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CHAPTER 8
10. THE THEORY OF KHALQI-QURAN
10.1 Faith and Infidelity
Owing to the difference in the belief, pertaining to Masalah-i-Khalq-i-Quran, Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal was imprisoned and kept in chains for 28 unruly months. He was taken daily from the prison to the court of the Abbasid caliph, where he was insulted and slapped publicly; every evening he was flogged. The difference of opinion in this belief caused the death of numerous Muslims, after having condemned them as kafir (infidels). During the Caliphate of Mamun al-Rasheed, hundreds of ‘Ulema were assassinated at the instance of the Mu'tazilites, who’s ‘Ulema considered it as an act of great piety and pleasing to God to execute those, who did not believe the Holy Qur’an to have been created (makhlooq).[84]
It is a matter of very serious remonstrance that the questions whose acceptance or rejection were not deemed by God as important and fundamental, and which were also ignored by the Prophet as insignificant, were made the criteria of a Muslim’s faith or infidelity, for whose coercive acceptance thousands of righteous ‘Ulema’s, precious lives were devoted to the service of the true Islam, were martyred.
The opponents of the Mu’tazilites, the Asharites, too, were not far behind in the matter of condemning their adversaries as kafir. Imam Abul Hasan Ash’ari had composed a ‘Book of Beliefs,’ the slightest deviation from which was considered a sin. ‘Allamah ibn Hazm – one of the best Muslim intellectuals of the fifth century Hijri (11th Century CE), in Spain – was condemned as a renegade for his philosophical ideas and his tendency towards analogical deductions; he was exiled and all his books were burnt publicly until he died, a broken man, on 8 Shaban 456 Hijri – 1063 CE, at a place called Sahra-e-Laila. Ibn – Rushd suffered much more atrocities, and was kept imprisoned for a long time for his views. Imam Bukhari was exiled; Imam Nisa’i was martyred inside a masjid; and Imam Ibn-Taimiyah was rebuked and censured for his beliefs.[85]
10.2 Barbarism
These misguided ‘Ulema had invented very painful and inhuman methods to punish their opponents; for instances, their victims received lashes, their limbs were cut off, they were crucified and they were placed on the back of camels and publicly insulted and disgraced in the streets etc. The profane and shameful treatment that was meted out to the great Muslim scholars, like Hadrat Bayazid Bustami, Dhunoon Misri and Shamsuddlu Tabriz, at the hands of the short-sighted and malevolent ‘Ulema, is a black chapter of the religious history of Islam. Hadrat Bayazid Bustami was exiled seven times from the city. Hadrat Dhunoon Misri was brought to Baghdad in chains (around his neck and in his feet). Once, Hadrat Junaid too was denounced as a kafir. In the beginning of the 4th Century Hijri – 10th Century CE – owing to his claim of An-al-Haq (I am God), Mansur at first had received at the hands of these misguided ‘Ulema, the punishment of a thousand lashes, then his hands and feet were cut off and, at the end, he was crucified. Imam Ghizali, Imam Raazi and Maulana Roomi, all, were opposed to the barbarism of these ‘Ulema, whom had sanctioned such brutal punishments against their victim, Mansur.[86]
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