s ideas, a theoretic and revolutionary born within the Moslem Brothers. He was sure that the Western Society was sick with individualism and ungodliness. And the Moslem countries would suffer the same thing, if they were influenced by West. And affirmed that the actual Moslem regimes were apostates, on having applied lay laws, instead of the Sharia.

sayyid-qutb | tarnmoor
Sayyid Qutb

Qutb‘s thought was one of the principal influences in the sects Muslims’ Society or Excommunnication (takfir) and Hegira (migration), arisen in 1969 in the bosom of the Moslem Brothers in Egypt, and in al-Qaeda, and his leaders, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Ben Laden. Sayyid Qutb, was detained, judged and executed at August 29, 1966, for planning the murder of the president Nasser. After his death, the Muslims Brothers evolved towards organization and fight forms inside the existing political system.

The actual salafist jihadism is born in the 80s, during the Afghanistan’s war against the Soviet occupation. The salafists jihadists arrived from Saudi Arabia met the Moslem Brothers. It drove them to adopt the political speech of the Moslem Brothers and to restoring in it the salafistst preaching of Sayyid Qutb.

Epilogue.

The practice praised by the salafistas introduced a strong ingredient of instability and of violence, still physical, between the Muslims and, therefore, between their ideological schools. That was depending and was a function of the antagonistic contradictions (insoluble in a pacific synthesis) that in every historical stage were generating and appearing in the Umma or in located parts of her and in the borders with the hostile peoples. The practical result was that the armed way became consubstantial and intermittently, in the mean of defense and spread of the Faith for many Muslims.

And though only a minimal percentage supports her nowadays and still they are less those who apply it, this conduct, as the red of the blood, turns out to be showy before all the men. That by extension and ignorance, attribute it to the totality of the Moslem community or Umma.

In addition, the sword is an enemy of the pen and of the abstract or scientific ideas. Or, at least, it fades and suffocates them. Though Mohammed already warned it in a hadis: «The ink of the pens is sometimes more useful for the Umma that the blood of the martyrs». At about the 5th century of the Hegira, our 11th century, the ideologists, in a political decision, closed the door to the ichtihad. And the methodological Islamic approach altered. From then, it was imitated, it was repeating itself, it was abused with the compendiums. There got lost the curiosity, the scientific personal effort, the flexibility, the intercommunication of studies and results. And, finally, since it could not be less, this ideological crystallization, moved also to the Moslem arts and sciences, that started a long declining.

This way, this second Transformation of the Islam remained largely frustrated and faded. By the new outcrop of the «minor Yihad», which constituted the first Transformation of the Islam. And that turned out to be completed and profitable with the incredible extension of the Islam in the known world in something more that one century. This reappearance of the first Transformation of the Islam, which was the use of the force for the extension and the implantation of a monotheistic religion, would turn into a complex, multiple, repetitive and violent action throughout the following centuries. Creating effusions of blood and spreading stertors of childbirth for different and numerous countries. On having searched with a new birth of the first Transformation of the Islam, the solution of the inevitable crises (for being vicissitudes of the personal and colectives lives) of the Muslims with the unfaithfuls or their chiies separated brothers…

Creating a permanent civil war, with a rosary of truces, within Islam, within the Umma, between Shiites and Sunnis.

THE IDEOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE ISLAM.

THE SECOND TRANSFORMATION

FIRST HALF VIII CENTURY TO BEGINNING XII CENTURY

General Introduction.

After a belligerent and expansive beginning, the Islam had established inside long and distant borders. That included extensive territories, placed in three known continents, in his parts more out-standing active and fundamental.

It was already time to realize a reflection and an internal doctrinal debate. That was interpreting and adapting towards the future, the whole Islamic revelation. That then was contained in the Koran, the hadises of the Prophet (his verifiable facts and sayings) and the behavior of the salaf or predecessors of the Islam, the primitive and pious Muslims. It is the work of ideological organization of the Islam and the believers’ community. And it shapes a second Transformation in the Islam.

There arise soon the Islamic schools, the cores of ideological work and his social projection. That vertebran around groups of believers and experts, who were living in the principal environments of dar al-Islam. These schools commenced and elaborated in a beginning the criteria and ideas that his neighbouring thinkers were mantaining. In an epoch of difficult communications. They were representing and assembling the expressions and the experiences of the Muslims of diverse origins and races. To that were added the contributions of Moslem eminent travelers, who traveled the ideological centers of the Islam from al-Andalus up to Baghdad.

All this was rethought, consulted, debated and decided by the members of the school, his collaborators and some out-standing thinkers of the country or the region. This way, they were creating different teaching corps by his different origins, to illuminate and direct the ideology and the actions of the Umma. And to project, with major or minor intention and result, towards the future, always changeablly and unknown, an ideological instrument that guarantees and allows an adaptative and rigorous evolution of the Islam.

Hazrat Imam Shafi'i - Al Hakam

In this mental and spiritual emergence, happened only one century after the death of Mohammed, concentrating all their human energies, the Muslims also devoted themselves to translate to the Arab all the knowledge of the epoch (VIIth and VIIIth century). This way, they founded libraries and submitted to the study of the universal knowledge and to apprehend it (from “aprehendere”, to grasp). Raising this way his humanities and sciences to a position of total preponderance, which they would preserve for 350 years, up to the 12th century.

A fundamental reason of this cultural bloom of the Islam was his multinational, global character. Already we saw that, once established the incorporations of countries and regions to dar al-Islam, existed initially a broad tolerance over the lives of the new subjects. This way, the cultural Islamic community took up, incorporated and synthesized in his specific task, the contributions of all kinds of cultures and races. And this also derived in the respect and the material support that the Muslims offered to this humanist culture that they created.

Expansió i evolució històrica de l'Islam- Sapiens.cat

In addition, from the emergence of the 3 principal ideological sunnis schools, gathered strength the principle of the personal reflection effort, the ichtihad, in the Islam. The ichtihad allowed the development of the Arabic civilization, so much as for the civil aspects (sciences, trade, literature, art), as for the enrichment of his ideology (it is the base for lawyers like al-Chafii). The ichtihad was a source of brilliancy, creativity, enrichment, progress and peace in the way of the personal and collective effort towards Allah (this is the authentic core and the reason of the Islam). When already the Umma had spread and enormously multiplied all over the known world.

Certainly, this really religious, mystical effort, is called the Major Yihad (in Allah’s way). Unlike to the purely military one, which is only a minor Yihad, to follow this way… All this exuberant ideological development constituted the second Transformation of the Islam.

Origin, need and transmission of the Islamic Tradition.

The histories orally transmitted of «the customs and sayings» (the Sunna) of Mohammed, transformed soon in writings. That were, in turn, objects of great summaries. Each story or written comment is called the hadith or hadis. The term also is used to refer to the generality of them. The length of the hadises is very variable, according to the topic of the writing. More interesting and definer for us is his intelligent internal structure. This characterizes them and gives faith of their verisimilitude. In each hadis is usually first exposed the «transmission chain» up to its writing or the checking of her, from his oral origin, with the figure of the «transmitter«. Nowadays, we would call this the historical traceability. They are of first importance as «transmitters» of the hadises, Aixa or A’, isa, the second and preferred wife the Prophet, and Ali, his cousin and son-in-law. Then, there comes the content of the story or the comment, called the «matn«.

Aixa - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

                                                          A’,ISA

The Koran in the chapter 4, verse 59, guarantees and grants a special power of decision and of explanation to the Prophet or Envoy of God and to the sovereigns, successors or Moslem caliphs, who are those who hold the authority in the Umma. This would explain and justify the need of a qualified interpretation, foreseen by Allah, for the practical application of the Koran along the geography and the history of the peoples. With Mohammed acting as interpreter, as exceptional and privileged «intermediary» of Allah.

Ali Ibn Abi Tálib - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

            THE SEAL OF ALI, THE FOURTH CALIPH OF THE ISLAM

There exist hundreds of thousands of hadises that have come up to us. And between them numerous contradictions appear. In addition, the total text is excessive for have commented or saying and lived or realized by Mohammed. Even using for it all his life. From almost the beginning, the own exegetas and apologists of the Islam saw this. The hadises were in the risk of turning into a chain of myths, tribal embellished stories and realities more or less preserved from a vaporous and insecure Tradition of the Prophet. And soon was established a critique system of the «isinad» or transmission. To guarantee in strict sense the quality of the content or «matn» of the hadises, as written Tradition.

The sunni ideological schools.

Abu Hanafi, an Iranian died in Kufa, city at the south of Baghdad, in 767, established the hanafi school. This school is outlined in the rigor in the selection of Mohammed’s hadises. And she accepts the employment of the istihsan or personal approval, as criterion for the social conduct. It is extended in Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangla Desh and the turkishmens territories of Central Asia (ex-soviet republics). The hanafism was the official Moslem doctrine of the Ottoman Empire.

Abu Hanifa | The Asian Age Online, Bangladesh                                               IMAM ABU HANAFI

The maliki school was founded by Malik ben Anas, who died in Medina in 795. The doctrine turned into the rite of the Muslims of the West and North of Africa. She regarded that was following the Moslem practice of Medina. And that was the most authentic, for being that the so called city of the Prophet and of the first four caliphs, the Rashidun. In his version, Malik applied the criterion of the usefulness, when sure texts did not exist, to defend the reason, the religion, the persons, the families and the goods.

Malik ibn Anas - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia

                                           IMAM MALIK BEN ANAS

The most opened and flexible school, the chafii, founded by the Palestinian al-Chafii, died in Cairo on 820 at the age of 53 years, opened an encouraging door for the pacific evolution of the Islam. This current accepts the «consensus of the sages of the Umma» and the analogical reasoning or qiijas, as correct inspired routes for the adjustment of the Islam to all the times and places. Departing from his original «rural, illiterate, poor and medieval origin and surrounded of hostiles and barbarism«.

Al shafi`i poster with others

It worth indicating that, having jointly and in the essence of his thoughts the Koran and the tradition of the Prophet, the three ideological schools had a strong common ideology. This way, it was always admissible, especially in the origins, that the Muslims were changing its school of thought.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

MOHAMMAD AND THE ISLAM.

Mohammad: Mystical and Religious; Soldier and Statesman.

 

 

The Origins and Youth of the Prophet.

Mohammad was born in Mecca in 570 A.D., or, in the year 52 before the Hegira, in the family of the Ben Hachim, of the Quraich tribe. This was the tribe most distinguished in the zone, though without many economic resources. Some of his members were the guardians of the Kaaba or the God’s house, constructed by Abraham and his son Ismael, had with his slave Agar, on order of the same God. And in her was guarded the Black Stone.

The Black Stone is an object of worship by the Muslims. It has a diameter of 30 cm. (a foot) and is placed in the east side of the Kaaba, at a height of 1,5 ms. The Arabic tradition says that it dates back to the times of Adam and Eve and is considered to be a stone from the Paradise. Also it says that when it descended from the sky it was white, and that the sins of the men turned it negress little by little. Mohammad kissed it repeatedly when he occupied in Mecca the 630 and in his last peregrination from Medina al-Nabi in 632. It was the only object of worship accepted by the Muslims, coexistent together with the idols in the Kaaba during the jahiliya or the epoch of the chaos and idolatry previous to the revealed Islam.

Resultado de imagen de abraham ABRAHAM, FATHER OF ALL THE BELIEVERS IN A UNIQUE GOD, ALMIGHTY AND MERCIFUL WITH ALL HIS CREATURES.

Mohammad was born orphan of father and, with five years, lost his mother. Four years later, his grandfather died. So, having only 9 years, his uncle Abu Taleb, father of Ali took charge of him. Ali would marry later the major and favorite daughter of the Prophet, Fatima, daughter of Jadiya. And of this marriage would be born the only descendants from Mohammad.

At the age of ten, Mohammad traveled with his uncle to the Great Syria, that the Arabs name al-Sham, and that comprises the actual territories of Syria, Palestine, the Jordan’s West Bank and The Lebanon. In Bosra’s suburbs, close to the Jordan, was a Christian convent. There, Mohammad knew a monk called Nestor, who spoke to him about the Christianity and his Revelation, and that estimated very much the qualities of the child. This experience was very deep in Mohammad.

The wants of the family did that Mohammad had to work as shepherd from child and, already in the adolescence, of camel-driver. At the age of 20, he entered to the service of Jadiya, widow in two occasions, which, encouraged by his father, was dedicating to the trade in Arabia and with the neighbors countries, and that was possessing a solid fortune. Finally, when he was 25 years old, Mohammad married Jadiya, who was already 40 years old. And that gave him 2 children, who died prompt, and 4 daughters.

Mohammad, Mystic and Religious.

Towards 610, Mohammad, that already took a comfortable and easy life by his marriage, began to move back to ponder in solitary, high and nearby sites. This would be already an essential and persistent interest in his life. His favorite place was a cave in the mount Hira, placed at 6 km from Mecca. Here he had the first revelation of the Qoran or Khoran in the so called Night of the Destination. A voice ordered him: «Read and recite». There, he continued going assiduously during more than three years and receiving little by little different chapters of the Khoran, called the suras of Mecca. In an occasion, he had in a vision the visit of the angel Gabriel, who said to him: «Oh, Mohammad, You are the Prophet of God”.

Till then, the year 613-614, only Jaliya was a believer of the God’s revelation. One day, Ali surprised them doing prayer and he turned into his second follower. The third was the freedman of Mohammad, Zaid ben Hantah and the fourth, Abu Baker al-Sidrique, a friend of the Prophet. Abu means «father of» and it refered to an important son or to the major one of a gentleman, when he was deserving it; indicating that it was extending in the time this familiar race.

From the beginning of the spread of the faith in the area near to the Prophet, there arose a strong and tenacious resistance from the mequinens to the idea of the only God and to the rites and obligations that the new religion asked. Which was condemning and rejecting the idolatry and his customs, that existed deeply in the city. The rites of the Salat were specially shocking and showy to them: The Muslim prayer divided and extended throughout the day, continuing the variable time of luminosity with the stations and using the positions of foot, sat, genuflect and humbled, in the recitation of the suras or chapters; that later will be established in the 5 actual moments. And the number of Muslims continued low and invariably.

Resultado de imagen de Al-Sham, la Gran Siria  AL-SHAM O THE GREAT SYRIA.

The Islam is not a religion of miracles. The miracle is the suspension or the overcoming of the laws of the Nature in an event and his circumstances. On them only has dominoes and legal authority the Necessary Being, who gave and established them with his characteristics and peculiarities. Whom we call God, in the different religions and languages. In many cases, the «advisers» and prophets sent by God to the different peoples and epochs, in order that they were turning of his unworthy life and were turning to the real God and his path, were asked by the peoples. In order that they give to them an unequivocal sign, which corroborates his ideas and the divine mandate.

Allah’s response, to the advisers for give to the idolaters and sinners, is: «I am the One that makes and supports all the works and the marvels of the world that you perceive». And, this way, chapter 30, aleya 37: «Is it that they do not see that Allah expands the provision whom he loves and restricts her to that he wants? It is true that in it are signs for people who believes»: chapter 35, aleya 27: «It is that you do not see that Allah makes that water falls from the sky and with her we do that go out fruits of diverse colors? And that there are mountains of white and red seams, of different shades and up to a dark black one?”, chapter 30, aleya 10: «Those that had committed evilnesse had the worst end, for having denied the veracity of Allah’s signs and have joked of them».

The visible head of the reaction against the Muslims is Abu Sufian, chief of the clan Amauin of the Omeyas’s tribe, which hold the power in Mecca and the privileges of the worship, accommodation, etc. The prolongation of this rejection, hard and progressively aggressive, will cause in the year 622 the «march towards» (Hegira) Medina of the Muslims.

At around the 615, in order to avoid the destruction of his small group of 40 followers, Mohammad divides them and arranges that they hide in Mecca or shelter in the rocky nearby hills. This is for the Islam a «stage of catacombs«, which will last until the 619.

We believe that between 616 and 617, (it is a date without making concrete and is within the limits of a decade, which the historic investigators indicate) Mohammad received, in one of the sites where he pondered, the visit of a group of persons of the tribe Jazrach, of Iazerib‘s city, at the north of Mecca. Attracted by his reputation, they came to ask for advice and help for the resolution of the litigious that they had with other Iazerib’s tribes, where the Jazrach had lost his prevalence.

The Jazrach were the Iazerib‘s most important tribe, until the Aus, a minor tribe, was allied by the Jews of the city. That were seeking to handle the trade and to gain political influence in her. The Jazrach saw in Mohammad, the leader who could join the Arabs and eliminate the influence of the Jews.

For Mohammad this was the promise of new converts for the Islam, which number was still despicable after so many years. It might be say that «the Islam was an ideology without force and the Jazrach were a force without ideology». And Mohammad woud be said, at least in his thoughts, «let’s gain the force of the Jazrach for our ideology (Islam)».

In effect, Mohammad‘s revelations found a good reception in Iazerib and, even, members of the Aus came to see him in his «mountainous retirement». These facts made increase in the mequinens and, specially, in the tribe Quraich his distaste to Mohammad and the Islam. This way, several years passed. And, finally, the quraichies decided to kill him and Mohammad had to flee of Mecca. It was the beginning of the Hegira.

Resultado de imagen de abu baker al siddique SEAL OF THE RASHIDUN CALIPH ABU BAKER AL-SIDRIQUE, FIRST SUCCESSOR OF MOHAMMAD.

MOHAMMAD, Soldier and statesman.

Mohammad and Abu Baker sheltered temporarily in Zaur‘s cave, at 5 km from Mecca. Mohammad ordered that the Muslim community should go in small groups to Iazerib, while was coming his moment to go, indicated by Allah. This night, Allah turned green a shrub that was at the entry of his hiding place, two birds nested in it and a spider wove his fabric in the opened remaining space. It was the summer beginning and these facts were normal. For 3 days and 3 nights they remained in the cave, hearing his mequinens persecutors crossing ahead, without noticing them.

A freedman and a guide came then, bringing camels and provisions and the 4 undertook the march to Iazerib, making a detour in the mountainous zone that surrounds the Red Sea. On July 12 of 622, they came to Iazerib and encamped in the suburbs, where the medinens come in mass to receive them. Finally, on July 16, date of the Hegira, Mohammad entered triumphantly in the city. It is the beginning of the Muslim Age and the end of the jahiriya or the preexisting idolatrous chaos to the Islam.

The medinens suras or chapters that Mohammad will receive here, are directed to a leader, a chief and defender of the Muslim community (the Umma). To establish the juridical and social procedure by which she will be ruled. And the Umma is born of the merger of the ansares or medinens assistant (in majority) with the mequinens muhayirun or emigrants.

In Medina, only the Jews opposed to the preaching and the action of the Prophet. On one hand, they were afraid to lose his social influence and his business. And neither they admit a prophet, foreign to the people chosen by Jehova. Reproaching Mohammad that many «revealed» suras were copying and interpreting falsely the books of the Torah or Old Testament.

This will do that Mohammad establishes from December of 623 the Kaaba (Mecca) as the direction towards which saying the Salat. Till then, Mohammad took Jerusalem as the sacred city towards which to pray. This decision was symbolizing, in addition, that the Islam was a religion of progress and loved by the Arabs. And that Mohammad perfected and sealed all the God’s previous revelations, the Torah and the Gospels.

(TO BE CONTINUED)