Murder in the Name of Allah — Page 69
Recantation under Islam not recanters. They were called so, metaphorically, by the Companions of the Prophetsa¸ '30. According to Wellhausen, Riddah was a break with the leadership in. Medina and not with Islam itself. Most of the tribes wanted to continue worshipping Allah, but without paying tax. Caetani agrees with. Wellhausen and says the Riddah was not a movement of recantation and that these wars were purely about politics. Becker, following Wellhausen and Caetani, concludes:. The sudden death of Mahomet gave new support to the centrifugal tendencies. The character of the whole movement, as it forces itself on the notice of the historian, was of course hidden from contemporaries. . Arabia would have sunk into particularism if the necessity caused by the secession of Al-Riddah had not developed in the State of Medina an energy which carried all before it. The fight against the Ridda was not a fight against apostates, the objection was not to Islam, per se, but to the tribute which had to be paid to Medina; the fight was for political supremacy over Arabia. 31. Bernard Lewis makes it quite clear that Riddah ‘represents a distortion of the real significance of events by the theologically coloured outlook of later historians'. He goes on to say:. The refusal of the tribes to recognise the succession of Abu Bakr was, in effect, not a relapse by converted Muslims to their previous paganism, but the simple and automatic termination of a political contract by the death of one of the parties. The tribes nearest to Medina had in fact been converted and their interests were so closely identified with those of the umma that their separate history has not been recorded. For the rest, the death of Muhammad automatically severed their bonds with Medina, and the parties resumed their liberty of action. They felt in no way bound by the election of Abu Bakr in which they had taken no part, and at once suspended both tribute and treaty relations. In order to re-establish the hegemony of Medina, Abu Bakr had to make new treaties. ³2. Ali was assassinated in 661. With him went the concept of a Muslim ruler who combined the functions of head of state and of religion. The dynastic reign of the Ummayyads (661-750), the political rulers of. Islam, began with Muawiyah. They had none of the religious outlook of the pious caliphs and were regarded more or less as secular kings. As guardians of the sharia the ulema came to occupy a position comparable in many ways to that of the clergy after the conversion of Constantine. . Like the clergy in medieval Europe, they were respected for learning and piety and their support was sought to legalise the political power of a despot or unpopular ruler. They also acted as the leaders of the 69