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Opinion Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
Armed uprisings are occurring in various parts of the Moslemic world, making some areas utterly ungovernable in countries such as Nigeria, Somalia, Libya, Iraq and Syria, and also in some of Indonesia’s thousands of islands, some regions of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Central African Republic (CAR) and one or two former Soviet Union’s Asia republics.

In Nigeria, areas of that country’s northern region have been virtually overrun by the Boko Haram sect, an Islamic group whose Hausa (language) name means ‘Western education is evil’.

Boko Haram’s operational area borders Niger, Cameroon and Chad, countries with very large Islamic population. Nigeria’s north eastern region is also predominantly Moslemic.

Boko Haram is not satisfied with that but would like to turn the whole area into an independent Islamic state in which radical tenets of that religion will be practised.

In some countries mentioned above, the armed conflicts are between two or more Moslemic sects; in some they are caused by political or doctrinal variations but with religious sectoral elements underlying the differences.

To understand why religion is inseparable from politics in Moslemic culture, we must bear in mind that the word “Islam” (which is the name of the Moslemic religion) means “submission” to God in totality, that is to say culturally, socially, politically, economically, morally and otherwise.

Unlike Christianity which, to all intents and purposes, requires the believer to co-operate with God, Islam demands the convert to surrender himself or herself to Allah.

Started by an Arabic man called Muhammad ibn Abd Allah in the town of Mecca in AD 622, the faith was propagated by armed conquest after Muhammad’s death in AD 632.

Muhammad dictated 114 chapters of differing lengths which comprise the Quran, a word which means “recitation”.

Moslems say that the Quran is a compilation of a continuous flow of revelations that the Prophet Muhammad received from the Angel Gabriel who passed God’s word to the people through Muhammad.

Muhammad’s doctrine is based on what are known as “The Five Pillars of Islam,” or, in Arabic “arkan al-Islam”.

There are, in effect, principles and practices the first of which is in the form of a credo emphasising the strictly monotheistic nature of Islam: “There is no god but God and Muhammad is the Prophet of God.” This declaration is referred to as the “shahada” in Arabic.

The second is an instruction to every Moslem to pray five times daily, and to do so facing the direction of Islam’s holiest city, Mecca.

The third is also a command that Moslems must fast from dawn to sunset during the month of Ramadan. It is known as “saum” in Arabic.

Exempted from this are women in labour, people involved in actual armed combat, those on a journey and sick people. However, those so exempted are required to fast for an equivalent number of days at their very earliest convenience later.

Giving of alms is Islam’s fourth pillar, and is called “zakat”. It is in effect an emphasis on charity, and Moslems are instructed to share what they have with the poor. Alms range from 2.5 percent to 10 percent of the giver’s income.

Pilgrimage to Mecca is the fifth and last pillar. It is called the “hajj” or “hajyi”.

The yearly pilgrimage to Mecca has become an occasion that brings together the largest number of people anytime in the world at any one time.

How did Islam spread so widely and so swiftly and yet it was launched some 622 years after Christianity?

And why these repeated armed conflicts in many of the countries where it is predominant?

In AD 622, when Muhammad started preaching the Islamic message in Mecca, there were several Christian communities in Arabia.

That was to change as Moslemic armed forces swept, with the ferocity of a bush-fire across dry savannah grasslands of the southern hemisphere, eastwards across the Himalaya mountains up to India, southwards across the Mediterranean Sea into Egypt, Nubia and into the Sudan, and westwards across Tripolitania towards Ifrikiya in today’s Libya, and north-eastwards right up to the shores of the Caspian and the Black seas.

That campaign was launched after Muhammad’s death in 632. In about a century or so, the crescent was dominant as far as Spain and was for quite a while even in Hungary, replacing the cross.

It is not true at all, as some incorrectly informed history scholars claim, that Islam was propagated by peaceful missionary enterprise.

That is as false as to claim that Jesus was killed by the Romans and not by the Jews.

If the Moslems had not used armed force to establish what they term “Dar al-Islam” or the “Islamic oekoumene”, Jerusalem, Alexandria and other cities particularly in the Middle East would still be predominantly Christian.

Incidentally, by “Dar al-Islam” or “Islamic oekoumene” is meant a world where Islamic social and political order is predominant.

That is what some Islamic groups would like to establish in various regions of the world, and are using force as those who went before them did. That is the case in Nigeria, the Central African Republic and elsewhere.

Wars are waged in some Dar- al-Islam regions to establish radical or orthodox Islamic socio-political dispensations where what Moslems call the “Sharia” law would be applied. The “Sharia” is in fact a detailed code of conduct or set of canons governing ways of worship and standards of morals of people’s practices as handed down by what Islamic scholars call his companions.

By companions, the “ashab” in Arabic, are the people who accompanied the Prophet to Medina when he left Mecca where he and his religious adherents were being persecuted, and those who went with him on that historic journey called the ‘hejira.’

Those who invited him to Medina are called the “ansar” in Arabic, a word which means “helpers” in English. It is very interesting to note that one of the current prominent Islamic insurgent groups in Libya calls itself the ‘Ansar.’ ‘Hadiths were collected from ansars and ashabs.

It later became obvious that the “Sharia” and the “hadiths” were not adequate to solve the moral, material, cultural, economic, political, legal, social, national and international needs and challenges of the Islamic community.

To try and codify the Islamic legal system, a number of scholars put their heads together in the eighth and the ninth centuries. Their individual attempts resulted in the emergence of four legal schools later named after their founders, Maliki, Hanbabi, Hanafi and Shafii.

A very significant feature of the Islamic legal system is that it assesses all actions of human beings from the basis of five concepts: Makruk (disapproved or reprehensible), wadjib (obligatory), mazhur (forbidden), mubah (indifferent), mandub (recommended).

Prophet Muhammad’s death was followed by a heated debate about his successor not so much as a prophet but rather as the head of the Islamic community. He himself had advised that his successor should be a result of consultation, an obviously democratic approach. That consultation is called “shura” in Arabic.

So far his death, his immediate successors were first elected, but later ones were appointed. The first four followed one another in this order — Arbur bakr, Umar, Uthman, and the Ali ibn Abi Talib. All these were related to Muhammad in one way or the another, but especially by marriage, and were referred to by Moslems as “al-khulafa al-rashidun” (the correctly or rightly guided caliphs.)

Ali was, in fact, Muhammad’s cousin. He was elected in Medina following the assassination of Uthman by some Moslems who disliked some of his policies. But Ali’s election was opposed by some senior government officials in Syria.

That led to the creation of an arbitration commission comprising two members, one appointed by Ali and the other by the Syrian Governor, a man called Muawiya. Some of Ali’s supporters violently opposed the very idea of an arbitration commission and demanded that Ali should have nothing to do with it.

He refused and they walked out of that meeting and have since that time been known as the Kharidjites, from the Arabic word “kharadja” which means “to go out”.

A defining doctrinal characteristic of the Kharidjites is their emphasis on the importance of acts and not just on faith. Kharidjites say anyone can become a caliph as long as he has the required integrity, religious knowledge and piety.

Meanwhile, Ali was left with a number of supporters who agreed with his arbitration commission idea. They were referred to as “Shiatu Ali”, the party of Ali. In several European languages, they are now called the “Shi’ites.”

They reject the practice of consulting the community to choose a caliph or an imam and say that in every age there is an infallible imam to whom Allah gives the wisdom to guide humanity. They uphold that the first imam was Ali and those after him are his descendants.

The inter-sectoral struggle in the Moslem world mainly over matters of doctrine resulted in the emergence of a very large following of orthodoxy known as the “Sunna” in Arabic. The word “Sunna” means the way of the Prophet.

Known as the “Sunni”, this is by far the Moslem world’s body and soul as Sunnism commands well more than 90 percent of Islam’s following.

The Sunnis differ doctrinally from the Shi’ites in that the basis or source of their law are the Quran, the analogy, the community’s consensus, and the hadith, that is Prophet Muhammad’s practices as preserved and handed down by his companions and helpers.

The four sources or bases of the Shi’ite law are the Quran, the Imams, reasoning, the consensus of the Imams, and the Prophet’s hadith.

There are now many unlawful sects that use and call for violence against any culture that is not Islamic. They are led and financed by obviously mentally sick people who regard the entire non-Moslem world as being in a state of war against Islam.

Boko Haram, al-Shebaab, al-Qaeda the Libyan-based Ansar and other violently radical groups in the Middle and Far East are by their actions for the extermination rather than preservation of human life.

One is inclined to think that the Christian church and all governments whose leaders’ minds are in the 21st century should have collectively cracked the whip where acts of banditry are committed especially in the name of Allah (God).

Some Islamic fanatics have launched civil wars in a number of countries ostensibly to establish states that will practise a brand of Islam of their own liking. They are in the process, meanwhile, committing indescribable atrocities and crimes against helplessly innocent people in the name of Allah (God).

Their atrocious crimes are in effect and fact cases of practical blasphemy without any doubt whatsoever. Many Christian communities are defenceless victims of these murderous, rapacious, blasphemous civil wars.

That is the experience of the north-eastern region of Nigeria, eastern areas of Syria and northern parts of Iraq. In Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan and his administration are as good as non-existent.

The situation is crying for a solution that will put the creators of all this global fear, alarm and despondency under permanent quarantine.