Destiny Disrupted (a history of the world through islamic eyes)

[فاطمہ طاہرہ]

The whole time Omar the conqueror was directing the territorial expansion oflslam, Omar the spiritual leader was directing the consolidation of Muslim doctrine and defining the Islamic way of life. Abu Bakr had established that Islam was not just an abstract ideal of community, but one particular community with a world-changing destiny. Omar formalized this by declaring a new calendar that began, not with the birth of Mohammed, nor with the first revelations, but with the Hijra, the migration of Muslims to Medina. Omar's calendar enshrined the conviction that Islam was not just a plan for individual salvation, but a plan for how the world should run. Many religions say to their followers, "The world is corrupt, but you can escape it." Islam said to its followers, "The world is corrupt, but you can change it." Perhaps this was inherent from the earliest days of Mohammed's preaching, but Omar confirmed this course for Islam and set it on tracks of iron.​

 

[فاطمہ طاہرہ]

Abu Bakr had ruled with legendary humility, trying never to impose his own will but merely administering the directives set forth by the Qur' an and the Prophet. Omar made this attitude a cornerstone of Muslim doctrine, a seminal decision because in vowing to do only what the revelations directed, he committed Muslims to determining what the revelations directed in every possible case, great and small. During Abu Bakr's khalifate, at Omar's suggestion, all the pieces of the Qur'an were compiled in one place. It was a miscellaneous collection at first, because when the revelations were coming in, people recorded them on anything that came to hand-a sheet of parchment, a piece of leather, a stone, a bone, whatever. As khalifa, Omar began a sorting process. In his presence, each written verse was checked against the memorized version kept by the professional reciters whom this society regarded as the most reliable keepers of information. Scribes then recorded the authorized copy of each verse before witnesses, and these verses were organized into one comprehensive collection.​

 

[فاطمہ طاہرہ]

Whenever a difficult decision came up, Omar looked here for the answer. If the Qur'an didn't provide an answer, he consulted with the community to find out what the Prophet had said or done in a similar situation. In this case, "the community" meant the several hundred men and women who had been Mohammed's "companions" during his lifetime. Every time the community made a ruling in this way, Omar had scribes record it and sent the ruling out to provincial governors to use as a basis for their decisions. Omar funded a body of scholars to spend all their time steeping themselves in the revelations, the stories of Mohammed's life, and other pertinent data, so that when he needed expert advice he could get it from these "people of the bench," a seed that grew into one oflslam's major social institutions, the ulama, or "scholars."​

 

[فاطمہ طاہرہ]

Even as he was shaping Muslim law, Omar was busy applying the doctrine to social life in Medina, which brings us to his stern side. Omar had no tolerance for slackards. For example, he banned drinking outright, even though the Qur'an had been somewhat ambiguous on this question, seeming in some early verses to disapprove more of drunkenness than of drinking per se (although later verses ban it more definitely). The Qur'an specified no particular punishment for drinking, but Omar deduced one by analogy. The analogy in this case went as follows: the Qur'an prescribed the lash for slander; drinking, said Omar, made a person spout slander. Therefore, the punishment for drinking must also be the lash. This mode of argument by analogy (qiyas) created a stencil used prolifically by later Muslim legal thinkers. Dreading the destructive power of unlicensed sex, Omar enforced the sternest measures against adultery. In fact, he mandated stoning for adulterers, which is not mentioned in the Qur' an but does appear in the law of Moses, dating to pre-Qur'anic times (Deuteronomy 22:22}. He also banned the Arab custom of temporary marriage, which allowed men to marry women for a few days: the khalifa recognized prostitution when he saw it. (Shi'ite jurists later relegitimized this practice in their codes.}​

 

[فاطمہ طاہرہ]

Omar's detractors charge him with misogyny, and his rulings do suggest that he held women responsible for the bad behavior of men. To defuse the disruptive power of sexuality, Omar took measures to regulate and separate the roles of men and women, mandating, for example, that women and men pray separately, presumably so they wouldn't be thinking about sex during that ritual.
This was, however, a far cry from the separation of the sexes and the disempowerment of women that developed in Islamic societies centuries later (and persists to this day). It's true, of course, that gender relationships in Medina did not conform to modern feminist ideals. Tribal Arabs (and most early cultures) saw separate and nonoverlapping roles for men and women, and Islam confirmed the separation. In Omar's day, however, education was compulsory for both boys and girls in the Muslim community. Women worked alongside men; they took part in public life; they attended lectures, delivered sermons, composed poetry for public orations, went to war as relief workers, and sometimes even took part in fighting. Important decisions facing the community were discussed in public meetings, Omar participated in those meetings as just another citizen of the community, and women as well as men engaged him fearlessly in debate. In fact, Omar appointed a woman as head of the market in Medina, which was a position of great civic responsibility, for it included duties such as regulating construction, issuing business permits, and policing the integrity of weights and measures. Even so, Omar did plant seeds that eventually developed into a severe constriction of women's participation in public life.​

 

[فاطمہ طاہرہ]

In the seventh century CE, every society in the world permitted slavery, and Arabia was no exception. Islam did not ban the practice, but it did limit a master's power over a slave, and Omar enforced these rulings strictly. No Muslim could be a slave. If a man impregnated a slave, he had to marry her, which meant that her child would be born a Muslim and therefore free. Slavery could not result in breaking up a family, which limited a master's options: he could only buy or sell whole families. Masters could not abuse or mistreat slaves, who had the same human rights as free folks, a theme stressed in the Qur'an and specifically reaffirmed in Prophet Mohammed's final sermon. Omar ruled a master had to give his slaves the same food he was eating and in fact had to have his slaves eat with his family. If Omar's rulings had been carried to their logical conclusions, slavery might have ended in the Muslim world in the early days of the khalifate. (Instead, Muslim societies regressed in this matter.)​

 

[فاطمہ طاہرہ]

lly, Omar's own career ended when an emotionally unstable Persian slave drove a knife into his belly at the mosque. On his deathbed,some of the community's notables asked him to nominate his successor as Abu Bakr had done, in order to ensure a smooth transition. "How about your son?" they suggested. Omar flew into his last rage: "Do you think I did this job to benefit myself and my family?" He died later that day, but before his death he established another consequential precedent. He named a six-man consultative committee (a shura) to select a new khalifa and seek the consensus of the Umma on their choice. Many later Muslim thinkers looked to the shura as the basis for democratic institutions in Islam. The shura discovered that two men, Ali and Othman, were everybody's first and second choices, some favoring Ali and some Othman. (Ali, remember, was Mohammed's son-in-law who had already been passed over twice.) The chairman of the shura interviewed both men in front of an assembly of the people, posing one key question to each: "If you become khalifa, will you be guided by the Qur'an, the sunna, and the precedents set by Abu Bakr and Omar?" Ali said yes to the Qur'an and yes to the sunna (the example set by Mohammed's life), but as for the decisions of his predecessors-no: Ali said he had a mind of his own and would consult his own conscience and best judgment for his decisions. Othman, by contrast, said yes to everything: "I am not an innovator." So the chairman declared him the right man to head the Umma, the people approved, and Ali, not wanting to rock the boat, took the oath of loyalty.​

 

[فاطمہ طاہرہ]

THE SECOND KHALIFA (13-24 AH) completed