A Miserable Sunni-Shia Debate on Egypt's Al-Mihwar Channel

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

I followed a dialogue on Egypt’s Al-Mihwar channel on Wednesday, 3 April 2013, between the Sunni Dr. Khaled Said and the Shia Dr. Ahmed al-Nafis.

As I followed the dialogue, I kept saying to myself: “Woe to the Muslims and the Arab nation, if these are the men who will lead the nation and speak on matters of religion and the affairs of Muslims.” The two esteemed doctors are living in the past, in the period some 1,400 years ago, discussing problems that existed, or were supposed to have existed, at that time, and there seems to be no room for the two of them to work together so long as those problems persist. The present grinds to a halt over the concerns of Abu Bakr, Ali, and Uthman, over the hadith of Ghadir, and over Abu Bakr leading the prayers during the last four days of the Prophet’s illness, peace be upon him, and the future hangs suspended on this great dispute whose original protagonists died long ago, its importance never diminishing in our minds, and we still stand ready to offer every sacrifice to keep it as a banner for Islamic infighting.

The two interlocutors laid out their disagreements, each defending his own position on who should have assumed the caliphate after the death of the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, each putting forward hadiths attributed to the Prophet, peace be upon him, to bolster his own position and affirm his superiority over the other. And although the Sunni representative was more aggressive and hostile, the Shia representative implied that the Sunnis were misguided. The Sunni representative said that the Shia were misguided and deceptive, calling them the “Rejectionist” sect, while the Shia representative implied that the Sunnis were a sect hostile to the Prophet’s household. The real battle between the two interlocutors was fought out at Saqifat Bani Sa’ida and in the streets of Medina, and had time allowed, they might well have moved on to the Battle of the Camel, Siffin, and Karbala.

I used to think that the battle over the legitimacy of the caliphates of Abu Bakr and Ali had long since ended, but I now judge that we are still only at the beginning of these deliberations and disputes.

The two interlocutors did not discuss Islamic thought, nor did they address the questions of truth and falsehood, or the principles from which the nation ought to set out toward construction and progress, even though the wisdom is perfectly clear that the nation has no time to waste on trivialities, and must first resolve the question of legitimacy in the rightly-guided caliphate.

Both stayed far from the Noble Qur’an, and grounded their respective arguments instead on hadiths supporting the view each of them was putting forward. And here I understood why the Messenger, peace be upon him, said: “Write down nothing from me except the Qur’an, and whoever has written anything else from me, let him erase it, and whoever deliberately lies about me, let him take his seat in the Fire.” The Messenger, peace be upon him, knew of tribal fanaticism, and perhaps anticipated that Muslims after him would fabricate sayings on his tongue to justify some of their own misdeeds. And yet, despite this, Muslims did not obey his command, and chose to write things down anyway, for the possibilities of forgery and falsehood concealed within that writing, possibilities that would let them justify their own social, economic, and political positions. And God, glory and exaltation be to Him, pledged to preserve the Qur’an, but did not pledge to preserve the Prophetic Sunna. It is clear that we have taken great liberties in putting deceptive words into the Messenger’s mouth, peace be upon him.

It is important for the two interlocutors, and for the Muslims alongside them, to know that the caliphs have long since died, that the Umayyad state collapsed, and after it the Abbasid state as well. They ought to know that the Crusaders invaded the lands of the Muslims and were driven out, that small states rose in the various Islamic regions, and that the Ottoman state emerged and then collapsed too. And we now live under the yoke of the Western foreigner, who continues to humiliate us, occupy our land, and plunder our wealth, through unjust and corrupt rulers who make fools of the nation and bend its neck. And perhaps the two interlocutors do not yet know that Palestine is occupied, and that the site of the Prophet’s Night Journey, peace be upon him, lies in the grip of the Zionists.

Men like these are the ones deciding the direction the nation takes now, and it is they who do harm to Islam and the Muslims, who bring upon the Messenger, peace be upon him, nothing but abuse, insults, and mockery, and who turn the Muslims into a laughingstock before the world. It is therefore incumbent upon Muslims to act, in defense of their religion and its values and principles, to protect it from those who refuse to be present for the sake of remaining in a past from which we ought instead to be drawing lessons that help us build our future. And for this reason we must return to the Noble Qur’an, and refer everything said to be a hadith on the tongue of the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, back to the Noble Qur’an, so that we neither go astray nor lose our way. The Islamic sects have historically done harm to Islam and the Muslims, and they continue to do so to this day, and we must hold fast to the Noble Qur’an, for in it lies the unity of all of us.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “مناظرة بائسة بين سني وشيعي على قناة المحور المصرية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.