Mufti Muhammad Taha Karaan (RA) on the Shiite and the Prophet’s Appointed Successor

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Question

Assalamualaikum Wa Rahmatuallahi Wa Barakatuhu. Maulana Taha Karan Sahib, a friend asked me a question related to shia beliefs and I am incapable of answering and was wondering if perhaps you can shed some light on the following questions.

(1) Was there an appointed successor of the Prophet after his departure? If so, who chose that successor and under what basis can we prove it?

(2) What are the positions of the men, Umar and Abu Bakr, in relation to the Prophet and how did they get the political seat?

(3) Under what factual basis can we prove who is more deserving of the Calipha seat between the different Caliphs?

(4) What support does the Sunni perspective have for beni Ummayad, specifically Muawiya and Yazeed?

(5) What perspective does the Sunni school of thought have on the Ahlul Bayt (as) of the Prophet compared to the companions of the Prophet?

Mufti Taha’s Response

Wa `alaykumu s-salam wa rahmatuLlahi wa barakatuh

The questioner, I gather, is a Shi’i. It is best therefore to respond to him by using material from Shi’i rather than Sunni sources. Part of the force of the Shi’i polemic in the past few decades has been their manner of using our legacy against us. While it makes perfect sense to turn the tables on them, it also presupposes a rigorous study of their sources.

In what follows I have only responded to the first question. Lack of time stands in the way of completing the rest. Hopefully I will be able to return to the matter later, in sha Allah.

Taha

Was there an appointed successor of the Prophet after his departure? If so, who chose that successor and under what basis can we prove it?

This question lies at the heart of the juncture at which Shi’ism parts ways with mainstream Islam. It is the belief of the mainstream that RasuluLlah sallaLlahu `alayhi wa alihi wasallam left this world without nominating a successor. Shi’ism, with the bulk of sects embraced within this term, rests on the central assumption that a successor was not only appointed, but that his position was unjustly usurped by those among the Companions who were raised to leadership through public election.

The demand for proof should be prefixed by a brief discussion as to exactly what would constitute proof. To a Muslim, the highest form of evidence should indeed be the Holy Qur’an. For the Ahl al-Sunnah this goes without saying; but for the Shi’ah an exception needs to be made for the Akhbari sect, as well for those of the Usuli sect whose adherence to the doctrine of tahrif or interpolation of the Qur’an is on documentary record.

The Qur’an

The Shi’ah have traditionally argued for their doctrine of Imamah on the basis of verses such as the 55th and 67th verses of Surah al-Ma’idah. To this the Ahl al-Sunnah have responded by pointing out the manner in which the Shi’ah understanding violates the contextual coherence of these verses, in addition to the dependence of this line of argument of pseudo-hadith evidence which lack the most basic requirements of authenticity. This paragraph seeks to compress and encapsulate quite a long-winded argument and counter-argument that would run into several pages. If interested, an exhaustive critical discussion could be made available.

But whatever one happens to believe around the above two verses from Surah al-Ma’idah, there is another verse in the same surah which begs closer inspection. This is the 54th verse in which Allah says:

يايها الذين آمنوا من يرتد منكم عن دينه فسوف يأتي الله بقوم يحبهم ويحبونه أذلة على المؤمنين أعزة على الكافرين يجاهدون في سبيل الله ولا يخافون لومة لائم ذلك فضل الله يؤتيه من يشاء والله ذو الفضل العظيم

This verse speaks about the imminent retribution which Allah promises against those who resort to apostasy. This retribution will come at the hands of a group described as loving Allah and beloved by Him, meek towards believers yet harsh against unbelievers, who fight in the way of Allah and fear the reproach of none. To the Ahl al-Sunnah, the indication is as clear as daylight: the apostasy which occurred among the tribes of the Arabian peninsula after the death of the Nabi sallaLlahu `alayhi wa-alihi wasallam was checked and countered by a group of exactly that description. The leader of that group was Abu Bakr.

The legacy of the Shi’ah also makes mention of an apostasy that occurred in the wake of the demise of the Nabi sallaLlahu `alayhi wa-alihi wasallam. In this regard there is a saying which is recorded in the most reliable sources of the Shi’ah, from their very first hadith collection, the Kitab Sulaym ibn Qays al-Hilali (pp. 74-75), to Abu Ja’far al-Kulayni’s celebrated al-Kafi (vol. 2 p. 244), to the Rijal of Abu ‘Amr al-Kashshi (p.6), to the Tafsir of al-‘Ayyashi (vol. 1 p. 199), to Shaykh Mufid’s al-Ikhtisas (pp. 4-5), and right down to late sources such as Mulla Baqir Majlisi’s Bihar al-Anwar (vol. 22 p. 345) and Shaykh Yusuf al-Bahrani’s Tafsir al-Burhan (vol. 1 p. 319). In this narration Imam Muhammad al-Baqir is recorded to have said that all the Sahabah, with the exception of three, had turned apostate after the death of RasuluLlah sallaLlahu `alayhi wa-alihi wasallam. The authenticity of this narration has, to the best of our knowledge, never been called into question by any Shi’i scholar.

Against a backdrop such as this we might be well entitled to ask: if this was indeed a case of apostasy, why did the retribution which in terms of Allah’s promise will descend imminently (note the significance of the word sawfa in the verse) not occur? And if we should, along with our Shi’ah brethren, relegate this imminently promised retribution with the return of the Hidden Imam at some vague future date, does that not reduce the power of imminence within Allah’s promise to ridicule? After all, it has been 1200 years…

The Hadith

The second source to which one would naturally turn is the Hadith. Before proceeding any further, there is something about the hadith legacy of the Shi’ah that might be worthy of consideration. This is the phenomenon of contradiction which, in the words of Shaykh Abu Ja’far al-Tusi, one of the greatest hadith scholars of the Twelver Shi’ah and the author of two of their four canonical hadith sources (Tahdhib al-Ahkam and al-Istibsar), permeates the hadith of the Shi’ah. In the introduction to Tahdhib, he remarks upon the fact that among the ahadith of the Shi’ah there is barely a single hadith that is not contradicted by another. It is this very phenomenon of inconsistency and contradiction that forces the adoption of caution and circumspection in dealing with the hadith legacy of the Twelver Shi’ah.

There are no doubt a large number of ahadith which the Shi’ah use to support their doctrine of Imamah. It has long been an accepted fact amongst them that the ahadith of Imamah are mutawatir. The question is: would it be tenable to reject all of those ahadith? An answer to this question may perhaps be sought from the manner in which the shi’ah have treated a parallel case: that of tahrif of the Qur’an. In that case too, the ahadith supporting interpolation of the Qur’an had been adjudged by leading Shi’i hadith experts to be mutawatir. Today, however, most if not all Twelver Shi’i scholars most vehemently deny the doctrine of tahrif. In other words, they have found it very tenable to reject ahadith which their predecessors regarded as mutawatir. Please look at the following quotation. It is from Mulla Baqir Majlisi’s commentary on al-Kafi entitled Mir’at al-‘Uqul. On page 525 of volume 12 of this work, the celebrated author writes, under hadith no 28 of Bab al-Nawadir:

موثق وفي بعض النسخ عن هشام بن سالم موضع هارون بن مسلم فالخبر صحيح ولا يخفى أن هذا الخبر وكثير من الأخبار الصحيحة صريحة في نقص القرآن وتغييره وعندي أن الأخبار في هذا الباب متواترة معنى وطرح جميعها يوجب رفع الاعتماد عن الأخبار رأسا بل ظني أن الأخبار في هذا الباب لا يقصر عن أخبار الإمامة فكيف يثبتونها بالخبر

“[This hadith is] muwaththaq. In some manuscripts there appears the words “from Hisham ibn Salim” instead of “Harun ibn Muslim.” So the hadith is authentic. It is by no means unclear that this report and many other authentic ahadith are quite explicit in proving deductions from and changes to the Qur’an. I believe that the ahadith on this issue are mutawatir in meaning, and that dispensing with all of them would of necessity lead to absolutely dispensing with the authority of ahadith in general. In fact, I believe that the ahadith on this issue [of tahrif] are in no way less than the ahadith of Imamah, so how do they then prove Imamah on the basis of ahadith?” (Mir’at al-‘Uqul vol 12 p 525)

What one learns from the above is that the ahadith of the Shi’ah are by no means homogeneous in respect of succession to RasuluLlah sallaLlahu `alayhi wasallam. It therefore comes as no wonder that objective Shi’i scholars who sincerely researched the issue of succession were guided by the available evidence to abandon the inherited Shi’i position of an apostolic and divinely designated succession to the Prophet sallaLlahu `alayhi wa-alihi wasallam. One such scholar is Ahmad al-Katib, once known by the name of Abdur Rasool Abduz Zahra Abdul Ameer Hajj Habeeb. His research into the foundations of Imamah eventually led him to repudiate his ancestral beliefs. The fruit of his research was compiled into a book whose English translation could be accessed at https://www.alkatib.co.uk/englishbook.htm.

There is no way in which this brief response can do justice to the full richness of al-Katib’s research, but a snippet or two from the research of people like him might not be out of place here. Nahj al-Balaghah is a work with which just about every Shi’i is familiar. In the 6th letter of this collection, addressed by Sayyiduna ‘Ali radiyaLlahu ‘anhu to Mu’awiyah, Sayyiduna ‘Ali provides justification for his caliphate in a manner whose significance cannot be lost upon an objective seeker of truth:

“Verily, those who took the oath of allegiance to Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman have sworn allegiance to me. Now those who were present at the election have no right to go back against their oaths of allegiance and those who were not present on the occasion have no right to oppose me. And so far as Shura (limited franchise or selection) was concerned it was supposed to be limited to Muhajirs and Ansars and it was also supposed that whomsoever they selected, became caliph as per approval and pleasure of Allah. If somebody goes against such decision, then he should be persuaded to adopt the course followed by others, and if he refuses to fall in line with others, then war is the only course left open to be adopted against him and as he has refused to follow the course followed by the Muslims, Allah will let him wander in the wilderness of his ignorance and schism.”