Documents of the Right Word

We have not been commanded to curse or swear at anyone, be
it those unbelievers who inflicted very bitter torments and
persecutions on our master the Fakhr-i-kâinât ‘alaihis-salawâtu
wa-t-teslîmât’ and the Sahâba for thirteen years, nor even the five
or six ferociously cruel people who were their chiefs. Even the
names of these exorbitant brutes have long been forgotten, with
the exception of Abû Jahl. It is not an Islamic commandment to
curse or vituperate any people belonging to any religion on the
earth. If a person performs the commands of Allâhu ta’âlâ and
avoids His prohibitions, the harâms, he will not be called to
account for not having cursed the devil even once in his lifetime.
Nor will he be accused of having been friendly with the devil. On
the other hand, if a person neglects the commandments and curses
the devil hundreds of times daily, he will be called to account in the
Hereafter and his having cursed the devil will not save him from
torment. This person will be considered not as an enemy of the
devil, but as one of his friends. Consequently, cursing this person
or that in order to prove one’s love for the Ahl-i-Bayt would be
both preposterous from the mental point of view and futile, and
even piacular, according to Islam. Nâdir Shâh, the Iranian
Emperor, ascended to the throne in 1148. He captured Delhi in
India in 1152 [A.D. 1739]. He tried to capture Baghdâd, too. He
was killed during a mutiny that broke out in 1160. When this Nâdir
Shâh raised the siege of Baghdâd, he convened an assembly of
Sunnite and Shiite scholars and appointed Abdullah bin Huseyn
Suwaydî [b. 1104; d. 1174 (A.D. 1760)] ‘rahmatullâhi ta’âlâ aleyh’
to preside over the assembly. [1] This assembly took a unanimous
decision to eliminate the beliefs that caused differences between
the Sunnite and Shiite Muslims, and the decision was undersigned
by all the scholars who took part in the debates. Upon Nâdir
Shâh’s death this useful attempt had to remain on paper. At this
point I should like to relate an episode which this subject reminds
me of:
Nâdir Shâh asked the Shi’î scholars, “Will Jews, Christians and
magians (unbelievers without a heavenly book, e.g. communists
and freemasons) go to Paradise or Hell?” The unanimous answer
was that these disbelievers would go to Hell. And when he asked
where the Sunnite Muslims would go, “They will go to Hell,” they
said. This made the Shâh angry. He said, “Did Jenâb-i-Haqq
(Allah) create the eight worlds of Paradise for only a group of
[1] See the first part, Documents of The Right Word.
– 148 –