Bughat (rebels against the imam)

The chapter on rebels is a chapter of the Book of Jihad in volume 3 of Radd al-Muhtar; in it Ibn Abidin defines baghy, distinguishes rebels from highway robbers and from the Khawarij, and explains how an imam becomes imam and when he is removed. ^{1 2 3}

Ibn Abidin says the chapter was placed late because rebels are rarely found, and to give the ruling on Muslims who are fought after that on unbelievers who are fought; it was not made a separate book, to signal that it falls under jihad, since fighting them is in the path of God, so that one of the people of justice killed by them is a martyr; jihad, for him, is not limited to fighting unbelievers. ²

He reports from al-Fath that baghy lexically means seeking, then came in usage to mean seeking what is unlawful, injustice and oppression, and that in the jurists' usage the baghi is one who rises against the rightful imam. ² He questions al-Fath's statement that this sense is only customary, citing al-Misbah and al-Qamus that baghy against people is injustice and aggression and that the "rebellious party" is the one that leaves obedience to the just imam, so that the sense of injustice is lexical too. ²

He divides those who leave obedience to the imam into three: highway robbers, rebels and Khawarij. ² Highway robbers are of two kinds: those who go out without any interpretation, with or without armed strength, taking Muslims' property, killing them and making the roads unsafe; and those who do the same with an interpretation but without strength; al-Fath counts four kinds. ² Rebels are Muslims who rise against the just imam on the basis of an interpretation without treating as lawful what the Khawarij did, the blood of Muslims and the capture of their children; otherwise they are highway robbers. ² He reports from al-Ikhtiyar that rebels are any group with armed strength that gains power, gathers and fights the people of justice on an interpretation, saying "the truth is with us" and claiming authority. ² The Khawarij, for him, are a people with strength who rise on an interpretation by which they hold the imam to be in falsehood, unbelief or sin, and so treat Muslims' blood and property as lawful; their origin is those who left the camp of Ali ibn Abi Talib after the arbitration, saying that judgement belongs to God alone, that the one who commits a grave sin is an unbeliever and that the arbitration was a grave sin. ⁴

He reports the saying of some authorities that but for Ali the rules of fighting the people of the qibla would not be known, Ali and his followers being the people of justice and his adversary the people of rebellion, and their remark that in their own time power decides and one cannot tell the just party from the rebel. ² He distinguishes a group that rises against the imam because he wronged them, who are not rebels and whom the imam must stop wronging and treat fairly, from a group that rises claiming the truth and authority, who are rebels. ² If they only speak of rising and have not yet resolved on it, the imam may not move against them, since resolve to commit the offence does not yet exist. ²

Ibn Abidin holds that declaring the Companions unbelievers is not a condition for the name Khawarij, and that it is enough that they hold those they rise against to be unbelievers; as an example he gives what happened in his own time with "the followers of Abd al-Wahhab", as the side heading of the passage calls them, who came out of Najd and took the two Sanctuaries. ⁴ He describes them as claiming the Hanbali school while believing that they alone were Muslims and that those who differed from their belief were polytheists, and so treating the fighting of Sunnis and their scholars as lawful, and says that the Muslim armies defeated them and their land was laid waste in 1233 AH. ⁴ The context, the rising from Najd, the taking of the Sanctuaries and the date of defeat, shows that he means the followers of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the war that ended the first Saudi state (the Ottoman–Wahhabi War); this link is the museum's reading of the context.

This description is Ibn Abidin's description and judgement; the museum reports it as his and does not adopt it.

Ibn Abidin says the imam becomes imam by pledge of allegiance, by designation by a previous imam, or by gaining power by force, as in Sharh al-Maqasid, and reports from al-Musayara that the contract of imamate is established by the caliph's designation, as Abu Bakr did, or by the pledge of a body of scholars and people of judgement. ³ Along with the pledge he requires that the imam's rule be effective over his subjects, and reports that obedience to the imam is due whether he is just or unjust, so long as he does not contravene the law. ³ He reports that the contract of imamate lapses with what defeats its purpose, such as apostasy, permanent insanity or captivity without hope of release, and that most hold he is not removed by sinfulness, the chosen view in the schools of al-Shafi'i and Abu Hanifa, with two reports from Muhammad, though he deserves removal by agreement. ³ In this context he mentions al-Hasan ibn Ali's abdication. ³

The rest of the chapter, on how they are fought and the rulings on their property and prisoners, was not read in this batch, and the other schools' views are not given from their own books.