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Ghadir Khumm and the Orientalists 2 - Al-Shia The Scientific and Cultural Website of Shia belief Ghadir Khumm and the Orientalists 2 2023-04-15 478 Views Orientalists , Ghadir Khumm , Non-Muslim scholars , Eid al-Ghadir In this article titled “Ghadir Khumm and the Orientalists”, we shall focus on other aspects of the topic here.

Ghadir Khumm: From Oblivion to Recognition The event of Ghadir Khumm is a very good example to trace the Sunni bias that found its way into the mental state of Orientalists. Those who are well-versed in the polemic writings of Sunnis know that whenever the Shi’as present a hadith or historical evidence in support of their view, a Sunni polemicist would respond in the following manner: Firstly: he will outright deny the existence of any such hadith or historical event.

Secondly: when confronted with hard evidence from his own sources, he will cast doubt on the reliability of the transmitters of that hadith or event. Thirdly: when he is shown that all the transmitters are reliable by Sunni standards, he will give an interpretation of the hadith or the event that will be quite different from that of the Shi’as. These three levels form the classical response of the Sunni polemicists in dealing with the arguments of the Shi’as.

A quotation from Rosenthal’s translation of Ibn Khaldun’s The Muqaddimah would suffice to prove my point. (Ibn Khaldun is quoting the following part from al-Milal wa ‘n-Nihal, a heresiographic work of ash-Shahristani.) According to Ibn Khaldun, the Shi’as believe that ‘Ali is the one whom Muhammad appointed. The (Shi’ah) transmit texts (of traditions) in support of (this belief)…The authority on the Sunnah and the transmitters of the religious law does not know these texts.

[1] Most of them are supposititious, or [2] some of their transmitters are suspect, or [3] their (true) interpretation is very different from the wicked interpretation that (the Shi’ah) give to them. (1) Interestingly, the event of Ghadir Khumm suffered the same fate at the hands of Orientalists.

With the limited time and resources available to me at this moment, I was surprised to see that most works on Islam have ignored the event of Ghadir Khumm, indicating, by its very absence, that the Orientalists believed this event to be ‘supposititious’ and an invention of the Shi’as.