CHAPTER II: Contradictions between Islam and the Muhammadans Are Completed during the Umayyad Caliphate (41 – 132 A.H./ 661 – 750 A.D.)

An overview of the Umayyad caliphs:

Mu'aweiya Ibn Abou Sufyan (661 – 680 A.D.):

 After the assassination of Ali, his eldest son, Hassan, was chosen initially as caliph, and his followers (among desert-Arabs and Bedouins) swore fealty/allegiance to him, but he found with them the same hardships faced by his father, and he realized that he could not face Mu'aweiya; Hassan made a peace agreement with Mu'aweiya to cede caliphate to him and to make the choice of caliphs later on based on Shura (i.e., consultation) among Muslims. Mu'aweiya went to Kufa, the Iraqi city that was the capital of Ali within his reign, and Hassan and his brother Hussein (sons of Ali and Fatima, daughter of Prophet Muhammad) swore fealty/allegiance to Mu'aweiya there in 40 A.H./661 A.D. Mu'aweiya established the Umayyad caliphate and dynasty and he was the very first real politician in terms of pragmatic politics, as he spared no means to reach his goals; he was shrewd, cunning, patient, firm while dealing with his foes, but he also had acumen and wisdom to tolerate and pardon men at certain occasions to win their trust and loyalty and to win many men to his side; he was a good negotiator who turned many of his foes into allies and friends and made many agreements to win over many tribes to his side. This is why when he rejected Shura/consultation and turned caliphate into hereditary kingdom as the throne would be confined to the Umayyad dynasty among his sons, most leaders and chieftains of tribes agreed with him. Even when his governors were given leeway to be so cruel and to terrorize and intimidate the rebels among his subjects, once they stopped their rebellion and sought the aid of Mu'aweiya, he would pardon them and win them to his side. Shortly before his death, Mu'aweiya made sure that people swore fealty/allegiance to his son and successor, Yazeed Ibn Mu'aweiya, especially the tribe of Kalb of the mother of Yazeed. Hussein Ibn Ali Ibn Abou Talib along with Abdullah Ibn Al-Zubayr and other senior companions' sons, whose fathers were the supporters and the immigrants in the former Yathreb city-state, refused to swear fealty to Yazeed. Mu'aweiya died and left this problem to his son and successor, Yazeed.      

Yazeed Ibn Mu'aweiya (680 – 683 A.D.):

 Once enthroned, he had no self-imposed mission but to force Hussein Ibn Ali to swear fealty and allegiance to him. Hussein was residing at the time in Yathreb with his sons and the sons of his late elder brother, Hassan, who was murdered with poison within a conspiracy plotted by Mu'aweiya, and the with the rest of this branch of the Hashemites that came to be known as the Alawites (i.e., the progeny of Ali) and the progeny of the sons of Abou Talib, their grandfather. At the same time, people of Iraq sent Hussein messages inviting him to come to Iraq so that they would help him to become a caliph. Once Hussein reached the Iraqi city of Karbala with his wives and sons, the Umayyad army there massacred all of them, except for one son of Hussein; namely, Ali Zayn Al-Abdeen, who was an ill adolescent at the time. The massacre of Hussein and his family members in Karbala caused the dwellers of Yathreb to rebel against the caliph Yazeed, who sent them an army that defeated and crushed them; the soldiers of this army kept sabotaging, raiding, and looting Yathreb, massacring men, and raping women for three days. Abdullah Ibn Al-Zubayr seized this chance to proclaim himself as caliph in Mecca. The same army of Yazeed was commanded by him to go to Mecca to crush the rebellious movement of Ibn Al-Zubayr. This Umayyad army sieged Mecca and attacked the city with catapults, and this caused the destruction and burning down of the Kaaba. Ibn Al-Zubayr left the Kaaba to burn down to slander the Umayyads and accuse them of intentionally destroying the Sacred Kaaba Mosque. A battle ensued, during which the caliph Yazeed died suddenly, after leaving a written will and testament to make his son, Mu'aweiya Ibn Yazeed, as his successor to the throne. The fury of the masses against the Umayyads increased, and matters worsened as Mu'aweiya II was enthroned briefly in 62 A.H./683 A.D., but he was weak and of sickly condition and very religious; this is why he refused to rule and ceded the throne without appointing a successor.        

The year of unrest for the Umayyads (684 A.D.):

 This year of turmoil caused by Ibn Al-Zubayr who had many supporters in many countries who desired to get rid of the Umayyad governors and the Umayyad rule: Egypt, Iraq, and Hejaz. Among those who joined the revolt of Ibn Al-Zubayr was the chieftain of the Qais tribes, Al-Dahhak Ibn Qais Al-Fahry who was the former ally of the Umayyads. The rebellious movement of Al-Mukhtar Ibn Obayd Al-Thaqafi emerged and mobilized huge troops of desert-Arabs, but its loyalty fluctuated between Ibn Al-Zubayr and Mohamed Ibn Al-Hanafiyya, a grandchild of Ali. This leader, Al-Mukhtar, seized the chance of this turmoil to assassinate the Umayyad governor of Iraq responsible for the Karbala massacre, Abdullah Ibn Ziyad, and he occupied and ruled Iraq for a while, and he put to death all men who participated in the Karbala massacre. This year of turmoil ended when the Umayyad dynasty members agreed within the Gabia conference to choose Marwan Ibn Al-Hakam as caliph.       

Marwan Ibn Al-Hakam (684 – 685 A.D.):

 He was the agent of his paternal uncle's son, Mu'aweiya Ibn Abou Sufyan, who controlled the caliph Othman and who incited the revolt against him led to his assassination, and he served the caliph Mu'aweiya. After Mu'aweiya Ibn Yazeed ceded the throne, Marwan was the eldest leader left among the Umayyads, and after his being appointed as caliph he regained the loyalty and alliance of many tribes, especially the Kalb tribe, and he defeated the Qais tribe that supported Ibn Al-Zubayr in the Levant in a battle, and he killed their leader Al-Dahhak Ibn Qais Al-Fahry. Thus, the Umayyads retrieved their rule over the Levant and over Egypt when Marwan defeated its governor who was appointed by Abdullah Ibn Al-Zubayr. Marwan died before he could defeat Musaab Ibn Al-Zubayr who was the governor of Iraq loyal to his brother Abdullah Ibn Al-Zubayr, leaving this mission to his successor, the caliph Abdul-Malik Ibn Marwan.    

Abdul-Malik Ibn Marwan (685 – 705 A.D./ 65 – 86 A.H.):

 This powerful caliph settled the affairs and rule of the Umayyad caliph; he re-established it once more after it was about to get lost, and thus, he is considered by historians as the second founder of the Umayyad dynasty after Mu'aweiya. He defeated and killed Musaab Ibn Al-Zubayr who was the governor of Iraq and defeated and killed Abdullah Ibn Al-Zubayr inside Mecca. His power was confirmed when he appointed a strong governor in Iraq – the center of all opposition movements against the Umayyads – who was Al-Hajaj Ibn Youssef, the blood-thirsty governor who forced Iraqis to submit using his savagery and brutality. Soon enough, Abdul-Malik continued the Arab conquests westward and eastward, and he introduced some reforms, thus leaving to his son and successor, Al-Waleed Ibn Abdul-Malik (86 – 96 A.H./ 705 – 725 A.D.), a caliphate that enjoyed stability. The caliph Al-Waleed continued the Arab conquests till India and borders of China and he conquered the Iberian peninsula (Andalusia). His brother and successor, Suleiman Ibn Abdul-Malik (96 – 99 A.H./ 715 – 727 A.D.), attempted to conquer Constantinople and he appointed his paternal uncle's son, Omar Ibn Abdul-Aziz, as his successor, who ruled for about three years (99 – 101 A.H./ 717 – 720 A.D.). In fact, Omar Ibn Abdul-Aziz remains the most famous Arab ruler (and Umayyad caliph) known for his piety and justice; he was assassinated by poison, and he was succeeded by Yazeed Ibn Abdul-Malik (101 – 105 A.H./ 720 -724 A.D.) who was a foil or a contrast to Omar Ibn Abdul-Aziz, because he was an immoral, promiscuous man who committed grave injustices and died as a young man. This caliph was succeeded by his brother Hisham Ibn Abdul-Malik (105 – 125 A.H. / 724 – 743 A.D.) who was the last strong and powerful Umayyad caliph. When he died, he was succeeded by weak caliphs who were in incessant disputes with everyone, and tribes manipulated and controlled those caliphs until the Umayyad caliphate ended in 132 A.H./ 750 A.D., only seven years after the death of the caliph Hisham Ibn Abdul-Malik.            

General features of the Umayyad caliphate:

 Arabian tribes were the only military power within the political sense during the Umayyad caliphate. Tribes were divided into two groups as per their stance regarding the Umayyads: (1) Al-Khawarij who rebelled against the Umayyad caliphate and sapped its energy until it collapsed and who indiscriminately massacred so many people among the Muhammadans after declaring them as 'infidels' while they raided cities while raising the motto/banner of (there is no rule except God's); yet, Al-Khawarij fighters always kept their peace treaties with the People of the Book (Jews + Christians), and (2) tribes that served the Umayyad caliphate and joined their troops to conquer other countries and fought enemies of the State as well among rebels and opposition figures. The Yemenite Qahtany tribes rebelled against the Umayyads who favored (within nepotism) the northern Adnanite Qais tribes. Some of the Yemenite Qahtany tribes allied themselves to Persian rebels who raised the motto (contentment is fulfilled by a ruler of the household of prophet Muhammad) within a secret-at-first call and military movement to topple the Umayyads, and this movement was led by Abou Moslem Al-Khorasany who helped the Abbasids establish their Abbasid caliphate. Those Arabian tribes which allied themselves to the Umayyads fought most of the time against the rebels: Shiites, Alawites, Al-Khawarij, Persians, Copts of Egypt, Amazigh/Berber of north Africa, and the Yemenite Qahtany tribes that turned against the Umayyads. Such endeavors were of no avail; as enemies of the Umayyad caliphate caused its downfall soon enough in 132 A.H. / 750 A.D. At the time, the Arab empire reached its largest expansion: from borders of China in the East to borders between Iberia and France in the West, and from walls of Constantinople in the north to the borders of Sahara in the south. Hence, the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea became for a while Arabian lakes. The Umayyad caliphate lasted less than a century; it was relentless in external conquests and in fighting rebels and foes inside its lands; its collapse was a direct result when its foes and enemies joined hands to bring about its downfall. People supported this downfall as everyone sought revenge against the Umayyads for their grave injustices and numerous massacres; the Umayyads massacred Hussein and his family and progeny in Karbala, thus dealing a fatal blow to their foes the Hashemites. The Umayyads quelled the Yathreb dwellers and other 'companions' of Muhammad when they destroyed the city and massacred its men and raped its women for three days. The Umayyads never hesitated to attack Mecca and destroy the Kaaba itself by burning it down with fireballs thrown by catapults when they sieged the city to crush the rebels under Abdullah Ibn Al-Zubayr who proclaimed himself as caliph. Many of the extremists among the Umayyad dynasty and their crones and leaders never hesitated to put to death innocent men for mere suspicion; such crimes were perpetrated by leaders like Ziyad Ibn Abeeh, Khaled Al-Qasry, and Al-Hajaj Ibn Youssef.                  

Allowing bloodshed, promiscuity, and immorality:

 The Umayyad earthly religion allowed the savage, powerful Umayyad caliphs and their governors absolute freedom to commit bloodshed and cause many bloodbaths! They ascribed their crimes to God and to Islam! Al-Hajaj used to swear by God's Name that anyone who dares to disobey him will get killed at once (see history of Ibn Al-Atheer, biography of Al-Hajaj, in deaths of 95 A.H.). many Umayyad caliphs were accused of immorality, promiscuity, and discarding prayers, and this applies to Yazeed Ibn Mu'aweiya who committed three major grave sins: the Karbala massacre, the Yathreb massacre, and the siege of Mecca that destroyed the Kaaba. The leader of rebels in Yathreb at the time was the pious man Abdullah Ibn Hanzala who delivered as speech before the battle of Al-Harrah (in 63 A.H.), describing Yazeed as incestuous man who drank wine and never prayed and therefore must be killed (see Al-Tabakat Al-Kobra by Ibn Saad part 5, p. 47, and Al-Muntazim by Ibn Al-Jawzy, part 66, p. 19). After this battle that ended in the defeat of the Yathreb dwellers and the murder of this leader Ibn Hanzala, Yathreb was sabotaged and its dwellers raped and killed for three days. The same accusation leveled at the Umayyads was repeated during the reign of Abdul-Malik Ibn Marwan; within the battle of Deir Al-Jamajim (literally, the house of skulls, as pyramids of skulls of dead men of the rebels filled the battlefield), Saeed Ibn Jubayr allegedly said that the Umayyads must be fought for their grave injustices, rejection of Islam, and discarding prayers (see Ibn Saad, part 6, p. 185). Yazeed Ibn Abdul-Malik in his earthly Umayyad religion kept his promiscuous lifestyle and excessive drinking until he died in the prime of his youth. The same promiscuity was a feature of the caliphs Yazeed Ibn Mu'aweiya and Al-Waleed Ibn Yazeed Ibn Abdul-Malik. Ibn Katheer mentions in his history book (part 3, p. 10) that the caliph Hisham Ibn Abdul-Malik desired to prepare Al-Waleed as his successor and forced him to give up wine by appointing him as the prince of pilgrimage in 116 A.H., but Al-Waleed brought along his hunting hounds, musical instruments, and wine bottles, intending to drink with his friends within a tent to be pitched on top of the Kaaba! But once he entered Mecca, he feared people might scold or even kill him for such sacrilege and he did not do it. Once enthroned as caliph, Al-Waleedwas described by many of his detractors that he was a sodomizer who desired and raped many of his step-brothers, as per words of his brother, the prince Suleiman, who also said that Al-Waleed tried to convince him to have sex with him! Al-Waleed used to declare his atheism and rejection of the Quran in public, while getting busy in gambling and excessive wine drinking, as well as getting as many women in bed as possible. It was rumored that when he read the Quranic verse 14:15, he threw arrows at the Quran copy he read, and he yelled the following line of verse that he composed: (You are threatening me with warning about stubborn tyrants! I am Al-Waleed, a stubborn tyrant! Go to your God in the Day of Resurrection, if it comes, to complain that I pierced you with my arrows!) (Al-Tabakat Al-Kobra, part 5/47 and 6/185, ''Al-Muntazim'' by Ibn Al-Jawzy: 7/236-248, and History of Ibn Katheer: 4/486). Yazeed Ibn Al-Waleed, the paternal uncle's son of the immoral caliph Al-Waleed, killed this caliph after rebelling against him and usurped the throne.                  

An overview of how the Umayyads manipulated Islamic rituals: how the Umayyad undermined Islam:

1- Fighting within Islam is ONLY for the purposes of self-defense against aggressors; this Quranic rule was disregarded by Qorayish that turned fighting into Arab conquests and invasion under the banner of Islam, the religion hated and undermined by them. The Umayyad hatred toward Islam and rejecting it had varying degrees within their dynasty. Al-Waleed rejected Islam flagrantly and in public in the way we have explained above, but some other caliphs like Abdul-Malik showed this implicitly when he was enthroned as caliph and stopped his pious lifestyle of long hours of worship known about him, while vowing never to read the Quran again for the rest of his lifetime, and his policies led to many bloodbaths and violation of treated; his speech delivered in Yathreb, the center of rebellion, in 75 A.H. expressed his defiance of the Lord God when he said that anyone advising him to fear God in piety will be put to death at once! And he said he was not as weak as Othman, nor as tolerant as Mu'aweiya, and nor as foolish as Yazeed (see History of Caliphs by Al-Siyouti, p.347-348, the Cairo edition). This means that Abdul-Malik was among the corrupters on Earth who intentionally disregarded this verse to defy Allah: "And when he is told, "Beware of God," his pride leads him to more sin. Hell is enough for him-a dreadful abode." (2:206).      

2- The Umayyads manifested their deep-seated hatred toward Islam by (1) massacring many people of Yathreb and even grandsons of those who participated in the battle of Badr that witnessed the defeat of the Umayyads, and (2) destroying Yathreb and the Kaaba during their siege of Mecca.

3- The governors appointed by the Umayyads competed in undermining Islam and everything stood for it at the time to please caliphs. For instance, Al-Hajaj threatened once to remove certain verses from the Quran to please the caliph Abdul-Malik (see history of Ibn Al-Atheer, biography of Al-Hajaj, in deaths of 95 A.H.). another example is Khaled Al-Qasry the governor of Mecca and Hejaz in 89 A.H., who got nearer to his Umayyad masters and the caliph Hisham by making imams in all mosques and in the Sacred Kaaba Mosque curse Ali in all sermons; this governor declared in public that living caliphs are better than dead prophets/messengers of God! (see history of Ibn Al-Atheer, biography of Al-Qasry, in deaths of 126 A.H.). This means that he desired that people must know that he preferred the caliph Hisham to prophet Muhammad! Al-Qasry never cared about the sanctity of the Kaaba and threatened the Meccans of death by crucifixion if they dared to speak ill of the Umayyads and of demolishing their houses if they received as guests any rebels who fled the fury of the Umayyads and desired to hide in the sanctuary/haven of the Sacred Kaaba Mosque. because of his loyalty and services, the caliph Hisham rewarded Al-Qasry by appointing him as the governor of Iraq for 14 years (106 – 120 A.H.). It is noteworthy that the mother of Al-Qasry was a Christian religious woman, and when he built her a chapel inside his palace as there were no churches in the city where he ruled, some Arabs blamed him, but he nonchalantly said that may God curse his mother's religion if it produced more wickedness than the Arabs' religion, and this means that he never embraced Islam or in fact any other religion except the worship of Mammon (i.e., money) (see history of Al-Tabari, part 6, p. 440 of 89 A.H. and p. 464 of 91 A.H.).

How the Umayyads manipulated prayers to serve their purposes:

1- Many Umayyads were too lazy and reluctant to perform prayers and this caused the belated performance of Friday congregational prayers that they attended obligatorily, and they manipulated the Friday sermons for the purposes of political propaganda and to make people, who converted recently to 'Islam', curse Ali as part of the rituals, as was the case with people of Harran who prayed without cursing Ali and the Umayyads taught them that no prayers deemed acceptable by God without cursing Ali! These people of Harran kept this 'ritual' until the first year of the Abbasid caliphate; see Moroj Al-Dhahab by Al-Masoody, part 2, p 193. Hence, the Umayyads has invented this bad habit of turning sermons into tools for political propaganda; this lasted within all the centuries of caliphs and sultans until the end of the Ottoman caliphate in 1924 A.D.; the established sultans/caliphs asserted their sovereignty by making people supplicate God for their sake every Friday congregational prayers and to curse their enemies and foes, and this bad habit of turning Friday sermons into political propaganda still lingers until now in most mosques of the Muhammadans now.            

2- Friday sermons in real Islam is only reciting some Quranic verses; this was done by Muhammad, and Sunnites never narrate any Friday sermons by him because of this undeniable fact, though he was the imam of hundreds of Friday congregational prayers in the Yathreb city-state. The Umayyads where the first ones who introduced this bad habit by taking advantage of the obligatory Friday congregational prayers and sermons in political propaganda and attacking the Alawites. This political manipulation of Friday sermons is still in use within countries of the Muhammadans now. Muhammad's Friday sermons were only reciting some Quranic verses; this is why fabricators and inventors of hadiths ascribed falsely to Muhammad never dared to fabricate sermons ascribed to him. Islam (i.e., the Quran) entails devoting acts of worship entirely to God and never to manipulate religion (and rituals, worship, mosques, etc.) for the sake of worldly gains. Yet, since the Umayyad Era onwards, Friday congregational prayers and sermons are being used within political manipulation (i.e., propaganda, praying for rulers, and invoking God's curses and wrath on rulers' foes), and this is a basic ritual in all mosques (past and present) within a city/country ruled by a tyrant who would be keen to have his name glorified by the masses. Caliphs made people pledge fealty to them inside mosques, and such political manipulation of mosques is part and parcel of the Shiite and Sunnite religions, despite their other big differences and unsettled disputes. Of course, this is sheer polytheism; God is the Only One to be remembered, glorified, and revered inside mosques.      

3- The Umayyad political propaganda in Friday sermons caused the Friday noon prayers to be lost; in some cases, the sermons were too long until the time of afternoon prayers would come! Those who dared to protest this were either put to death of publicly humiliated and disgraced. In about 90 A.H., a Levantine fiqh scholar was beheaded when he protested in public against this delay in the presence of the caliph Al-Waleed Ibn Abdul-Malik in the Damascus mosque (see History of Deaths by Al-Safadi, 14/15).

4- Al-Hajaj was a powerful, extremist governor and vizier who committed many massacres and bloodbaths, but he was very eloquent in his speeches and sermons; he used to deliver very long sermons until afternoon prayers time would come, thus deliberately making people miss the noon prayers! He was the governor of Hejaz and then of Iraq, serving Abdul-Malik Ibn Marwan and his sons. When Al-Hajaj ruled Hejaz, he delivered very long sermons inside the Sacred Kaaba Mosque and noon prayers were performed belatedly. Abdullah Ibn Omar Ibn Al-Khattab stopped praying behind Al-Hajaj as imam because of this sacrilege. Ibn Saad the historian (see Ibn Saad, part 4, p.110 and 117) writes that one sermon of Al-Hajaj in Mecca lasted till sunset! People got very bored and restless, and Abdullah Ibn Omar shouted at him to remind him of missed prayers, and people were afraid that he might be put to death by Al-Hajaj, who felt mortified as people grew angry and descended the pulpit to lead the congregational prayers as their imam. Abdullah Ibn Omar advised Al-Hajaj in public on that day to perform noon prayers first before the sermon, not vice versa as required, so that he would talk nonsense endlessly as much as he pleased without making people miss the Friday noon prayers. Because he embarrassed Al-Hajaj in public, Abdullah Ibn Omar was assassinated later on by an anonymous man who pierced his body inside the Sacred Kaaba Mosque with a spear that had poison on its head.    

Building the so-called Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and performing pilgrimage there instead of the Kaaba:

1- It is very wrong to assume that God's verses about harmful mosques built by hypocrites in Yathreb (see 9:107-110) is mere history that is never repeated. In fact, the number of harmful mosques that cause harm to people has increased ever since until now worldwide, in contrast to the role of mosques that should be safe havens for piety, monotheism, and devotion in the worship of Allah. We refer readers to our two articles in English about harmful mosques of our era (http://www.ahl-alquran.com/English/show_article.php?main_id=16843/ http://www.ahl-alquran.com/English/show_article.php?main_id=15492). Harmful mosques combine between (1) spreading notions of polytheism/disbelief in terms of the heart/mind that make people deify/sanctify items, mortals, and mausoleums (as was the case with mosques of Qorayish; see 72:18-23), and (2) spreading disbelief in terms of behavior by inciting and committing aggression and acts of violence (also as was the case with  Qorayish that intimidated early believers and prevented them by force from entering the Sacred Kaaba Mosque and other mosques; see 2:114). Of course, Qorayish combined both types of harm and polytheism (in terms of behavior and beliefs) by manipulating and controlling the Sacred Kaaba Mosque; see 9:17-18.        

2- The pre-Umayyad and the Umayyads caliphs (who were all of Qorayish, of course) increased the number of harmful mosques, after they felt safe that after the death of Muhammad in Yathreb, no more Quranic verse will descend to expose them. Hence, they committed the heinous crimes within the Arab conquests: invading, sabotaging, massacring, looting, enslaving, raping, etc., while being keen on building small and grand mosques everywhere and keeping the habit of praying the five times even during aggressive wars and civil wars; they even turned mosques into battlefields and centers for political propaganda and inciting against others.

3- The five daily prayers with their timings were known before the Quran was revealed, as part of the rituals of the religion of Abraham that include prayers, fasting, pilgrimage, and glorification of the Lord within piety and monotheism, reflected in peaceful behavior and justice as well as dedicating one's acts of worship only to God, while never to worship/deify things, creatures, or mortals beside God. Qorayish tribesmen had retained the overt shape and rituals of prayers but lost and wasted it by being impious as they committed heinous crimes and grave sins and injustices through their control of the Kaaba and pilgrimage, especially when they placed pagan idols/gods around the Kaaba to please Arabian tribes and when they persecuted Muhammad and the early believers; thus, they had lost the fruits of their prayers that never led to peace and piety; this verse applies to them: "But they were succeeded by generations who lost the prayers and followed their appetites. They will meet perdition." (19:59).     

4- Committing injustices while ostentatiously performing prayers is sheer hypocrisy that makes prayers as justification to being among the unjust ones who commit evil deeds, crimes, aggression, and acts of violence instead of making prayers lead to piety as the supreme purpose of all acts of worship in Islam. After most of the Qorayish tribesmen feigned to convert and followed peace shortly before the death of Muhammad, the Qorayish tribe retrieved its hegemony and control, and its evil and mischief returned with a vengeance within the era of the pre-Umayyad caliphs by mobilizing Arabs into the Arab  conquests and inciting the first and second major Arab civil wars (i.e., Mu'aweiya vs. Ali and Yazeed vs. Hussein, respectively). Within such decades of atrocities, the Qorayish tribe retained regular and superficial performance of prayers even during battles of conquests. It is noteworthy that the governors of a conquered countries and the military leaders who invaded them were called "the prince of prayers'', and they would be higher in rank than tax-collectors and the supreme judges. Sadly, they taught new converts how to pray without focusing on attaining piety; the terrorists among the Muhammadans of today pray regularly while committing many atrocities and massacres and shouting (Allahu Akbar!) which means "Allah is the Greatest" and should be said before prayers. We tackle below another crime of Abdul-Malik Ibn Marwan who built the so-called Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem as an alternative to the Kaaba.    

Abdul-Malik and building the so-called Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem:

1- The Kaaba was insulted and burned down in the worst act of sacrilege within a political dispute of men of Qorayish (i.e., the troops of Abdullah Ibn Al-Zubayr and the Umayyad troops). Ibn Al-Zubayr manipulated the pilgrimage season to increase his anti-Umayyad propaganda and to proclaim himself as caliph; the Levantine pilgrims returned home with heads filled with ideas against the Umayyads whose capital was Damascus. The Umayyad caliph Abdul-Malik feared that the Levantine people would forsake him and withdraw their support to join forces of Ibn Al-Zubayr; hence, he build the so-called Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, while claiming that pilgrimage must be performed in this mosque as if it were the one mentioned in 17:1 as the Farthest Mosque (which is, in fact, Mount Al-Tur in Sinai, Egypt, where Moses received the Torah tablets and Muhammad received the Quran from Gabriel into his heart within the Night-Journey: the Night of Decree). The caliph made his official hadith-narrators (hired and paid by him to spread oral traditions invented by them and ascribed falsely to Muhammad after his death) to spread hadiths about how this Jerusalem mosque was a 'holy' site and where Muhammad landed during the Night-Journey mentioned in 17:1. New converts in the Levant had remnants of their old religions (i.e., Judaism and Christianity) and they located for the caliph the supposed site of the so-called temple of Solomon near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This myth of a mosque in Jerusalem existing during Muhammad's lifetime is refuted by the historical fact that when the caliph Omar conquered and invaded Jerusalem, there was no mosques there at all; Omar prayed outdoors near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Yet, Abdul-Malik and his oral narrators/fabricators managed to pass off his fake Aqsa mosque as if it were a 'holy' site.              

2- In his book of history titled "Al-Bidaya wi Al-Nihaya", the Levantine historian Ibn Katheer describes the building of this fake mosque of Abdul-Malik in Jerusalem in the events of 66 A.H. He mentions that Abdul-Malik began to build this Jerusalem mosque in 66 A.H. and ending it in 73 A.H., and the reason behind this was that the rebel Ibn Al-Zubayr ruled and controlled Mecca and seized the opportunity of the pilgrimage reason to vilify, asperse, and insult the Umayyads in his sermons, especially the caliph and his father, while inventing hadiths that Muhammad had cursed the Umayyads! The Levantine pilgrims were convinced by his argument. This made the caliph stop the Levantine people from traveling to pilgrimage, and they were so unhappy and furious. In order to please and distract them, he built this Jerusalem mosque and made them circle the dome of the rock instead of the Kaaba and then to slaughter sacrificial animals and shave their heads. This plan intended to distract people from listening to Ibn Al-Zubayr. This entailed hadith-narrators to invent hadiths about Muhammad visiting Jerusalem during the Night-Journey and how he blessed the location of the dome of the rock and the Aqsa mosque, and as if he flew up to the heavens from this rock! Abdul-Malik spent huge sums of money to build this magnificent richly furnished mosque using the best builders within the Umayyad empire, who used the most expensive building materials, ceramics, incense, frankincense, amber, rosewater, saffron, lamps of gold, Persian carpets, gold and silver chains, and encrusted precious stones, mosaïque, grand gates, domes, etc., with the total cost of 600.000 bags of gold dinars, and he hired servants to care for the mosque and its visitors/pilgrims. People felt infatuated with this Aqsa mosque whose incenses were smelled for days on end, admiring its great inside and outside decorations and ornaments; people of the Levant forgot all about Kaaba and pilgrimage to it and came from every city to perform pilgrimage to Jerusalem instead. They invented other myths about this mosque, such as calling the gate to heaven, marking locations on which Muhammad presumably had trodden, and calling a certain valley in Jerusalem as the valley of Hell-Fire. Ibn Katheer mentioned that people still revered this place built in the 1^st century A.H. as 'holy' grounds until his era (i.e., the 8^th century A.H.). It is very shocking to us that this myth lingers until the 21^st century! Ibn Al-Katheer mentions that the Abbasid caliph Abou Jaffer Al-Mansour visited Jerusalem in 140 A.H., and he saw that the Aqsa mosque lay in ruins; he commanded that his soldiers would take off the encrusted gold of the domes and exterior design to sell them and spend the money on rejuvenating the mosque, and he commanded the builders to lessen its length and height and to increase its width. Until now, this myth invented by the Umayyads lingers still among the Muhammadans who assume that this Jerusalem mosque is the third holiest site to them after the Kaaba and the Yathreb mosque with the Satanist mausoleum!

Al-Waleed Ibn Abdul-Malik and building the so-called Yathreb mosque (and mausoleum of Muhammad) in 88 A.H.:

1- After the caliph Abdul-Malik Ibn Marwan had built the Jerusalem Aqsa mosque to replace the Kaaba and pilgrimage to it, his son and successor the caliph Al-Waleed Ibn Abdul-Malik committed a similar crime/sin as he built the so-called Yathreb mosque ascribed to Muhammad as the second holiest site and sanctuary after the Sacred Kaaba Mosque within the earthly religions of the Muhammadans (thus, making the Jerusalem mosque as the third holiest site). Al-Waleed did not intend to turn this Yathreb mosque into a second 'holiest' ground, and the notion was never known at the time; this myth began as Al-Waleed made his men widen the Yathreb mosque by demolishing chambers of the wives of Muhammad (decades after their death) among other houses. Since traditions have it that Muhammad was buried in the chamber of his wife, Aisha, decades later, people who deified Muhammad chose a location at random inside the widened mosque to build a mausoleum where supposedly the chamber of Aisha was located, and they performed pilgrimage to this mausoleum and worshiped at it! The Muhammadans assume that their immortal deity named 'Muhammad' is still alive beneath this mausoleum and responds to those who greet and praise him! they assume he reviews himself (with no aides or secretaries!) good and bad deeds of his 'Umma'/nation until the end of days! This is sheer madness and one of the most insulting myths of the Sunnites!        

2- Al-Tabari in his history book mentions in the events of 88 A.H. that the caliph Al-Waleed demolished the Yathreb mosque and houses around it, along with the chambers where Muhammad's wives used to live, in order to rebuild, rejuvenate, and widen it (200 arms X 200 arms). Al-Waleed send his envoys to the governor of Yathreb at the time, Omar Ibn Abdul-Aziz, to undertake this mission and to pay compensation money for those people whose houses will be demolished. Omar Ibn Abdul-Aziz negotiated the compensation money with these people until they were satisfied, and the notables among the Yathreb dwellers oversaw the construction work performed by builders from Yathreb only at first, then the caliph sent 100 builders along with mosaïque and 100.000 bags of gold pieces. Of course, neither Al-Waleed nor Omar Ibn Abdul-Aziz built any mausoleum inside the Yathreb mosque richly furnished and decorated by them. Yet, they unintentionally made people get infatuated by the magnificence of the mosque and to ascribe it decades later to Muhammad as a second 'holiest' site after the Kaaba and others invented hadiths about this to make Yathreb a holy ground and its people as a source of fiqh legislations! Thus, the Umayyad Era witnessed the spread of oral traditions and fiqh legislations of the earthly religions that contradict the Quran and have been written down later on during the Abbasid Era.           

The fabrication of hadiths and the beginning of earthly, man-made religious legislations during the Umayyad Era:

Introduction: the Arab conquests are the roots of all evils:

1- We still suffer in today's world the evils of Arabs conquests that has led to the man-made Sunnite sharia laws of terrorism, massacres, and aggression that contradict the Quranic higher values that include peace, justice, charity, freedom, dignity, and prohibition of transgression, injustices, acts of violence, and aggression: "God commands justice, and goodness, and generosity towards relatives. And He forbids immorality, and injustice, and oppression. He advises you, so that you may take heed." (16:90). The crimes of the Arab conquests entailed the invention of legislations and laws that allow declaring others as 'infidels' who deserve to be fought and murdered, their countries to be invaded and conquered, their money, assets, lands, possessions to be confiscated, and their children and women to be raped and/or enslaved. This is the history of Arab conquests within all types of caliphs from Qorayish: the pre-Umayyads, the Umayyads, the Abbasids, and the Fatimids, and then other caliphs away from Qorayish tribesmen who followed their footsteps. The Arab conquests have led to the emergence of Sunnite fiqh books of legislations and laws to justify grave injustices.    

2- God in the Quranic sharia legislations prohibits aggression and fighting peaceful people who never commit aggression against believers in a Quran-based country, as fighting is allowed ONLY in cases of self-defense for God's sake to ward off and deter aggressors and to make them stop their aggression and/or religious persecution. Peaceful non-Muslims are to be treated kindly and fairly: "As for those who have not fought against you for your religion, nor expelled you from your homes, God does not prohibit you from dealing with them kindly and equitably. God loves the equitable." (60:8); "And fight in the cause of God those who fight you, but do not commit aggression; God does not love the aggressors." (2:190).

3- The Qorayish caliphs (from Abou Bakr and other after him) disbelieved in Quranic legislations in 60:8 & 2:190 when they declared peaceful non-violent people of other countries as 'infidels' who deserve to be fought, robbed, invaded, conquered, and ruled by Arabs. About Bakr invented a devilish ploy never known before during the lifetime of Muhammad and never used by him or by his foes: to send troops and armies with a written threat to nations whose countries were coveted by Arabs to force them to choose either to convert, to pat tributes/taxes to keep their religion, or to be massacred. Within the three 'options', Arabs aimed to invade and rule the coveted country anyway! Abou Bakr and the companions with him disbelieved in this Quranic rule "There shall be no compulsion in religion..." (2:256) and disbelieved in this Quranic verse addressed to Muhammad: "Had your Lord willed, everyone on earth would have believed. Will you compel people to become believers?" (10:99). How come that Abou Bakr and other caliphs dared to force and coerce people to convert?! Within the Abbasid Era, such aggression has been 'justified' by inventing the hadith of (I was commanded to fight human beings until they convert and testify that.....).   

4- This ploy of declaring people as 'infidels' invented by Qorayish and Abou Bakr achieved for Arabs their desire to raid, loot, enslave, etc. within using a quasi-religious pretext. Yet, Qorayish had a bitter taste of its own medicine when rebellious and belligerent Bedouins and desert-Arabs declared the Qorayish leaders/imams/caliphs as infidels and they assassinated Othman and Ali; they went to an extreme of declaring anyone who would not agree with them as 'infidels' who deserve to be robbed and discriminately massacred, and their women raped and/or enslaved, within the motto (there is no rule except God's). This went on within the decades of the Umayyad Era.   

5- The notion of declaring others as 'infidels' who deserve to be robbed and discriminately massacred, and their women raped and/or enslaved is the basis of all evils within the history of the Qorayish caliphs and of the emergence of Sunnite sharia laws of Satan that cause Wahabi Sunnite terrorism in our era worldwide.

Invention of hadiths is the first step in the emergence of the earthly, man-made religions during the Umayyad Era:

1- Political struggles entailed quasi-religious justification to 'legitimize' violations of Quranic teachings; this justification is never found in the Quran, and texts/narratives had to be invented and concocted under the name of hadiths/sayings ascribed falsely to Muhammad after his death. Another justification is to fabricate a false notion about Fate (i.e., every injustices and massacres are predestined and preordained! This is called fatalism). We will comment on this erroneous view of Fate later on in this book. We briefly assert here that the domain of fabrication of hadiths was activated by some companions and Abou Hurayrah was on top of this list and so was some men of the next generations like Al-Awzaay; all of them were hired and paid by the Umayyads. Such oral traditions called hadiths have been deemed (until now by the Muhammadans) as part of divine revelation within Islam! By ascribing lies and falsehoods to Muhammad and by imposing fatalism on Arabs, the Umayyads has invented an earthly religion that came to be known officially (within the Abbasid Era) as the Sunnite religion, and as a reaction, their foes, the Shiites, have invented their own hadiths and narratives apart from their own faith tenets/notions that have emerged before the Umayyad Era.           

2- The military, political struggle during the Umayyad Era turned soon enough into a struggle between two earthly religions of the Sunnites and the Shiites. This has been accentuated within the second major civil wars (i.e., Yazeed vs. Hussein and then Abdul-Malik vs. Ibn Al-Zubayr) that took place within the period (61 – 73 A.H.) and caused a weakness within the Umayyad dynasty, and this made Abdullah Ibn Al-Zubayr proclaim himself a caliph and controlled most countries and regions. The powerful Marwan Ibn Al-Hakam and his son Abdul-Malik re-established the strength of the Umayyad caliphate and Ibn Al-Zubayr was killed in 73 A.H. Within such turmoil, the rebellious movement of the adventurous man Al-Mukhtar Ibn Obayd Al-Thaqafi emerged; he was at first an agent obsequiously serving the Umayyads, but he was tempted to seize the chance of their weakness to raise the motto/banner of avenging the murder of Hussein to gather Shiites around him; for a while, he joined Abdullah Ibn Al-Zubayr but turned against him, and he was eventually murdered by Musaab Ibn Al-Zubayr in 67 A.H. We focus here on the fact that vile, mean adventurer Al-Mukhtar made use of the earthly Shiite mottoes and mobilized men to fight under such Shiite mottoes, and he gave the title (Al-Mehdi) or ''the guided imam'' to M. Ibn Ali Ibn Al-Hanafiyya, a progeny of Ali Ibn Abou Talib, and he provided a throne for him to incite soldiers to fight for his sake. This myth of an imam called Mehdi is still part and parcel of the Sunnite, Sufi, and Shiite mythologies. Another myth invited by Al-Mukhtar is ascribing to God his military endeavors; he coined the term (God's troops) to describe his army of soldiers; this is reminiscent of the Shiite militants of Hezbollah (i.e., the party of Allah or allies of Allah!) who are now in Lebanon. The history book titled "Al-Muntazim" (part 6, about events of 66 A.H.) by Ibn Al-Jawzy tells us that Al-Mukhtar was an active hadith-inventing machine and invented so many 'prediction' hadiths to support his stances and views, and he killed men who refuted or refused to believe in his invented hadiths such as M. Ibn Ammar Ibn Yasser. As a reaction, enemies of Al-Mukhtar invented their own hadiths to contradict his hadiths and prove him a liar. All of them forgot the Quranic fact that Muhammad never knew or talked about the future or the metaphysical realm of the unknown.                     

3- Within "Al-Muntazim" (part 6, about events of 93 A.H.) by Ibn Al-Jawzy, we read about the governor of Yathreb, Omar Ibn Abdul-Aziz who became a caliph later on, had to obey the written decree of the caliph Al-Waleed one winter by flogging Khobayb Ibn Abdullah Ibn Al-Zubayr 50 or 100 lashes and to pour very cold water on his naked body while he was tied to a mosque gate and left until he died. The reason was that Khobayb intentionally invented a hadith ascribed falsely to Muhammad to undermine and insult the Umayyad caliphs who are the progeny of Marwan Ibn Al-Hakam.   

Fabricating hadiths for or against the Umayyads:

1- Those who served the Umayyads by justifying their heinous crimes and grave injustices within their earthly religion are judges, religious scholars, orators, and narrators who specialized in fabricating narratives/hadiths that are part of the pro-Umayyad propaganda. Those agents/narrators serving the Umayyads were handsomely paid within official high-stature posts. Among the most famous narrators and scholars was Al-Awzaay who served the Umayyads and later on the Abbasids; he was the one who issued a fatwa for the caliph Hisham Ibn Abdul-Malik to murder Ghilan Al-Dimishqi the leader of the Qadariyya group of theologians who asserted that humans possess free will (unlike fatalism of the Umayyads) who insulted the Umayyads in public.    

2- Corrupt scholars not only justified injustices of the Umayyads, but also committed the crime of intentionally corrupting some caliphs; for instance, the young Umayyad prince, Yazeed Ibn Abdul-Malik, was at first very pious and loved to talk to scholars and theologians, and he was greatly influenced by the justice of his predecessor the caliph Omar Ibn Abdul-Aziz. As per history of Ibn Katheer (part 9, p. 259), when Yazeed Ibn Abdul-Malik was enthroned, he announced he would follow the footsteps of the just caliph Omar Ibn Abdul-Aziz and to prevent all injustices, to the consternation of his Umayyad relatives who left him do this for just 40 days; they had to bring him 40 fiqh scholars asserting, using a false hadith, that caliphs are never judged on the Last Day and they are exempted from entering into Hell, and thus, they are allowed to do whatever they like! This myth caused Yazeed Ibn Abdul-Malik to be an immoral, promiscuous, tyrannical caliph who committed many grave injustices.   

3- Political struggles caused fabrication of hadiths to flourish under the auspices of two Jewish Yemenite men who feigned a conversion to Islam in order to deceive the Muhammadans: Kaab Al-Ahbar who sided with the Umayyads and his friend Abdullah Ibn Saba who sided with the Shiites, foes of the Umayyads. In fact, both men have authored hundreds of hadiths to support views of both sides and ascribed such falsehoods to Muhammad after his death.  

4- Kaab Al-Ahbar claimed his knowing details about the divine metaphysical realm of the unknown and that he had vast knowledge of the Torah and other celestial books given by God to ancient prophets; people at the time believed his lies. Kaab Al-Ahbar befriended Abou Hurayrah who allied himself to the Umayyads, and both men engaged into oral narration of hadiths and narratives within pro-Umayyad propaganda within Arabia and elsewhere. They have fabricated hadiths praising the Umayyads, and they had several preachers under them (paid by the Umayyads) to spread and propagate such pro-Umayyad hadiths in short sermons after the daily prayers in almost all mosques. Abou Hurayrah (supposedly a contemporary of Muhammad) narrated hadiths concocted by Kaab Al-Ahbar though this Jewish man never saw Muhammad and 'converted' during the caliphate of Omar Ibn Al-Khattab. Among the pro-Umayyad preachers was Al-Awzaay who served the Umayyads within the last decade of their rule (and then served the Abbasids) by inventing more stories, narratives, and hadiths. 

5- On the other hand, the Shiites and other opposition groups who hated the Umayyads invented hadiths that expose and undermine them and incite others to rebel against them. These hadiths include slandering the promiscuous, unjust Umayyad caliphs and telling stories to prove their tyranny and likening them to Moses' Pharaoh. Such hadiths were written down and propagated especially by the Abbasids later on and quoted by historians and scholars of the Abbasid Era like Ibn Katheer.

6- Among the hadiths invented by the Shiites is a laughter-inducing one about Muhammad seeing Mu'aweiya carrying his son, Yazeed, and saying that a man among the Paradise dwellers is carrying a man among the Hell-dwellers! The Quran asserts that Muhammad never knew about the future or the metaphysical realm; besides, Mu'aweiya as the Damascus-based governor of the Levant married Maysoon, daughter of the chieftain of the Kalb tribe and the mother of Yazeed, three decades after Muhammad's death.    

7- The Shiite followers of Abdullah Ibn Saba believed in the myth invented by him earlier that the deified Ali is not actually dead and he lives somewhere at present, to return shortly before the end of days to spread peace and justice on Earth. This has been the seed that has germinated the myth of (the waited Mehdi) or ''the guided one'' among the descendants of Ali and Fatima: a main Shiite notion that has been crystalized during the Abbasid Era and later on adopted by the Sufis and Sunnites. We are to bear in mind that Sunnite, Shiite, and Sufi religions with their appellations and doctrines took form and written down during the Abbasid Era, not within the troubled Umayyad Era of oral traditions, civil wars, instability, and turmoil. M. Ibn Al-Hanafiyya was the deified imam, among other imams of the Shiite group called the Kaysanites, who later on helped establish the Abbasid caliphate.     

8- Al-Khawarij fighters were victims of hadiths fabricated to attack and undermine them, collected later on by the historian Al-Malty during the Abbasid Era in a book titled "Al-Tanbeeh wi Al-Rad". Among such hadiths is the one by Abou Hurayrah about those who read the Quran by their mouths and never their hearts and get out of religion as easily and quickly as an arrow thrown from a bow. The same hadith is mentioned by Ibn Al-Atheer in his history book when he mentions the story of Ali during the battle of Nahrawan being warned against Al-Khawarij, by this hadith of prediction, who will rebel against him soon. We remind readers here that the Quran asserts that Muhammad never knew about the future or the metaphysical realm at all; he could not have possibly talked about rebel Bedouins. Al-Khawarij never invented hadiths because they were uncouth, ignorant, belligerent men with hardly the cultural level and intellectual faculties or cunning necessary to indulge in such propaganda based on fabricating hadiths. Yet, Al-Khawarij men were practically the first ones to begin bloodbaths and massacres of innocent, peaceful ones in the name of religion (after declaring those who would not join them as 'infidels' and therefore deserve to be put to death!) and under the pretext of revolting against unjust rulers. This is their main legislation in their earthly religion applied mercilessly by their swords throughout the Umayyad Era. Within the Abbasid Era, Al-Khawarij group waned as they were weakened by incessant revolts against the Umayyads and by internal disputes among their leaders; their insurgences and revolts dwindled with the passage of time, and desert-Arabs and Bedouins were not of much consequence during the Abbasid Era of large cities of civilized life introduced by the influence of non-Arabs, especially the Persians. Yet, within the Abbasid Era, some desert-Arabs and Bedouins continued their belligerence by joining the destructive and savage  Zanj revolt and the revolt of the Qarmatians. The massacres and savagery are also repeated by Wahabis among the desert-Arabs in the 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th centuries; Wahabism has originated in the Najd region, and so were the Qarmatians and Al-Khawarij who originally came from the Najd region and expanded outside it.        

The nature of the contradictory earthly, man-made religions during the Umayyad Era:

Extremism in notions and application:

1- The Umayyad Era witnessed the rise of the extremist religious ideas and notions within the earthly religions of Shiites and Sunnites. One story in authoritative history books asserts that some Shiites led by Abdullah Ibn Saba deified Ali during his lifetime within the civil war, and Ali punished them by burning them alive. Al-Khawarij, within their extremist notion of declaring all those who would not join them as 'infidels', massacred all peaceful, innocent people who never got involved in politics and the civil war, within their raids for loot and spoils.     

2- The Umayyads, on their part, went to extremes such as destroying the Kaaba and omitting sacrilege in Mecca and massacring the Yathreb dwellers and anyone related to the household of Muhammad and his 'companions'; in fact, the Umayyads and their cronies and allies put people to death based on mere aroused suspicions, as was the way of the governor and vizier Al-Hajaj Ibn Youssef. The Umayyads ascribed their crimes to God's Will and predestined commands within the faulty philosophy of fatalism.     

Simplicity and lack of intellectual theorization:

1- Extremist views and patterns of behavior within the political struggles between Sunnites and Shiites lacked the stabilized periods of time to allow theories to crystalize or to write down anything; ideas were simple and spread orally, and the Umayyads were Arabs who never cared except for Arab tribes and they despised non-Arabs among the conquered nations. Non-Arabs before and after the Arab conquests cared for civilization, culture, and writing down books of literature and history, whereas Arabs during the Umayyad Era, were never keen on writing down anything and they memorized oral poetry; any religious 'knowledge' were mere chattering focused on oral narratives of events and hadiths ascribed to Muhammad falsely and history of Arab in general narrated in parties of merry-making. Besides, the Umayyad caliphs (especially those who founded it firmly like Mu'aweiya, Marwan, and Abdul-Malik) spent their rein in quelling revolts and civil strife, and therefore had no time for worldly or 'religious' knowledge – even if we suppose they desired to make knowledge flourish in books to be written upon their commands. Other immoral, promiscuous caliphs never cared for knowledge at all, and the Umayyads in general focused mainly on Arab conquests east and west and to quell and crush revolts of Alawites, Shiites, Berbers, Copts, and Al-Khawarij. The Umayyads had other troubles which consisted of rivalries among tribes within an atmosphere of tribalism, as the Umayyads favored (within nepotism) some tribes among their allies over some others. Hence, within the short duration of the Umayyad caliphate that knew nothing but bloodshed, there was hardly any time to settle down and write down anything at all.     

2- The short duration of the Umayyad caliphate was filled with many external and internal events and turmoil, and its Arab tribal Bedouin culture never allowed any intellectual development; this is why intellectual theorization of the Sunnite and Shiite religions did not occur during the Umayyad Era despite the spread of Shiite and Sunnite oral narratives/hadiths/notions invented within the political and military struggle between the Umayyads and their enemies.     

3- Thus, religious life during the Umayyad Era was simple and uncomplicated, and it was confined to add the religious nature or religiosity to dominant views, practices, and deeds. Thus, religiosity was manipulated to justify political views, for instance, and no one at the time thought about theorizing and explaining this in short or long books; the Umayyads focused only within oral propaganda of their official narrators who invented hadiths, and their Shiite foes invented other hadiths to support their political stances. Hence, the Sunnite and Shiite religions did not crystalize their forms until the authors of the Abbasid Era came along to write down and record all rituals, notions, sects, theories, doctrines, etc. of both religions. Hence, all Shiite revolts and quest for establishing a Shiite caliphate were based on such books that preserved the early Shiite history of resistance and Shiite practices and rituals.    

The beginning of Sunnite fiqh legislations during the Umayyad Era:

1- The worst and most dangerous phenomenon within the topic of the earthly religions that emerged orally at first during the Umayyad Era is ascribing stories/hadiths and narratives that 'interpret' the Quran to Muhammad. Such oral accounts of the earthly religions are deemed by polytheists as part of the divine revelation of Islam; no one dared to criticize or protest against such a flagrant lie as inventors of hadiths had ascribed them to Muhammad and the narrators were protected by the Umayyads. Such oral narratives and fiqh legislations were written down during the Abbasid Era and tool the name of the Sunnite religion.   

2- The Sunnite sharia legislations had branched into several schools or doctrines during the Abbasid Era, but four doctrines only remain until today: the Malik doctrine in Yathreb, the Abou Hanifa doctrine in Iraq, the Al-Shafei doctrine in Iraq and Egypt, and the Ibn Hanbal doctrine; the last one is the most extremist, fanatical, bigoted, and violent Sunnite doctrine whose fiqh metamorphosed into the Wahabism of our era.

3- The Sunnite religion in particular, with its fiqh and sharia legislations and its false and fabricated ever-increasing hadiths, has aborted within the Second Abbasid Era the real intellectual and scientific movement (within fields of chemistry, music, geometry, philosophy, algebra, medicine, etc.) initiated and flourished by non-Arabs of the conquered countries who translated books of the Greek civilization and built on their branches of knowledge within more books written in Arabic that added to human knowledge later on. The ones who aborted such intellectual and scientific movement were the Sunnite Hanbali clergymen, imams, and sheikhs.

The influence of Arab conquests on the intellectual and religious trends:

1- The crime known as the Arab conquests that resulted into an Arab empire falsely carrying the name of Islam is the key to understand the historical background to the Sunnite religion and its sharia laws and fiqh. 

2- Arabs were too busy with conquests and political and military struggles, within the pre-Umayyad era and the Umayyad caliphate, to write down anything related to religion or history. As a nation, the Arabs had no written civilization before the Quranic revelation and they had nothing but oral traditions. In contrast, several nations conquered by Arabs had centuries-old civilizations and written heritage; yet, they were treated by the Umayyads as second-class citizens or rather like servants and slaves owned by Arabs; they paid heavy taxes/tributes to Arabs whether they converted to 'Islam' or not.     

3- The Umayyad Era was filled with conquests, civil strife, revolts, intrigues, political schemes, etc., and within such an atmosphere, a new generation of non-Arabs among the conquered nations served Arabs (and some of the so-called 'companions') and learned the Arab religion and the Arabic tongue. This generation who had civilizational heritage and a certain background of cultural knowledge memorized the oral stories and narratives of Arabs (including the hadiths ascribed falsely to Muhammad) so that being religious would be their way to climb the social ladder and be distinguished from their Arab masters – even some of them went into extremes of religiosity and became ascetics who renounced material possessions of the world that caused Arabs to fight and massacre one another.    

4- Those cultured non-Arabs led the intellectual life of oral traditions and invention of hadiths within the last decades of the Umayyad Era, especially after the death of many 'companions' who were children  when Muhammad died; for instance, Anas Ibn Malik who served inside the house of Muhammad died in Basra, Iraq, in 92 A.H. at the age of ninety-nine. Other men of the same generation died in the period between 86 and 99 A.H., and many of them (and non-Arabs who served them) authored many hadiths, especially the one about putting to death those who change their religion and forsook 'Islam'. More details on that false hadith are found in our book titled "The Penalty of Apostasy", found in English on this link: http://www.ahl-alquran.com/arabic/book_main.php?main_id=91  

5- Ibn Al-Jawzy mentions in his book Al-Muntazim (part 6, p. 319-320) that one narrator mentions that when the generation of those who witnessed Muhammad as children before his death, knowledge of hadiths and fiqh legislations in most countries and cities were controlled by non-Arabs who learned Arabic and converted, and each city/region bragged of its famous fiqh scholar.

6- This story of Ibn Al-Jawzy mentions names of some famous fiqh scholars (of non-Arab origin) of Iraq, Yathreb, and the Levant while disregarding those of Egypt, but Ibn Al-Jawzy asserts that they learned from their Arab masters and tutors in the fields of fiqh and hadiths. It is noteworthy that Ibn Al-Jawzy, out of envy, belittles their ijtihad in fiqh notions and hadiths they narrated, as he was an Arab and they were of non-Arab origin; racism (favoring Arabs and hating non-Arabs) still lingered within the era when Ibn Al-Jawzy lived. Another reason for the envy of Ibn Al-Jawzy was his never reaching the fame and stature of such fiqh scholars and that he opposed many of their ideas because of the extremist Ibn Hanbal doctrine he followed.

7- What is never mentioned by Ibn Al-Jawzy (and others) is the fact that such 'scholars' were no scholars at all as they never wrote any books and never theorized anything; they merely improvised, concocted, and fabricated hadiths (ascribed to Muhammad decades after his death) as oral narrators in mosques and made their personal views as fiqh notions to gain leadership, stature, and authority among the masses who were infatuated by their asceticism in contrast to the Umayyads and their enemies who fought and massacred one another for the sake of worldly possessions and transient glory.

On the threshold of the Abbasid Era.

1- The Abbasid dynasty reached power by the swords of 1) the Persians who followed the leader Abou Moslem Al-Khorasany 2) the Qahtanite Arab tribes. This made the 'Muslims' of non-Arab origin deem themselves as superior to Arabs and some Persians became chauvinists; some non-Arabs undermined Arabs and Islam itself, and some among the cultural elite and scribes of governmental diwans during the Abbasid Era were known for their atheism and ridiculing religion. Abbasid caliphs never persecuted those atheists and disbelievers as long as their loyalty was 100% dedicated to the caliphate; otherwise, those 'apostates' or 'infidels' (even if they were 'religious' and 'pious' persons among Sunnite or Shiite/Alawites rebels) were accused of rejecting 'Islam' and put to death as the penalty of apostasy in the Sunnite religion. This penalty to get rid of foes and enemies of the Abbasids has been fabricated by Sunnite scholars of fiqh as we have explained in our previous writings, especially our book titled "The Penalty of Apostasy" and our book titled "Hisbah: A Historical Overview", found in English on this link: http://www.ahl-alquran.com/arabic/book_main.php?main_id=99           

2- The Abbasid Era witnessed the writing down of most of the oral traditions, narratives, and hadiths and simple/naïve notions of fiqh, while increasing all these branches of 'knowledge' within more complication, complexity, and variations. The hadith-making machines produced endless hadiths written down by many authors and fiqh has comprised many sub-branches. The traces and the influence of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian riverside civilizations are undeniable in such books; many of their mythologies have been revived while taking Arab and 'Islamized' form within the eclectic nature and diversity of the Abbasid Era that subsumed the ancient civilizations of conquered nations. This made these books contradict the essence of Islam (i.e., the Quran).    

3- Such developments in thought and in the intellectual, cultural life influenced Arabia itself; a Yathreb-based school of fiqh was established and took pride in Malik, the founder of the doctrine carrying his name that was the first school whose followers invented hadiths and ascribed them falsely to Muhammad after his death, and different schools in major cities within the Arab empire resulted into the crystallization of the earthly Sunnite religion and its fiqh and sharia laws later on.

4- Life grew complicated within the Abbasid Era within riverside environments in Egypt, Iraq, and the Levant. Even some people of the conquered nations who decided to live in Arabia changed, developed, and elevated the lifestyle there, especially in Mecca and Yathreb. Of course, desert environments in particular are closed and based on imitation, traditions, tribalism, and limited lifestyle and activities, and desert-Arabs hate development and change. The most important cities in Arabia were Mecca and Yathreb, which were like two oases within the Arabian desert, with a modicum of development and civilization. This is because of the universality of pilgrimage to Mecca, where the Sacred Kaaba Mosque is located. As for Yathreb, it was no longer a capital for any state of the Muhammadans since the assassination of Othman, since capitals were Kufa, Damascus, and then Baghdad. This made the Yathreb dwellers lament that Yathreb was no longer in the limelight in terms of power, authority, wealth, making of history, and intellectual movements, because history was being made in Egypt, the Levant, and Iraq. The Yathreb-dwellers had nothing left but to dwell on their glorious past when it was the city-state led by Muhammad and a center of power, wealth, and control during the reign of the caliphs Abou Bakr, Omar, and Othman, where senior 'companions' of Muhammad lived once. Thus, the Yathreb dwellers specialized in orally narrating and inventing stories about Muhammad and his so-called companions who were their ancestors, and such narratives were written during the Abbasid Era along with hadiths ascribe falsely to Muhammad to form what has come to be known as the Sunnite religion.           

5- This environment of nostalgia in Yathreb led its dwellers to ascribe themselves to the lifetime of Muhammad, but they faced the problem of facing new developments and influences coming from riverside environments that have centuries-old civilizations: Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Persia. Thus, many inveterate liars in Yathreb (who had no civilization to allow theorization of any kind) made their ijtihad by ascribing their views/phrases/practices to Muhammad and senior companions who lived once in Yathreb, while calling such views/phrases/practices as 'traditions' of Muhammad's lifetime. Those Yathreb men did not ascribe their views to themselves so as not to be criticized or persecuted. This is the same methodology of Malik whose school in Hejaz opposed ijtihad within fiqh (or that one ascribe views to oneself, and therefore making them not compulsory); Malik insisted on following his hadiths only, and he never wrote them down, but his disciples did, during the Abbasid Era, in several versions of the book called (Al-Mowata'). This is in contrast to the Abou Hanifa school of thought, in Iraq, of ijtihad and intellectual endeavors ascribed to the thinker and not to Islam itself. It is noteworthy that Abou Haifa, who rejected all hadiths, never authored any books; yet. his disciples formed a doctrine using his name and authored their own books.       

6- Sadly, the ever-increasing hadiths dominated Iraq and Asian regions during the Abbasid Era; this state of affairs began by Al-Shafei, who died in 204 A.H. and who, in our opinion, the real founder of the Sunnite religion and its fiqh in his seminal book titled (Al-Um) and he elaborates further his Sunnite methodology in another book titled (Al-Resala). Political and military conditions caused the erroneous thought of Al-Shafei to spread; when the armed revolts of Persians were brutally quelled, Persian clergymen of Mazdakism and Zoroastrianism resorted to peaceful resistance against Arab military invasion and invasion of Arab culture and religion by joining scholars of hadiths who invented so many of hadiths. This field of hadiths was financed and sponsored by the Abbasids caliphs to consolidate their theocratic sovereignty and 'call'.  It is ironic that when armed rebellions of Persians were crushed brutally, Persian cultural elite members converted to the religion of the Sunnite hadiths in multitudes and bought with their money loyalty to certain Arabian tribes to make themselves under the protection of such tribes. This is why the Second Abbasid Era witnessed the prominence of the Ibn Hanbal school/doctrine scholars, though Ibn Hanbal was or Persian origin and so were other known authors of hadiths: Al-Bokhary, Moslem, Ibn Maja, Al-Nisaa'i, Al-Tirmizy, etc. Those men established firmly the Sunnite religion with its two main branches: hadiths and fiqh. Decades later, those Persian clergymen and authors has become the infallible gods of the Sunnite religion. In the next CHAPTER III, we tackle the Abbasid Era of the development and crystallization of the earthly religions of Sufis, Sunnites, and Shiites.