No God But God

by Reza Aslan

  Despite this support, it was not until his political rivals in Mecca, including Talha and Zubayr, promised to pledge him their allegiance that Ali finally succumbed and accepted the mantle of leadership. Insisting that the oath of allegiance be given publicly in the mosque and in the presence of the entire Medinan community, Ali ibn Abi Talib, cousin and son-in-law to the Prophet, finally took his place at the head of the Ummah. Significantly, Ali refused the title of Caliph, which he believed had been permanently tainted by Uthman. Instead, he opted for Umar’s epithet, Amir al-Mu’manin, “Commander of the Faithful.”

  With the backing of his party, Ali restored order to Medina by announcing a general amnesty to all who had, in one way or another, played a role in Uthman’s death. This was to be a time of forgiveness and reconciliation, not of retribution. The old tribal ways, Ali claimed, were over. He further appeased the rebellious territories by removing nearly all of Uthman’s kin from their posts as amirs and filling the vacancies with qualified local leaders. Yet Ali’s actions, especially his amnesty of the rebels, not only enraged the Banu Umayya, they paved the way for Aisha to rally support in Mecca against the new Caliph by pinning him with the responsibility for Uthman’s murder.

  Aisha did not really believe Ali was responsible for Uthman’s death; even if she had, it is unlikely she would have cared. Aisha loathed Uthman and played a significant role in the rebellion against him. In fact, her brother, Muhammad, was instrumental in the Caliph’s assassination. But having learned from her father, Abu Bakr, never to entrust Muhammad’s clan with the Caliphate, lest the distinction between religious and political authority in the Ummah become confounded, Aisha saw Uthman’s murder as a means to replace Ali with someone she considered more suitable for the position, most likely her close allies Talha or Zubayr. It was with the help of these two men that she organized a massive contingent of Meccans and, riding atop a camel, personally led them into battle against Ali’s forces in Medina.

  The Battle of the Camel, as it came to be known, was Islam’s first experience of civil war, or fitnah (there would be many more over the next century and a half). In some ways, this conflict was the inevitable result, not just of the continuing antagonism between the factions of Ali and Aisha, but of a steadily evolving debate within the community over the role of the Caliph and the nature of the Ummah. Too often, this debate has been portrayed as strictly polarized between those who considered the Caliphate to be a purely secular position and those who believed it should encompass both the temporal and religious authority of the Prophet. But this simple dichotomy masks the diversity of religio-political views that existed in seventh- and eighth-century Arabia with regard to the nature and function of the Caliphate.

  The astonishingly rapid expansion of Islam into what had to this point been considered the impregnable domains of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires was, for most Muslims, proof of God’s divine favor. At the same time, the encounter with foreign peoples and governments was forcing these Muslims to reexamine the ideals that governed the political structure of the community. And while everyone agreed that the Ummah could remain united only under the authority of a single leader, there was still no consensus as to who that leader should be and almost no agreement as to how that leader should lead.

  On the one hand, there were those Muslims, like Aisha and her faction, who, while recognizing the importance of building a community dedicated to the commandments of God, were nonetheless committed to maintaining the secular character of the Caliphate. This faction was referred to as the Shi‘atu Uthman, “the party of Uthman,” though one should remember that Aisha in no way considered herself as advancing the cause of Uthman, whom she considered to have blighted the Caliphate established by her father and his protégé, Umar.

  On the other hand, there was the Banu Umayya, who, in light of Uthman’s lengthy reign as Caliph, had fallen under the impression that the Caliphate was now the hereditary property of their clan. It was for this reason that, upon Uthman’s death, his closest kin, Mu‘awiyah, the governor, or amir, of Damascus and the scion of Umayya, decided to disregard the events taking place in Medina and instead begin plans to take over the Caliphate himself. In some ways, the Shi‘atu Mu‘awiyah, as this faction was called, represented the traditional ideal of tribal leadership, though Mu‘awiyah himself seemed to be trying to steer the Ummah in the direction of the great empires of the Byzantines and Sasanians. No one was yet calling for the establishment of a Muslim kingdom, but it was becoming increasingly clear that the Ummah was now too large and too wealthy to maintain its unity according to the “neo-tribal” system established by Muhammad in Medina.

  At the opposite end of the spectrum were the Shi‘atu Ali, who were committed to preserving Muhammad’s original vision of the Ummah, no matter the social or political consequences. Although it is true that some factions within this group thought the Caliphate should incorporate Muhammad’s religious authority, it would be a mistake to consider this view the established Shi‘ite position it would eventually become. At this point, there were no significant religious differences between the Shi‘ah and the rest of the Muslim community, later called the Sunni, or “orthodox.” The Party of Ali was nothing more than a political faction that maintained the right of Muhammad’s clan to rule the community in Muhammad’s stead.

  However, there was a small faction within Ali’s party who held the more extreme view that the Ummah was a divinely founded institution that could be run only by the most pious person in the community, irrespective of his tribe, lineage, or ancestry. Eventually called the Kharijites, this faction has already been cited for their justification of Uthman’s murder on the grounds that he had broken the commands of God and rejected the example of the Prophet, making him no longer worthy of the Caliphate. Because the Kharijites stressed the need for a religious authority as Caliph, they are often credited with being the first Muslim theocrats. But this was a tiny, fractious group whose radically theocratic position was rejected by nearly every other faction vying for control of the Muslim community.

  What makes the Kharijites so important to Islamic history, however, is that they represent the first self-conscious attempts at defining a distinctive Muslim identity. This was a group obsessed with establishing who could and could not be considered a Muslim. According to the Kharijites, anyone who disobeyed any of the Quranic prescriptions, or violated the example of the Prophet Muhammad in any way, was to be considered a kafir, or unbeliever, and immediately expelled from the Ummah.

  Small as this group may have been, they made a lasting contribution to Muslim thought by arguing that salvation comes solely through membership in the Ummah, which they considered to be the charismatic and divine community of God. They divided all Muslims into two camps: the “People of Heaven,” as the Kharijites referred to themselves, and the “People of Hell,” by whom they meant everyone else. In this respect, the Kharijites can be considered the first Muslim “extremists,” and although the group itself lasted only a couple of centuries, its austere doctrines were adopted by succeeding generations of extremists to give religious sanction to their political rebellions against both Muslim and non-Muslim governments.

  One final issue: it is important to recognize that regardless of their views on the nature and function of the Caliphate, no Muslim in seventh-century Arabia would have recognized the distinction our modern societies make between the secular and religious. The primary philosophical difference between the Shi‘atu Uthman and the Kharijites, for instance, was not whether but to what extent religion should play a role in the governing of the state. Thus, while the Shi‘atu Ali, the Shi‘atu Uthman, the Shi‘atu Mu‘awiyah, and the Kharijites were above all else political factions, all four of these groups were also described in more religiously oriented terms through the use of the word din, or “religion” (as in din Ali, din Uthman, etc.).

  It is difficult to discern where Ali fit into this debate over the nature and function of the Caliphate because, as will shortly become
apparent, he never had a chance to fully embrace the position. It seems clear from the decisions he made upon succeeding Uthman that Ali agreed with the Kharijite position that the Ummah was a divinely inspired community that could no longer abide either by the imperial ideals of the Shi‘atu Mu‘awiyah or by the neo-tribal precedents of Abu Bakr and Umar as envisioned by the Shi‘atu Uthman. Whether Ali thought the Caliphate should fully encompass Muhammad’s religious authority is another matter.

  Ali was certainly no Kharijite. But he felt deeply his connection to the Prophet, whom he had known his entire life. The two men grew up together as brothers in the same household, and Ali rarely left Muhammad’s side either as a child or as an adult. So it would have been understandable if Ali believed his relationship with Muhammad gave him both the religious and political qualities necessary to lead God’s divine community on the path marked out by the Prophet. But this does not mean Ali considered himself to be divinely appointed to continue Muhammad’s prophetic function, as his followers would eventually claim, nor does it mean he believed that the Caliphate should necessarily be a religious position.

  Considering the cunning political maneuvering taking place around him, Ali’s attempts to reshape the Caliphate into a position of religious piety, if not religious authority, seemed doomed from the start. Nevertheless, Ali was committed to uniting the Ummah under the banner of the ahl al-bayt and in accordance with Muhammad’s egalitarian principles. Therefore, after his forces quickly overwhelmed Aisha’s army at the Battle of the Camel—during which Talha and Zubayr were killed and Aisha seriously wounded by an arrow—rather than punish the rebels as Abu Bakr had done after the Riddah Wars, Ali rebuked, then pardoned Aisha and her entourage, allowing them to return to Mecca unmolested.

  With Mecca and Medina finally subdued, Ali transferred his Caliphate to Kufa, in modern-day Iraq, so as to turn his attention to Mu‘awiyah, who, as the son of Abu Sufyan and the cousin of Uthman, had appealed to the old tribal sentiments of his Qurayshi kinsmen in order to raise an army against Ali in retribution for Uthman’s murder. In 657 C.E., Ali and his Kufan army met Mu‘awiyah and his Syrian army at a place called Siffin. After a long and bloody battle, Ali’s forces were on the verge of victory when, sensing defeat, Mu‘awiyah ordered his army to raise copies of the Quran on their spears: a message signaling his desire to surrender for arbitration.

  Most of Ali’s army, and especially the Kharijite faction who had, to this point, remained loyal to him, pleaded with Ali to ignore the gesture and continue the battle until the rebels had been punished for their insubordination. But, though Ali sensed treachery on Mu‘awiyah’s part, he refused to ignore God’s command that “if [the enemy] desists, then you must also cease hostilities” (2:193). Ordering his army to lay down their weapons, Ali accepted Mu‘awiyah’s surrender and called for a Hakam to settle the dispute between them.

  This was a fatal decision. The arbitration that followed the Battle of Siffin declared Uthman’s murder to have been unjust and worthy of retribution: a decision that, at least on the surface, seemed to justify Mu‘awiyah’s rebellion. However, far more ominous was the fact that the Kharijites considered Ali’s decision to submit to arbitration rather than mete out God’s justice upon the rebels to be a grave sin worthy of expulsion from the holy community. Crying “No judgment but God’s,” the Kharijites angrily abandoned Ali on the battlefield before the arbitration had even begun.

  Ali barely had time to absorb the impact of the arbitration. After Siffin, he was reluctantly forced to send his army to deal with the Kharijites who had seceded from his party. No sooner had he subdued the Kharijites (in what was less a battle than a massacre) than he had to turn his attention back toward Mu‘awiyah, who during the lengthy arbitration process had managed to reassemble his forces, capture Egypt, and, in 660 C.E., proclaim himself Caliph in Jerusalem. With his armies scattered and his supporters divided along ideological lines, Ali mustered what forces he had left and, the following year, prepared a final campaign against Mu‘awiyah and the Syrian rebels.

  The morning before the campaign was to begin, Ali entered the mosque in Kufa to pray. There he was met by Abd al-Rahman ibn ’Amr ibn Muljam, a Kharijite, who pushed his way through the crowded mosque, shouting, “Judgment belongs to God, Ali, not to you.”

  Drawing a poisoned sword, Ibn Muljam struck Ali on the head. It was a superficial wound, but the poison did its work. Two days later, Ali died, and with him the dream of the Banu Hashim to unite the holy community of God under the single banner of the Prophet’s family.

  In a sermon delivered a few years before his assassination, Ali remarked that “a virtuous man is recognized by the good that is said about him and the praises which God has destined him to receive from others.” These were prescient words, for Ali may have died, but he was not forgotten. For millions of Shi‘ah throughout the world, Ali remains the model of Muslim piety: the light that illuminates the straight path to God. He is, in the words of Ali Shariati, “the best in speech … the best in worship … the best in faith.”

  It is this heroic vision of Ali that has been firmly planted in the hearts of those who refer to the person they believe to have been the sole successor to Muhammad not as the fourth Caliph, but as something else, something more.

  Ali, the Shi‘ah claim, was the first Imam: the Proof of God on Earth.

  THE CALIPHATE, WROTE Sir Thomas Arnold, “grew up without any pre-vision.” This was an office that developed not so much through the conscious determination of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, but as the result of conditions that the Ummah encountered as it matured from a tiny community in the Hijaz to a vast empire stretching from the Atlas Mountains in West Africa to the eastern edges of the Indian subcontinent. It is not surprising, therefore, that disagreements over the function of the Caliphate and the nature of the Ummah ultimately tore the Muslim community apart, forever shattering any hope of preserving the unity and harmony that Muhammad had envisioned for his followers. Nor is it surprising that three of the first four leaders of Islam were killed by fellow Muslims, though it is important to recognize that both the rebels who murdered Uthman and the Kharijites who assassinated Ali were, like their spiritual successors among the Jihadists of today, far more concerned with maintaining their personal ideal of Muhammad’s community than with protecting that community from external enemies.

  After Ali’s death, Mu‘awiyah was able to seize absolute control of all the Muslim lands. Moving the capital from Kufa to Damascus, Mu‘awiyah inaugurated the Umayyad Dynasty, completing the transformation of the Caliph into a king, and the Ummah into an empire. Mu‘awiyah’s Arab dynasty lasted a very short time, from 661 to 750 C.E. Ultimately, it was supplanted by the Abbasid Dynasty, which was carried to power with the help of the non-Arab (mostly Persian) converts who so greatly outnumbered the Arab élites. The Abbasids claimed descent from Muhammad’s uncle al-Abbas and rallied support from the Shi‘ite factions by moving their capital to Baghdad and massacring all the Umayya they could find. But the Shi‘ah ultimately rejected Abbasid claims of legitimacy and, as a result, were ruthlessly persecuted by the new Caliphs.

  While continuing to rule as secular kings, the Abbasid Caliphs embroiled themselves far more deeply in religious matters than had their Umayyad predecessors. As we shall see, the seventh Abbasid Caliph, al-Ma’mun (d. 833), even attempted to impose a measure of imperial orthodoxy upon the Muslims under his rule by launching a short-lived, and ultimately unsuccessful, religious inquisition against those Ulama who disagreed with his theological beliefs.

  Although their dynasty lasted well into the eleventh century, the later Abbasid Caliphs were nothing more than figureheads who wielded no direct authority over the Muslim lands. Even Baghdad, their capital, was under the control of a Shi‘ite conglomerate of aristocratic Iranian families called the Buyids, who from 932 to 1062 C.E. ran all affairs of state but still allowed the Abbasid Caliph to remain on his powerless throne. Meanwhile, in Cairo, the Fatimids (909–1171)—Shi‘i
tes who claimed descent from Ali’s wife and Muhammad’s daughter, Fatima—established themselves as Baghdad’s rivals, maintaining political control over everything from Tunisia to Palestine. And in Spain, a lone descendant of the Umayya, Abd al-Rahman, who had managed to escape from the massacre that took place in Syria, founded his own dynasty that not only lasted well into the fifteenth century but became the paradigm of Muslim-Jewish-Christian relations.

  The Persian Buyid chiefs were eventually replaced by their own Turkic slave-guards who founded both the Ghaznavid Dynasty (977–1186), which claimed suzerainty over northeastern Iran, Afghanistan, and northern India, and the Saljuq Dynasty (1038–1194), which ruled most of the lands east of that. It was the Turks who, infiltrating the various sultanates as hired militia, managed many years later to reunite most of the Muslim lands under the single Caliphate of the Ottomans: the Sunni dynasty that ruled from their capital in Istanbul from 1453 until 1924, when the Ottoman Empire was dismantled and the Caliphate abolished.

  There is no longer any such thing as a Caliph. With the rise of the modern nation-state in the Middle East, Muslims have been struggling to reconcile their dual identities as both citizens of independent sovereign states and members of a unified worldwide community. Some have argued, a few of them violently, that the Caliphate should be restored as the emblem of Muslim unity. These Muslims believe that the ideals of Islam and nationalism are “diametrically opposed to each other,” to quote Mawlana Mawdudi, founder of the Pakistani sociopolitical movement Jama‘at-i Islami (the Islamic Association). Consequently, Mawdudi and many others feel that the only legitimate Islamic state would be a world-state “in which the chains of racial and national prejudices would be dismantled.”

  The twentieth century has witnessed a transformation of the historic contest over the function of the Caliph and the nature of the Ummah into a debate over the proper way to combine the religious and social principles of Islam—as defined by Muhammad and developed by the Rightly Guided Ones—with modern ideals of constitutionalism and democratic rights. And yet, this contemporary debate remains deeply rooted in the same questions of religious and political authority with which the Ummah grappled during the first few centuries of Islam.