The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad

Religion: The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad by Barnaby Rogerson
REVIEWED BY MALISE RUTHVEN



THE HEIRS OF THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD
by Barnaby Rogerson



Apart from pockets of bigotry such as Northern Ireland, where
theological differences have crystallised into conflicting social
identities, Christians have put the wars of religion behind them,
allowing a spirit of ecumenicism to develop under more or less secular
systems of government. Islam, Christianity's younger sibling by six
centuries, may yet be forced down this path by the imperatives of
globalisation. But, for the present, brutal forces of sectarianism
remain at large. In 1998, the Taliban in Afghanistan (covertly backed
by the anti-Shia Saudi government) massacred between 2,000 and 5,000
members of the Shia Hazara community after the capture of
Mazar-e-Sharif. In Pakistan, Shia worshippers are routinely slaughtered
by Kalashnikov-toting Sunni thugs on motorbikes, while in Iraq, where
the tables have been turned after decades of anti-Shia policies under
the brutal Ba'athist regime, Arab Sunni insurgents are resisting a
government perceived as dominated by Shias and Kurds. Although Muslim
leaders, both radical and moderate, regularly denounce sectarian strife
as contrary to Islam, the default modes in Muslim societies (buttressed
by endogamous marriages and separate places of worship) tend to fall
along sectarian lines.

In this follow-up to his highly readable biography of the Prophet
Muhammad, Barnaby Rogerson offers a vital service to western readers by
exploring the origins of the Shia-Sunni schism that afflicted Islam
(almost) from the time of its origin. A natural storyteller, he
achieves his purpose not by viewing the first great schism of Islam
from the outside, but by immersing his readers in the master- narrative
of events as these came to be viewed - with the bitterness and
benefits of hindsight - by subsequent generations.

Rogerson is generally scrupulous in his treatment of the sources,
giving equal weight to both sides of the story. The Prophet Muhammad,
who united the Arabian tribes under the banner of Islam, died in 632 in
his sixties without unambiguously naming a successor. His closest
kinsman, Ali (his young first cousin and the husband of his daughter
Fatima), who, the Shia minority believe, had been designated to succeed
him, was passed over three times before becoming caliph (the
prophet's successor) in 656, by which time the leadership of the Arab
empire (vastly expanded by the conquests of Palestine, Syria, Egypt and
Persia) was in danger of fragmenting. The first three caliphs
(acknowledged by the Sunnis but rejected and, until recently, ritually
cursed by the Shia) reunited the tribes and drove forward the Arab
conquests in a series of stunning military victories over better
equipped and organised Byzantine and Persian armies.

The flaw in the triumphant progress of the true Abrahamic faith emerged
during the reign of the third caliph, Uthman, a pious believer and
early convert to Islam, but also a member by birth of the old Meccan
aristocracy who had fought against Muhammad and his message. Despite
being personally virtuous, Uthman was unable to resist the demands of
his newly converted clansmen, to whom he gave preferential treatment in
the spoils and privileges of government. Some of the stresses that gave
rise to Islam's first schism can also be traced to tensions within
Muhammad's extended household - between Ali and Muhammad's wife
Aisha, the daughter of Abu Bakr, the first caliph (a contemporary of
Muhammad, and the only "rightly guided" caliph to have died a
natural death). By the time Ali succeeded Uthman (after the latter's
assassination by mutinous troops) as the fourth and last of the
"rightly guided" caliphs, the stage had been set for establishment
of the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus under Uthman's kinsman, the
brilliant and wily Muawiya.

Ali's rule was never uncontested: his principled disdain for the
dirty business of politics alienated some of his supporters (who would
leave his camp to form a separate sect). After four conflict-ridden
years, he died a violent and brutal death, as did his son Husayn, who
perished in a heroic but doomed attempt to wrest the caliphate from
Muawiya's son Yazid in 680. Thereafter, the spiritual and secular
streams of Islam would divide and merge in complex and sometimes
dangerous patterns that continue to this day.

While Rogerson's book does not address the ramifications of the
Sunni-Shia divide, he sets the scene in an absorbing narrative that
captures the epic quality of an era to which Muslims of all persuasions
look for inspiration.

.