Fatima.Mernessi_The-Forgotten-Queens-of-Islam-EN

120 The Arab Queens
Saba had legendary powers of persuasion when it came to subversion.
He is credited with the crime of having launched many heretical
ideals in Islam, and, above all, with being the first to come up with
the idea of fighting official power initially with propaganda and only
later with weapons. According to Tabari, he was 'a Jew from San'a
whose mother was black and who was converted to Islam during
the reign of 'Uthman'. That puts us in the seventh century during
the reign of the third orthodox caliph, when the wrath of the people
of Yemen, Egypt, and Iraq was stirred up by the excesses and
inefficiency of his governors. In the eyes of Tabari this was assuredly
not enough to inspire ideas of revolt. 'Abdallah Ibn Saba is accused
of having drawn his ideas not from daily frustrations and injustices,
but from books by the enemies of Islam: 'He had read the ancient
works and was very learned.' 8
One of the ideas foreign to Islam that he revealed to his followers
was the heretical notion of the return of the Prophet: The Christians
say that Jesus will return to this world. But the Muslims have even
more right to claim that Muhammad will return for it is said in the
Koran: "Lo! He who hath given thee the Qur'an for a law will
surely bring thee home again" [sura 28, verse 85].' 9 Saba was an
innovator : he systematically used the idea of a revolt against official
power in the name of 'Ali; and he set the world on fire by thinking
up a propaganda model that later became a classic and is still
used today. This method was to recruit people into small groups
conditioned to oppose the established regime, with totally secret
initiation followed by action, including violence if needed.
It is supposed to have been Saba who first had the idea of
deposing Caliph 'Uthman and putting 'Ali, the Prophet's cousin, in
his place: 'Uthman,' he told them, 'acceded to power when he had
no right to, since the Prophet had chosen 'Ali as his successor. So
begin by spreading this idea, take action, go right after the reigning
princes.' 10 It was thus, according to Tabari and many other Sunni
historians, that the idea of shi'a (dissension, schism, breakaway)
began - in the mind of an ex-Jew from Yemen, 'who became a
Muslim and journeyed throughout the Muslim countries with the
aim of leading them astray. He went first to Hijaz, then to Basra,
then Kufa, and then to Shams [Syria]. He was unable to achieve
what he wanted in Shams. The Syrians turned him out. Then he
went to Egypt.' 11 And it was in Egypt that he gathered around him
a whole flock of followers whom he completely won over to his
ideas. Saba's ideas led directly to the murder of 'Uthman and to
the first civil war in 36/656, which shattered the unity of Islam by