Archive for the ‘Islam/Moslem/Islamic world’ Category
How the colonial imperialist powers created and exploited this Wahhabi Saudi monarchy?
Posted on: April 27, 2021
The Imperialist Origins of Saudi Arabia
By Yanis Iqbal / April 22nd, 2021
Note: I posted many articles on the Saudi monarchy and the history of the Arabian Peninsula. This is one of the exhaustive research papers
Why Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, a Sunni absolute monarchy, is enthusiastically supported by the West, and promoted as a global promoter of “democracy” and a peaceful entity in the region? This question is rarely asked.
The apparent mismatch between liberal democracy and religious fundamentalism is hastily airbrushed when the matter is about oil trade and arms deals.
This attitude is not an expression of mere hypocrisy on the part of the West; it is deeply rooted in a historical process, whereby the Arabian Peninsula was propped up by major powers as an outpost of imperialist interests and a bulwark against revolutionary ideologies.
Creating the Kingdom
Sheikh Mohammed Ibn Abdul Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, was an 18th century peasant who left date palm cultivation and cattle grazing to preach locally, calling for a return to the pure beliefs of the seventh century “authenticity”.
He denounced the worship of holy places and shrines as denying the “unity of the One God”. He insisted singularly on beatings that led to inhumane practices: thieves should be amputated and criminals executed in public.
Religious leaders in the region objected when he began to perform what he preached and the local chief in Uyayna asked him to leave.
Wahhab fled to Deraiya in 1744, where he made a pact with Mohammad Ibn Saud, the leader of the Najd tribes and the founder of the dynasty that currently rules Saudi monarchy today.
Wahhab’s daughter became one of Ibn Saud’s wives. Ibn Saud utilized Wahhab’s spiritual fervor to ideologically discipline the tribes before hurling them into a battle against the Ottoman Empire.
Wahhab considered the Sultan in Istanbul as undeserving of any right to be the Caliph of Islam and preached the virtues of a permanent jihad against Islamic modernizers and infidels.
Lamenting the demise of the former greatness of Islamic civilization, he wished to remove all bidah (innovations/heresies), which he regarded as heretical to the original meaning of Islam.
Basing himself on the Sunnah (customary practices of the Prophet Muhammad) and the Hadiths (accounts, collections of reports, sayings and deeds of the Prophet), he wished to purge the Islamic world of what he viewed as the degenerative practices introduced into the Islamic world by the Ottoman Turks and their associates.
In 1801, Ibn Saud’s army attacked the Shia holy city of Karbala, massacring thousands and destroying revered Shiite shrines. They also razed shrines in Mecca and Medina, erasing centuries of Islamic architecture because of the Wahhabist belief that these treasures represented idol worship.
The Ottomans retaliated, occupied Hijaz and took charge of Mecca and Medina.
(Actually, it was the army of Egypt Muhammad Ali, at the insistence and persistence of the Ottoman Sultan Muhammad 4, and led by his son Ibrahim Pasha, later labelled the “Little Napoleon” by the French, that Ibrahim army entered Deraiya and erased it around 1820. Ibrahim took all his time to progress slowly and rally the tribes before advancing surely and determinately. It is after Ibrahim retreated from the peninsula, and after the British captured Aden in Yemen, that the British resumed their weapon and financial support to the Wahhabis).
The Ibn Saud-Wahhab alliance remained in the interior, with the full support of the British in weapons and money, until the Ottomans collapsed after World War I.
By 1926, the al-Saud clan – led by their new patriarch Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud – and their fanatical Wahhabi allies – the Ikhwan, or “Brotherhood” – once again seized control of the holiest cities in Islam, as well as important trading ports on the western coast of the peninsula.
Like the initial advances of the 1700s, it was a campaign defined by bloodshed, forced conversions, enslavement, and the enforcement of the strict and eccentric laws of Wahhabism.
It was also a campaign that was grounded in an alliance between Abdul Aziz and the British Empire. A 1915 treaty turned the lands under Abdul Aziz’s control into a British protectorate, ensuring military support against rival warlords and uniting the two against the Ottomans.
The intimate relationship between British imperialists and Abdul Aziz continued even after the dismantlement of the Ottoman empire, reflected in their close cooperation in the war against Sharif Hussein of Mecca, the Guardian of the Holy Cities, the chief of the clan of Hashem and directly descended from the Prophet.
Hussein had contributed the most to the Ottoman Empire’s defeat by switching allegiances and leading the “Arab Revolt” in June 1916 which removed the Turkish presence from Aqaba.
He was convinced to alter his position after Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, made him believe that a unified Arab country from Gaza to the Persian Gulf would be established with the defeat of the Turks.
The letters exchanged between Hussain and McMahon are known as the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence. As soon as the war ended, Hussein wanted the British to fulfill their war-time promises.
The British, however, wanted Sharif to accept the division of the Arab world between the British and the French (Sykes-Picot agreement, two Jewish administrators) and the implementation of the Balfour Declaration, which guaranteed “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine through a process of colonization done by European Jews.
These demands were laid out in the Anglo-Hijaz Treaty – written by the British – which Hussein refused to sign.
In 1924, the British unleashed Ibn Saud against Hussein. Lord Curzon hailed this as the “final kick” against Hussein.
Meanwhile, the Ikhwan grew increasingly angry about Abdul Aziz’s accommodation with the imperial powers that financed him. They disliked his lavish lifestyle, his family’s relations with the West, the relative leniency toward the Shia sect on the coastal region of the Gulf.
The Shia were actually being savagely repressed, but the desired rate of execution in forcible conversion and deportation were Not to the level expected by the Ekhiwan.
The introduction of new technologies (the telegraph, for example, was viewed as being of satanic origin).
Consequently, the Ikhwan began to openly rebel in 1927, shortly after Abdul Aziz signed another treaty with the British which recognized his “complete and absolute” rule of the twin kingdoms of Hijaz and of Najd and their dependencies.
The Ikhwani insurgents, after conquering the various regions of Arabia, began to attack the British and French protectorates of Transjordan, Syria and Iraq in order to subject them to Wahhabi doctrines.
They came into direct conflict with imperialist interests in the Middle East. After some three years of fighting, Abdul Aziz – with military assistance from the British Empire – defeated the rebellion and executed the leaders.
(It was the same deal as done during the initial Nazi regime as the German army demanded that Hitler militias be dismantled, the militia that brought him to power. Hitler personally got engaged in arresting his own leaders in what is known as Cristal Night)
In 1932, Ibn Saud confirmed his conquests by crowning himself as king of a new state, named after himself and his family: Saudi Arabia.
The suppression of the Ikhwan revolt did not in any way signify the weakening of Wahhabi fundamentalism. Threatened by Islamic radicalism, the royal family co-opted the Ikhwan movement by incorporating its local leaders into the Saudi state apparatuses.
This laid the foundations for the backward ideology of the state: unity of religion and loyalty to one family, making Saudi Arabia the only state in the world that was titled as the property of a single dynasty.
Cozying Up to USA
In 1933, Abdul Aziz had to face a severe financial crisis because his main source of income, taxation of the hajj (Muslim pilgrimage), had been undermined by the world slump.
(Actually, the Wahhabis were intent on destroying the Kaaba (shrine) and forbid Islamic pilgrimage as anathema to their ideology, but Saud was reminded of the wealth he could generate from the Hajj seasons)
For £50,000 in gold he gave an oil concession to Standard Oil of California (SOCAL). The deal between Abdul Aziz and SOCAL provided crucial funds for the fledgling king to consolidate his precarious rule.
Indeed, at the time, his rule was so tenuous that Britain had more control over the House of Saud than the House of Saud had over their own recently conquered dependencies.
SOCAL gave Abdul Aziz a $28 million dollar loan, and paid an annual payment of $2.8 million in exchange for oil exploration rights throughout the 1930s. SOCAL later merged with three other US firms (Esso, Texaco, Mobil) to form the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO).
This began exploration in eastern Arabia, and in 1938 production of Saudi Arabian oil commenced. The developing political economy of Saudi Kingdom quickly became linked to ARAMCO and its American backers, as the company built labor camps, corporate towns, roads, railways, ports, and other infrastructure necessary for the production and export of oil.
These infrastructural projects tapped into subsidies from the US government that ran into the tens of millions of dollars.
During the Second World War, the role of Saudi monarchy as a reliable partner of a nascent American empire was strengthened. In 1943, Washington decided that “the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States” and lend-lease aid was provided: a US military mission arrived to train Abdul Aziz’s army and the United States Air Force (USAF) began construction of an airfield at Dhahran, near the oil wells.
These arrangement were to give the US a position independent of the British bases at Cairo and Abadan (port in Iran.
This airbase became the largest US air position between Germany and Japan, and the one nearest Soviet industrial plants. Washington managed to retain the base only until 1962, when anti-imperialist resistance forced the Saudi monarchy to ask the Americans to leave.
Not until three decades later, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, were the Americans provided with an opportunity to reoccupy the base.
The relationship between the US and Saudi Kingdom was famously sealed in a 1945 meeting on the Suez Canal between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abdul-Aziz. The two leaders agreed that the kingdom would supply the US with oil, and the US government would provide the kingdom with security and military assistance.
Over the years, US presidents reiterated their commitments to Saudi monarchy security. The 1947 Truman Doctrine, which stated that the United States would send military aid to countries threatened by Soviet communism, was used to strengthen US – Saudi military ties.
In 1950, President Harry S. Truman told Abdul-Aziz, “No threat to your Kingdom could occur which would not be a matter of immediate concern to the United States”.
This assurance was repeated in the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine. The 1969 Nixon Doctrine included aid to three strategic American allies in the region – Shah of Iran, Saudi monarchy, and colonial Israel.
After the US-supported ruler in Iran was overthrown and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter issued his Doctrine as a direct threat to the Soviets, essentially asserting USA’s monopoly over Middle East’s oil.
Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, extended this policy in October 1981 with the “Reagan Corollary to the Carter Doctrine”, which proclaimed that the USA would intervene to protect the Saudi rulers.
While the Carter Doctrine focused on threats posted by external forces, the Reagan Corollary promised to secure the kingdom’s internal stability.
Spreading Counter-revolution
The 1960s and 1970s saw the emergence of Saudi petro-nationalism, based upon the rapidly expanding oil industry and the growth of transnational energy corporations.
The petrol bonanza – driven by the western economies’ steady consumption of oil – not only filled the coffers of the Saudi state, but also provided the Saudi state the ability to spread Wahhabi ideology, Not as a minor creed of militant jihad, but as a cultural export to influence the direction of Islam.
(Actually, it was the insurgency of the Ekhwan after the entrance of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and their occupation of the Kaaba in 1977 that convinced the Saudi monarchy to revisit its origin and cow under harsher laws and customs, principally targeting women and exporting millions of their brand of Quran, free, and establishing thousands of Madrassas (religious schools) in the Islamic world)
Oil wealth enabled the Saudi royal family to counter the rival interpretations and denominations of the Islamic world, and spread its influence over the Ummah (the community of the faithful). In other words, the Saudi ruling elite attempted to project itself as the ultimate definer and protector of the Ummah.
The export of Wahhabism to other countries was a part of the post-World War II US-Saudi strategy, wherein the two countries were allies in their opposition to Soviet “godless communism,” with USA focused on communism while the Saudis were more concerned about the “godless” side of the equation.
Wahhabism also served as a counter-revolutionary instrument against Nasserism, Ba’athism, and the Shia radicalism of the Iranian revolution.
Saudi Arabia started an organisation called the World Muslim League in 1962 to “combat the serious plots by which the enemies of Islam are trying to draw Muslims away from their religion and to destroy their unity and brotherhood.”
The main targets were republicanism (Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser Nasserite influence and invasion of Yemen) and communism.
The objective was to push the idea that these anti-monarchical ideologies were shu’ubi (anti-Arab). Saudi Arabia was also a central member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), created in 1969 as a counter-balance to the socialist-oriented Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
Apart from this geopolitical function, OIC was used by Saudi monarchy to undermine its regional adversary, namely Nasserite Egypt.
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 brought shudders into the palaces of the Saudi royal family, and into the US higher establishment. The overthrow of the monarchy of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi announced the creation of an Islamic form of republicanism.
Iranian Islamic leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said that Islam and hereditary monarchies were incompatible and he characterized Saudi Arabia as a US agent in the Persian Gulf.
Saudi rulers felt threatened. They denounced Iran’s revolution as an upheaval of heretical Shiites, but to no avail as Islamic republicanism swept the region, from Pakistan to Morocco.
Ultimately, the Saudis and the West egged on Saddam Hussein to send in the Iraqi army against Iran in 1980 and supported by all the colonial powers, including the Soviet Union, with all kinds of modern weapons and financial infusion from Saudi Monarchy and Kuwait).
That war went on till 1988, with both Iran and Iraq bleeding for the sake of Riyadh and Washington. (Over 400,000 Iraqi soldiers perished and 1.5 million Iranians. A ceasefire was announced as Khomeini felt that this war might resume indefinitely if he comes to die before an end to it)
Iraq, weakened by the lengthy war, turned against its Gulf Arab financiers who were demanding to be repaid, at the USA request. With insufficient support to rebuild Iraq, Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, threatening Saudi Arabia as well.
The US entered the picture with its full spectrum warfare – bombing Iraq to smithereens and providing Saudi Arabia with the confirmation that the US military would protect it till the end of time.
Once the history of Saudi Arabia is understood, it can be easily concluded that the monarchs of the kingdom willingly entered into a relationship of geo-political servitude to the West.
The kingdom would have had marginal or limited importance in the world if it was not supported wholeheartedly by the British and American empires.
With the significant backing it received by the colonial powers, Saudi Arabia became an international political player. With the help of their enormous oil wealth, the decadent kings and princes of Saudi Arabia have been perpetrating massacres and wars in various countries, such as the bombing of Yemen, the indirect attacks in Syria and Libya.
All this has been allowed to happen by the West, which provides both tacit and explicit support to the House of Saud in its myriad crimes.
As Che Guevara said, “The bestiality of imperialism…knows no limits…has no national boundaries”.
And why France, one of the staunchest supporter of ISIS, is ditching the ‘Islamic State’ name? And replacing it by the original Daesh? A label this group currently hates?
Posted on: April 22, 2021
ISIS hates the original label of Daesh: Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
Posted on September 21, 2014
- In: cities/geography | Essays | Events/Cultural/Educational/Arts | Islam/Moslem/Islamic world | political Artical
From the start, what exactly was the problematic of the colonial powers in calling the extremist Islamist group? An occupation that has taken over much of Syria and Iraq.
At first, many called it the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or (the acronym Daesh in Arabic).
However, due to differences over how the name should be translated from the Arabic, some (including the U.S. government) referred to them as ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, meaning Syria, Jordan Lebanon and Palestine).
(The US preference for ISIL iwas n order to satisfy the wishes of their obscurantist Wahhabi Saudi monarchy that is scared to giving the ISIS any further expansion schemes into Arabian Peninsula, the hotbed of Wahhabism and their homeland. Wahhabism is the extreme Protestant counterpart in Islamic sects)
To make matters more complicated, the group later announced that it should simply be called the “Islamic State” – a reference to the idea that the group was breaking down state borders to form a new caliphate.
(Or the caliphate title is thought after by the Saudi monarchy and Turkey)
A number of media groups, including The Post, the Associated Press and, eventually, the New York Times, adopted the Islamic State, while others stuck with ISIS and ISIL.
Now the French have added another complication.
On Monday, the French government released a statement that included a reference to the group under a different name: “Daesh.”Adam Taylor September 17 , 2014
An image made available on the jihadist Web site Welayat Salahuddin on June 11.
The picture shows militants of the Islamic State posing with their trademark jihadist flag after they seized an Iraqi army checkpoint in the northern Iraqi province of Salahuddin. (Welayat Salahuddin/HO via AFP)
France had hinted that it would begin using this term – how the group is referred to in much of the Arab world – before, but this week appears to be the first time that the country has used it in official communications.
“This is a terrorist group and not a state,” Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters last week, according to France 24.
“I do not recommend using the term Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims and Islamists. The Arabs call it ‘Daesh’ and I will be calling them the ‘Daesh cutthroats.’ ”
That logic is certainly understandable, and the French aren’t alone in bristling at the idea that an extremist group gets to take the moniker “Islamic State.”
Last month, Egypt’s leading Islamic authority, Dar al-Ifta, called on the world’s media to stop using the term, instead suggesting a new term: “al-Qaeda Separatists in Iraq and Syria” or QSIS.
“The initiative by Dar al-Ifta came to express the institution’s rejection of many stereotypes that attach the name of Islam to bloody and violent acts committed by such groups,” Ibrahim Negm, an adviser to Egyptian grand mufti Shawqi Allam, told al-Arabiya News.
And a group of British imams recently called on British Prime Minister David Cameron to stop calling the group “Islamic State,” making a request for a new moniker, “Un-Islamic State,” instead.
“We do not believe the terror group responsible should be given the credence and standing they seek by styling themselves Islamic State,” a letter sent from the imams to Cameron read, according to the Guardian.
“It is neither Islamic, nor is it a state. Despite the admirable French logic, Daesh comes with its own complications.
As historian and blogger Pieter van Ostaeyen noted back in February, that word is a transliteration of an Arabic word (داعش), an acronym for al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham (which is itself a transliteration of the group’s Arabic name: الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام).
There are a variety of different schools of transliteration, and there are a number of different styles for writing the Arabic acronym in Latin characters: The Washington Post uses DAIISH, but DAASH, DAIISH and DAISH are also used.
However it’s spelled, there’s another big factor: The group is reported to hate the moniker.
The Associated Press recently reported that the group were threatening to cut out the tongues of anyone who used the phrase publicly, and AFP have noted that the term “Daeshi” has been used a derogatory term in some parts of the Middle East.
Some analysts have suggested that the dislike of the term comes from its similarity to another Arabic word, دعس, or Da3ess.
That word means to trample down or crush.
Adam Taylor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. Originally from London, he studied at the University of Manchester and Columbia University.
Aisha, the most beloved wife of Prophet Muhammad: the book review after the death of Muhammad. Part 2
Posted on: March 4, 2021
Book review of Genevieve Chauvel
Note: If you missed Part 1, go to this link https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2021/03/03/most-beloved-wife-of-prophet-muhammad-aicha/
Shortly after his return to Medina, Muhammad suffered from terrible headaches for a month; he asked Abu Bakr to preach in his place when he was bedridden. The Prophet dies on June 8, 632; he was 63 years old.
Aicha was apprehensive that her father might succeed to the Prophet with the subsequent responsibilities, and asked Omar to preach instead, since he had a loud voice and a large body. Muhammad got irate for Aicha involvement in altering his decision, and demanded that Abu Baker resume the preaching.
Omar would not believe that the Prophet could die and threatened anyone who says so; then Abu Bakr told the congregation “Muslims, those among you who adore Muhammad, Muhammad is dead. Those who adore God, God is living”.
Ali was to wash the body and arrange for the funeral. The Companions elected Abu Bakr Caliph in the absence of Ali who was the closest member in the prophet’s “House”.
Abu Bakr reminded the Muslims what the Prophet told him once: “All prophets were buried at the place of their death”; and thus Muhammad was buried in Aicha’s bedroom. Aicha replaced the bed on top of the burying ground and continued sleeping there.
Abu Bakr would Not distribute the Prophet’s inheritance to anyone of his wives or family members because Muhammad has told him that prophets’ belonging went to charities.
Fatima died 6 months later as Mohammad has predicted, aggrieved and desperate.
Under Abu Bakr, Aicha, aided by Zayd ibn Thabit, got the huge responsibility of gathering and collecting all the parchments and written verses and the early oral verses of the Koran and then sorting them, verifying their authenticity, correcting and compiling them.
Aichi was not yet twenty years old. Abu Bakr died within two years and was also buried in Aicha’s bedroom next to the Prophet.
At the time of his death, Khalid ibn Al Walid had vanquished the Byzantine Emperor at Yarmuk and was advancing toward Damascus. (This Khalid committed mass massacres in Damascus for 3 days and nights, and for no sane reason)
Omar was selected by Abu Bakr to be the next Caliph. Omar extended Islam to Persia by a victory in Qadissiya and toward Egypt.
Omar was assassinated by a Christian slave while praying in the Mosque in Medina; Omar also asked permission of Aicha to be buried in her bedroom. By then, Aicha was the ultimate interpreter of the Koran and had issued 2,210 Hadiths and was the expert in women’s legal right or “Fiqh Al Nisaa”.
On his deathbed, Omar appointed a Council of five Companions from the tribes of Quraish (excluding the Ansar leaders) to elect the next Caliph. Uthman ibn Affan was selected and Aicha had misgivings on how he might manipulate the masses of documents collected on the verses of Islam. Omar left the documents with his daughter Afsa to hand over to the next Caliph.
Uthman ended up exercising nepotism and appointing relatives as governors and civil servants in high offices and he built a palace and lived luxuriously with 500 serfs maintaining the palace and organizing the feasts.
The new Caliph appointed Jewish scholars to select and revise the documents collected by Aisha and published a new version of the Koran, the one being read and accepted.
Aicha got wind of the alterations to the parchments and came out of her house carrying the sandals and shirts and hair of the prophet and shouted at the caliph: “The Prophet’s belongings had not had time to deteriorate and you started to turn your back on his teachings”.
(My conjecture is that Uthman hired scholar Jews to select and re-edit the parchments to match the messages in their Bible, and its is this Koran that is currently adopted, except the version disseminated by the Wahhabi in the Saudi Kingdom. Uthman destroyed many documents that the new Islamic empire needed to woe, especially in matters of imposing taxes, and delivering a patriarchal overtone to the Koran. So far, no original documents have been made public to study their validity. Mind you that the original documents had no punctuation or any kinds of signs or complicated embellishment you see in current versions…The documents/verses could be read as Kerouac “On the Road” or Schelinger “Catcher in the rye”, and were ripe for interpretations)
Aicha had a copy of all the documents and she rewrote her version of the Koran. (There is no information of what happened to these copies)
A large dissatisfied mob of Muslims, who were manipulated by “extremists” in Basra (Iraq), marched on Medina. Aicha had premonition that the arriving mob is bad news and got permission from Uthman to leave for pilgrimage with the harem. The mob entered the palace of Uthman burned it asunder and stabbed and beat the Caliph to death. (Probably the invading “mob” had wind of Uthman tampering with the Koran and disseminating luxury attitudes and practices that did Not match the conservative understanding of Islam).
Ali was elected Caliph but refrained to give the revenge for the murder of the Caliph Uthman a priority. His lukewarm behavior prompted Aicha to action and she started delivering speeches in Mecca to the effect that the punishment of the leaders of assassins should be carried out first thing first.
Her brother-in-law Zubair and another Companion Talhat excited Aicha to lead a contingent of 3,000 fighters to Basra.
Ali was on his way to Damascus to fight Moawiya, the governor of Syria, and stopped at Kufa to recruit more fighters and had to challenge Aicha before resuming his campaign.
Aicha, Zobair and Talhat managed to recruit an army of 30,000 men against 20,000 with Ali.
The battle of the “Camel”, the first among the Muslims, left 15,000 victims and injured among the Muslim fighters which affected Aicha for the remainder of her life.
Talhat and Zubair died in the battle. Aicha was riding hidden in a palanquin and exhorting her army to fight. Ali ordered his officer to cut the hand of the camel guide so that the camel could be moved from the center of the battle field; guides took the relay and 72 camel guides left theirs hands on the rope before the camel’s hamstrings were cut and was brought down and the battle cry and symbol of “The Mother of the Believer” finally relinquishing its effect on the troops.
Ali permitted Aicha to return to her home in Medina and she was escorted as a Queen. One of Muawiya’s delegates told Aicha that they wished she died in the battle so that the allies of Moawiya would have had an excellent excuse to fight Ali.
Aicha spent the remaining of her life in her house, receiving scholars and students who regarded her as the main resource for correct interpretations of the religious verses and taking notes of her experiences.
Aicha was initially the only virgin in the extended harem, and whatever she knew of love making was of the initiation of Muhammad.
A specific revelation forbade Muhammad’s wives to remarry and also to remain in their homes and to be covered completely and wear the “niqab” on their face when stepping outside their doors or meeting males.
The effects of the assassination of Uthman didn’t end up there. Muawiya raised the same reason of avenging Uthman to engage Ali in a terrible battle at Seffine in Syria: the bloodied shirt of Uthman hanging in the Mosque of Madina demanded retribution and the Arabs coined the dictum “the Shirt of Uthman” to convey the meaning that the reason offered is but an excuse for the power struggle.
There were no victors in this battle that was leaning toward Ali army, and a large contingent of Ali’s army dissented because Ali agreed to arbitrage. These dissenters were labeled Al Khawarij and were led by Abdullah ibn Wahab (A coincidence? The actual Saudi Monarchy sect is founded on a Wahhabi preacher): they went on assassination rampage against the leading followers of both Ali and Muawiya.
The Khawarij failed to assassinate Muawiya (just injured) but killed Ali in Kufa. Ali refused to name anyone to succeed him as Caliph and said to his followers that he would not disagree with anyone they select.
Aicha was to say “this is typical Ali’s ambiguity” as she forecasted the worst to the unity of the “Umma” or Nation of Islam.
Muawiya was elected Caliph and the power became hereditary and the period is known as the Umayyad (the most powerful tribe of Quraish) reign in Damascus, which lasted for a century before the Abbasid (The house of Abbass, the Uncle of Muhammad) succeeded in taking power in Baghdad for two centuries.
The occupied Central Asian people converted Sunni sects and their tribes were to dominate the political and religious landscape for over 10 centuries.
Muawiya sent assassins to ged rid of any potential leaders related to the Prophet , but spared Aisha.
Aicha lived to experience the death of many of her male family members.
Hassan, the son of Ali, was assassinated by his wife enticing Hassan to wear the poisoned dress given to him as a gift by Muawiya. Muawiya then slaughtered Hassan’s wife to hide his schemes with her.
Notes:
- The Prophet had two sons who died before the age of two. Ali, his nephew who married his youngest daughter Fatima, was the only male in his “House”. Muhammad appointed Ali to read the religious messages in meetings where the Prophet could not be present. Ali and Abu Bakr were the most learned males, among the early Companions, on Islam, but Aicha was the best and she was present during many revelations of “Archangel Gabriel” in her house.
- Ali was the most qualified to be the Imam of Islam, but since there was yet no separation between the political and religious functions, then Ali had to seek power as Caliph. Ali lacked the political acumen and the qualities of a government leader because he was constantly plagued with ambiguities as a result of his vast religious knowledge and his apprehension to err in his decisions. Schism developed during his short five years reign and the Shia sects (the followers of Ali’s second son Hussein) emerged as a counterpart to the Sunni sect representing the legitimate Muslims.
- The Prophet Muhammad was highly literate https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/the-parson-and-the-prophet-book-review/
Adonis Diaries 