THE SECTARIAN PHENOMENON

The concept of a single ‘saved sect’ or firqa al-najiya has absolutely no basis. It has nothing to do with the Hadith of the Prophet quoted above. This Hadith tells us that salvation in the Hereafter will not be on the basis of one’s sectarian affiliation. Rather, individuals from different sects, who, in their individual capacity, remain firm on the straight path shown by God, will be deemed worthy of salvation in the Hereafter. As mentioned earlier, the splitting of a community into sects always starts with the leaders of that community. Under the influence of the conditions they are faced with, these leaders present certain ideas, which in later times, owing to exaggeration and prejudice, leads to the emergence of separate sects. Later, these sects become clearlydefined, separate communities. This happens due to basically two factors. Firstly, what can be termed a ‘shift of emphasis’. The other is an error in reasoning, or what in Urdu is called ijtihadi khata. Here are examples of both of these, from the past as well as the present-day. The concept of a single ‘saved sect’ has absolutely no basis. Some Sufis provide an example of a ‘shift of emphasis’ in Muslim history. Many leading Sufis appeared at a time when powerful Muslim Sultanates had been established. The Sufis perceived that the minds of the people had become overshadowed by politics, while, in contrast, the spiritual dimension of Islam had greatly weakened among them. In this context, some Sufis gave such great stress to the spiritual dimensions of Islam or ‘the affairs of the heart’ as if they were everything, or Islam in its entirety. Leaving aside a few controversial methods employed by some of them, the case of some of these Sufis was, in essence, one of a ‘shift of emphasis’. As a result of this ‘shift of emphasis’ in the name of religion, a certain esoteric religiosity spread among Muslims, and rational thought and realism went into decline. A second factor for the emergence of sectarianism is, as we mentioned above, an error in reasoning or ijtihad. An example of this is provided from the Abbasid period. At this time, Hadith reports and the narratives about the companions of the Prophet were collected and compiled in