Happy end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting and hoped for reflection. The New Islamic Religious Revolution (see my book on it at Amazon, December 2017), launched by Al-Azhar in 2014 has to contend with the abuse of Islam as a political power tool. A span of time of nearly 1400 years.
It should be noted that Islam did not establish a State. It established a Nation, now numbering 1.7 billion population, spread over every continent and region. Including Iceland where Muslims fast for 20 hours during the month of Ramadan (the sun there sets for only 2 hours). After the 4 successors of the Prophet Muhammad assumed the title of Caliph to stress continuity, though within an Arab context, all so-called Caliphate which followed lacked legitimacy.
That early continuity was demonstrated by burying Muhammad at where he lived with his wife Aisha in Medina. Next to his burial grounds were buried the first two Caliphs, Abu-Bakr, then Omar. The Arab line of succession within Quraish (the tribe in Mecca which dominated Islam from its inception in 593 AD until 661 AD), held fast. That is until the transfer of the capital of Islam (the capital of the Nation) from Al-Medinah in Arabia to Damascus where the Ummayiads held sway.
Yet the Ummayiads of Syria kept the leadership of the Muslim nation for nearly 160 years with the Arabs. The Arabs were then on top of the ethnic fabric of that nation. Even after conquering the four civilizations surrounding tribal Arabia. These were the Yemenis to the south; the Persians to the east; the Byzantines to the north; and the Egyptians westward.
Yes, the Bedouins of Arabia gained not only territory, but also diverse civilizations, especially in the art of governance and medicine and philosophy. Nonetheless, all non-Arabs to the East, to the North, and to the West were , though Islamized, Mawalis (meaning subservient). The ruling class were Arabs, and those who possessed better knowledge and organizational skills were the Mawalis.
That latter class, by the 7th century, were the majority of Muslims. The armed forces brought the Arabs and the Mawalis together under the banner of Islam. But the Mawalis, whether in Persia, Syria and Palestine, Egypt or Morocco, were deprived of: army pay equal to that of the Arabs; riding horses, even in combat; restriction of their service to infantry (foot soldiers); and no permission to intermarry with Arab women.
One may call this apartheid of the first order which went against the soul of Islam. For Islam stands for equality. But the Ummayiad structure was primarily monarchical, patterned after the East Roman empire. The leader was Arab, but the system was either Roman or Persian. And that is what collapsed the Ummayiads in 750 AD. So the pendulum swung again in the direction of Medina in Arabia, and towards the family of the Prophet Muhammad.
So far the battle for the soul of Islam remained within Islam itself. Other faiths were left undisturbed, with full respect for Judaism. Christianity and other beliefs. That inter-Islamic struggle was about who was to be on top after the collapse of the last Arab caliphate, namely, the Ummayiads. Those who established the Abbasids in 656 AD resumed the linkage to the line of the Prophet Muhammad, since Abu-El-Abbas, the founder, was Muhammad's uncle. But the backbone of that 600 year regime was Persian.
In fact the last of the Ummayiads Caliphs, Marwan II who fled for his life to Egypt, was pursued by the Mawalis of the Abbasids to the Egyptian province of Al-Fayyoum where he was killed at the village of Bu-Seer.
The manipulation of Islam through its politicization now began in earnest, basing itself from its initial capital of Khorasan (Persia), before moving to Baghdad. Baghdad became the historic Abbasid capital as of the 7th century AD -the persianized capital of the Umma.
The Islam of Arabia which advocates inclusiveness was now the Islam of the Mawalis. The conquered became the conqueror. With that major shift in the fortunes of Islam, came also the repression of all those who spoke Arabic -though Arabic is the language of the Quran.
Power became the object of governance; the politicization of Islam by the non-Arabs proved to be a legitimating cover; the division between Sunni Islam and Shii Islam was advocated; those within the Shii branch were branded in part "Alawis" - the sect of Bashar Al-Asad; the sword, a word not mentioned at all in the Quran, became the instrument of enforcement, especially by the Ottomans, the Turkic races which swooped from central Asia on horseback to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea (the 16th century to the 20th).
Finally Islam, as of 1928, was co-opted by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood whose logo is still two swords framing the Quran, with the fighting words "Be Prepared" (Aaidoo) at the bottom of that trade mark of a wayward movement.
The historic and ideological lineage of the Muslim Brotherhood should be traced to Abu-Muslim Al-Khorasani (653 AD) in Eastern Persia.
Under the Abbasids, freedom of thought was suppressed. Even Abu-Hanifah and Malik, the founders of two great schools of Sunni thought, were whipped. The framework of the Abbasid system was the glorification of those fake Caliphs who followed the first four succeeding the Prophet Muhammad.
Examples on the disconnect between Islam and the period from the 7th to the 20th centuries abound. Here is an early example. The response of Al-Mansour, an early Abbasid ruler to those who criticized his brutality was very candid: "We are among people who saw us yesterday as ordinary street people and now we are their Caliphs. Such people shall never respect anything but punishment. So forget about forgiveness."
The second dominant feature of the Abbasids is to clothe their politics with a Muslim garb. The Caliph propagated himself as the protector of Islam. They made the Sultan or Caliph the projection of God on earth.
Thus Abu-Hanifah and Malik were punished because they declined Al-Mansour's invitation to be judges. Such declination, Al-Mansour feared, would signal to the rank and file.of Muslims that the Abbasid Caliphate lacked legitimacy.
The basis for the dogma of the Muslim Brotherhood, though appearing 13 centuries later, is one and the same as that of the Abbasids. To them, Islam is only a cover for raw power; the ballot box to them is the entry ticket to rulership.
To them, Egypt, the State of 7000 years was no more than a launching pad for a mythical Islamic realm. And one of their supreme guides expressed this candidly but grossly: "Hell with Egypt" (Toz Fi Masr).
Such words have historic consequences. The Brotherhood's affinity to the brutal past, starting from the Abbasids and stretching to Ordoghan, the present Ottoman ruler, needs to be understood in the light of that horrid continuum.
Islam's abuse as a political football has indeed deep roots.
