The ultimate iteration of deen was revealed after the fatra – the six centuries long gap in which there had been no Prophethood. In that period the two sects of the People of the Book had become defined by their relationship to power and empire.
The first group had calcified their existing subjugation to the ancient empires and invented a religion, rabbinical judaism, which justifies their getting on with what matters to them: making money – remembering that usury and its most terrible child, fiat currency, which is literally ‘making money’ – is their transmission to the world from the ancient empires of Babylon and Sumer.
The second group – after following the last of the Prophets of the first group, peace be upon him, a man who had lived entirely without worldliness, outside of the state, and who had called his followers to abandon the world entirely – the second group had made a deal with the oligarchy of Rome and had become its Church, endorsing its power and it in turn endorsing their religion. This group then split into two: Orthodox and Roman Catholic, the latter further subdividing into a large number of groups.
It is the height of naivety to see the Church, the Papacy and Patriarchy as religious forces rather than power configurations.
Thus, these two sects were redefined entirely by their relationship to power and empire.
Allah sent His last Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, with His last revelation, not for a race or a tribe but for all mankind, and not with a state or an empire, but an umma.
He, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, told us that the Muslims would follow the Jews and the Christians to such an extent that if they entered a lizard’s hole the Muslims would follow them down it too.
But he also told just us that there would always be a party who hold on to what he had brought. Contrary to those who interpret this group to consist of the ulama or even certain groups of the ulama such as the people of hadith – and I certainly don’t deny the importance of knowledge, people of knowledge and the transmission of Prophetic knowledge – the Prophet, peace be upon him, described them as: “openly and victoriously on the truth.” Of course, everyone would like to claim to be of that group, but the point here is that their potential existence is good news for all the Muslims not just for this or that party. The point is that this group in some way connect to power from within the deen, and it was power of the empire outside the deen that defined the first two and because of which they deviated.