Meditating on Ashoura: Did the Companions deliberately ignore the Prophet's (PBUH) teaching on rebellion?

بسمه تعالى

Regarding the issue of armed rebellion by Muslims against Muslims rulers, we find many authentic hadiths, of which the following from Sahih Muslim are representative. In a hadith narrated on the authority of 'Awf ibn Malik al-Ashja'i (RA), the Prophet (P) said:

خِيار أئمتكم الذين تُحبونهم ويحبونكم وتُصلّون عليهم ويصلون عليكم، وشِرار أئمتكم الذين تُبغضونهم ويبغضونكم وتلعنونهم ويلعنونكم. قال: قلنا يا رسول الله أفلا نُنابِذهم عند ذلك؟ قال: لا ما أقاموا فيكم الصلاة لا ما أقاموا فيكم الصلاة. ألا مَن وُلّي عليه والٍ فرآه يأتي شيئا من معصية الله فليكره ما يأتي من معصية الله ولا ينزعَنَّ يدا من طاعة

The best among your rulers will be those whom you love and who love you, whom you pray for and who pray for you; and the worst of your rulers will be those whom you hate and who hate you, whom you curse and who curse you. So we asked: O Messenger of God, in that case, should we not overthrow them? He replied: No, so long as they establish the prayer amongst you. No, so long as they establish the prayer amongst you. Surely, whoever has a governor imposed on him, whom he sees performing a sin against God, then he should hate that sin performed against God but he should not withdraw a hand from his allegiance.

There is another narration which is substantially identical except that the vague notion of 'overthrow' is replace by a specific mention of armed violence:

يا رسول الله، أفلا ننابذهم بالسيف؟

O Messenger of God, should we not overthrow them by the sword?

The factor that make overthrow lawful in the above hadith is failure on the part of the ruler to allow the performance of congregational Friday and Eid prayers. And in another hadith narrated by Abu al-Walid 'Ubadah ibn al-Samit (RA), we learn:

بايعنا رسول الله صلعم على السمع والطاعة في العسر واليسر والمنشط والمكره وعلى أثرة علينا وعلى أن لا ننازع الأمر أهله إلا أن تروا كفرا بواحا عندكم من الله تعالى فيه برهان، وعلى أن نقول بالحق أينما كنا لا نخاف في الله لومة لائم

We pledged allegiance to God's Messenger (P) to hear and obey in hardship and ease; in good times and bad; and when we are discriminated against; and that we would not seize the command from those in charge except on seeing outright disbelief with proof from God; and to speak the truth wherever we are, not fearing the blame of anyone.

Having watched Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, on the news joining the Eid prayer at the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus, it is easy to see how difficult it would be for Muslims today to justify armed rebellion on the strength of the above-mentioned hadiths. So instead today's extremists turn to tragic stories from our early history, most notably that of al-Husayn ibn Ali but also of others among the Pious Predecessors (al-Salaf al-Salih), which they twist in order to justify the violence that most of us are fortunate only to observe and not live through, or die in, in countries like Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Mali, Afghanistan.

The problem with rebellion justified on the basis of historical examples, but which appear to contradict the Sunnah, is that it effectively requires prominent Companions to have either:

• ignored explicit statements by the Prophet (PBUH) to the contrary;
• considered other Companions to have been guilty of outright disbelief (kufr bawwah); or else,
• abrogated by their actions an explicit injunction by the Prophet (PBUH), with all the implications that poses for principles of Islamic jurisprudence.

However, they are unwilling to admit any of these, preferring instead to imply that the decision of al-Husayn ibn Ali, for example, in ignoring the advice of other Companions and leaving Medina bound for Kufa demonstrates that the Prophet's (PBUH) apparent narrowing of the scope for violent rebellion is not to be understood literally, but instead makes use of the figure of speech of metonymy (i.e. using a part to refer to the whole). The net result though is the same as if they had denied the authenticity or existence of the above hadiths, namely the killing, maiming, orphaning and widowing of thousands upon thousands of innocents.

In his commentary, al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Qur'an, the scholar al-Qurtubi quotes the insightful opinion of one of the most famous Muslims of the generation that followed the Companions:

وقد سئل الحسن البصري عن قتالهم فقال قتال شهد أصحاب محمد صلعم وغبنا وعلموا وجهلنا واجتمعوا فاتبعنا واختلفوا فوقفنا. قال المحاسبي فنحن نقول كما قال الحسن ونعلم أن القوم كانوا أعلم بما دخلوا فيه منا ونتبع ما اجتمعوا عليه ونفق عند ما اختلفوا فيه ولا نبتدع رأيا منا ونعلم أنهم اجتهدوا وأرادوا الله عز وجل إذ كانوا غير متهمين في الدين، ونسأل الله التوفيق

Al-Hasan al-Basri was asked about their fighting, and replied: “It was fighting which the Companions of Muhammad (P) witnessed while we were absent; they knew while we remain ignorant; they came together, so we followed; they differed, so we halted.” al-Muhasibi said: “We say the same as al-Hasan said. We know that those people were more knowledgeable about what they entered into than we. We follow what they agreed on, and we stop at what they differed over, not coming up with opinions of our own. We know that they exercised their reason, desiring God – may He be extolled and glorified – and were under no suspicion as to the [sincerity of their] religion. And we ask God for success.”

The fact is that, in the accounts of the Battle of the Camel, or of the Battle of Siffin, where we might have expected Ali ibn Abi Talib to quote the above hadiths to his opponents, there appears to be a silence. And the same goes for the events leading up to the death of al-Husayn at Karbala. Given that the silence could not have been due to their irrelevance, and given that it is unthinkable that either 'Ai'shah or Mu'awiyah would have opposed Ali militarily as they did had they been aware of the hadiths, the better interpretation that we are forced to conclude is that not all the Companions knew all the hadiths that we can now easily find published in the collections compiled well over a hundred years after their deaths. 

If the above conclusion is as correct as it is logical, then the Companions whose honour and reputations the extremists daily traduce by their gratuitous acts of violence, would surely have said much the same as Imam al-Shafi'i is famously reported in al-Hawi al-Kabir and al-Majmu' sharh al-Muhadhdhab to have said:

إذَا صَحَّ الْحَدِيثُ فَهُوَ مَذْهَبِي

If the hadith is authentic, then it is of [the teachings of] my school.

or:

مَا وَرَدَ مِنْ سُنَّةِ الرَّسُولِ بِخِلَافِ مَذْهَبِي فَاتْرُكُوا لَهُ مَذْهَبِي، فَإِنَّ ذَلِكَ  مَذْهَبِي

Whatever comes from the Messenger's Sunnah contrary to [the teaching of] my school, then abandon [the teaching of] my school in favour of it, for that is [the teaching of] my school.

10th Muharram 1435 = 13th November 2013 after sunset