The Generation Banu Umayya Raised Loved the Qur'an and Was Also Its Greatest Enemy

Every policy implemented by those in power leaves important effects in society. In some cases, rulers pay attention to these effects, and at times these effects are created unintentionally within society.

Therefore, 'people follow the religion of their kings'; the policies rulers implement have a very deep effect on the culture and life of the people, to the point that the people's religiosity is described as following the religiosity of their rulers. This statement is a truth observable throughout human history.

Through different policies, one can increase or decrease the people's religion, their attachment or lack of attachment to religion and religious practice, or even eliminate a religion altogether. Therefore, examining the results of policies implemented in human societies is highly necessary, because many beliefs have become widespread among societies as a result of policies enforced by past rulers.

On the other hand, the conduct of the infallible Imams, peace be upon them, must be considered in view of the cultural and doctrinal conditions of the people of their time. Leaving aside the command and covenant the Imams had from God, one can compare and analyze the difference between the conduct of the Imams of guidance, peace be upon them, and the policies of the oppressors of their time.

The effects of Mu'awiya's policies, which were implemented in his time and continued after him by the Umayyads and the rulers who came after him, still exist in the Muslim world today. One of Mu'awiya's most important crimes was his order to fabricate hadiths. This policy was implemented very widely in his time, and after him this policy did not stop. Although many of Mu'awiya's fabrications consisted of inventing false virtues for himself, the fabrication of hadith did not end there.

Mu'awiya committed this scholarly crime deliberately and with an eye toward future Muslim generations. Examining some of the hadiths fabricated by worldly people at his command makes this matter very clear. The effect that this scholarly crime left on scholarly circles years later, an effect that still continues, shows both the directed nature of Mu'awiya's policy and his success in this vile policy.

It is narrated that Mu'awiya wanted to give Samura ibn Jundab one hundred thousand dirhams so that he would say that the verse, 'And among the people is he whose speech pleases you in the life of this world, and he calls God to witness what is in his heart, yet he is the most stubborn of opponents,' was revealed about Ali, peace be upon him, and that the verse, 'And among the people is he who sells his soul seeking the pleasure of God...' was revealed about Ibn Muljam. Samura did not accept the offer. Mu'awiya doubled the amount to two hundred thousand, but Samura still refused. He then added another hundred thousand and offered three hundred thousand dirhams. But Samura persisted and did not accept, until finally they agreed on four hundred thousand dirhams, and Samura composed and narrated a statement as Mu'awiya wanted. (1)

By fabricating such hadiths, Mu'awiya tried to direct the curses and verses of disavowal in the Qur'an toward Ali, peace be upon him. The importance of this matter becomes clear when we pay attention to the fact that the Qur'an's method in presenting teachings and different matters is generally concise, and except in a few cases it does not point to its own instances by name. Therefore, fabricating such hadiths amounts to manufacturing instances for the general divine verses.

When the instances of the verses are forgotten, or when the instances of the verses are changed and altered, even if the outward wording of the verse remains protected from distortion, the Qur'an becomes a weapon against the truth. Therefore, one can boldly say that through such policies Mu'awiya succeeded in using the Qur'an against the Qur'an itself and against the friends of the Qur'an.

The Qur'an identifies the trial that will afflict this community. In the language of the Qur'an, those who fail in these trials and become captivated by them will inevitably become calf-worshippers. The trial that will afflict the community of the Messenger of God is described in the Qur'an as the accursed tree, and according to Prophetic narrations the instance of the accursed tree is Banu Umayya. But by pursuing such actions, Mu'awiya tried to mislead people in recognizing the trial about which the Qur'an had warned, and to portray as troublemakers those who are the refuge and sanctuary of the people in trials, those to whom people must turn in times of trial.

Therefore, Mu'awiya presented the Ahl al-Bayt of the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him and his family, as a source of trial in the eyes of the people. These were the very Ahl al-Bayt about whom love had been commanded, who had been purified from every impurity and defilement, whom the people had been commanded to follow, and to whom hundreds of Qur'anic verses had been interpreted in authentic Prophetic narrations. According to these narrations, hundreds of verses were revealed concerning the virtue and greatness of the Ahl al-Bayt, yet through Mu'awiya's policies their rank and station were kept away from the people's eyes, and instead of these noble ones, the base and the wretched were introduced as the Qur'an's instances. This historical report is one example of that policy.

Mu'awiya, and following him Banu Umayya, did not directly attack the person of the Prophet in order to demolish religion and destroy the Qur'an, nor did they openly and officially oppose the foundation of Islam. Rather, they attacked the red lines of the Qur'an. In reality, through these policies they redirected the arrow of the Qur'an's red line toward the Ahl al-Bayt of infallibility and purity, presented themselves in the position of the Qur'an's righteous ones, commanded enmity toward those whose love had been commanded, and commanded love toward those from whom the people were obliged to disavow.

Banu Umayya made strenuous efforts to distort the Qur'an and did not even refrain from verbal distortion and alteration of the Qur'an. For example, Amr ibn al-As said from the pulpit in Egypt: I gave two hundred thousand dirhams so that they would remove this noble verse of Surat al-Kawthar from the Qur'an, but they said it could not be done. Thus we see that with complete shamelessness he was ready to spend money from the public treasury to distort the Qur'an. (2)

Banu Umayya were able to completely distort the meaning of the Qur'an. They did this by fabricating hadiths beneath various verses or by prohibiting the narration of hadith from the Prophet. These actions caused people, in order to understand many verses, to turn to scholars approved by Banu Umayya. In both cases, the result was one and the same: using the Qur'an against the Qur'an.

As a result of these actions, Banu Umayya were able to raise a generation that was attached to and in love with the Qur'an, yet at the same time was the greatest enemy of the Qur'an. This generation was very insistent on reciting the Qur'an, but had no hesitation about killing and plundering Muslims and violating their honor. The crimes of Busr ibn Artah in the Hijaz and his massacres are examples of the murders and crimes of those trained by the Umayyads.

One of the strangest crimes of Busr ibn Artah was the beheading of young children. Mu'awiya ibn Tha'laba says: When the rule of Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan became stable and firm, he sent Busr ibn Artah toward the Hijaz to pursue and arrest the Shi'a of Ali ibn Abi Talib, peace be upon him. In those days, Ubayd Allah ibn Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib was governor of Mecca. Busr searched for him but could not find him, and he learned that he had two young sons, named Qutham and Abd al-Rahman, or Sulayman and Dawud.

He searched for the two until he found those two innocent children, took them from where they were, and brought them out. The two children had two curled locks at the front of their heads like two pearls. He ordered that they be beheaded. These two innocent children were slaughtered like birds for the crime of loving Ali. When this news reached their mother, her soul almost left her body. (3)

When the Qur'an is turned upside down among a community, these kinds of crimes committed in the name of religion become natural. But these crimes did not end with the crimes of Mu'awiya's own time. The generation Mu'awiya had raised brought about after him the greatest crimes in human history, crimes without precedent since the time of Adam. In Karbala, they martyred through prolonged killing the Prophet's grandson and the son of Fatima, peace be upon her.

Then the Umayyads created the event of Harra, violated the sanctity of the Mosque of the Messenger of God and the city of the Prophet, and for three days made the honor of the people of Medina, hundreds of whom were Companions of the Prophet, lawful for the Umayyad army of Syria. Many unmarried girls became pregnant during those three days.

When the Qur'an is used against the Qur'an, when the entire power of the Umayyad empire is spent on distorting the Qur'an, and when the person whom the Qur'an and the Prophet introduced as God's successor on earth, the person to whom people were supposed to turn after the Prophet's martyrdom to find the interpretation of the Qur'an and the interpretation of its ambiguous verses, the person whose authority the Qur'an presents in continuation of the authority of the Messenger of God and God Himself, and whose enemies are introduced in the Qur'an and Prophetic narrations as cursed and objects of wrath, is cursed and reviled from pulpits, in mosques, and in Friday prayer sermons; the very person whose love and affection God commanded in the Qur'an. His Shi'a and lovers are martyred and buried alive for the crime of loving him. Generation after generation are raised on enmity toward the Qur'an: Qur'anic enemies who love the Qur'an, Qur'anic enemies who memorize the entire Qur'an from childhood with great difficulty. These enemies of the Qur'an, who were the result of Mu'awiya's innovations and policies, continued for years afterward with the same violence and killing.

The result of Mu'awiya's innovation was the distortion of the Qur'an's meaning, and the result of the distortion of the Qur'an's meaning was the emergence of Umayyad Islam. One of its characteristics is profanity and bloodshed, and another very important characteristic is enmity toward Islam while claiming love for the Qur'an.

The unworthy offspring of Mu'awiya was Umayyad Islam. Since Mu'awiya's goal was to bury the Prophet's name, in order to succeed in burying the Prophet's name he was forced to distort the true Qur'an and try to bury the name of Ali, peace be upon him. After him, the successors of Banu Umayya continued this path.

Mutarrif ibn al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba says: My father always spoke with Mu'awiya, praised his intelligence and understanding, and expressed amazement at him. One night I found him saddened, and he even refused to eat. I asked him the reason. He said: My son, I have come from the vilest of people. I said: Who is he? He said: When I was alone with Mu'awiya, I said to him: O Commander of the Faithful, now age has overtaken you; it would be good for some goodness to appear from you. You have reached your goal, so come and look differently upon your kin, Banu Hashim, for that will remain for you.

He said: Far from it! Far from it! Abu Bakr acted justly and departed, and his name was erased. Umar also ruled for ten years, but as soon as he died his name too perished. Our brother Uthman, who had no equal in lineage and nobility, suffered whatever they wanted to do to him. But he who is from the tribe of Hashim has his name mentioned loudly five times every day: I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God. May your mother mourn you; what can I do after this except bury his name, bury his name? (4)

The followers of Umayyad Islam, who are the result of Mu'awiya's efforts, continue this policy of Mu'awiya in every age with a particular policy and in a strange form. Centuries later, one of the students of the Umayyad school, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who gave power to today's Wahhabism, issued the command to erase the Prophet's name.

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, after whom we know later Umayyad Islam as Wahhabism, followed Mu'awiya to the point that he disliked even hearing the Prophet's name and considered sending blessings upon the Prophet to be ugly. He prohibited sending blessings after the call to prayer and broadcasting them from minarets by muezzins, especially on Friday nights, and if anyone disobeyed his order he would punish the offender severely, to the point that he killed a blind muezzin for sending blessings upon the Prophet after the call to prayer.

With shamelessness, he says about this: 'Inna al-rababa fi bayt al-khati'a (al-zaniya) aqallu ithman mimman yunadi bi al-salat ala al-nabi fi al-manabir,' meaning: 'The fornication of Rababa, a woman famous for fornication whose name became proverbial for this ugly act, in the house of corruption where she commits fornication, is less sinful than someone who sends blessings upon the Prophet from pulpits and minarets.' (5)

What a calamity is Mu'awiya and the Wahhabi children of Mu'awiya. Woe to those who consider themselves monotheists while showing enmity toward the teacher of monotheism. Yes, the sin of fornication is less than sending blessings upon the Prophet, because the legal punishment of the fornicator is one hundred lashes, while the muezzin who sends blessings upon the Prophet of God, upon whom God Himself has sent blessings, must be killed.

In another act, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab burned all the books written on the virtue of sending blessings upon the Noble Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him and his family, under the pretext of defending monotheism. (6) What is interesting is that he clings to the Qur'an for the monotheism he claims, and for the monotheism he imagines he kills a blind muezzin and considers sending blessings upon the Prophet worse than fornication. Therefore, this is the very same ominous policy of Mu'awiya.

The result of Mu'awiya's ominous policy is the Qur'an against the Qur'an and the Qur'an against Muslims. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, under the pretext of a monotheism he had understood from the Qur'an, massacred many Muslims of the Hijaz. He attacked Karbala and Najaf and drenched many Shi'a in blood in these two holy cities. Today, the Umayyad followers of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab massacre Muslims wherever they can under the pretext of calling to monotheism, and they do not refrain from any kind of violence.

We regard the existence of Wahhabism today in different parts of the Muslim world, and the killing of Muslims by them under the pretext of polytheism and idol-worship, as a result of the effects of Mu'awiya's policies and innovations. Mu'awiya's policies distorted Islam to such an extent that today Wahhabism easily strikes at the root of Islam in the name of Islam. Therefore, today's Wahhabism is the result of distorted Umayyad Islam.

One of the effects of Mu'awiya's policy of reviling was the emergence of a generation unable to accept the truth, because their hearts had been filled with love and affection for falsehood, and enmity toward the truth had unconsciously become their guiding principle. 'They were made to drink the calf into their hearts because of their disbelief,' meaning: they loved the calf so much that this love led them to worship the calf. (7)

Therefore, today Wahhabism offers the greatest defense of Mu'awiya, even though he is the one who placed the greatest innovations into religion and his actions are in no way justifiable or acceptable.

1- Adwar-e Fiqh (Persian), Mahmud al-Shihabi al-Khorasani, vol. 3, pp. 208-209.
2- Ta'wil al-Ayat al-Zahira, p. 550, Surat al-Zukhruf and the verses in it.
3- Al-Amali (by al-Mufid), trans. Ustad Vali, text 348, thirty-sixth session, Saturday, 10 Ramadan 410.
4- Chikideh-ye Andisheh-ha (Persian), Dr. Muhammad al-Tijani, pp. 119-120.
5- Zayni Dahlan Makki Shafi'i, Al-Durar al-Saniyya fi al-Radd ala al-Wahhabiyya, p. 28.
6- Zayni Dahlan Makki Shafi'i, Al-Durar al-Saniyya fi al-Radd ala al-Wahhabiyya, p. 28.
7- Bihar al-Anwar, vol. 9, p. 186, chapter 1, God's argument against the followers of different religions in the Noble Qur'an, p. 2.