3. The Baghghasiyyeh, Banhasiyyeh, or Bayhasiyyeh, followers of Abu Baghghas, Banhas, or Bayhas. I have found no account of their ‘doctrinal quiddities.’
4. The Safar, so called from their founder Ziyad ibn el Asfar, believe concealment of tenets (‘Takiyyeh’) permissible in word not in deed, and they extend infidelity (Kufr) even to such offences as neglecting prayer.
5. The Abazi or Bayazi, who form the mass of Arab population at Zanzibar, and who are also numerous in Oman. They are Karmati and anti-Moslem in the matter of Freewill, a vital distinction from the Sunnis; like the Ismailiyyeh and sundry mystic schools, they believe the Imamship to be a supreme pontificate, but not the succession, by grace, of the prophethood and the caliphate. They are opposed to the Mutazali by respecting the Shaykhayn (Ahubekr and Omar), their exoteric reason being that El Islam then throve under a single head. Therefore they deem it lawful and right to abuse Usman and Ali (damning the Shiahs for venerating the latter), Muawiyah and Yezid, Talhah, Zubayr,[[102]] and others, who brought calamities upon the Faithful, and who caused the spilling of Moslem blood. In this age of decaying zeal they do not ‘Sabb’ or blaspheme any one publicly by name, and by order of the late Sayyid they bless, during the Friday sermon (Khutbah), the two first Caliphs, and then generally the Sahabah (Companions of the Prophet), the Muhajirin (Meccans who accompanied the Flight), and the Ansar (Medinites who received Mohammed). As are all Moslems they may not use the word ‘La’anat,’ or curse, except to Satan—so Christians are forbidden to call others fools, and with equal success. Moravian-like they pride themselves upon preserving pure and undefiled the tenets and the ritual handed down to them from the Prophet’s day, and, with the rest of the Moslem Ulema, who in this point are the most conservative and anti-progressive of men, they would model all modern civilization upon that of barbarous Arabia in the 7th century. One of their favourite sayings is, ‘All innovation (Bida’ah, i.e. a practice unknown to Mohammed’s day) is error, and all error is in hell-fire.’ Possibly, however, this may be the effect of Wahhabi neighbourhood.
The faith of the Bayázi is narrow and exclusive, a monopoly of righteousness, a moral study of the infinitely little. Amongst Christians I can compare him only with the ‘hard-grit’ style of Baptists, who aspire alone to people a Heaven in which the letter H is of no account. All who do not profess his tenets are Kafirs, and, as it is a standing belief that whoso calls a Moslem Kafir becomes a Kafir himself, they are replied to in kind. Each of the 73 schools naturally considers itself the ‘Nájiyah,’ or Saving Faith; but it is not justified in consigning to Jehannum those that do not agree with it. The Bayázi condemn all the Sunnis, and especially the Shafeis, who expect actually to see the Deity (el Ru’uyah) during the next life. Quoting the debated passage of the Koran ‘Sight shall not see Him’ (لاتدمرکه الابصار), the Kharijis agree that if the Lord be visible, He must be material and personal, consequently created and unessential. In these matters they go beyond their depth; but who, it may be asked, attempts the subject and does not? The idea of the Godhead varies with every race, of which it is the highest mental and moral expression; the higher the conception the higher will be the intellectual status, and vice versâ; even the same race constantly modifies its hold for better or for worse. I do not believe that the sages of Greece and Rome were polytheists or idolaters, although they may have sacrificed cocks to Esculapius. Under almost all mythologies, even the Hindu, there is an underlying faith in monotheism. But the God of the Jews, of the Christians, and of the Moslems, differs in kind as well as in degree, even as the God of Calvin would not be the God of Channing. A late writer has published several pages of very good writing and very bad reasoning, upon the contrast of the Deity, as worshipped by Christianity and by El Islam. His error has been to assume Wahhabiism for the typical form of the latter. I might as well work out the theory that the Anabaptist Protestant is the Christian par excellence. Like the article on the Talmud which lately created so much attention, it is an able bit of special pleading and no more.
Amongst Moslems, Paradise is supposed to embrace the extent of the earth and firmament, and the late Sayyid used quaintly to remark, that his scanty orthodox subjects would people it but poorly. The Bayázi, unlike others of the Saving Faith, which we may better translate ‘le Salut,’ hold hell-fire to be the eternal portion of even their own sinners; thus literally interpreting the text, ‘ever, to all eternity (dwelling) in it (hell),’—خالدين فيها ابدًا. They have no prayer-station round the Ka’abah, and they relieve then chagrin by proving these oratories to be ‘novelties,’ unknown to the Prophet’s day.
The ritual differences between the Bayázi and other schools are small; in prayer the arms and hands are extended down the thighs, instead of being folded over the waist. Contrary to the practice of Sunnis and Shiahs, they may wear gold or silver rings of indefinite weight, and silks and satins, provided that the latter be removed during prayer. These sectarians cannot marry women with whom they have cohabited; divorce is imperative from wives whom they have visited at a forbidden season, and they allow legitimacy to children horn within two years after the father’s death. Amongst the Shafei the period extends to four years: physiological ignorance of ovarian dropsy fixed the time; and mistaken charity has refused to shorten it. In general the Bayázi, like the Druze, appears unwilling to explain his tenets, a remarkable contrast with the self-assertion and the controversial readiness of other Moslems. When betrayed into argument they quarrel about their belief—a sign of weakness; the calmly and thoroughly convinced, for instance an honest Scotch country minister, only smiles with pity upon the man who dares to differ from him. The studied simplicity and literalness of the sect and its fierce intolerance, combined with its crass semi-barbarism and isolation from the great family of nations, have favoured the progress of Wahhabi puritanism, and accordingly many Bayázi have ranged themselves under the uncompromising banner of puritanical ‘Unitarianism’—literalism and Koranolatry.
Of old the Kharijis were the flowers of the Islamitic garden; and history will ever dwell upon the literary glories of Seville and Cordova. It was this heresy that produced the Allámat (doctissimus) El Ghazali, and the celebrated Persian grammarian and poet, the Imam Abú’l Kasim Mohammed bin Omar, El Zamakhshari. His wife attacked his vile belief in man’s Free-will with an argumentum ad hominem more demonstrative than purely logical. It caused him, however, to recant the error and to express his penitence in that glorious ode beginning—
يا من يرا مدّ البعوض جناحه
فی ظلمة ليل البهيم اّليالى
‘O Thou who seest the midge extend her wing