Mu’awiya as a Model of Islamic Governance

Bi ismillahi rahmani raheem


do u like mawiyah that much that u can't bear to read about his disgracefulness?


You have an over simplistic view of the subject, it is not a matter of like or dislike if you would uphold a lie simply becouse you like it or hide a truth becouse you dislike it then this is despicable behavior. To simplify the subject to such a degree is an indication of your train of thought, i dont think like you so please dont use your reasoning to explain mine you will fall short.

was the prophet sunni or shia?

He was sunni by the definition of the word and according to his teachings.

But answering the question according to how you intended it, As Islam stands some 1400 years after the time of the prophet [sallah llahu alaihi wa sallam] it is fard for you to practice what the He taught and what the Quran says, according to the Quran itself you are obliged, duty bound and will be held accountable if you do not follow expert opinion regarding the legal injuctions of the Quran unless you are qualafied to deduce your own legal rullings from the Quran and sunnah.

Why should we follow a madhhab [shia or sunni] instead of our own understanding of the religion?

After understanding what a madhhab actually is rather than some vague understanding based upon gossip the answer to this has to come from two sources The revealed guidance, whether the sunnah and/or the quran and our intalect, this is because the Quran and sunnah guides and validates our reasoning, while the intalect is needed to apply general principles found in the Quran to every day life.

"Ask those who recall if you know not" (Qur�an 16:43),

This verse indicates that Allah has people on earth who he has guided to know his religion, it also instructs us to ask them about the matter we don�t know thus giving people authority to say what is right and what is wrong after the prophets time. We also know from this verse ""and in Surat al-Nisa, " If they had referred it to the Messenger and to those of authority among them, then those of them whose task it is to find it out would have known the matter " (Qur'an 4:83), in which the phrase those of them whose task it is to find it out, expresses the words "alladhina yastanbitunahu minhum", referring to those possessing the capacity to draw inferences directly from the evidence, which is called in Arabic istinbat.

These and other verses and hadiths oblige the believer who is not at the level of istinbat or directly deriving rulings from the Qur'an and hadith to ask and follow someone in such rulings who is at this level. It is not difficult to see why Allah has obliged us to ask experts, for if each of us were personally responsible for evaluating all the primary texts relating to each question, a lifetime of study would hardly be enough for it, and one would either have to give up earning a living or give up ones din.""

http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/nuh/madhhab.htm

Also regarding the above verse ""Whoever makes ijtihad without this qualification is a criminal. The proof of this is the hadith that the Companion Jabir ibn �Abdullah said:

We went on a journey, and a stone struck one of us and opened a gash in his head. When he later had a wet-dream in his sleep, he then asked his companions, "Do you find any dispensation for me to perform dry ablution (tayammum)?" [Meaning instead of a full purificatory bath (ghusl).] They told him, "We don�t find any dispensation for you if you can use water."

So he performed the purificatory bath and his wound opened and he died. When we came to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), he was told of this and he said: "They have killed him, may Allah kill them. Why did they not ask?�for they didn�t know. The only cure for someone who does not know what to say is to ask" (Abu Dawud, 1.93).

This hadith, which was related by Abu Dawud, is well authenticated (hasan), and every Muslim who has any taqwa should reflect on it carefully, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) indicated in it�in the strongest language possible�that to judge on a rule of Islam on the basis of insufficient knowledge is a crime. And like it is the well authenticated hadith "Whoever is given a legal opinion (fatwa) without knowledge, his sin is but upon the person who gave him the opinion" (Abu Dawud, 3.321).

http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/nuh/madhhabstlk.htm

"Not all of the believers should go to fight. Of every section of them, why does not one part alone go forth, that the rest may gain understanding of the religion, and to admonish their people when they return, that perhaps they may take warning" (Qur�an 9:122)

""where the expression li yatafaqqahu fi al-din, "to gain understanding of the religion," is derived from precisely the same root (f-q-h) as the word fiqh or "jurisprudence," and is what Western students of Arabic would call a "fifth-form verb" (tafa��ala), which indicates that the meaning contained in the root, understanding, is accomplished through careful, sustained effort.""

The verse indicates that a group of people in the ummah should
dedicate there lives to learning the religion and admonishing others which gives authority for the systematic scholarship we have and the ijazah system we currently implement.

A person can rationally conclude from this that what muslims have developed and refined in the madhhabs has authority in islam and is an indication of divine guidance for this ummah, so one must decide which legal scholars are on the truth, to deny that any exist would be to claim Allah did not preserve his religion or guide his people as he stated in the Quran.

how many sects of muslims are there?

That depends on if you have invented a new meaning for the word or are following the islamic defanition. A religion can not be entirely comprised of sects, you have the orthodox understanding [sunni] and then you have the new [shia,mutazilli etc]. According to rasul allah's definition we will be split into 73 groups and only one will be on the right path.

Some simple question sister, are sufi's, wahhabi's, Habashis, deobandi's, berweli's a sect the same way shia are a sect in islam?

Do you consider ahmadi's to be an islamic sect what about nusairi's in syria?

are you a scholar?

No, i try as best i can to give the scholars opinion regarding matters rather than my own which is why i may seem stern in my words becouse it's not certainty in my research that i am portraying.

Bi ismillahi rahmani raheem

Take your own advice and reply in a cordial manner rather than an antagonistic one.

since the first question was over-simplistic -i'll rephrase: do you like muawiyah?

Im indifferent, there are ahadith highlighting his bad qualities and there are others highlighting his good only shia like to make a point and judge in absolutes terms.

2- i think u are confusing the word sunni and the term sunni. in arabic sunni means traditional - of the sunnah (the way of the prophet). orthodox and traditional are not synonymous.

A term is a word and we are called sunni's specifically becouse of the meaning of that word i.e  those who follow the sunnah of the prophet.

Websters dictionary,

Orthodox:
They are inseparable in this context, unless you learn the meaning of words from journalists who cant write and routinely misuse and abuse the English language.

also- what the prophet said was there is no god but allah and i am the last messenger.

Whats your point Sunni Islam is not a sect it is traditional islam, it is idiotic to label 90% of all muslims on earth a sect it is the main body of the religion not a small group in it. shia literaly means partisan and by that definition it is a group and or sect. Those who didnt side with them remained with the main body of muslims who followed the sunnah hence the term sunni.

before the death of the prophet there were no sects or disputes.

How does that invalidate anything, you are obliged to follow the Quran and sunnah of the prophet do you derive legal rulings from the quran and sunnah yourself. How do you know what is or isnt part of Islam, by some simplistic cursory analysis of some verses and ahadith or by a comprehensive studies into each and every topic mentioned in the quran and sunnah.

i wont get into some of the debateable hadith which u quoted-

Pleas do, unless you have hard evidence regarding the authenticity of the hadith you have committed a serious sin by labeling them false.

lets focus on something even more simple and clear. the quran. it says obey allah,obey the messenger and those of you who have authority/ who are vested with knowledge. again the interpretation can also be debated. if someone is like u - a hardcore sunni muslim you would interpret the last part of the ayat as being for example umar or maybe abu hurraira and if u are shia then u would interpret it as being ali.

You havnt shown a different interpretation than the one i gave which is simply that allah has placed some people in authority and people are obliged to follow them, if you are confused about who these people are in our lifetime this does not negate the fact that they exist.

If you havdnt noticed Saydinah Umar, Abu hurayrah and Ali are all dead so no i am not reffering to them but people alive today, The Quran is for all time and so is Allahs commands if there isnt any person whom allah has guided then we couldnt follow this command can we. You may have also missed the fact that Sunni muslims follow Sayidinah Ali as much as Shia do, if you learnt about sunni islam from shia sources i can understand your confusion.

You need to take off your shia sunni glasses and look at what im saying without such preconceptions as you have misunderstood what i was saying.

In light of what i said ""Why should we follow a madhhab [shia or sunni] instead of our own understanding of the religion?"" it should have been clear that i wasnt passing judgment on who was right sunni's or shia but indicating the basic fact applicable to both sunni's and shia and agreed upon by both sunni and shia scholars that a person has to follow the legal rulings of an expert rather than try to come up with there own.

There is no disagreement on this basic point by any ulumah in any group you could name they all agree with this, despite our differences we agree with our shia brothers on many fundamental things they simply say these people can only come from ahl al bayt we say not necessarily, neither disagree on the fact that these people exist.

ur right everyone else is wrong...adn going to hell.

I never said that.

3-in ur bias reply to how many sects there are u did not answer the question.

Actually i did 73, and that is the only number that counts.

u just again divided everything into sunni and non sunni. fyi shia is not a new sect. 73 groups? that is unclear. firstly where is that hadith and is it reliable. granted it is - is this ur own scholarly interpretation as to what "group" refers to?

i said according to what rasul allah's definition of a group is we will divide into 73 sects and only one will be on the right path, i didnt pass judgment on who this was or how it was defined.

My Questions where to ascertain your understanding of what a sect is and to see if you are confusing labels, since you wont answer the question ill elaborate.

Wahhabi's and Habashi's are sects within sunni islam, there a sect based upon the diferant fiqh issues they have with the majority of muslims who adhere to the madhhabs.

Sufi's are not a sect there a people who practice tassawuf the science of ihsan [different from the science of fiqh], they can be both sunni or shia and they can adhere to differant schools of fiqh, so they can be a sunni, sufi and hanafi all at the same time. Though some Sufi groups have gone to far in there practice and can be called a sect.

Ahmadi's are a sect which came from Islam and are no longer considered muslims.

Most uneducated muslims who have a label fobia simply say there are to many groups and sects, you have sunni, shia, wahhabi, sufi, habashi, ahmadi thinking these are all groups by the same criteria and just reject everything without real knowledge of what is going on.

and whether or not that statement refered to religious sects? and do u think that unity amongst muslims is better or division amongst various sects...and we can argue for an eternity about how many there are?

Are muslims separate from sunnis and shia now to differentiate the way you have?

4-when u are not a scholar then like the ayat i quoted u should follow someone who is - a scholar, one vested with knoledge, a religious authority. and what scholar do u follow?

Why dont you follow your own advice and follow a scholar, first you have to decide if it is going to be a sunni scholar or a shia scholar you have no other alternative. you missed my Double quotes "" everything in these is a quote of a Ulama not my own words, i even gave you the links to the articles i took them from.

So no i dont understand you advice as i clearly am following the interpretation of a scholar.

and seriously..lol..if u have no certainty in your research why should anyone else...

I didnt say that at all, i said i had certainty in the Imams and that i wasnt presenting my own personnel views on the matter.


Edited by rami