Ghulam Nabi...

Ghulam Nabi, at page 59 of his book “Khilafah in theory and Practice”[^9] writes:“Historical reports are generally anti- Umayyad because they were narrated, collected, and preserved during the Abbasid Khilafah by prejudiced reporters. Naturally, there are so many charges against them.

Some prominent (charges) are that they made the Khilafah hereditary within the Umayyad family; that they were oppressors; that they attacked the holy cities of Mecca and Medina; that they prevented non-Muslims to accept Islam by charging the Jizya [Taxes] to them; that they ruled by force and tyranny and that they usurped public treasury converting it into a private property.”[^10] He continues, “On the basis of these charges leveled against the Umayyads , a distinction between al-Khilafah ar-Rashida (the rightly-guided caliphate) [^11] and al-Khilafah al-Umawiyyah (the Umayyad caliphate), is vehemently made so much so that many scholars are not ready to call the Umayyad rulers as Khulafa (caliphs) and their rule as the Khilafah .

They call them rulers [ Muluk ; kings] and their system of governance as the monarchy [ Mulukiyah ].[^12] A pertinent question arises here whether the charges of these scholars or the populist theories about the Umayyad rule are correct leading to the main question with regard to the Islamic Khilafah. [^13] If Mr. Ghulam Nabi is to be taken to be correct in his elucidation, then most of the Sunni Islamic literature will become suspect and unreliable.

This raises another pertinent question as to why it should not similarly be assumed that the historical reports were indeed narrated, collected, and preserved by prejudiced reporters during the Umayyad khilafah . In effect, these assumptions will discredit all the reports collected during the Umayyad as well as the Abbasid periods.

Once this happens, no record of the Prophet’s time, the Sunna would be available to the Sunnis , while the only Islamic literature to survive would be Shiite literature which traces its authority from the Immaculate and Infallible Masumin (a.s.), to the Prophet (S). The present day tendency of people like Mr. Ghulam Nabi is probably due to the fact that, from times past, the Shias often relied on Sunni Islamic literature to support the Shiite Creed .

Now these Sunni sources are sought to be wiped out by editing or at least rendering their suspect, only to withdraw the support they brazenly provided to Shiite theology.