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Who Wrote the History of Islam and How?
HISTORY, IT HAS BEEN SAID, IS THE PROPAGANDA OF THEVICTORIOUS PARTY. What this means is that in any conflict, the victor
can manipulate history just as it pleases him, and there is nothing that the vanquished
can do about it. The victorious party can cook up a story and broadcast it as the absolute
truth without any fear of being challenged by anyone. It has not only the power to cook up
its own story; it also has the power to spike the story of an opposing party. M. Shibli, the dean of India's Sunni historians of
Islam, writes in his famous biography of Prophet Muhammad, Sira-tun-Nabi, volume I, 4th
printing, published by the Maarif Printing Press, Azamgarh, U.P., India, in 1976: "Among all those extraneous forces which affect
and influence the writing of history, none is more powerful than the government. But it
will always be a source of pride for the Muslims that their pen was never subdued by the
sword. Work on the compilation and collation of Hadith was begun in the times of the Banu
Umayya. For full 90 years, from Sind in India (Indo-Pakistan) to Asia Minor and Andalusia
in Spain, Ali and the children of Fatima were cursed from every pulpit in every mosque
after every Friday sermon. Thousands and thousands of hadith (traditions; statements of
the Prophet) glorifying Muawiya, were manufactured, and were put into circulation. In the
times of the Abbasis, hadith were invented foretelling the birth and the excellence of
each (Abbasi) khalifa by name. But what was the result of all this stupendous effort? The
traditionalists (the collectors of the statements of the Prophet) declared publicly at the
same time (during the caliphates of the Umayyads and the Abbasis) that all these hadith
were spurious, and they rejected them. Today, we are proud to say that the science of
hadith is free from all that filth and garbage." Almost but not quite! In the case of innumerable hadith, the attempt to
excise a false report from hadith literature, or to correct it, never caught up with the
original untruths. Even after expurgation, if there was one, that part
of the hadith literature which relates to the personal life of Muhammad, the blessed
Prophet of Islam, is full of the quaint, the curious, the fanciful and the false. There
are many hadith which make him appear as lustful and licentious; vindictive and cruel;
opportunistic and unprincipled; and treacherous and unethical. Then there are some other
traditions which can only be called smutty. But the evidence of history runs counter to such
characterization of Muhammad. He could have been all these things but he was not. It is
important, therefore, for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, to separate bunk and junk from
fact and truth in studying the history of Islam. How did such "traditions" which defy
commonsense and logic, insinuate their way into the hadith literature, and how were the
deeds and statements which can only be called shocking, attributed to the man whose real
life was the epitome of all purity, truthfulness, sincerity and simplicity? Shibli has made a rather perfunctory attempt to
answer this question in the passage quoted above. He says that the most powerful
extraneous "agent" influencing the writing of history in the times of the
Umayyads and the Abbasis (661-1258) was the government. The government in those days had
the power to get history written to its own "specifications." Both dynasties
felt they were free to distort history or to suppress history, and whenever they believed
it was in their interest to do so – to invent ‘history.' Whereas many hadith
were invented for political reasons, there were also those hadith which were invented for
sensual reasons. The sybarites of the courts of Damascus and Baghdad sought
"sanction" for their own pleasures in these hadith. A hadith means a statement. If a man saw the Prophet
doing something or he heard him saying something, and then he reported it to others, it
would be called a hadith or a tradition. The companions considered it their duty to
preserve all the traditions of the Prophet for the benefit of the Muslim umma for all
time. A hadith could also be a comment of the Prophet on
some person. If he paid a compliment to any of his companions, or if he criticized
someone, his remarks gained wide publicity among the Muslims. During the khilafat of
Muawiya, many of these hadith were in circulation. He was quick to grasp their importance,
and he decided to make them a political weapon in his campaign against Ali ibn Abi Talib
and the Banu Hashim. Muawiya who was the founder of the Umayyad dynasty,
won for himself another "distinction." He founded the "cottage
industry" for the production of hadith. His successors, and after them, the Abbasi
khalifas, patronized the "industry" which for a long time was busy churning out
hadith. Though Shibli claims that hadith was expurgated by highly critical, perceptive and
analytic censors, there was much that escaped detection by them, and is accepted today as
genuine by a vast majority of Muslims. Muawiya appointed a team of men to make up
statements favorable to himself and to the other enemies of Ali, and to attribute them to
the Apostle of God as his own hadith. At the same time, he suppressed or tried to suppress
the genuine hadith which were complimentary to Ali, and ordered his team to manufacture
hadith derogatory to him. The members of this team concocted hadith of both varieties, and
he put them into circulation. After the death of Muawiya, this campaign was
carried on by his successors. Their "ghost-writers," "public relations
personnel," and "image-makers" skillfully blended fake hadith with genuine
hadith, and synthetic history with factual history, hoping that the "mix" would
"jell," as part of the sacred lore of the Muslims. Muawiya had one more reason for going into the
business of "hadith-production." He knew that the generations of the future
would judge every Muslim ruler against the ideal ruler – Muhammad. He knew too that
if they did, they would find him poles apart from Muhammad. He was also aware that no
matter what he did, he could never rise as high as Muhammad; he knew in fact that he could
not reach the heights attained even by the slaves of Muhammad. But it occurred to him that
though it was not possible for him to reach the sublime plane on which Muhammad stood, it
was possible for him to bring him (Muhammad) down to the plane on which he (Muawiya) stood
by the simple process of tarnishing his (Muhammad's) reputation, so that he too would look
like other mortals. Muawiya hoped that the indictment of the historians
against him would be less severe if it was shown to them that even the most perfect man
– Muhammad, God's Own Messenger – was not altogether free from blemishes of
character. Clearly, much of the content of hadith literature was a conspiracy for the
character assassination of Muhammad, the Messenger of God. Muawiya and the other entrepreneurs of his
"cottage industry" were "successful" in their attempt at the character
assassination of Muhammad. They interspersed hadith literature with countless stories,
anecdotes and "incidents" the intent of all of which was to make Muhammad look,
in the eyes of posterity, less than prophetic. Following is a sample of one of the
"printable" traditions which has come down to us. It is quoted by Hakim Muhammad
Saeed in an article published by the Hamdard Academy, Karachi, Pakistan, in 1972, in a
book called Tazkar-i-Muhammad: "Shortly after their marriage, Muhammad, the
Apostle of God, suggested to his new bride, Ayesha, that both of them run in a race.
Ayesha was thin and lean, and she easily outran her husband. Some years later, the Apostle
challenged Ayesha to run against him once again. (She had put on weight during the years
since the first race). Both of them ran, and this time the Apostle outran her. His
comment: ‘Last time you were the winner, O Humayra (Ayesha's nickname) but this time
I have won, and now the score between us is even.'" (Perhaps the defeat in the first
race had rankled in the mind of the Apostle all these years.) Muhammad, the Apostle of God, was 54 years old when
he ran in a race against a girl of 9 or 10, and he lost; and he was 60 years old when he
ran against her a second time, and won! Muslims are very jealous of the dignity of their
Prophet. Is this "tradition" which most of them believe to be true, a portrait
of that dignity? It appears that the "foremen" and the
"production managers" whom Muawiya had appointed in his "hadith
factories," had only one love, and that was quantity. They had geared the
"industry" only to mass produce "traditions." It is obvious that they
had no interest in the "quality control" of their products. They planted lies in
their books, and each lie left in its wake, as it invariably does, "a drop of
poison," that polluted the minds of generations of Muslims. Some of their products
are extremely crude. They are, in fact, unprintable. The critics and the enemies of the
Prophet, inevitably, have shown great eagerness in accepting them as authentic, and they
have quoted them in their books. These critics and enemies of the Prophet have not,
however, taken into account those facts the authenticity of which is beyond any question.
For example, they overlooked the fact that in Makkah, the Quraysh had offered to him the
most beautiful woman or women as a quid pro quo if he would give up preaching Islam. They
also forgot the fact that Muhammad was the sovereign of Medina, and that he could have
married any girl. The Arab chiefs would have been proud to give him their daughters. The Prophet married many women in Medina but most of
them were widows, and they were not very young either. With the exception of Khadija, all
the other women entered his household when he was in his mid-fifties or late fifties. They
entered his life at a time when the spring and the bounce and the sheen and the vigor of
his youth had long since departed, and their place was taken by the ever-growing burdens
of an ever-growing State, and other problems of superlative complexity and magnitude,
leaving him little time or inclination for such dalliance as is reported in many of the
"traditions." For the compilation of hadith, Muawiya had given the
following orders: 1. All the traditions of the Prophet in praise of
Ali or upholding his superiority in any way, should be suppressed. 2. Any man narrating the virtues of Ali or quoting
the hadith of the Prophet in this regard, would do so at his own risk. His subsidies and
stipends would be withheld from him. His house and other property would be confiscated.
His testimony as a witness would not be accepted in the courts, and he would be ostracized
by other Muslims. 3. On the other hand, every conceivable virtue
should be attributed to Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and of course, to Muawiya himself. People
should be encouraged to make up "hadith" of the Prophet in praise of these four
men and their friends. Whoever invents such hadith, would become a favorite at the royal
court, and would receive rich rewards in rank or cash or estates etc. Concurrently with the founding of his "cottage
industry" for manufacturing "hadith" of the Prophet, Muawiya also set up a
"brain laundry" for the Muslims. He instituted the practice of anathematizing
the memory of Ali and his children from the pulpit in every mosque in his empire so that
the Muslim children were born, they grew up, and they died hearing curses upon Ali, and
not knowing who he was. Whole generations lived and died in ignorance. Falsehoods were put
into circulation by the government on a scale so vast that they became the staple of their
lives. Muawiya and his successors kept their "brain laundries" just as busy as
their "cottage industry." Muawiya mobilized every means for waging propaganda
war against Ali and the Banu Hashim. The momentum of the blitz he launched against them,
has lasted down to our own times. He waged his war from the mosques. The prayer-leaders in
them were paid to put weird and fantastic interpretations upon the verses of Qur'an in an
attempt to show Ali at a disadvantage. They tried to convince the rank-and-file Muslims
that it would be in their interest "in both worlds" if they supported Muawiya
against Ali and the Banu Hashim. Michael C. Hudson Incumbents have the advantage of the media and
educational arms of the state, and they control through subsidies the religious
establishment itself. (Islam and Development, p. 16, 1980) It must now be clear to the reader that the history
of Islam was written under the direction of the party which held all the instruments of
power in its hands. It must also be obvious to him that much of the historical material
was "laundered" at the "brain laundries" established by Muawiya before
it got into his hands. Muawiya was a most consummate master of the art of propaganda. Sir John Glubb The full effects of propaganda have not yet become
plain, yet it is already obvious that whole nations can be indoctrinated with wrong
opinions and evil moral standards. Few, if any, minds are strong enough to resist the
ideas constantly projected at them. (The Course of Empire - The Arabs and Their
Successors, 1965) If any hadith of the Prophet of Islam was
complimentary to Ali, its narration was placed under proscription by Muawiya. This
proscription was not lifted when he died in 680. It was not lifted even when his dynasty,
the Umayyads, perished in 750, and it was not lifted even through the long centuries of
the caliphate of the Abbasis. The Abbasis exterminated the Umayyads but they
shared with them their animosity to Ali and to the children of Muhammad. In this matter,
the aims and interests of the governments of Saqifa, the Umayyads, and the Abbasis
converged; there was ideological compatibility among them all. The Umayyads and the Abbasis did their utmost to
suppress the facts of history. Many of their khalifas had forbidden their subjects to say
or to write anything about Ali except falsehoods. Truth was under a siege and falsehood
was rampant in their dominions. And yet, Truth asserted itself. Truth has (now) arrived, and falsehood
perished: For falsehood is (by its nature) bound to perish. (Qur'an. Chapter 17;
verse 81) True statements were volunteered by sources which,
in most cases, were inimical to Ali. Even his most rabid enemies like the Umayyads and the
Kharjis, conceded the sublimity of his character. As noted before, M. Shibli, the Indian
historian, pointed out that the Shia Muslims did not write any history. Whatever history
we have, has, therefore, come down to us from the non-Shia or the anti-Shia sources. It
has come down to us from the archives of the governments of Saqifa, the Umayyads and the
Abbasis. The story of the glorious deeds of Ali ibn Abi Talib, like the radiance of Truth
itself, has filtered out of those archives. But the modern historians are not threatened by any
government for writing factual history nor are they being seduced by promises of rich
rewards for writing false history. They should, therefore, curb the temptation to stifle
or to distort truth. If they yield even now to this temptation, as many of their
forerunners did in the past, then it can mean only that they give their loyalty, not to
principles but to persons; not to truth but to the organizations and the governments; and
not to their integrity but to their emotional commitments. Loyalty is a noble quality as long as it is not
blind, and does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and to decency. If the loyalty of the modern historians is not
blind, and if it does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and to decency, then they
should scrape away the excrescences and barnacles of history, and they should also resist
the temptation to invoke the "Meyers' Law" in their works. The "Meyers'
Law" stipulates that: "If the facts do not fit the theory, discard
the facts." A historian will inevitably run into truths which
may be unpleasant to him but he must not suppress them. He must state all the facts as he
uncovers them if he wishes to vindicate truth. But the historian, if he is a Muslim, has no choice
in this matter. He is not free to write "inspired" or "synthetic"
history. All he can do, if he is writing history, is to cling tenaciously to truth. If he
writes false "history" for any reason, he will only merit the displeasure of
God. Here, as elsewhere, al-Qur'an al-Majid, the Book of God, is explicit, emphatic, and
unequivocal in its judgment which reads as follows: And cover not truth with falsehood, nor conceal the
truth when ye know (what it is). (Qur'an. Chapter 2; verse 42) Those who conceal the clear (signs) We have sent
down, and the guidance, after We have made it clear for the people in the Book
– on them shall be God's curse, and the curse of those entitled to curse. (Qur'an.
Chapter 2; verse 159) If the Muslim historians make these two verses of
Qur'an their "guiding stars," they will be protected from error, and they will
also be protected from becoming either the agents or the victims of propaganda,
consciously or unconsciously. In trying to smirch the name of Ali ibn Abi Talib;
in trying to play down his services to Islam; and in desperately trying to conceal his
glorious deeds, behind a screen of propaganda, from the eyes of posterity, his enemies
were casting dust into the bright face of the sun. They raised clouds of dust in the form
of most virulent and sustained propaganda against him, and yet, the sun only shone
brighter and brighter. And God blots out vanity, and proves the truth by
His words. (Qur'an. Chapter 42; verse 24) God blessed Ali's name to all eternity. His name is
the symbol of love of God, and the symbol of Justice and Truth. His name will endure as
long as Love of God, and Justice and Truth, will endure in this world.
