What business has Abd al-Rahim al-Sulami with the protective veil of the Messenger’s Companions, may God be pleased with them all?
By Professor Dr Fahd ibn Sulayman ibn Ibrahim al-Fuhayd
Praise belongs to God, Lord of the worlds. Peace and blessings be upon God’s Messenger, his family, Companions and those guided by his guidance.
I was saddened and troubled by Dr Abd al-Rahim ibn Sumayl al-Sulami’s published words, may God forgive him, entitled “Political Despotism,” sent to me by a participant in the al-Qasim mailing group. I had known these words earlier from reading his doctoral dissertation, The Reality of Liberalism, and hesitated to write, hoping someone else would discharge this religious duty. But when he published this article containing an attack upon the noble Companion Mu‘awiyah, may God be pleased with him, I considered it necessary to act promptly in support of truth and against falsehood.
The article’s expressions attacking the noble Companion Mu‘awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan are:
1. “Political despotism occurred in Mu‘awiyah’s time.” He defines it: “Political despotism is exclusive possession of power. To act despotically in something means to monopolise it: one monopolises an affair to the exclusion of others. Despotism acquires its negative meaning in the mind…”
2. “He fell into aggression and tyranny.”
3. “It opens the doors to injustice, corruption and forms of aggression, called ‘political despotism’…”
4. “Despotism is part of tyranny, not synonymous with it. A despot may be tyrannical and unjust, or just and striving for reform.
“Despotism appeared early in the Muslim community, after Mu‘awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan assumed authority and appointed his son Yazid to the caliphate after him…”
4. “He thereby took away the community’s right to appoint the most suitable person.”
5. “This exclusive control over appointing caliphs opened a great door of evil upon the Muslim community, continuing to weaken it until its present deplorable condition. Scholars among the Companions took a strong position against this strange phenomenon leading to tyranny and objected to Mu‘awiyah.”
Such words make the body shudder: someone claiming adherence to the Sunnah attacks a noble Companion of God’s Messenger, resembling the Sunnah’s enemies among Rafidis and others.
Dr Abd al-Rahim did add a footnote intended to preserve Mu‘awiyah’s right. But after these accusations, it still did not accord with the Sunni method. He wrote:
“Here we must affirm the merit of the noble Companion Mu‘awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan. His merit is included in the general religious texts explaining the Companions’ virtues. No one may use his lapse in turning government into hereditary succession as a pretext to attack him. He was among Islam’s finest kings, his conduct among the best, and his reign among the outstanding periods of justice in Islamic history. Sunni belief concerning the Companions is recognition of their merit and rank in the texts, while believing that their shortcomings are forgiven because of their virtues. Nothing after prophethood equals the merit of companionship. For Mu‘awiyah’s virtues, consult books on the Companions’ merits and others.”
The doctor should also have said that Sunnis believe the Companions’ disputes involved independent judgement: either correct judgement or mistaken judgement, bringing two rewards or one. Mu‘awiyah’s action that he condemns belongs to this reasoning between one and two rewards. This is Sunni belief. It was neither a lapse nor negligence nor opening the door to injustice and tyranny. Mu‘awiyah neither opened a great door of evil upon the community nor took away its right to appoint the most suitable person, as the doctor expresses it.
He should also have said that Sunnis refrain from discussing the Companions’ disputes and do not mention alleged faults as innovators do. Instead he repeats, even while defending him, that Mu‘awiyah erred by making government hereditary.
Without realising it, he has placed himself with those among Rafidis and religion’s enemies who attack the Messenger’s Companions, preparing the ignorant and simple-minded to do likewise. He resembles someone who opens a bodily wound without justification and then says: do not enlarge it.
Rafidis and those sharing their position among extreme Sufis, Mu‘tazilis and others enumerate these matters to attack Mu‘awiyah. See what Ibn Taymiyyah quotes from them in Minhaj al-Sunnah, 1/546 onwards. See also Muhammad al-Maghrawi’s Whoever Insults the Companions and Mu‘awiyah, His Refuge Is the Abyss, p. 76, quoting Ahmad al-Ghumari and his two brothers’ accusation that Mu‘awiyah contributed to al-Husayn’s killing because he wished to monopolise kingship and make it hereditary among the Umayyads. It quotes Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad’s Mu‘awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan in the Balance, p. 66: “If history judged him correctly, it would describe him only as the divider of communities.”
Likewise, Husayn Mu’nis’s “A Brief History of Arab Thought” in the weekly October magazine describes Mu‘awiyah’s government as unjust, tyrannical and despotic, issue 372, p. 24. Sayyid Qutb is quoted from Books and Personalities, p. 242:
“Mu‘awiyah and Amr ibn al-As did not defeat Ali because they knew people’s inner workings better or were more skilled in useful action at the proper moment, but because they were free to use every weapon while he was constrained by his morals in choosing means of conflict. When Mu‘awiyah and his colleague resort to lies, fraud, deception, hypocrisy, bribery and buying consciences, Ali cannot descend to that lowest depth. No wonder they succeed and he fails: a failure more honourable than every success.”
These are the people Dr Abd al-Rahim joins in attacking Mu‘awiyah, and these are his predecessors in it. We find no deeply grounded scholar of knowledge and religion preceding him in this false attack. Muslims must restrain their tongues concerning the Companions and their disputes, especially when great scholars remained silent.
Among those scholars were people Imam al-Bukhari met. He says: “I met more than a thousand learned men of the Hijaz, Makkah, Madinah, Kufa, Basra, Wasit, Baghdad, Syria and Egypt, meeting them repeatedly, generation after generation, finding them plentiful over more than forty-six years…” After describing their creed he says: “I saw none of them attack Muhammad’s Companions. A’ishah said: they were commanded to seek forgiveness for them,” citing: “Our Lord, forgive us and our brothers who preceded us in faith, and place no rancour in our hearts towards those who believe. Our Lord, You are Kind, Merciful.” See al-Lalaka’i’s Explanation of the Foundations of Sunni Creed. I ask: Dr Abd al-Rahim, does what sufficed for them not suffice for you?
Who among the scholars preceded you in attacking Mu‘awiyah with the broad, objectionable claim that he erred by turning government into hereditary succession? See Minhaj al-Sunnah, 4/473.
Was appointing Yazid his successor itself a transformation of government into hereditary succession?
Did Mu‘awiyah know what would happen after him, to be blamed in this way?
Historical reality shows that rule was not hereditary after Yazid and his son Mu‘awiyah, whose reign was brief and who appointed no successor. Ibn al-Zubayr publicly sought authority and was followed by most regions except Syria. In Syria, after Mu‘awiyah ibn Yazid ibn Mu‘awiyah, Marwan ibn al-Hakam became ruler for a short time, followed by his son Abd al-Malik.
How closely these ideas and proposals for establishing a Muslim state and choosing its ideal ruler resemble Satanic whisperings and false hopes. Unfortunately, God’s enemy Iblis plays with many religious people through such wishes. They may borrow them from Islam’s liberal and secular enemies, agreeing with their method of choosing rulers through what they call democracy, forming parties and selection by voting, imagining it agrees with God’s law and twisting texts to support it. This led some to attack Mu‘awiyah. God is the One whose help is sought.
Minhaj al-Sunnah, 3/367, states:
“What each person imagines and proposes of things never created has no weight. One proposes an infallible imam; another proposes someone like an infallible person without calling him so. Despite a scholar, shaykh, commander or king’s extensive knowledge, religion, virtues and the abundant good God has accomplished through him, they demand that nothing escape his knowledge, that he err in no question and transcend humanity’s limits, never becoming angry. Many demand of such people what they do not demand of prophets.
“God commanded Noah and Muhammad to say: ‘I do not tell you that I possess God’s treasures, nor do I know the unseen, nor do I say I am an angel.’ Yet the ignorant want a leader to know everything asked, accomplish everything requested and be independent of human needs like angels. Such demands of rulers resemble the Kharijites’ demand that nobody in the community sin; a sinner, for them, is an unbeliever eternally in the Fire. All this is false, contrary to what God created and legislated. Their proposals regarding those God appoints resemble others’ proposals regarding whom He sends, or whom He has mercy upon and forgives. Innovations derive from unbelief; every innovated doctrine contains a branch of unbelief.”
He also says, answering Dr Abd al-Rahim’s praise for what he calls armed movements of enjoining right in resistance to despotism:
“When a caliph such as Yazid, Abd al-Malik, al-Mansur or another assumes authority, one might say he must be prevented and fought until another is appointed, as advocates of the sword hold. This is a corrupt opinion, since its harm exceeds its benefit. Rarely has someone risen against a ruler possessing authority without their action producing more evil than good: those who rose against Yazid in Madinah; Ibn al-Ash‘ath against Abd al-Malik in Iraq; Ibn al-Muhallab against his son in Khurasan; Abu Muslim, the organiser of the call, who also rose against them in Khurasan; those who rose against al-Mansur in Madinah and Basra; and similar people.
“Their outcome is either defeat or victory followed by the disappearance of their rule, leaving no lasting result. Abd Allah ibn Ali and Abu Muslim killed many people, and both were killed by Abu Ja‘far al-Mansur. The people of al-Harrah, Ibn al-Ash‘ath, Ibn al-Muhallab and others and their followers were defeated, neither establishing religion nor preserving worldly life. God does not command something that achieves neither religion’s nor worldly life’s soundness…”
Brother Dr Abd al-Rahim, what business have you with the protective veil of the Messenger’s Companions? You have entered a grave matter; remaining free of it would have been better for you.
Abu Tawbah al-Rabi‘ ibn Nafi‘ al-Halabi said: “Mu‘awiyah is a protective veil for Muhammad’s Companions. When someone lifts the veil, they dare attack what lies behind it.” Tarikh Baghdad, 1/209; al-Bidayah, 8/142.
Muhammad ibn Abd Allah ibn Ammar al-Mawsili and others report that al-Mu‘afa ibn Imran was asked whether Mu‘awiyah or Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz was better. He became angry: “Do you equate a Companion with a Successor? Mu‘awiyah was his companion, relative by marriage, scribe and trusted keeper of God’s revelation.” Tarikh Baghdad, 1/209. Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak, asked the same question, said: “Dust entering Mu‘awiyah’s nose in one of the Prophet’s campaigns is better than Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz.”
Imam Ahmad said: “The best of the community after the Prophet is Abu Bakr, then Umar, then Uthman, then Ali. Some stopped there. They are rightly guided caliphs. After these four, the Messenger’s Companions are the best people. No one may mention their faults or attack any of them for a defect or deficiency. Whoever does so must be disciplined and punished. The authority may not pardon him, but must punish him and seek his repentance. If he repents, it is accepted; if he persists, punishment is repeated and he remains imprisoned until death or retraction.” Ibn Abi Zayd says in the introduction to al-Risalah: “No Companion of God’s Messenger should be mentioned except in the best terms. One should refrain from their disputes. They most deserve that excuses be sought for them and the best interpretations assumed.”
Ibn al-Imad says of Mu‘awiyah: “He governed Syria for Umar and Uthman for twenty years and ruled after Ali for twenty years less one month. He treated his subjects well, was among the Arabs’ shrewdest and most forbearing men, proverbial in these qualities, and one of the scribes of revelation. He is the measure of love for the Companions and their gateway.”
Is enumerating his errors and faults, mentioning his alleged lapse and publishing it in books and articles not an attack, or assistance in one?
Evil’s appearance in Muslim lands is not caused by hereditary rule but by shortcomings in Muslims’ general condition, great and small, as religious texts indicate. Indeed, saying that Mu‘awiyah’s era, his son’s and those following were among the strongest periods after the rightly guided caliphs would be true and match reality. Ibn Taymiyyah says:
“In the two Sahih collections, Jabir ibn Samurah reports that the Prophet said: ‘This affair will remain mighty through twelve caliphs, all from Quraysh.’ So it was: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali, then those upon whom people united and who possessed strength and protection: Mu‘awiyah and his son Yazid, then Abd al-Malik and his four sons, with Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz among them. Afterwards the Islamic state suffered deficiencies continuing until now. The Umayyads ruled all Islamic lands, and the state was mighty in their time. The caliph was called by his name, Abd al-Malik or Sulayman; titles such as ‘Support of the State,’ ‘Glory of Religion,’ ‘Splendour of Religion’ and ‘So-and-so of Religion’ were unknown. Each led the five daily prayers, and banners were bound and commanders appointed in the mosque. They lived in their homes, not fortresses, and did not conceal themselves from their subjects.”
The Rafidi Ibn al-Mutahhar criticised Sunnis for the imamate’s passage through the Umayyads and Abbasids: “Then they placed the imamate among the Umayyads, then the Abbasids.” Ibn Taymiyyah replied:
“Sunnis do not say that each of these rulers alone had to be appointed rather than anyone else, or that he must be obeyed in everything. They describe reality and command duty, witnessing what occurred and commanding what God and His Messenger commanded. They say these people held power and had authority enabling the purposes of government: enforcing prescribed penalties, distributing wealth, making appointments, fighting the enemy, establishing Hajj, festivals, Friday prayers and other governing purposes.
“They say that none of these rulers, their deputies or others may be obeyed in disobedience to God, but should be joined in obedience to Him… Others also ruled: Umayyads in the West and descendants of Ali. People cannot live soundly without rulers. Even rulers inferior to these unjust kings would be better than none. As the saying goes, sixty years with an unjust imam are better than one night without an imam. Ali is reported to have said: ‘People must have government, righteous or wicked.’ Asked about wicked government, he said: ‘It secures roads, enforces prescribed penalties, fights enemies and distributes public revenues.’ People cannot survive even a few days without authorities; their affairs would fall into disorder.”
Regarding choosing a ruler through consultation, the issue behind the doctor’s attacks on the Commander of the Faithful Mu‘awiyah, Ibn Taymiyyah says:
“Sunnis do not dispute that some holders of power after the four caliphs appointed someone while another was more entitled. Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz wished to appoint al-Qasim ibn Muhammad after him but could not, because the powerful did not agree and the succession pledge had already designated Yazid ibn Abd al-Malik after him. Yazid was therefore heir apparent.
“The powerful who advance the less suitable and leave the more suitable, or a person who takes power through his own and his followers’ strength unjustly and aggressively, bear the sin of that appointment insofar as they neglected an obligation they could fulfil or aided injustice. Someone who neither wrongs nor assists a wrongdoer, but assists righteousness and mindfulness of God, bears no blame… Islamic law seeks to secure and complete benefits and avert and reduce harms as far as possible.
“Sunnis hold that the most suitable should be appointed when possible, obligatorily according to most, recommended according to some. Whoever chooses another out of desire despite being able to appoint the most suitable is unjust. Whoever cannot appoint the most suitable despite wishing to is excused. Whoever holds authority should be used to assist obedience to God as far as possible, assisted only in obedience, neither used nor assisted in disobedience.” Minhaj al-Sunnah, 1/550.
I conclude with Imam Ahmad’s words. Al-Maymuni says: “I heard Ahmad say, ‘What business have they with Mu‘awiyah? We ask God for well-being.’ He told me: ‘Abu al-Hasan, if you see someone speaking ill of God’s Messenger’s Companions, suspect their commitment to Islam.’”
What business have you with Mu‘awiyah, Abd al-Rahim? We ask God for protection from this dangerous path.
Lord of the worlds, Most Merciful, open Abd al-Rahim al-Sulami’s heart to truth, enable him to accept it, act upon it and teach it. Enable him, our Lord, to correct what he wrote and publicly retract it. Amen, amen.
God, be pleased with Mu‘awiyah and all the Companions. Grant us hearts and tongues free of ill towards them and their companionship in Paradise with our Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, Most Merciful. Bless our Messenger Muhammad, his family and all his Companions, and grant them peace.
Written by Fahd ibn Sulayman ibn Ibrahim al-Fuhayd
Associate Professor, Department of Creed, Imam University
16/8/1432 AH