Page 117 - Arabian Studies (V)

The Yemeni Poet Al-Zubayri 107
(/) Al-Shawkani goes on to say,100 One of the tribulations of this world is
that thousands of those partisans come into San‘a’ and threaten anyone
who reads the books of the Sunnah, but the culpability is not theirs—it is
the culpability alone of those who instigate them.
(m) Al-Shawkani then adduced the example of a tragic dissension101 of
this sort during which a bloody battle broke out between certain tribes and
the townsfolk of San‘a’ because the promoters of the dissension were insti­
gating the tribes to pick a quarrel with the people of San‘a’ and so terrorize
them that none of them would dare disobey the People of the House.
(n) These are samples drawn from the history of the Yemen but they
contain an effective pointer in support of the view I hold—namely, that
freedom of independent judgement (ijtihad) is but superficial,102 divided,
or confined within a narrow compass, and that the objectives of the Imam-
ate are well preserved objectives, to encroach upon which the alleged free­
dom of independent judgement {ijtihad) will not dare.103
[19]
9. The duty to revolt against the unjust
{a) This is another of the resplendent principles which the propagandists of
the Imamate bore along with them. It is a principle, in embracing and
believing which, the first of those who bore it to the Yemen were perhaps
sincere because, in actual fact, they were in revolt against the ‘Abbasid and
Umayyad Caliphates.
{b) But is this principle applied against any one of the Imams?
(c) Would one of the sons of the populace have the temerity to revolt
against one of the Imams, then to become a ‘heretic’, ‘oppressor’, ‘the
enemy of God’ both in the eyes of the state {dawlah) and the subservient104
‘ulama 1
id) When we have perceived that the Imamate has broken the back of the
populace and made two segments out of it, one of them the Zaydi segment
and the other the Shafi‘i segment—there are yet further well established
chains of divisions and segmentations, one grasping the throat of the other,
emanating, all of them, from this single chronic malady—the divine right
to govern mankind.
(e) The Shafi‘is, as I have shown, consider the Imamate a single autho­
rity, and that the Zaydls as a group are those who govern the Shafi‘Is,
ruling over and exploiting them.
(/) When, however, we turn to the Zaydls we do not find they hold this
view [20] or put themselves in this position. On the contrary they feel a
bitter vehement resentment that it is a particular stratum of Hashimite
families which enjoys the divine right to govern, that is specially favoured with
it and passes it, turn about, among the ambitious male members of it,
generation after generation, feeling a consciousness of superiority and
distinction over the rest of the sons of the populace.
(g) Then, when we turn to the Hashimites, we find poor wretches, unfor­
tunates and deprived persons. These we find pointing their fingers in fear
and trembling at a single family of the Hashimites—the Royal Family that
has ruled despotically, exploiting and singling out for itself the benefits of