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There is no doubt, that the British were helped by the fact that their adversary had no comparable weapons, forces, or fighting equipment. The weapons of the revolutionaries were simple and in fact non‑existent; some of them were untrained and inexperienced, and there was also a lack of real cooperation between certain sections which claimed to be patriotic and called for freedom along with the revolutionaries. There were also the existence of groups of certain religious minorities which formed a fifth column, a lack of money among the revolutionaries, and other such handicaps. All these factors were instrumental in the discontinuance and abortion of the revolution, and helped the occupiers to overpower it. However, in spite of that, we see that there were many positive achievements made by the glorious religious revolution. Among them were the following:
* The creation of a revolutionary spirit among the Ummah, and its experience of the revolution and the uprisings following it which trained it in rebellion, disobedience and non‑surrender to foreigners and unbelievers, and created in it the desire for just Islamic rule.
* A declaration of the effectiveness of religion and its hold on the Ummah, and of how the element of faith could mobilize the Ummah to struggle against oppression, humiliation and subjugation.
* It taught the British a painful lesson, which they remember to this day, despite all the poison which they had directed against the Iraqi Muslims and their sincere ‘Ulama.
* It helped to create the indirect rule by the British, by using Faisal I, the son of Sharif Husayn, to rule Iraq under the pretext of Arab‑Islamic rule with the Islamic Shari'ah as one of the bases and sources of Iraqi law, so that the government issuing these laws was constituted by responsible Muslims from Iraq itself.
Some of the leaders and `Ulama’ were exiled to Oman, the Island of Saranjam and India, and the confrontations stopped completely. Nothing remained except a secret hatred in the hearts of the British against the Muslims and religious scholars of Iraq, particularly those based in the city of Najaf and the Islamic centre of learning there.
* It made the British and their surrogate rulers ‑ from the time of the first government formed with the efforts of Miss Bell ‑ wary of passing any laws which were in clear opposition to the Shari'ah, and fearful of the reactions from Najaf and other cities with any considerable number of `Ulama’ and religious seminaries. |
