When Ali was murdered in 661 C.E., Islam had only been without Muhammad for less than thirty years. Yet already the community was soaked in blood. The so-called “Rightly Guided Caliphs” had ended with three assassinations in a row: ‘Umar stabbed, ‘Uthman lynched in his own house, and finally Ali cut down while praying. The myth that Islam’s first century was a time of unity and pure spirituality collapses as soon as we look closely.

From 661 onward, the movement Muhammad started became something even more obvious: an Arabian dynasty ruling in the name of religion. The Umayyads, an aristocratic clan from Mecca who had once opposed Muhammad fiercely, now seized the caliphate, turned it into a family monarchy, and ruled from Damascus like kings. Within their own ranks they fought bitterly, murdered rivals, bombed Mecca and Medina, and left behind the permanent Shia curse upon their name.

During this period we see:

Ali assassinated and his son Hasan poisoned in what looks very much like arranged murder.
Husayn, Muhammad’s beloved grandson, lured out and butchered at Karbala, his family paraded in chains.
Medina sacked and Mecca shelled with catapults by armies commanded by men who claimed to be protecting Islam.
Umayyad rulers like Muawiya, Yazid, and Abd al-Malik normalizing public cursing of Ali from pulpits.
Islamic expansion into Spain and India driven by the same logic as earlier conquests: loot, slaves, and dominance.

This is not how Jehovah’s congregation behaves when guided by the Holy Spirit. The New Testament shows overseers who must be gentle, not violent, and holy ones who spread the good news by preaching, not by dynastic wars. The Umayyad story instead shows what happens when a political empire wraps itself in Muhammad’s name.

First Dynasty: Umayyads Seize Power

The Umayyads were an old Meccan family of Quraysh, closely tied to the aristocracy that had opposed Muhammad in his early years. Abu Sufyan, their leading figure, had commanded forces against the Muslims at Uhud and the Trench. Only when Muhammad marched on Mecca with 10,000 men did Abu Sufyan yield, uttering the shahada under clear coercion. Yet within a generation his clan would control the caliphate.

Muawiya, Abu Sufyan’s son, had been appointed governor of Syria by ‘Umar and kept in power by ‘Uthman. Syria was wealthy, with strong military structures and close links to Byzantine administration. Muawiya used his long tenure there to build loyalty to himself, not just to the abstract “caliphate.” When Ali became caliph after ‘Uthman’s murder, Muawiya refused to recognize him, demanding vengeance for ‘Uthman first.

The standoff between Ali and Muawiya led to the Battle of Siffin in 657. After days of fighting, Muawiya’s forces were losing ground. Then they played a political trick that would shape Islamic history. They ordered pages of the Qur’an to be hoisted on spears, shouting that judgment should be referred to “the Book of Allah.” Many of Ali’s troops, pious but naïve, demanded a halt to battle and agreed to arbitration. Ali reluctantly accepted. The arbitration process was manipulated; Muawiya gained time and legitimacy, while Ali’s authority eroded. From Ali’s own camp came the Kharijites, furious at what they viewed as compromise, who later assassinated him.

When Ali was finally murdered in 661 by the Kharijite Ibn Muljam, the way lay open. His son Hasan briefly received allegiance in Kufa, but Muawiya moved swiftly. Using a mixture of threats and lavish bribes, he persuaded Hasan to abdicate in his favor in exchange for promised payments and a vague commitment that the community would choose the next ruler after Muawiya’s death. Hasan withdrew; Muawiya entered Iraq in triumph. Later Sunnis would call this “the year of unity,” but it was unity under a usurping strongman.

Once in full control, Muawiya ruled from Damascus, transforming the caliphate into a hereditary kingship. He dressed like a monarch, sat on a throne, and surrounded himself with court ceremony. He established a navy and continued conquests, but his most consequential move was domestic: he nominated his son Yazid as his successor, against the earlier promise that the community would choose. Powerful figures like Husayn ibn Ali and Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr refused to give Yazid the oath. Muawiya, however, ignored them. When he died in 680, he left behind a dynastic state and a looming crisis.

From a biblical standpoint, none of this resembles the life of Jehovah’s congregation. The early Christian writings do not show apostles turning the congregation into a family monarchy or staging theological theatrics to stop a battle. They appointed overseers based on character, not bloodline, and they never used military power to enforce unity. Muawiya’s seizure of power reveals that Islam, once the original charismatic founder was gone, collapsed naturally into an Arab monarchy built on cunning and force.

Assassination of Ali and Hasan Poisoned

Ali’s end shows the hollowness of claims that Muhammad left behind a clear, Spirit-guided succession. Ali had been among the first to believe in Muhammad, married his daughter Fatima, and fought in many battles. Shia Muslims regard him as the rightful first imam. Even many Sunnis call him one of the greatest of the early rulers. Yet he was unable to hold the fractured community together and died at the hands of those who claimed to be purifying Islam.

The Kharijites, who emerged from the fallout of Siffin, hated both Ali and Muawiya. They denounced arbitration as a betrayal and declared that “judgment belongs only to Allah,” but then took that slogan into their own hands. Three of them are said to have conspired to kill Ali, Muawiya, and Amr ibn al-‘As on the same day. Only Ali’s attacker succeeded. He struck Ali in the mosque at Kufa with a poisoned sword as Ali prayed. Ali died from his wound, and the Kharijite was captured and executed.

The death of Ali did not bring peace. Instead, it opened the next chapter of manipulation. Hasan, Ali’s eldest son, was acknowledged in Kufa as caliph for a brief period. But his position was weak. Muawiya had Syrian troops, money, and momentum. Through a mixture of military pressure and offers of wealth, he pushed Hasan into an agreement. In return for large sums of money and a promise that succession would revert to the community after Muawiya, Hasan abdicated and retired to Medina.

Years later, Hasan died, not by natural causes, but by poisoning. Early Islamic accounts point to one of his wives, Ja‘da bint al-Ash‘ath, as the one who administered the poison. More disturbingly, there is repeated testimony that Muawiya had approached her with an offer: poison Hasan and you will receive money and be married to Yazid. Whether every detail of that bargain is accurate or not, the political logic is obvious. As long as Hasan lived, he was a potential rival and a rallying point for those who rejected Umayyad rule. His death removed a threat and cleared the path for Yazid’s accession.

In the Bible, when kings resorted to poison and palace intrigue to remove rivals, Jehovah condemned them. The stories of Ahab, Jezebel, and the murder of Naboth, or of Athaliah’s massacre of the royal seed, show that God’s prophets spoke against such deeds even when done by kings of Judah. Here, in Islam’s own sources, we see similar patterns: rivals conveniently removed by poison, followed by thin attempts to blame it only on private motives. Yet the main beneficiary, Muawiya, remained in power, unrebuked.

For Shia Muslims, these events became the foundation of a lasting sense of betrayal. They believe the rightful family of the Prophet was cheated again and again—first Ali, then Hasan. They see the hands of the Umayyads behind each murder. Even stripped of Shia embellishments, the basic facts point in the same direction: the new rulers of Islam were willing to use assassination by proxy to secure their dynasty.

Karbala 680: Husayn Butchered, Family Enslaved

If Hasan’s poisoning lit the fuse of Shia rage, the massacre at Karbala in 680 detonated it.

When Muawiya died, his son Yazid demanded the oath of allegiance from key figures, including Husayn ibn Ali, younger brother of Hasan and grandson of Muhammad through Fatima. Husayn refused. He saw Yazid as an illegitimate, corrupt ruler imposed on the community. In Kufa, many disaffected Iraqis sent letters urging Husayn to come and lead them. They promised support, swearing that thousands stood ready to fight for him.

Husayn eventually set out from Mecca with a small band of relatives and supporters, including women and children. From the beginning, the journey was risky. Despite earlier assurances, the political situation in Kufa had shifted. Yazid had appointed a harsh governor, ‘Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, who intimidated and suppressed Husayn’s supporters. The mass movement evaporated before Husayn arrived.

On the plain of Karbala, near the Euphrates, Husayn’s caravan was intercepted by a much larger Umayyad force. They blocked access to water, surrounding the small encampment. Negotiations dragged on. Husayn offered various options: to return, to go to a frontier and fight non-Muslim enemies, or to meet Yazid personally. Ibn Ziyad refused anything but unconditional submission. Days passed; thirst gnawed at Husayn’s children and companions. On the tenth day of Muharram—Ashura—the standoff ended in slaughter.

Accounts differ on exact numbers, but the imbalance was extreme: perhaps seventy to one hundred men with Husayn against several thousand pursuers. Husayn’s followers fought bravely but were cut down one by one. Husayn himself was wounded and finished off—some reports name Shimr ibn Dhi’l-Jawshan as the one who severed his head. His body was trampled by horses. The heads of Husayn and his slain relatives were placed on lances.

The treatment of his family adds another layer of horror. The surviving women and children, including Husayn’s sister Zaynab and his sick son Ali Zayn al-Abidin, were taken captive. They were paraded first to Kufa, where Ibn Ziyad gloated over the heads, and then to Damascus, where Yazid himself is reported to have mocked Husayn, tapped his lips with a stick, and recited lines of pre-Islamic poetry celebrating Umayyad triumph. Though later Sunni writers try to paint Yazid as troubled by the scene, the damage was done. The family of Muhammad’s own daughter had been butchered and chained by rulers claiming to lead his community.

For Shia Muslims, Karbala became the central trauma. Every year on Ashura they mourn, chant, and sometimes beat themselves in grief over Husayn’s martyrdom. They interpret their history as a long line of oppression by corrupt rulers beginning with the Umayyads. They call down curses on Yazid, Ibn Ziyad, Shimr, and all who supported them. The “blood curse” that this chapter’s title mentions is their conviction that the Umayyad crime at Karbala brought divine wrath on that dynasty and that all true believers must dissociate from those killers.

Even if one does not share Shia theology, the Karbala episode shouts a theological verdict. The men who ordered and carried out that massacre were not outsiders. They were Muslims, many of them from families of early companions. They prayed, recited Qur’an, and claimed to defend the caliphate. Yet when a small group led by Muhammad’s own grandson challenged their ruler’s legitimacy, they responded with a level of brutality that would be remembered for centuries.

Compared with the New Testament, the contrast is immense. When disputes arose among Christians, they did not send armies to butcher the families of their opponents. The apostles, faced with false teachers and heretics, used Scripture, letters, and congregational discipline. They did not trample the bodies of their opponents’ children on the ground. Karbala shows what kind of fruit Muhammad’s system bore once his own restraining presence was gone: “believers” willing to decapitate his grandson to preserve a throne.

Mecca and Medina Bombed and Burned

Yazid’s crimes did not end at Karbala. The holiest cities of Islam—Medina and Mecca—soon felt the weight of Umayyad power.

In Medina, resentment had been building against Umayyad rule. Many of the Prophet’s companions and their descendants lived there, watching Syria dominate the caliphate. They saw nepotism, luxurious living, and disregard for Muhammad’s family. Eventually Medina’s people rejected Yazid’s authority and drove out his governor. In response, Yazid sent a Syrian army under Muslim ibn ‘Uqba to punish the city.

The army camped at a place called al-Harra, just outside Medina. The Medinans fought but were defeated. What followed was a three-day orgy of violence remembered as one of the darkest episodes in Islamic history. The Syrian troops were given license to plunder the city. Men were killed, houses looted, and, according to multiple early accounts, women were raped. Some later reports claim that illegitimate children in Medina afterward were called “children of Harra,” a grim evidence of the assaults.

This was the city where Muhammad had built his first mosque, where his grave lay, where the earliest Muslims had prayed. Yet under Yazid, an army claiming loyalty to Allah’s caliph trampled it, violating its inhabitants in direct contradiction to the supposed sanctity of the Prophet’s city.

The next target was Mecca. Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr, grandson of Abu Bakr and a companion himself, had refused to recognize Yazid and, after Husayn’s death, became the main rival caliph, centered in Mecca. Yazid’s forces, after Harra, marched on Mecca and laid siege. To break Ibn al-Zubayr’s resistance, they set up catapults on the hills and hurled stones and incendiary materials into the city. The Kaaba itself was struck; its covering caught fire; parts of the structure were damaged, and the Black Stone was broken into pieces.

The very house that Muslims say Abraham built and that Muhammad cleansed of idols was now hit by rocks and flames launched by Muslims against Muslims. The defenders were not pagans; they were fellow Arabs reciting the same Qur’an. But because they backed a rival claimant, they became legitimate targets.

Yazid died suddenly in 683 while the siege was ongoing, and his army withdrew in confusion. Ibn al-Zubayr controlled the Hijaz for several more years. But the pattern of sacrilege had been set: the holiest sites were expendable in internal power struggles.

Later, under Abd al-Malik, the Umayyads tried again. Abd al-Malik sent his ruthless governor al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf to crush Ibn al-Zubayr. Once more, Mecca was besieged and battered with catapults. Once more, the Kaaba suffered damage. Al-Hajjaj offered safety if Ibn al-Zubayr surrendered; he refused and was killed, his body hung in public as a warning.

In the Bible, when Jehovah ordained a holy place—first the tabernacle, then the temple—He demanded that His people treat it with reverence. When enemies desecrated it, judgment fell. No faithful leader of Israel ever justified hurling stones at the temple simply to defeat another Israelite faction. The fact that early Muslim armies twice bombarded their own sacred house reveals that political control meant more to them than religious claims. The Kaaba was not inviolable; it was a tool of legitimacy. Whoever held it could call himself caliph, so any damage done in seizing it was acceptable.

Abd al-Malik and the Permanent Curse on Shia

Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, who ruled from 685 to 705, rebuilt Umayyad power after a period of civil war. Under him, the dynasty became more centralized, more ideologically self-conscious, and more openly hostile to rival Islamic narratives—especially those that honored Ali and his line.

One of his most infamous instruments was al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, already mentioned as the butcher of Mecca. Al-Hajjaj governed Iraq and the eastern provinces with an iron hand. He executed tens of thousands, especially supporters of Ibn al-Zubayr and later of Shia movements. Stories abound of prisoners hung on crosses for days, of heads displayed in public, of entire districts terrorized into obedience. For generations, the name of al-Hajjaj was a byword for cruelty in Muslim memory.

Abd al-Malik also undertook ideological projects. He minted new coinage that replaced Christian symbols and phrases with Islamic text, asserting that Allah has no son. He built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, inscribing inside and outside it with polemics against the divinity of Christ and affirmations of Muhammad’s role. These moves were aimed at Christians and Jews. But toward Shia, Abd al-Malik’s policy involved another tactic: public cursing.

Already under Muawiya, it had become standard for Friday preachers to insult Ali during the khutba, portraying him as a rebel and downplaying his virtues. Abd al-Malik continued and institutionalized this practice across the empire. Week after week, in mosques from Damascus to Kufa, the name of Ali was condemned from pulpits, while the Umayyad caliphs were praised. For Shia, who revere Ali as the rightful successor and the first imam, this was salt in the wound of Karbala. The state was not only responsible for the blood of their imams; it used worship gatherings to insult them.

Only much later, under the pious Umayyad caliph Umar ibn ‘Abd al-Aziz, was this practice officially stopped and replaced with generic praise of earlier caliphs. But by then the damage was done. A culture of cursing had shaped Sunni–Shia relations. Shia communities responded with their own ritual denunciations of the “tyrant caliphs” and their henchmen. The curse of Karbala became an enduring feature of their identity: they defined themselves partly by opposing the Umayyads and all who imitated them.

From a Christian perspective, it is extraordinary that members of a religion supposedly founded on one prophet came to spend so much energy cursing each other’s heroes over succession disputes. The apostolic congregation was warned against factions (Paul rebuked those who said “I belong to Paul” or “I belong to Apollos”), and true overseers were commanded to avoid quarrels and to correct opponents with gentleness. The Umayyad practice of weaving political hatred into Friday sermons demonstrates again that Islam’s early rulers had no interest in the kind of love and unity Christ demands. They built unity by creating common enemies—Jews, Christians, and especially Shia—and by sanctifying hatred from the pulpit.

Expansion to Spain and India Built on Skulls

While the Umayyads were crushing internal rivals and cursing Ali, their armies continued to expand outward. The period from 661 to 750 saw Islam’s political reach stretch from the Atlantic coast of Spain to the frontiers of India. Muslims today often celebrate this as an age of “civilization and tolerance.” The path they took to get there was lined with skulls.

In the west, Arab and Berber forces pushed across North Africa, suppressing resistance from Christian Berbers and remaining Byzantine enclaves. Cities were besieged; populations enslaved or taxed heavily. The founding of Kairouan in present-day Tunisia created a permanent base for raids further west.

From North Africa, the next leap was across the straits into Iberia. In 711, an army under Tariq ibn Ziyad, mostly Berber but under Umayyad authority, crossed and defeated Visigothic forces at the battle of Guadalete. The Arab narratives tell stories of massive slaughter, of nobles killed, of cities stormed. Some towns negotiated surrender and were allowed to keep churches in exchange for jizya; others were looted. Over the next few years, Cordoba, Seville, Toledo, and much of the peninsula fell under Muslim rule. Slaves were taken by the thousands and shipped back across the Mediterranean or kept as labor and concubines.

In later centuries, a refined culture would emerge in al-Andalus, with philosophy, poetry, and limited toleration of dhimmis. But that later polish cannot erase the foundation: the Islamic presence in Spain began with invasion and conquest, not with peaceful preaching. The cross in Iberia was not replaced by the crescent because people read the Qur’an and converted freely; it was forced aside by armies who offered the usual triad: Islam, tribute, or war.

In the east, an equally grim story unfolded. Under the Umayyads, particularly through the actions of al-Hajjaj in Iraq, campaigns were launched into Sindh (roughly modern southern Pakistan). The standard excuse given in Muslim chronicles is that local rulers had attacked Muslim shipping or mistreated Muslim women captured by pirates. In response, al-Hajjaj sent a young general, Muhammad ibn Qasim, with an army to punish them.

Whatever the pretext, the result was conquest. Ibn Qasim attacked coastal cities such as Debal, using catapults against temples, and, after capturing them, oversaw large-scale killings and enslavement. Chroniclers describe the slaughter of fighting men, the mass taking of women and children, and the imposition of jizya on those Hindus and Buddhists who were allowed to live. Temples were partially destroyed or converted, and mosques established as symbols of new rule.

Again, the pattern of “people of the book” versus “idolaters” mattered. While Christians and Jews were generally offered the option of dhimma, many polytheist populations faced harsher terms. Over time, pragmatic adaptation led to making room for non-monotheists under forms of tributary status, but the early invasions were savage. The Umayyad state enriched itself with plunder and slaves from the Indus valley just as it had earlier from Syrian, Egyptian, and Persian lands.

From Jehovah’s standpoint, the conquest of Spain and parts of India in this way cannot be confused with the spread of His Kingdom. Jesus never commanded His disciples to cross seas with armies to seize Iberia or Sindh. When Philip met the Ethiopian official, he preached Christ from Isaiah; he did not threaten him with troops. When the Gospel first reached Europe, it did so through the preaching of Paul, not through catapults.

The Umayyad Empire might impress worldly historians with its scale and speed. But for anyone asking whether Islam in this era bore the marks of a true, holy religion, the answer is inescapable. Its rulers murdered rivals, bombed their own holy cities, cursed whole branches of their community, and built their external glory on the suffering of conquered peoples. That is the legacy of 661–750: Muawiya, Yazid, Abd al-Malik, and their successors presiding over an empire that had inherited Muhammad’s methods and taken them to the ends of the known world.

For Shia Muslims, this period became an open wound. Ali assassinated, Hasan poisoned, Husayn butchered at Karbala, the family of the Prophet enslaved and paraded—all at the hands of those who claimed to follow the man they revered. For Christians evaluating Muhammad’s claim in the light of Scripture, it offers further confirmation. The Lord Jesus said that false prophets could be known by their fruits. The fruits of Islam’s first dynasty are plain: blood, oppression, and curses, not the righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit that Jehovah gives to His true people.

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