Moslem Schisms and Sects pdf download

Moslem Schisms and Sects, Al-Fark Bain Al-Firak by Abd Al-Qahir Ibn Tahir Al-Baghdadi (Author), Kate Chambers Seelye (Editor)

MOSLEM SCHISMS AND SECTS

Introduction of Islamic sects in general

The author says:

To the student who first looks into the tenets of the Moslem religion, the simplicity of the creed accepted by all who profess Islam, would imply a remarkable unity in this religion. The might at first be tempted to compare it, with favorable results for Islam.

to Christianity with its many Sects and denominations. Even, when, after a little fur- ther study, he found that there was one great schism in Islam, the one which divides the Shiites and the Sunnites, he could still marvel at a religion of but two sects.

But once face to face with the tradition, “

The Jews are divided into 71 sects, and the Christians are divided into 72 sects, and my people will be divided into 73 sects,” his marveling would cease, and his first impulse would naturally be to condemn a religion which justified its schisms by a tradition said to come down from the prophets.

The fact of the matter is, that instead of the tradition being invented to justify the sect, the sects have been invented to justify the tradition. In other words, claiming that Mohammed had said that Islam would be divided into 73 sects, many of the theologians of Islam felt it incumbent upon them to bring about the fulfilment of this prophecy, and therefore set to work to make a more or less arbitrary division of the religious system.

We must not, however, conclude from this that all but the two sects, the Shiites and the Sunnites, owe their origins to the imaginings of the theologians. Many sects exist which represent important philosophical schools   and widely differing trends of thought.

It is when these are subdivided, to bring up their number to 73, that the arbitrariness appears. In his article entitled Le dénombrement des sectes Ma- hometanes, which appeared in the Revue de l’Histoire de la Religion, vol. 26, Goldziher offers an explanation for the origin of this rather extraordinary saying attributed to Mohammed, He tells how allusions to this division by European authors are to be found as early as the sixteenth century.

Martinus Crucius in his Turco-Gracciac libri octo, Bale, 1587, p. 66, says: Superstitio Mohametana est in LXXII principales sectas divisa, quarum una sola in Para- disum dux est, reliquae vero in inferos.” Some traditions give the number as 72 instead of 73.

 Ibn Māja (d. 283) gives three versions of this saying of the prophet: In one it is only the Jews who, with their 71 sects, are opposed to the future division of Islam into 72 sects, the Christians not even being mentioned; in another, in opposition to the 73 sects of Islam, the Jews are mentioned with 71, and the Christians with 72 sects, of which one shall go to heaven, while the rest are condemned to hell; in the third version, the 71 Jewish sects alone are opposed to Islam.

Palgrave suggested that the idea of the 72 sects came from the New Testament account of Our Lord’s 72 disciples. Goldziher’s suggestion is that this tradition is an erroneous interpreta- tion of a word which originally meant something quite different, this wrong interpretation having changed the primitive form.

 In other words, Shu`ab,” branches, a term applied very generally to the various ramifications of an idea, came to mean Firķah,” division, and thus sect.

The tradition which has become thus misinterpreted is, accord ing to Goldziher, the one quoted by the great traditionalist Bukhāri? (194-256/810-870), Faith has 60 and some branches, and modesty is one branch of faith” (Le rec. des trad. Mah., ed. Lud. Krehl, vol, i, p. 2).

This same tradi- tion appears a little later, as follows: “Faith has 70 and more branches, of which the highest is the belief that there is no God but Allah, and of which the lowest is the taking out of the oath what is to be rejected; and modesty is a branch of faith” (Muslim, Şahīḥ, ed. Cairo 1288 A. H., vol. i, p. 126).”

This use of the word branch gradually came to have the meaning of branching off, dividing; and finally firşah having been substituted for “ Shu’ab,” we have the tradition of the 72 or 73 sects. Other rather interesting explanations of this arbitrary division are to be found in Steinschneider’s article in Z, D. M. G., vol. iv, p. 147.

Here the suggestion is made that it can be traced back to the Jewish tradition about Moses and the 70 elders;

that Moses chose six elders from each tribe, except Levi, which being a model tribe would not take offense if slighted, and was therefore asked for only four representatives, Moses himself constituting the seventy-first elder.

This number the Mohammedans must increase; and they therefore claim 73 sects. Another view is that the origin is astronomical, while a third derives it from the 70 languages of the Tower of Babel;

and a fourth from the 72 letters in Allah’s name, a tradition drawn from the Jewish legend of the 72 letters with which Yahweh will free the children of Israel.

Disagreements over this ḥadīth have not, however, been limited to the question of the number. One of the greatest points of difference was the question of how many of these

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