 Those people for whom the caliph was Muawiya, at that point you wouldn't necessarily call them Sunni Muslim. But they're just Muslims living in different countries. They're living in Egypt, they're living in Syria, they're living in Iraq, they're living, they've probably never seen Muawiya. But they know there is a caliph by that name. They never met Amir al-Mu'minin, they never met the Prophet. The Ahadith in Praise of the Ahlul Bayt have been washed away, hidden, changed, forged. And I want to argue, besides the fact that the majority does not necessarily mean that is Orthodox Islam, but I want to argue the fact that the Muslims that are majority today, they came about to be Sunni Muslims because of historic and socio-political reasons, not because of any religious or theological reason. Let me explain this. There was no major debate at some point where the Shia ulama and the Sunni ulama had this big debate and the Sunni ulama completely trumped and defeated the Shia ulama, and then the majority went with this and the other ones were left behind. It wasn't like that. What I will demonstrate to you is that most people living in a society will follow the government of the time without standing up for any cause or fighting for anything that they see wrong in that society. Let's make it relevant and talk about the society we live in today. We live in Canada. We see a lot of things in the policies of this government that we like, that gives us the freedom, the security, the comfort, the benefits that we live in, Alhamdulillah. But we see things that are wrong as well. How many of us stand up and protest about it? For example, the government introduces gender-specific education to very young children, and some of that teachings we know are wrong and are corrupting the minds of our children. We're very concerned, but will we go downtown and protest and write petitions and write letters? No. Why? We're busy with our lives. We have to go to work. We have to put food on the table. We have dependence. We have responsibilities. There is no time for these sort of things. So we say others will do it. The government is trying to legalize port. We all know it's wrong. We don't want marijuana legalized. But how many of us are going to write petitions and letters? No. We just let things go. The government, when we came to Canada many of us, there was no gay marriages. Now it is legalized. How many of us said anything about it? No. If you came a long time back, maybe there was a time when Canada had capital punishment and then they removed it. You can give example after example after example, abortion, pro-life, pro-choice. We see these things happening on a day-by-day basis. You hear in the news that the government is now, the province of Ontario is going to allow alcohol and wine to be sold at the grocery stores. You don't want that. You don't want your children when you go grocery shopping seeing the bottles of wine and alcohol. But are you going to do anything about it? You let it go. You let this slide. You let that slide. Over a period of time, that way of life and that way of thinking becomes what is defined as quote-unquote Canadian values. And these are then infused into your children's minds and they grow up with these ideas of what is human rights, what is feminism, what is animal rights, what is right and wrong about the environment, what should you stand up for, what should you not stand up for. And then you speak that language. When you get on social media, you blog, you write comments to every news article, you write based on what you have determined to be right and wrong, based on what society has fed you as values. But your fathers, when they saw these first creeping in, they kept quiet. So it went and you go with the flow. What I am trying to say here is, this is the same thing that happened with Islam. The rights of the Ahlul Bayt, as we shall demonstrate why you served, they were marginalized and put aside and tormented and tortured. After the early Caliphs, and particularly after Amirul Mu'mineen, when the Umayyads came to power, they were brutally opposed to the Ahlul Bayt. And they also spread lies and rumors and fabricated false traditions to disparage Amirul Mu'mineen and the Ahlul Bayt and to downplay their importance in Islam. And so the society grew up with those values. Now those people for whom the Caliph was Mu'awiya, at that point you wouldn't necessarily call them Sunni Muslim. But they are just Muslims living in different countries. They are living in Egypt, they are living in Syria, they are living in Iraq, they are living, they have probably never seen Mu'awiya. But they know there is a Caliph by that name. They never met Amirul Mu'mineen, they never met the Prophet. The Ahadith in praise of the Ahlul Bayt have been washed away, hidden, changed, forged. So they don't know any better, they go with the flow. You don't protest, you have a living to do. You have to go to work, you have to provide for your family, and things go one after the other. The Umayyads rule comes to an end, the Abbasids come to rule. The Abbasids rule comes to an end, the Ottomans come to rule. The Ottomans rule until the First World War, Second World War, the Khilafat comes to an end, countries break up. There is now nations with borders. But for the majority of the time, when the Muslim Ummah was growing and expanding in hundreds and thousands and millions, the government was determining what is going to be the official story of Islam. And what some of these Caliphs did as well, as I shall demonstrate, is they also created a sanctity around the idea of the Sahaba and said that we must not speak any ill of any one of the companions of the Prophet and create sort of an aura of infallibility around them. Why? Because if we allow investigations and discussions around them, even if they are true and honest, they might lead people back to seeing the Ahlul Bayt, the name of Islam. And they might now also point fingers at us that we are not as good as even the Sahaba Kiram. So we must somehow make them perfect, but at the same time we are claiming titles to be Khalifa of Allah and Khalifa of Rasool. So we must bring the Prophet down as well and show flaws in his character so that now we are worthy of being his Khalifa. Now this sounds like a conspiracy theory at this point, but I will abundantly prove this with evidence. The one advantage that the Shia Muslims have over the Sunni Muslims is that when the Shia Muslims argue their case, they bring their proofs and arguments from the Sunni sources because a lot of the early history, the Syrah of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, were written by Muslims that you might today categorize as Sunni. So for example, Tariq Tabari, Tariq ibn Atheer, Tafsir ibn Kathir, Suyuti, Ghazali, Tabaqat ibn Saad, and there is a host of them, Sira ibn Ishaq, Sira ibn Isham, none of these were Shias. So we use those very same sources to argue our case. But what we argue is we say we must not bury our heads in the sand and pretend that there was nothing wrong. We must dig this out and talk about it, not because we want to foster division and arguments, but because that is the only way to heal and understand what we lost in the original Islam so that we can recalibrate our compass and find the way forward and solve the plight of the Muslims today. You see the Quran itself abundantly argues that the majority for the most of times is wrong. If you read the Quran, the language of the Quran always condemns the majority. We're not saying that this is proof that the Sunnis are wrong, the Shias are right, but we're saying it's not an argument that because you are the majority therefore you must be right. Consider for example in Surah Al-An'am chapter 6 verse 116, it says وَإِنْ تُطِيَ أَكْثَرَ منْ فِي الْأَرْضِ يُضِلْ لُكَ عَنْ سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ And if you were to follow most of those who are on the earth, they will take you away from the path of Allah. اِنْ يَتَّبِيُونَ إِلَّا الدَّنْ وَإِنْهُمْ إِلَّا يَخْرُصُونَ They follow nothing but suspicions and they're only guessing their way through. It is only conjecture. So the Quran repeatedly argues this case. But as I said, it is not that all the Sunni Muslims necessarily agreed with what Mu'awiya preached or what Harun al-Rashid did or what Mu'tawakil did. When you live in a society in a government, you go with the flow. You don't really oppose it. And this is how the majority came to follow that one path. It is because for the longest time, Muslims were ruled by tyrants and dictators. But that does not mean the majority is right, nor does it mean that the minority who voiced their opinion and opposed this tyrants are wrong. And so when we search for orthodox Islam, we must not judge it on the basis of majority or play with words and labels of saying, you know, how did the word Shi'a come about and how did the word Sunni come about.