Why do we argue about Muawiyah in the first place?

Yet, these narratives do not deal with Muawiyah or his contemporaries as political figures who acted according to the days' standards, customs, and values, but rather as figures who live with us today, in our daily lives, in all its detail and circumstance. 

When, for example, the Umayyads are being publicly cursed on the streets of Beirut, the cursers are not 'critiquing' the Umayyad political practice that transferred power from the Rightly Guided Caliphate to the 'hereditary monarchy'.

Nor do they question the nature of the rule Hussein bin Ali would have established if he had been given a chance, asking would his reign have passed to his offspring, for instance, or would he have returned to the formula of the Rightly Guided Caliphs in choosing the fittest to rule?

Instead, those curses on the streets of Beirut reflect the will to overcome and dominate contemporary spaces and communities.

Overlapping history and religion

The overlap between historic and religious factors still impacts our societies today and hinders our ability to think critically about Arab-Islamic heritage.

The new TV series, which deals with this historical era, does not add comment on these historic figures, nor does it provide any new or distinctive perspective on these historic events. It simply repeats the old narratives as taken from history books without making any effort to resolve their evident contradictions.

Nor do the programme makers aim to interpret anything beyond the 'official' narrative to draw a more accurate picture of the events that constituted the foundation of our societies, with its divisions and conflicts.

No matter how the subjects of these divisions change over the centuries, they remain points of friction that can lead to social outbursts at any moment.

Neither lies nor heresy

Al-Tabari, the most prominent preserver of Arab-Islamic culture and history, says in his book 'History of the Prophets and Kings' that while he collected all the narrations, responsibility for their validity (or lack thereof) lies entirely with those who gave them to him. Hence the importance of the 'chains of transmitters,' of which Orientalists are not usually fond.

There are examples of sectarian violence throughout the recent past, including Iraq in 2006-2007, the Syrian revolution in 2013 which morphed into a civil war after the failure of various forces to formulate a cross-sectarian political programme), or the embers of the Sunni-Shiite conflict under Lebanon's economic ashes.

These three episodes repeat ancient events. They will not be heresy or lies, nor will they add fuel to the fire of sedition, which was never extinguished.

An institutional refusal by different Muslim sects to separate neutral and objective historical study from religious beliefs, once again, stands in the way of building a homogeneous narrative of the history of this region.

Separating events from beliefs

The inability to separate history from religious beliefs also stops us from answering questions raised by history, not religion.

For example, was Muawiyah the first to open the door to hereditary rule? Or was it the case among all active political forces in the Arab-Islamic environment at the time, which could not bear the formula of choosing the caliph as a political and military leader, imam, and jurist?

Is Muawiyah an exception to a large group of problematic figures in Arab-Islamic history, or is he a statesman who tried to adapt to the nature of power at the time?

In this sense, the assassination of the Caliph Uthman bin Affan by the 'people of the peripheries' (remote regions) and that of Imam Ali Bin Abi Talib at the hand of Ibn Malajim al-Khariji can be seen from different perspectives.

They could be seen in light of the changing interests and concerns of the groups that emigrated to the peripheries and those who equated Muawiyah and Imam Ali as two of the "imams of misguidance".

The two events can then be evidence of the profound impact on the dynamism of the conquests and the radical change that they imposed on the economy and society of Muslims and their residence in remote areas and exposition to new cultures and values, on the one hand, and the extraction of the right to political practice regardless of the caliph's will (which Kharijites did), on the other hand. These incidents need to be studied as historical events.

The realities of the day

In his book 'The Conquests of Egypt,' Al-Maqrizi says that Amr ibn al-Aas told an Egyptian Coptic cleric who came to protest against the excessive taxes on the Copts: "You are our treasurers."

This is a purely political position – not a religious one – emanating from a ruler who seeks to manage his subjects' money, as the rulers have done since the dawn of history. It has been common practice ever since the creation of the nation-state.

The human characteristic of Arab-Islamic history and the scientific and critical dealing with the past in light of the available archaeological and literary evidence must be the prelude to getting out of the deadly binary labyrinth between underestimation and sanctification.

As such, Muawiyah and others should be taken out of the sectarian and denominational debate space, meaning that any TV show about him should be viewed as an artistic work that neither provokes strife nor prompts civil war.