Shia Muslims

“ And, if we are being honest, fault lines must be closed among Muslims as well, as the divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence, particularly in Iraq.
Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together. We must always examine the ways in which we protect it. For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. ”

“ And he says the Shia
17 and the Sunnis, they should come together for focusing in one
18 enemy.
19 Q. In the Sudan, are most of the Muslims there Sunni or Shia?
20 A. Most of the Muslims Sunni.
21 Q. Is there a particular country where most of the Shia
22 Muslims are?
23 A. In Iran, most of the Muslims Shia.
24 Q. You mentioned that Abu Fadhl al Iraqi also spoke about the
25 difference between Sunni and Shia. ”

“ The sahib will be accused of being a Persian, and will be insulted accordingly, for none loves a Persian in this land, Islam having two chief sects, of which the Persians chose to adopt the Shia faith, which is not in favor with the Sunni, who are most numerous and most fanatic. The less the Sunni knows of his religion the more he despises a Shia; and when these people despise they steal, strike, abuse, and act otherwise unseemly. ”

“ The Mohammedan world is roughly divided into Sunnis and Shia. The Shia are the idealists, the mystics of Islam; the Sunnis are the formalists, the schoolmen. The Shia trace an apostolic succession from Ali, the husband of the prophet Mohammed's daughter Fatima, hold doctrines of immanence and illumination, adopt an allegorical interpretation of scripture, and believe in the coming of a Mahdi or Messiah. ”

“ There is still mental life and vigour among the Shiites, as appears among the sects, which, allowance being made for “taqīya,” play no inconsiderable part. The Akhbārīs (traditionalists) , who adopt a semi philosophical wayof explaining away the plainest doctrines (such as the resurrection of the flesh) on the authority of false traditions of ‘Alī, are not so much a sect as a school of theology within the same pale as the orthodox Shia or Mujtahids. ”

“ In studying the Muhammadan religious sys tem it must be well understood that Islam is not simply the religion of the Quran, but that all Muhammadans, whether Sunni, Shia h, or Wahhabi, receive the Traditions as an authority in matters of faith and practice. The Sunni Muhammadans arrogate to themselves the title of traditionists ; but the Shia hs also receive the Hadis as binding upon them, although they do not acknowledge the same collection of traditions as those received by their opponents. ”

“ The Shia extremists want to deny them this right. This Shia strain of Islamic radicalism is just as dangerous, and just as hostile to America, and just as determined to establish its brand of hegemony across the broader Middle East. ”

“ O God our Lord, give us the blessings of this life, and also the blessings of life everlast ing. Save us from the torments of fire."
f The Shia hs add, " who has no partner." t Every two rak ats close with the Tashahhud. i The Shia hs merely recite : " God have mercy on Muhammad and his descendants ; " and omit the rest. The Du a is omitted by the Shia hs, who recite the following instead : " Peace be on thee, Prophet, with the mercy of God and His blessing ! " " Peace be upon us, and upon God s righteous servants ! "
112 PRAYER.
He then closes with the Salam. ”

“ Shiahism.—The Shiah Church traces its foundation to the Caliph Ali and the immediate descendants of the Prophet, regarded as the rightful expounders of his teachings. Some twenty millions of Indian Mussulmans are Shiahs; Shiahism is also the State religion of Persia. There are large numbers of Shiahs in the Hijaz, in Egypt and other [76] parts of the world, but always in a minority. The question of the title to the spiritual and temporal headship of Islâm forms the chief point of difference between the two churches. The Sunnis are the advocates of the principle of election ”

“ The Shiah faith is as old as ’Alí; for, on the feast of Ghadir, he is said to have been selected by Muhammad as his successor. In the ages immediately succeeding the Prophet, it spread itself East and West. The Muslim colonies, in various parts of the Empire, embraced its political teaching. It took root even in Mecca and Medina; but it was in Persia alone that it grew, in the Ninth Century, to be the State religion, waning and waxing in its hold on the people during the dynastic changes to which the country subsequently submitted itself ”

“ But neither here nor elsewhere did they intermarry with the Arabs on equal terms, nor were they, in point of fact, looked upon otherwise than as of inferior caste. Thus though in theory, on becoming Muslims, conquered nations might enter the "equal brotherhood" of Islam, they formed not the less an altogether lower estate. The race and language, ancestral dignity, and political privileges of the Arab hue continued for many generations to be paramount. ”

“ With the homage due to God, is the respect due to His revealed will. Moslems claim for the Koran what many Christians do not claim for the Bible—a literal and verbal inspiration. Every word is Divine.
And not only is the unity of God the cardinal truth, but it is vital to salvation. In this respect Islam is a Religion. It is not a mere philosophy, the acceptance or rejection of which is a matter of indifference. It is not merely a system of good morals—it is a Divine code for the government of mankind, whose acceptance is a matter of life and death—of salvation or damnation. ”

“ The Shia, whatever their racial origin, form the Persian, the Aryan, adaptation of Islam, which is an essentially Semitic creed. In the tenth century they had established a caliph among the Berbers at Kayrawan (908) . They had thence invaded Egypt with temporary success in 914 and 919. When the death of Kafur in 968 left the country a prey to rival military factions, the fourth of the caliphs of Kayrawan--called the Fatimid caliphs, because they claimed a very doubtful descent from Fatima--sent his army into Egypt. ”

“ The religion of Islam has more adherents than it had; its dominion is marked by three Moslem empires: Turkey, Persia, and Morocco; it is the religion of Arabia still; its followers predominate in Egypt, in Asia Minor, in Afghanistan, in the East Indies. It numbers many millions throughout Africa, India, China, Russia, and the Philippines; but nowhere, unless it be possibly in some of the most degraded districts of pagan Africa, do Moslems stand above their fellows in enlightenment, in morality, in progress. {115} Has Islam, then, failed to meet men? ”

“ By Allah except Whom none has the right to be worshipped, you people know for certain, that I am Apostle of Allah and that I have come to you with the Truth, so embrace Islam." The Jews replied, "We do not know this." So they said this to the Prophet and he repeated it thrice. Then he said, "What sort of a man is 'Abdullah bin Salam amongst you?" They said, "He is our chief and the son of our chief and the most learned man, and the son of the most learned amongst us." He said, "What would you think if he should embrace Islam?" They said, "Allah forbid! He can not embrace Islam." ”

“ The "old believers," i.e., the sahibs or companions of the Prophet and the early converts who placed the religion of Islam first and desired that religion to produce a real brotherhood of all believers, whether Arab or not. Important by their prestige they were numerically in the minority. (ii) The Arab party, consisting of those who had embraced Islam only when Muhammad had shown his power by the capture of Mecca. They accepted Muslim leadership because Muhammad and the first two Khalifs were at the moment in the ascendancy, but they had no attachment to the religion of Islam. ”

“ Mohammed himself was far more than a warrior, or even than a ruler—first and foremost, he had stood forth as the Prophet. And we shall never understand Islam if we regard it only as a battle-cry. The task which Islam set itself was more than the conquest of the nations. That might have left them Zoroastrian or Pagan, Jew or Christian still. Its task was not merely to defeat armies, but to proclaim a creed and win adherents to it. Therefore, as the Caliph's armies marched, conquering province after province, the inhabitants were summoned to declare their faith in Islam and to repeat the creed. ”

“ Mohammed, Abu Bahkr, Omar, Usman, and Ali, as divinely-appointed Khalifahs or teachers; the Arabs, Turks, Afghans, and the Rohillas of India more or less belong to the Sunni sect. These undertake long pilgrimages to Mekka, and are very tenacious on points of doctrine, often putting to death the heterodox of their own religion. The Shiahs, another very powerful sect of Mohammedans, wholly reject the "Sunnahs," or traditions, and with them the four successors of the Prophet. They perform pilgrimages, not to Mecca or Medinah, but to the tomb of Husain at Kaibelah. The Koran is their only guide. ”

“ Islam had made millions of converts, and had digested those millions very imperfectly. Cities, nations, whole sects and races, Arab pagans, Jews, Christians, Manichæans, Zoroastrians, Turanian pagans, had been swallowed up into this new vast empire of Muhammad’s successors. It has hitherto been the common characteristic of all the great unifying religious initiators of the world, the common oversight, that they have accepted the moral and theological ideals to which the first appeal was made, as though they were universal ideals. ”

“ Islam, as it was forced on Persia, was the faith of foreign conquerors and oppressors, so it never has had the same considerable influence on the people as elsewhere. This, taken with their habits of freedom of thought and love of romance and poetry, inclined them to champion the Shiah schism, which, on the fall of the Arab power, they adopted for their National Church. ”

“ If a Christian said Salam to him, he would not reply by the same salutation, displaying thereby the haughty fanaticism of the most bigoted Shi’a; yet, as every sincere Musulman must, he deplored the decadence of Islam and cursed more violently the backsliders of his own religion than the reprobates among Christians, “for,” said he, “these have the law and the book, and the light of the131 saints before them; while those have ever been in a mistaken path, and know no better.” ”

“ The tenets of the Shiahs are not derogatory to the mission of Mohammed, or to the position of the Quran, but they make the solitary figure of the prophet stand out much less prominently. For instance, if a Persian is told that his religion possesses nothing corresponding to the vicarious [75] sacrifice of Christ, he will invariably reply by pointing to the martyrdom of the Imam Husain. Also the Mehdi, or occult Imam, is not the future, but the present ruler of Islam ”

“ Still it must be owned that the worldly considerations are apt to predominate, for the Persian Shiah seems to be a reflection of Mohammed, who suggested that pilgrimages should be used for purposes of trade, invited people to become Mussulmans for political reasons, and not only winked at the making of converts by threats and terrorism, but laid this down as one of the essential means for spreading the religion. ”

“ But in the case of Islam there can be no mistake. True, the Arabs in themselves were a great and virile people. But it was the genius of Mohammed, the spirit he breathed into them through the soul of Islam, that exalted them. That raised them out of the lethargy and low level of tribal stagnation, up to the high water mark of national unity and Empire. It was in the sublimity of Mohammed’s deism, the simplicity, the sobriety and purity it inculcated, the fidelity of its founder to his own tenets, that acted on their moral and intellectual fibre with all the magnetism of true inspiration. ”

“ Seid, the Christian prince of Nadjran, with the patriarch Jesujabus, procured by their valuable gifts a favourable audience of Muhammed himself; they demanded a written document of alliance between the Christians and the Arabs who had embraced the predatory faith of Islam, and the diploma of the prophet stipulated that his subjects should defend them from their enemies; that they should never be compelled to go to fight, or to change their religion ”

“ While the result of the embassy to Abyssinia was being looked for in Mecca with the greatest expectancy, there occurred the conversion of a man, who before had been one of the most bitter enemies of Muḥammad, and had opposed him with the utmost persistence and fanaticism—a man whom the Muslims had every reason then to look on as their most terrible and virulent enemy, though afterwards he shines as one of the noblest figures in the early history of Islam, viz. ”

“ In the first years of Islam there was more tolerance for Christianity than ever afterwards, as well as for Jews. Even Zoroastrians met with a certain consideration owing to a half-reverence Muhammad had accorded to their prophet. The Christians and Jews, however, were “People of the Book”—that is, people of a revealed faith—and as such entitled to more merciful treatment than pagans and idolaters. Moreover, Muhammad was considerably indebted to Christians and Jews for a great part of the Quran ”

“ Arabia found Islam a religion after her own heart. The conquest of the Arabian mind, and that sudden transference of religious and political loyalties which changed it from chaos into cosmos, is little short of miraculous. In the words of one of the severest critics of Islam: “In A.D. 570, Abdullah, the son of Abd el Muttalib, a Mecca merchant,{139} went on a trading trip from Mecca to Medina and died there; the same year his wife, Amina, gave birth to a boy, named Mohammed, at Mecca. ”

“ For barbarous nations, then, especially—nations which were more or less in the condition of Arabia itself at the time of Mahomet—nations in the condition of Africa at the present day, with little or no civilisation, and without a reasonable religion—Islam certainly comes as a blessing, as a turning from darkness to light and from the power of satan unto God. ”