The Arabic word fitnah bears the meaning of trial, discord, affliction, temptation and civil war, and any other strife ‘that ruptures the community’s unity and pits Muslim against fellow Muslim.’1 As well as discussing the ageless and abiding fitnah of wealth, women and civil war, this blog piece will also reflect upon the fitnahs related to callers to misguidance, governments seeking to domesticate Islam and Muslim scholars, the active promotion and funding of warped understandings of our faith, and the fitnahs of sectarian violence and takfir. Our Prophet ﷺ said: ‘Before the coming of the Hour there will be fitnahs like patches of dark night. A person shall awaken in the morning a believer but by the evening become a disbeliever, or in the evening be a believer but by morning become a disbeliever; and people will sell their religion in order to acquire some portion of the world.’2

♦

1 – Fitnah of Wealth: We are reminded in the Qur’an:

Figure 1A: The crypt of Az-Zubair ibn Al-`Awwam, one of the ten promised Paradise by name.

Regarding the identity of who fits the definition of a Companion, Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 241 AH), the last voice of the first three generations and known as the Imam of Muslim Orthodoxy, mentioned that a Companion is, “As far as the use of the expression ‘companion,’ this is any Muslim who met the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, even for a moment.”[1]

Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 241 AH), said the following of the Companions and the Household of the Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him:

“The Rafidah are those who disavow and renounce the Companions of Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, and they also curse and consider as low the Companions, along with…

By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Magazine, July 14, 2015

THIS SPRING, THE novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie put a new spin on the commencement speech, that most staid of genres. Speaking at Wellesley College, she didn’t emphasize how the graduates had been helped by their education, but how they had been hindered by it. She invoked their privilege — and her own — to describe how ‘‘privilege blinds.’’ As a highly educated woman, she told them, she hadn’t always been alert to the ‘‘nuances’’ of people who were different from her. ‘‘Privilege blinds, because it’s in its nature to blind,’’ she said. ‘‘Don’t let it blind you too often. Sometimes you will need to push it aside in order to see clearly.’’

Adichie was speaking to her audience in their own language. The word ‘‘privilege’’ has become ubiquitous on college campuses — but in her coolness, in her ability…