United States or Macao ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He lost no time in opening the matter; and, with the good sense that always characterized him, Najib touched at once the potent spring of self. Shia or Sunni, all Moslems were alike the object of Mahratta enmity. He, Najib, knew full well what to expect, should the Hindu league prevail. But would the Vazir fare better?
But the Shia, while admitting that the death of the first martyrs may have wrought severer loss to Islam, cannot admit that their end surpasses in pathos the tale of the bitter tenth of Mohurrum when the stars quivered in a bloodied sky and the very walls of the palace of Kufa rained tears of blood as the head of the Martyr was borne before them.
The nationalistic and centralistic tendency was directed not merely against the various non-Mohammedan nationalities Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, and Jews but also against the non-Turkish Mohammedan nations Arabs, Mohammedan Syrians, Kurds, and the Shia element in the population.
The Mohammedan world is roughly divided into Sunnis and Shia. The Shia are the idealists, the mystics of Islam; the Sunnis are the formalists, the schoolmen.
If one glorify the other three Khalifas in a Sunni quarter, it is well with one, but not so in an area devoted to the Shia population: and so the beggar chooses Ali's name as a convenient and fitting means of opening the purse-strings of both the great Musulman sects.
The Sunnis adhere to the elective historical caliphate descended from Mohammed's uncle, maintain the eternal uncreated sufficiency of the Koran, literally interpreted, and believe in no Messiah save Mohammed. The Shia, whatever their racial origin, form the Persian, the Aryan, adaptation of Islam, which is an essentially Semitic creed.
There was discipline in that man's camp, as long as he was looking. But Ayisha followed the woman out, and whether she herself found Shammas Abdul, or whether she contrived to pervert the junior wife, Grim presently became aware of that move to summon forth men, and governed himself accordingly. For about a minute Ali Higg fixed baleful eyes on me. "You are a Shia!" he snapped suddenly.
It must be remembered that, in virtue of its subjugation to the Sindhias, the Empire was now regarded as a Hindu power, and that Shia and Sunni might well be expected to join, as against the Mahrattas or the English, however they might afterwards quarrel over the spoil, should success attend their efforts.
It was as though Presbyterian Scotland had suddenly been put under the rule of the Jesuits. But, like the Society of Jesus, the Shia were pre-eminently intellectual and recognised the necessity of adapting their teaching to the capacities of their hearers, and the conditions of the time. They did not force extreme Shia doctrine upon the Egyptians.
And the interest of Shia authors in Persian tradition was unquestionable. Now the discussion of Adab as we said above is intimately connected with Persian tradition. And this tradition probably survived in the books which had for their theme "the good qualities of Adab."
Word Of The Day