When Truth Divides Us: The Dilemma of Unity in the Face of Historical Injustice

How do we come together — as families, as communities, as an ummah — when our versions of the truth are different?

Not just different in interpretation, but in acknowledgment.

Not just different in emotion, but in fact.

It’s a question that haunts me — especially when the truths we disagree on are not abstract, but blood-stained.

Like the killing of the Prophet’s ﷺ family.

Like the battles waged against Ahl al-Bayt.

Like the silencing of their grief and the rewriting of their sacrifice.

How can unity be built on truth, when even the truth is contested?

And it is. Deeply. Painfully.

Ask a Sunni Muslim about the Battle of Jamal, and most will hesitate. Ask about the killing of Imam Hussain (رضي الله عنه), and they will mourn the tragedy — but avoid the names. The questions. The accountability.

We’re told not to look too deeply. Not to “cause division.”

Not to “speak ill” of companions.

But at what cost?

The truth is: we can’t rewrite history just to make it easier to live with ourselves.

We can’t erase the blood of the Prophet’s grandsons and still claim to love him fully.

We can’t selectively honour Ahl al-Bayt while ignoring the pain they bore at the hands of our own ummah.

This is not a sectarian issue. This is a moral one.

So why the denial?

Part of it is fear — fear of being “divisive,” fear of being called Shia, fear of questioning what we’ve been taught.

Part of it is inherited bias — an unwillingness to hold revered figures to account.

And part of it is simply spiritual dissonance — because to admit the truth would demand a reckoning.

It would mean acknowledging that our ummah has wounds we’ve never healed — because we’ve never even admitted they exist.

It would mean accepting that not all companions were infallible. That power corrupted some. That women — even beloved wives of the Prophet ﷺ — were capable of grave misjudgment.

That political ambition, jealousy, and tribalism tore through our early history, just as it tears through our present.

And yet — here is the tension:

If we want true unity, it cannot be built on silence.

It cannot be built on the erasure of sacred suffering.

It must begin with truth — even if that truth is uncomfortable.

So where do we go from here?

We begin with honesty.

We allow space for multiple voices — and we listen, not just to scholars of one tradition, but to the descendants of the Prophet ﷺ themselves.

We read. We research. We ask. We sit in the discomfort.

Because the killing of the Prophet’s family should be something that unites every Muslim — not divides us.

If we truly love the Prophet ﷺ, then our hearts should break for the injustice faced by Ali, Fatima, Hassan, and Hussain.

If we claim to follow the Sunnah, then we must follow it all the way to Karbala — and stand with the oppressed, even if it means questioning those in power.

And no, unity doesn’t mean we’ll all agree on every detail.

But unity can mean we agree on what is sacred.

We don’t need to have identical opinions to have collective compassion.

But we cannot have selective truth and expect collective healing.

Families fall apart over these same tensions. Some members hold truth in their bones; others hold fear in their silence. But even here, the path forward is the same: truth, with compassion. Justice, with gentleness. The courage to speak — and the humility to listen.

And most of all, the refusal to call betrayal unity.

Because if we unite by ignoring injustice, then we are not united — we are just avoiding each other.

The Prophet ﷺ warned us of this. He left behind two things: the Qur’an and his Ahl al-Bayt. Not one. But both. If our love for him does not extend to defending their honour, mourning their pain, and amplifying their legacy — then what kind of love is it?

So I return to the question I began with:

If the price of unity is betrayal, then what are we uniting upon?

And maybe the answer is this:

True unity isn’t avoiding the truth.

True unity is returning to it — together.