Like it was said in episode 2 that the Ummah before was united in deeds and minds.Their society exemplified Islam in totality. The existing powers were envious of the Ummah of Islam. They sent their representatives to visit the new order to see how gigantic the palace of the leader (Amir) would look like but they were surprised to see the leader sleeping under the tree relaxing . The ummah demonstrated the highest level of the meaning of Ummah. They lived their lives based on high moral standard. They were serious minded who do not engage in trivialities. They were soldiers prepared for work and engulfed in the spirit of worship.
Despite the fact that there were some disagreements, they never led to blood shedding. Some of them even avoided going into issue of Ijtihad to avoid disunity. Their differences were only intended for them to reach the truth. Then came after them some group of people among whom are the hypocrites who work from within to elaborate the differences and take it to disunity. The discord moved from bad to worse. The perpetrators intended to return the Arabs to their state of lowliness before Islam through taking away their honour.
Chronicles And Champions of Disunity in The Islamic World- From Past to Present (2)
Apart from the hypocrite within, the new people who came into Islam have little understanding of the religion and did not have the features and attributes of the companions . The tribalism of the Arabs and the hatred came up again. Some people entered into Islam out of fear but harboured hatred for the Muslims, then the people of whims desired to exploit the opportunities.The society that had started accepting rumours The Jews having seen the situation decided to plot and conspire with the hypocrites to instigate falsehood and rumours .
The turning point was when Uthman bn Affan was assassinated. This marked the beginning of the disunity within the Muslim Ummah. Abdullah bn Salam said: “Today the Arabs are destroyed”. And he said: “By Allah, the sword wil not allow the gushing of blood except that it increases your distance from Allah “. The death of Uthman marked the beginning of open religious and political conflicts within Islamic community. This was the conflict the scholars would only discussed to bring out lessons for Muslim ummah and not to blame any of the two sides of the divide. Most of them sincerely fell into error. May Allah forgives them all. Lives were lost and there are lessons for us to learn.
To be continued.
Olawale Ibraheem writes from Lagos, Nigeria.
