Religious Propaganda Adds To Group Feeling

This is because religious coloring:

• does away with mutual jealousy among people who share in a group feeling
• causes concentration on the truth.

When people who have a religious coloring come to have the right insight into their affairs, nothing can withstand them, because their outlook is one and their object one of common accord.

They are willing to die for their objectives.

On the other hand, the members of the dynasty they attack may be many times as numerous as they.

But their purposes differ, in as much as they are false purposes, and the people of the worldly dynasty come to abandon each other, since they are afraid of death.

Therefore, they do not resist people with a religious coloring even if they themselves are more numerous.

They are overpowered by them and quickly wiped out.

This happened to the Arabs at the beginning of Islam during the Muslim conquests.

The Muslim armies at al-Qadisiyah and the Yarmuk numbered some 30,000 in each case.

• The Persian troops at al-Qadisiyah numbered 120,000.
• The troops of Heraclius, according to alWaqidi, was 400,000.

Neither of them were able to withstand the Arabs.

Another illustration is the Lamtunah (Almoravid) and Almohad dynasties.

The Maghrib had many tribes surpassing them in numbers and group feeling.

However, their religious organization doubled the strength of their group feeling through their feeling of having the right religious insight and their willingness to die.

• Nothing could withstand them.

This can also be illustrated (by the situation existing at the time) when the religious coloring changes and is destroyed. The power (of the ruling dynasty) is then wiped out.

Superiority exists then merely in proportion to the existing group feeling, without the additional power of religion.

As a result, the dynasty is overpowered by those groups (up to this time) under its control, that are equal or superior to it in strength. It had formerly overpowered the groups that had. a stronger group feeling and were more deeply rooted in desert life, with the help of the additional power that religion had given it.

An illustration of this is the relationship of the Almohads with the Zanatah.

The Zanatah were deeply rooted in the desert. They more savage than the Masmudah. But the Masmudah had the religious call to follow the Mahdi.

They took on his religious coloring.

As a result, the strength of their group feeling increased many times over.

Therefore, they were at first able to overpower the Zanatah and to make them their followers, even though the Zanatah were more strongly rooted in the desert and had a stronger group feeling than they.

But later on, when the Masmudah lost their religious coloring, the Zanatah rose up against them and took their power away.

6. Religious Propaganda Cannot Materialize Without Group Feeling

This is because every mass political undertaking by necessity requires group feeling. This is indicated in the tradition:

The prophets are those most likely to perform wonders.

If this was the case with prophets, one would expect it to apply all the more so to others.

One cannot expect them to be able to work the wonder of achieving superiority without group feeling.

It happened to the Sufi shaykh Ibn Qasi, the author of the Kitab Khal’an-na’layn on Sufism.

He rose in revolt in Spain and made propaganda for the truth shortly before the time when the propaganda of the Mahdi (of the Almohads) started.

His followers were called al-Murabitun. Ibn Qasi had some success because the Lamtunah (Almoravids) were preoccupied with their own difficulties with the Almohads.

But there were no groups and tribes there to defend him.

When the Almohads took over control of the Maghrib, he soon obeyed them and participated in their cause.

He took the oath of allegiance to them at his stronghold, the fortress of Arcos de la Frontera. He handed his frontier province over to them and became their first missionary in Spain.

His revolt was called the revolt of the Murabitun.

To this chapter belong cases of revolutionaries from among the common people and of jurists who undertake to reform evil (practices).

Many religious people come to revolt against unjust amirs.

• They hope for a divine reward for what they do.
• They gain many followers and sympathizers among the masses
  • But most of them consequently perish as sinners and are unrewarded because God had not destined them for such activities.

God commands such activities to be undertaken only where there-exists the power to bring them to a successful conclusion.

Rulers and dynasties are strongly entrenched. Their foundations can be undermined and destroyed only through strong efforts backed by the group feeling of tribes and families.

Similarly, prophets in their religious propaganda depended on groups and families, though they were the ones who could have been supported by God with anything in existence, if He had wished, but in His wisdom He permitted matters to take their customary course.

If someone who is on the right path were to attempt religious reforms in this way, his isolation would keep him from gaining the support of group feeling, and he would perish.

If someone merely pretends to achieve religious reforms in order to gain political leadership, he deserves to be hampered by obstacles and to fall victim to perdition.

Religious reforms are a divine matter that materializes only with God’s pleasure, through sincere devotion for Him and in view of good intentions towards the Muslims.

In Islam, the first person to start that sort of thing in Baghdad was Khalid ad-Daryush.

Tahir had revolted and Al-Amin was killed.

Al-Ma’mun in Khurasin was slowed down in his advance toward Iraq. He appointed Ali b. Musa ar-Rida, a descendant of al-Husayn, successor to the throne.

The Abbasids disapproved of that move. They banded together and revolted against al-Ma’mun and chose Ibrahim b. al-Mahdi in his stead.

Trouble broke out in Baghdad.

The troublesome elements among the underworld and the soldiery were given a free hand against the decent citizens.

They robbed the people and filled their pockets with loot, which they sold openly in the markets.

The people turned for protection to the authorities, but these did not help them.

• The religious and good citizens then united to stop the criminals.

Khalid ad-Daryush then appeared in Baghdad.

• He appealed to the people to obey the law.
• Many responded to his call.

They fought the troublesome elements and defeated them.

Khalid had them beaten and punished.

Afterwards, Abu Hatim Sahl b. Salamah al-Ansari appeared in Baghdad.

He hung a copy of the Qur’an around his neck, and appealed to the people to obey the law and to act in accordance with the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet.

High and low, Hashimites and others, all followed him.

He established himself in the palace of Tahir and took over the government. He went around Baghdad, kept out all those who were frightening wayfarers, and put an end to the payment of protection money to the underworld.

When Khalid adDaryush said to him that he, Khalid, was not against the government, Sahl replied that he for his part was fighting all those who acted contrary to the Qur’an and the Sunnah, whoever they might be.

This happened in the year 817.

Ibrahim b. al-Mahdi sent an army against Sahl.

He was defeated and captured, and his power quickly dissolved. He barely escaped with his life.

Later on, many deluded individuals followed, that example. They took it upon themselves to establish the truth. They did not know that they would need group feeling for that.

They did not realize how their enterprise must necessarily end and what they would come to.

One may either:

• treat such people as insane, or
• punish them by execution or beatings when they cause trouble, or
• ridicule them and treat them as buffoons.

Some of these people allied themselves with the Expected Fatimid.33

They pretended to be, either he himself, or one of his missionaries, despite their ignorance of everything concerning the Fatimid. Most men who adopt such ideas will be found to be, either deluded and crazy, or to be swindlers who, with the help of such claims, seek to obtain political leadership -which they crave and would be unable to obtain in the natural manner.

They believe that such claims will be instrumental in bringing to them the fulfillment of their hopes. They do not consider the disaster that will overtake them in consequence. The trouble they create will speedily cause their death and bring their trickery to a bitter end.

At the beginning of this century, a man of Sufi leanings, by name at-Tuwayziri, appeared in as-Sus. He went to the Mosque of Massah on the shore of the Mediterranean and pretended to be the Expected Fatimid.

He was taking advantage of the common people’s firm belief in predictions to the effect that the Fatimid was about to appear and that his mission would originate at that Mosque. A number of ordinary Berber groups were attracted to him like moths (to the flame).

Their chiefs then feared that the revolt might spread.

The leader of the Masmudah at that time, ‘Umar asSaksiwi, secretly sent someone to him, who killed him in his bed.

At the beginning of this century, al-‘Abbas appeared among the Ghumarah.

He made a similar claim. The lowest among the stupid and imbecile members of those tribes followed his blethering. He marched on Badis, one of the Ghumarah cities, and entered it by force.

He was then killed, 40 days after the start of his mission. He perished like those before him. There are many similar cases.

Their common mistake is to disregard the significance of group feeling for the success in such matters.

If deceit is involved, it is better that such a person should not succeed and be made to pay for his crime. “That is the sinners’ reward.”