In the Name of Allah, the most beneficient, the most Merciful.
Once upon a time, there was a kind person named Muhammad lived with his wife in a small village. Allah gave him four sons, Hanif, Malik, Ahmad, and Shafee. He loved his sons, and taught them good manners, and how to worship Allah. All four were the most obedient, and pious. Later, Allah gave him more sons and daughters, but these four were the most prominent ones.
Muhammad taught all of his kids that they are like limbs of a single body, and if one would suffer, others should cry out in pain. Also, that regardless of disagreements they should follow his teachings, and stay united so the outsiders cannot take advantage of them. He also taught them that disagreement will not harm them, but dividing into separate groups will.
One day Muhammad passed away leaving behind a big state and many children, but he ordered in his will that the estate should never be divided, because their strength was in the unity, and all his children should live together. All his children understood this, and taught their children the same message.
The estate was too big, so each of the four eldest divided responsibilities, and setup rules to help their children complete tasks, but the central control was still the core rules setup by Muhammad. Each of the four rules were based upon wisdom, and knowledge, but they were not same, since created by a human being.
On occassion, there will be conflicts, where two brothers rules contradicted each other, and a solution has to be reached. So, all will gather together, and debate to figure out which rule should be used. Usually the brother Hanif's rules be used since he had the skill to extrapolate in new situations. Slowly, most of their children used rules from Hanif, but some still used rules from other brothers. All brothers have commanded their kids to accept the other brother if their argument has the direct teaching of their grand father Muhammad, because all of them were following his rules. In essence, if any of the rule contradicted an explicit rule of Muhammad, it must be abandoned, and the brother who got the correct rule should be followed.
Despite the different rules, some children would follow the best of all four rules, because they had learned the art of deriving rules. There was a brotherhood at the core of the family, and everyone stayed together in the same estaet, and the size of the family kept increasing. Unfortunately, all of the children of Muhammad passed away one by one, but his grand children were maintaining the unity, and staying with one identity of the estate.
After many years, several generations were passed, and new generation were now running the estate. They did not like the arguing on the rules, and wanted to stablize the rule system so there are less conflicts. Also, the pride in the family lineage took hold of some of the people in the family, and they begin to identifying the original rules of the four brothers, and started to adopt rules solely based on their father from those four, and started rejecting the rules from other three brothers. These were the richest of the family, so they were able to implement their version of rules for their part of the estate. Everything was still normal, because they all lived together, but there was a certain pride to their rule system now.
In fact, there were always people in the family who debated and fixed problems with the rules as new situation arise in the estate, but they always kept the rules of Muhammad to be unchanging, and allowed changes to all other rules. This kept the unity among them, and protected against any foreign influence. This was the golden rule that was never to be broken. They are not allowed to form other estates, hence weakening the family.
However, the movement to establish four rules independent of each other won, and the estate was divided into four different functional bodies, each following a certain rules from the original four brothers. This worked for a while, but after a while, it became clear that the four functional parts of the estate has become separate estates in themselves, and cannot function as a single estate. This was due to the strict adherence to the single set of rules, and no allowance for deabte from other parts of the estate.
After several years, the estate of Muhammad became the four estate, and were moved to different cities. Hence, the brotherhood ended, and estate of Muhammad was lost. Conflicts on the rules were reduced, but the cost was too high, because now the people identified as the new four estates more than they identified as the original estate.
Four city estate ruled that if one becomes the resident of the city, they are not allowed to visit the other cities, or work there. In essence, they claimed that a person must follow the rules of the city in all circumstances to be protected from the foreign looters and the King who owned everything.
However, there was a small group of people lived outside the cities, who worked in all four cities, and kept the original rules of Muhammad alive. The small group of people living outside worked on bringing unity among the four cities, and wanted to remove illegal and illogical rules from the rules of the four cities. Interestingly, they were labelled as the spies of the other cities, when they argue against a certain rule to be baseless, and yelled at or threatened. On one such occassion, a person asked "Can we live in this city, but follow some rules that seem more correct from the explaination of the leader of the other city?" answer was "NO! NO! once you sign up here, you must follow all rules good or bad. "
One powerful analogy given by the cities to the minority group living outside the city is "How do you know what is best for you? Don't you need a cardioligist to diagnose heart issues, and you should trust his opinion over the opinion of a non-cardioligist?" Answer given "Yes, it is true that one has to be cardioligist to issue diagnosis on heart issues, but isn't it wise to get a second opinion from two cardioligist and see which opinion is better so we are not being mis-diagnosed. On the other hand, it is unwise to keep the same doctor, when the symptoms are getting worst. Also, it should be acceptable to have multiple doctors who we select from for different specialities they posses. So, it is a flawed argument from the cities that a lay person cannot chose between cardioligists, because they have not studied medicine. In fact, everyone choses doctors and lawyers they trust and change when needed."
Due to the division of the resources in four cities, foreign looters were attacking and harming all four cities, and they were not able to defend on their own. They claimed that it is impossible to form the original one estate of Muhammad now, so the best option is to live in one of the city estate and follow their rules instead.
In fact, these four cities fail to realize that there is nothing wrong with having multiple rules to run different part of the estate, but the central estate has to be one. If there are conflicts in rules, the best rule should be adopted that is closest to the original rules of Muhammad. Of course, this has to be done by the experts, and a process has to be established. Unfortunately, the leaders of these four cities does not want to go against their forefathers and leave the power for unity, so they will not allow debate between two cities.
Yes, there will be more debates, and conflicts, but the estate of Muhammad will be formed, and thats the definition of the unity, and everything else is a loss, however peaceful it is.
May Allah protects this small group from the opression, and taunts from the powerful cities, and guide them to bring about unity.
And the story continues...
JazakAllah Khairin
An outsider to four cities
AbuArman (Adnan Jumani)
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