The most difficult period for Shi’ism was the twenty-year rule of Mu’awiyah, during which the Shias had no protection and most of them were considered marked characters, under suspicion and hunted down by the state.
Two of the leaders of Shi’ism who lived at this time, Imams Hasan and Imam Husain (a.s), did not possess any means whatsoever to change the negative and oppressive circumstances in which they lived.
Imam Husayn (a.s), the third Imam of Shi’ism, had no possibility of freeing the Shias from persecution in the ten years he was Imam during Mu’awiyah’s Caliphate, and when he rebelled during the Caliphate of Yazid, he was massacred along with all his aides and children.
Certain people in the Sunni world explain as pardonable the arbitrary, unjust and irresponsible actions carried out at this time by Mu’awiyah and his aides and lieutenants, some of whom were like Mu’awiyah himself, among the Companions.
This group reasons that according to certain hadiths of the Holy Prophet, all the Companions could practice ijtihad, that they were excused by God for the sins they committed, and that God was satisfied with them and forgave them whatever wrong they might have performed.
The Shias, however, do not accept this argument for two reasons:
- It is not conceivable that a leader of human society like The Holy Prophet (s.a.w.a) should rise in order to revivify truth, justice and freedom and to persuade a group of people to accept his beliefs – a group all of whose members had sacrificed their very existence in order to accomplish this sacred end – and then as soon as this end is accomplished give his aides and companions complete freedom to do with these sacred laws as they will.
It is not possible to believe that the Holy Prophet (s.a.w.a) would have forgiven the Companions for whatever wrong action they might have performed. Such indifference to the type of action performed by them would have only destroyed the structure that the Holy Prophet (s.a.w.a) had built with the same means that he had used to construct it.
- Those sayings which depict the Companions as inviolable and pardoned in advance for every act they might perform, even one unlawful or inadmissible, are most likely apocryphal; the authenticity of many of them has not been fully established by traditional methods.
Moreover, it is known historically that the Companions did not deal with one another as if they were inviolable and pardoned for all their sins and wrongdoings. Therefore, even judging by the way the Companions acted and dealt with each other, it can be concluded that such sayings cannot be literally true in the way some have understood them.
If they do contain an aspect of the truth, it is in indicating the legal inviolability of the Companions and the sanctification which they enjoyed generally as a group because of their proximity to the Holy Prophet (s.a.w.a).
The expression of God’s satisfaction with the Companions in the Holy Qur’an, because of the services they had rendered in obeying His Command, refers to their past actions, and to God’s satisfaction with them in the past, not to whatever action each one of them might perform in the future.
The Establishment of Umayyad Rule
In the year 60/680, Mu’awiyah died and his son Yazid became Caliph, as the result of the allegiance that his father had obtained for him from the powerful political and military leaders of the community.
From the testimony of historical documents, it can be seen clearly that Yazid had no religious character at all and that even during the lifetime of his father, he was oblivious to the principles and regulations of Islam.
At that time, his only interest was debauchery and frivolity. During his three years of Caliphate, he was the cause of calamities that had no precedent in the history of Islam, despite all the strife that had occurred before him.
During the first year of Yazid’s rule, Imam Husain (a.s), the grandson of the Holy Prophet, was massacred in the most atrocious manner along with his children, relatives, and friends.
Yazid even had some of the women and children of the Household of The Holy Prophet (s.a.w.a) killed and their heads displayed in different cities.
During the second year of his rule, he ordered a general massacre of Medina and for three days gave his soldiers freedom to kill, loot, and take the women of the city. During the third year, he had the sacred Ka’bah destroyed and burned.
Following Yazid, the family of Marwan gained possession of the Caliphate, according to details that are recorded in the history books. The rule of this eleven-member group, which lasted for nearly seventy years, was successful politically but from the point of view of purely religious values, it fell short of Islamic ideals and practices.
Islamic society was dominated by the Arab element alone and non-Arabs were subordinated to the Arabs. In fact, a strong Arab empire was created which gave itself the name of an Islamic caliphate.
During this period some of the Caliphs were indifferent to religious sentiments to the extent that one of them – who was the “vicegerent of the Holy Prophet” and was regarded as the protector of religion – decided without showing any respect for Islamic practices and the feelings of Muslims to construct a room above the Ka’bah so that he could have a place to enjoy and amuse himself during the annual pilgrimage.
It is even recounted of one of these Caliphs that he made the Holy Qur’an a target for his arrow and in a poem composed to the Quran said:
“On the Day of Judgment when you appear before God tell Him ‘the caliph tore me.”
Naturally, the Shias, whose basic differences with the Sunnis were in the two questions of the Islamic Caliphate and religious authority, were passing through bitter and difficult days in this dark period.
Yet, in spite of the unjust and irresponsible ways of the governments of the time, the asceticism and purity of the leaders of the Household of The Holy Prophet (s.a.w.a) made the Shias each day ever more determined to hold on to their beliefs.
Of particular importance was the tragic death of Imam Husain (a.s), the third Imam, which played a major role in the spread of Shi’ism, especially in regions away from the centre of the Caliphate, such as Iraq, Yemen, and Persia.
This can be seen through the fact that during the period of the fifth Imam, before the end of the first Islamic century, and less than forty years after the death of Imam Husain (a.s), the Shias took advantage of the internal differences and weaknesses in the Umayyad government and began to organize themselves, flocking to the side of the fifth Imam. People came from all Islamic countries like a flood to his door to collect hadith and to learn the Islamic sciences.
The first century had not yet ended when a few of the leaders who were influential in the government established the city of Qum in Persia and made it a Shia settlement.
But even then the Shi’ah continued to live for the most part in hiding and followed their religious life secretly without external manifestations.
Several times the descendants of The Holy Prophet (s.a.w.a) (who are called in Persian Sadat-i ‘Alawi) rebelled against the injustice of the government, but each time they were defeated and usually lost their lives.
The severe and unscrupulous government of the time did not overlook any means of crushing them. The body of Zayd, the leader of Zayd Shi’ism, was dug out of the grave and hanged; then after remaining on the gallows for three years it was brought down and burned, its ashes being thrown to the wind.
The Shias believe that the fourth and fifth Imams were poisoned by the Umayyads as the second and third Imams had been killed by them before.
The calamities brought about by the Umayyads were so open and unveiled that the majority of the Sunnis, although they believed generally that it was their duty to obey the Caliphs, felt the pangs of their religious conscience and were forced to divide the Caliphs into two groups.
They came to distinguish between the “rightly guided Caliphs” (khulafa rashidun) who are the first four caliphs after the death of the Holy Prophet (Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Imam Ali, and the others who began with Mu’awiyah and who did not possess by any means the religious virtues of the rightly guided Caliphs.
The Umayyads caused so much public hatred as a result of their injustice and heedlessness during their rule that after the definitive defeat and death of the last Umayyad Caliph, his two sons and a number of their families encountered great difficulties in escaping from the capital.
No matter where they turned no one would give them shelter. Finally, after much wandering of the deserts of Nubia, Abyssinia, and Bajawah (between Nubia and Abyssinia) during which many of them died from hunger and thirst, they came to Bab al-Mandab of Yemen.
There they acquired travel expenses from the people through begging and set out for Mecca dressed as porters. In Mecca, they finally succeeded in disappearing among the mass of the people.
To be continued!
