Divide and Conquer

By Umar Al Mujahid Abdur-Rasheed

Formerly

Anthony Navarro

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Growing up as a Christian kid, I used to wonder why there were so many
different versions of Christianity. I thought that if we all believed in God
and Jesus, that we were just Christians, right? Wrong! There are over
39,000 different denominations of
Christianity, with their own churches, Bibles
and beliefs. Don’t believe me? Go here and
see for yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chri
stian_denominations.

They have Christians, Catholics,

Baptists, Protestants, Pietism,
Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism,
Jahovah’s Witnesses, Lutherans,
Mormons, Anglicans and the list could
go on forever.

Did one group know something that the others didn’t? Why do they
have different Bibles and who made them different to each other? Which
one was the right one? Why couldn’t they all agree on the same things? I
couldn’t understand this “same religion, different division” concept until I
came to Islam and found the exact same thing happening here too. In
Islam you have Sunni’s, Shia’s, Tabliggi’s, Sufi’s, Salafi’s,

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Ahmadiyah’s, etc. Then within these divisions you have different schools
of thought. Not as many as Christianity, but still way more than there
should be. Only difference between
Muslim and Christian divisions is that the
Muslim holy book, the Qur’an, is the same
no matter what sect or division you follow.

Narrated AbuHurayrah: The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: The

Jews were split up into seventy-one sects; and the Christians were split
up into seventy-two sects; and my community will be split up into seventy-
three sects, all of which will be in Hell except one from each. They (the
Companions) asked: Allah's Messenger, which of the Muslims will be
saved? Whereupon he said: Those who follow the Qur’an and my
teachings. –Tirmidhi

So it’s clear from the Prophet

Muhammad that division within
religion is not a good thing. He
says that all who have divided
themselves will end up in Hell.
The only ones who will get
Paradise are those who
followed their respective Prophets (Jews= Moses, Christians= Jesus,
Muslims= Muhammad). All of these Prophets came with the same

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message and taught the same thing, so in reality we should all follow the
religion of the one true God. If you don’t then it is Hellfire for you and
for those who followed with you. Why will all of these divisions end up in
Hell? Because every single one of these groups think that they are right
and everyone else is wrong, so they are committing the same sin that lead
Shaytan (devil) to be banished to Hell for all of eternity…. arrogance.

In Islam as well as in any other belief, there are

many who think that they and only they, are on
the truth. What arrogance these people have.
As Muslims, we should pray that Allah guides
us and has mercy on us if we have strayed from
the straight path, so for people to claim “I am
on the truth” is not much better than Shaytan
saying that he was better than Adam. To
these people, I ask the simple question of….
what did the Prophet Muhammad claim to be? If he said that the ones
who get to Paradise are the ones who followed his teachings, then we
must claim what he claimed.

The Prophet NEVER said that he was a Salafi or a Sufi. He

NEVER said that he was a Shia or that he followed a specific school of
thought. NO!!! He simply said, “I AM A MUSLIM” and never said
anything other than that, so why have we divided ourselves like the

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Christians and Jews and taken names under the banner of Islam other
than just Muslim? I was very confused the first time this topic came up
after just accepting Islam. I was asked what kind of a Muslim I was and I
thought that being a Muslim was it. I didn’t know that I had to pick a
“Muslim team” to run with. I had just
come from the gang life in the streets of
New York and never thought I would
have to go from the “Latin Kings” to
the “Islamic Kings” gang. It just didn’t
seem to fit with what the Prophet
Muhammad had taught us.

I never picked a sect and simply claimed “Muslim” whenever confronted

about my “kind” of Islam. After a few years of being Muslim and meeting
different brothers, I noticed how hostile some were to others and how
some disrespected others for what they claimed and then it hit me…. The
enemies of Islam have us fighting each other, just like I was fighting other
Puerto Ricans and Blacks on the streets, and for no real reason either. I
never understood why Sunni’s and Shia’s
couldn’t get along and why Salafi’s didn’t like
anybody that wasn’t Salafi. “They have
divided us in order to conquer us” I thought to
myself. After all, we were all Muslims who bore
witness to the oneness of Allah and that

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Muhammad was the last of His Prophets. So why did we not like each
other and felt the need to fight each other?

It was another trick of Shaytan that I was on to, but people just seemed
to stick to their way of thinking regardless. There’s no need to post
Hadith or Qur’an on here, because this is something that should be
pretty much summed up by common sense. Divide and conquer is a war
technique that has been used
for as long as man has been at
war with other men, so why would
this be any different? We know
that Islam is the enemy of the
elite, so why wouldn’t they
infiltrate Islam to divide us? It
makes it a whole lot easier for
them to conquer all of Islam if we Muslims were too busy fighting each
other. Imagine all the Muslims in the world united together under the
banner “La ilaha il Allah (There’s no
god but Allah)”. No one would be able
to stop a force that strong, they know
this, and this is why we have divisions
and this is why we as an Ummah are so
divided amongst ourselves. So, my
advice to all my brothers and sisters

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under the one true God, if somebody asks you what kind of a Muslim you
are and you have an answer other than just Muslim…. you have already
deviated from the path that you bore witness on.

I bare witness there is no god but Allah. I bare witness that Muhammad is
the messenger of Allah and I am a Muslim and ONLY a Muslim….