15. Muhammadan sects. Shiah and Sunni.
Of the two main sects of Islam, ninety-four per cent of the Muhammadans in the Central Province were returned as being Sunnis in 1911 and three per cent as Shiahs, while the remainder gave no sect. Only the Cutchi, Bohra and Khoja immigrants from Gujarāt are Shiahs and practically all other Muhammadans are Sunnis. With the exception of Persia, Oudh and part of Gujarāt, the inhabitants of which are Shiahs, the Sunni sect is generally prevalent in the Muhammadan world. The main difference between the Sunnis and Shiahs is that the latter think that according to the Korān the Caliphate or spiritual headship of the Muhammadans had to descend in the Prophet’s family and therefore necessarily devolved on the Lady Fātimah, the only one of his children who survived him, and on her husband Ali the fourth Caliph. They therefore reject the first three Caliphs after Muhammad, that is Abu Bakr, Omar and Othman. After Ali they also hold that the Caliphate descended in his family to his two sons Hasan and Hussain, and the descendants of Hussain. Consequently they reject all the subsequent Caliphs of the Muhammadan world, as Hussain and his children did not occupy this position. They say that there are only twelve Caliphs, or Imāms, as they now prefer to call them, and that the twelfth has never really died and will return again as the Messiah of whom Muhammad spoke, at the end of the world. He is known as the Mahdi, and the well-known pretender of the Soudan, as well as others elsewhere, have claimed to be this twelfth or unrevealed Imām. Other sects of the Shiahs, as the Zaidiyah and Ismailia, make a difference in the succession of the Imāmate among Hussain’s descendants. The central incident of the Shiah faith is the slaughter of Hussain, the son of Ali, with his family, on the plain of Karbala in Persia by the sons of Yazīd, the second Caliph of the Umaiyad dynasty of Damascus, on the 10th day of the month Muharram, in the 61st year of the Hijra or A.D. 680. The martyrdom of Hussain and his family at Karbala is celebrated annually for the first ten days of the month of Muharram by the Shiahs. Properly the Sunnis should take no part in this, and should observe only the tenth day of Muharram as that on which Adam and Eve and heaven and hell were created. But in the Central Provinces the Sunnis participate in all the Muharram celebrations, which now have rather the character of a festival than of a season of mourning. The Shiahs also reject the four great schools of tradition of the Sunnis, and have separate traditional authorities of their own. They count the month to begin from the full moon instead of the new moon, pray three instead of five times a day, and in praying hold their hands open by their sides instead of folding them below the breast. The word Shiah means a follower, and Sunni one proceeding on the sunnah, the path or way, a term applied to the traditions of the Prophet. The two words have thus almost the same signification. Except when otherwise stated, the information in this article relates to the Sunnis.
Famous Tāzia at Khandwa
16. Leading religious observances. Prayer.
The five standard observances of the Muhammadan religion are the Kalima, or creed; Sula, or the five daily prayers; Roza, or the thirty-day fast of Ramazān; Zakāb, the legal alms; and Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which should be performed once in a lifetime. The Kalima, or creed, consists simply in the sentence, ‘There is but one God and Muhammad is His prophet,’ which is frequently on the lips of Muhammadans. The five periods for prayer are Fajr ki namāz, in the morning before sunrise; Zohar, or the midday prayer, after the sun has begun to decline; Asur, or the afternoon prayer, about four; Maghrib, or the evening prayer, immediately after sunset; and Aysha, or the evening prayer, after the night has closed in. These prayers are repeated in Arabic, and before saying them the face, hands and feet should be washed, and, correctly speaking, the teeth should also be cleaned. At the times of prayer the Azān or call to prayer is repeated from the mosque by the muezzan or crier in the following terms: “God is great, God is great, God is great, God is great! I bear witness that there is no God but God! (twice). I bear witness that Muhammad is the Apostle of God! (twice). Come to prayers! Come to prayers! Come to salvation! Come to salvation! God is great! There is no other God but God.” In the early morning the following sentence is added, ‘Prayers are better than sleep.’[21]
17. The fast of Ramazān.
The third necessary observance is the fast in the month of Ramazān, the ninth month of the Muhammadan year. The fast begins when the new moon is seen, or if the sky is clouded, after thirty days from the beginning of the previous month. During its continuance no food or water must be taken between sunrise and sunset, and betel-leaf, tobacco and conjugal intercourse must be abjured for the whole period. The abstention from water is a very severe penance during the long days of the hot weather when Ramazān falls at this season. Mr. Hughes thinks that the Prophet took the thirty days’ fast from the Christian Lent, which was observed very strictly in the Eastern Church during the nights as well as days. In ordaining the fast he said that God ‘would make it an ease and not a difficulty,’ but he may not have reflected that his own action in discarding the intercalary month adopted by the Arabs and reverting to the simple lunar months would cause the fast to revolve round the whole year. During the fast people eat before sunrise and after sunset, and dinner-parties are held lasting far into the night.
It is a divine command to give alms annually of money, cattle, grain, fruit and merchandise. If a man has as much as eighty rupees, or forty sheep and goats, or five camels, he should give alms at specified rates amounting roughly to two and a half per cent of his property. In the case of fruit and grain the rate is one-tenth of the harvest for unirrigated, and a twentieth for irrigated crops. These alms should be given to pilgrims who desire to go to Mecca but have not the means; and to religious and other beggars if they are very poor, debtors who have not the means to discharge their debts, champions of the cause of God, travellers without food and proselytes to Islām. Religious mendicants consider it unlawful to accept the zakāt or legal alms unless they are very poor, and they may not be given to Saiyads or descendants of the Prophet.