What exactly is going on in Amman?
Two curious documents have issued from there endorsed by large numbers of big names. The first one, the Amman Agreement, claims, contrary to the consensus of knowledgeable Muslims, that there are 8 madhhabs and not 4, and it neglects to mention the Maturidi school of dogma, an oversight that is unthinkable for people of knowledge.
The second one, A Common Word, claims to prove that Islam is simply a form of Christianity and is based on the Two Commandments of the Gospels. Moreover, whoever designed the website thoughtfully only put the option for a ringing endorsement of these two flawed documents, and no room for disagreement or even friendly criticism.
Then there is a link to a small paragraph or two on the Hashemites, “The Hashemite led the Arab nation, and established the Arab glory since the days of the old Arab tribe Quraish, and their service of the holy sites in Mecca and Madina. History betells of the Hashemites and of their state building, as well as their endeavours to achieve Arab independence, sovereignty and dignity.” Apart from the indignities inflicted on the English language in this execrable piece of prose, such Arab nationalism has been a disaster for the Muslims, positing, as it does, the idea of the Arabs as separate from the Muslims. Moreover, the history of this branch of the Hashemite family is by no means glorious, beginning as it does with Sharif Hussein’s betrayal of the legitimate sultan of his time and his collusion with the enemies of Islam, thus contributing to the present interregnum in the Caliphate. The British created two nations, Iraq and Jordan, and placed these Hashemites on their thrones, with the disastrous results in Iraq we are still experiencing.
The way forward certainly does not lie on the road of fantasy, neither in terms of fatwa nor in rewriting history.
as-salamu ‘alaykum
Strange is an understatement.
wa alaikum as-salam. Thank you. I thought I was entirely alone. Abdassamad
I felt the same until I came across your post.
As-salamu alaikum,
Someone wrote a reasoned reply to the above post, but unfortunately it was accidentally deleted among a massive amount of spam. If that person reads this, I would actually be interested in what you have to say.
Abdassamad Clarke
As-Salaamu Alaykum.
I used to be proud of such things -a bunch of Muslims supposedly condemning extremism and intolerance, moving Islam into the 21st Century. But then I read Shaykh Umar Vadillo’s “The Esoteric Deviation in Islam”.