CHAPTER ONE

      THE CAUSE OF DISAGREEMENT

      6 In this book, I have chosen to follow the path of concision, omitting the chains of authority from oral reports as well as repetition, so that readers and examiners of this work might find it easy to follow, and citing only such oral reports as are well known, widely accepted, and transmitted reliably. To this category belong the following: the reliably transmitted report from ʿAlī, God’s blessings upon him, that he said, upon witnessing the people’s disagreement after the passing of the Messenger of God: “Were the mat for dispensing justice folded for me, and were I to sit before the people, I would judge among the people of the Qurʾan by the Qurʾan, among the people of the Torah by the Torah, and among the people of the Gospel by the Gospel. No two of you would disagree over a single ruling of the religion”;¹⁶ the reliably transmitted report from the Messenger of God: “The best judge among you is ʿAlī”;¹⁷ and the report that when the Prophet Muḥammad sent ʿAlī to Yemen, the latter remonstrated, “O Messenger of God, you have sent me to people who are experienced elders, yet I am young and have no knowledge of judgeship!” The Prophet struck ʿAlī’s chest with his hand, blessing him, “O God, make him learned in the religion and lead him to the manifest truth.” ʿAlī, God’s blessings upon him, remarked, “After that, no case between two parties was difficult for me to judge.”¹⁸

      7 In the ability to judge is combined all knowledge that people require regarding God’s lawful and unlawful things, the obligations He has imposed, and His rulings. Concerning these things, the people must submit to the one whose knowledge was attested to and prayed for by the Messenger. During the entire extent of ʿAlī’s life after the passing of the Messenger of God, those who had followed the Messenger before him found themselves needing to consult him concerning the religious law, while ʿAlī had no need to consult or ask anyone at all about such matters. This is one of the things that engendered anger toward ʿAlī on the part of those who had been regularly consulted and to whom people referred concerning matters about which they disagreed. An example of this is the reliably transmitted report attributed to ʿAlī according to which he often used to command, “Ask me before you lose me.”¹⁹ He also stated, “My eyelids never shut, nor did sleep ever enter my head even one day during the days of my life with the Messenger of God until I had learned the permitted and forbidden things that Gabriel, peace be upon him, had brought down that day, whether a report from the Prophet or a citation from the Scripture. So ask me, for you will not find anyone more knowledgeable about what is between the Scripture’s two covers than I. There is no verse in the Qurʾan but that I learned when it was revealed and about what it was revealed.”²⁰ To present all the reports of this type would cause us to go beyond the scope of this book.

      8 Abū ʿAbd Allāh Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad,²¹ God’s blessings on him, was asked about the cause of disagreement among the Muslims after the Messenger of God and the circumstances that led to it. He asked the questioner, “Did they disagree during the life of the Messenger of God?” “How could they disagree,” the questioner replied, “when the Messenger of God was with them, explaining to them the matter over which they disagreed, so that they might adopt his ruling?” The Imam responded, “You have spoken the truth. In like fashion, if the one who assumed authority after the Messenger had been apprised of the matters regarding which he was consulted, he would have answered them whenever they posed questions regarding their disagreement. However, the one who assumed authority did not know the answers to all the questions that were referred to him, so he asked the people about many things that he did not know, and they gave him conflicting answers on those topics. Disagreement occurred as a consequence. If they had submitted to the true authority and accepted his word, then no two of them would have disagreed over the religion of God, just as they did not disagree during the life of the Messenger of God.”

      9 This is just part of what has been related about early disagreements. Later, control over people’s affairs was assumed by the Umayyads and the Abbasids, who had no knowledge of God’s permitted and forbidden things and no ambition or desire to uphold the sacred law, but whose only desire and ambition, instead, was to seek the trappings of this world. When they obtained power, they became engrossed in the mundane and turned away from all else. They handed over control of the religion to commoners who claimed to be learned in the law. The rulers did this in order to appease the jurists and to attract thereby their support in attaining their own desires, despite their ignorance. The jurists took free rein and vied unhampered for leadership among themselves. They multiplied, and with increased numbers, their various inclinations caused them to split into factions, and their distinct views on legal questions led them to oppose one another. This occurred because the rulers had left them to their own devices, violating the fundamental principle of the Sacred Law and the obligations that God imposed on those who would uphold it, including the duty to maintain the religion, protect its sanctity, and combat those who go against it.

      10 The first of the Umayyads who championed this approach and rose up to preach it, after the people had denounced ʿUthmān for his heretical innovations, was Muʿāwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān.²² He stood up to preach when he was first sworn in as Caliph. He thanked God and praised Him, extolled the Prophet and His family with the dignities that God had bestowed on them, and praised Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and ʿUthmān. Then he said: “Hear me! I have assumed this position after them, following the dissension which you have seen. I have leaned toward the world and it has leaned toward me, putting me in possession of itself, and I have knelt upon it with my full weight like a camel stallion kneeling down. I am her son, and she is my mother. You will find me better than those who come after me, just as I am worse than those who have gone before me. I will show clemency for your ignorance, forgive you for your slips, and leave you to choose matters of your faith as you please. May God have mercy on the man for whom I alone am sufficient and who is sufficient for me. If he asks me for some matter directly and without subterfuge, then I will help him to get it and treat him justly.” Then he complained of a pain in his leg, and asked them for permission to sit, so they granted him permission. He sat and preached to them, and he was the first to innovate giving a sermon while sitting. As he testifed against himself, he was among the worst of people, and, as he also mentioned, those of the Umayyads who came after him were yet worse than he.

      11 Then rule passed to the Abbasid caliphs, who all followed the path of the Umayyad dynasty before them, leaving the people to dispute over matters of the religion during their era and focusing their attention on mundane matters. The first and best among them²³ was addressed concerning this, and he replied as his advisors suggested: “Let the people alone to adopt whatever they will concerning their religion, and they will let you alone to pursue worldly wealth and power.” These usurpers, though God had imposed on all those who occupied their position the duty to uphold the religion, became engrossed with the pursuit of wealth and power and left matters of religion to those who pledged allegiance to them, accepted their rule, became their devoted supporters, and called themselves their scholars and jurists. These scholars and jurists vied with one another over rank, increased in number, and claimed authority over the common people. Since they were incapable of proper knowledge of the Book and the Practice, they disagreed and derived legal rulings for the Muslim nation on their own. For they were loath