It is important to have a proper understanding of the situation of the Muslim community in Arabia at the time of the Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) passing away. By analysing this situation, we aim to show that the social conditions of the time necessitated the appointment by God, via the Prophet (PBUH), of a pious and knowledgeable man as the Prophet’s (PBUH) successor.
The three dangers threatening the Muslim community
The still nascent Muslim community faced three dangers in the Prophet’s (PBUH) final years. The first danger was posed by the Byzantines, who were effectively at war with Muslims. The Prophet (PBUH) had led an army of thirty-thousand fighters to a place called Tabuk to fight the Byzantines in the year 9/630, but they had already withdrawn and no battle took place. In general, however, the Byzantine Empire aimed to capture the Arabian Peninsula and to overthrow the new Muslim nation.
The second potential danger came from the Sassanian Empire. Several years earlier, their king had received the Prophet’s letter calling him to Islam. The king became so angry upon reading this letter that he ordered the Governor of Yemen to either detain the Prophet or cut off his head and send it to him.
The third source of danger were the hypocrites (Munāfiqūn), who were always busy conspiring against the Muslims. Led by a man named Abu ‘Amir, the hypocrites built what came to be called the Mosque of Ḍarār as part of a plot to assassinate the Prophet (PBUH). Later, Abu ‘Amir left Medina for Mecca to provoke the Meccan pagans against the Muslims before fleeing to Byzantine lands, but he kept in touch with his contacts within Muslim territory.
Due to these sources of trouble, the Prophet (PBUH) needed to appoint a capable and knowledgeable successor before his passing away. This would prevent any disagreements concerning the issue of succession, which could pave the way for the enemies of Islam to take advantage of the situation and accomplish their own goals. For example, when Abu Sufyan (who had outwardly converted to Islam but still remained a pagan at heart), heard about the event of Saqifa (at which Abu Bakr was appointed the first Caliph after the Prophet), he went to Ali (AS) and, naming him the true successor to the Prophet (PBUH), hypocritically offered his allegiance.
He said to Ali (AS) : “I am here to pledge my allegiance to you and to tell you that I am ready to fill up Medina with an army of fighters to support your claim”. Aware of Abu Sufyan’s plot to take advantage of the situation against the unity of Muslims, Ali (AS) replied : “By God, you intend by this offer of allegiance to me nothing but destroying Islam, for you have been long preparing for this. I do not need your help”. Disappointed by Ali’s (AS) response, he would go around in Medina reciting the following lines of poetry to goad Banu Hashim tribe (to which the Prophet (PBUH) and Ali (AS) belonged) into revolting against the Caliph appointed at Saqifa:
‘O, Banū Hāshim! Let not other tribes take away your prerogative,
Especially Banū Taym and Banū Uday!
You deserve leadership (of Muslims) and you should have it.
Nobody else deserves to be the leader but ʿAlī.’
(Ibn Athīr 1/325; Ibn ʿAbd Rabbah 2/149)
As attested to by the Quran’s frequent references to the hypocrites in surahs 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 29, 47, 48, 57, 58, 59 and 63 (the last of which is actually entitled ‘Munafiqun,’ i.e., the hypocrites), these persons were not a small unimportant group but a powerful underground faction within the community.
Three options for succession
As Muhammad Baqir Sadr also notes in the introduction to his Tārīkh al-Imāmiyya, we can imagine three options for the Prophet with regards to the future of the Muslims:
First, the Prophet could leave the future of his followers wholly to themselves and worry leading them during his own life only. Sadr rejects this possibility because he thinks that it is based on two unacceptable assumptions: First, that the Prophet’s indifference to the future of the Muslims would not be harmful since they were able to solve their own problems and prevent any deviations in religion. For Sadr, however, this assumption is unreasonable because the Prophet would be leaving people who, in their new faith, had never experienced an absence of leadership. Therefore, he could not be sure about their success without his own planning for their future. The second assumption that might justify the Prophet’s lack of planning for the future of the Muslims is that the Prophet only cared about the situation of the Muslims in his own life time, and not about their future. But such an assumption is equally wrong, Sadr adds, because it is not the kind of attitude expected from prophets – people who dedicate their whole lives to helping human beings for the sake of God.
Secondly, Sadr says it could be imagined that the Prophet, caring and worrying about the future, decided that his successor should be chosen by a council of the Helpers (Ansar) and the Emigrants (Muhajirun), because they represented the entire Muslim community. But Sadr rejects this option too. This is because the Prophet was living amongst people who had an established tribal system of leadership where the leader either inherited his status or obtained it by force. Furthermore, the Prophet had not familiarized the Muslims with, or prepared them for, engaging with and accepting a system of leadership which was based on councils and elections. He had not taught Muslims the rules, regulations, nature and delimitations of such a kind of government. The lack of such teachings could be confirmed by the fact that while the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, was chosen via an agreement of sorts between some Emigrants and Helpers at Saqifa, the second Caliph, Umar ibn Khattab, was appointed by the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, and the third Caliph, Uthman, was chosen from a council of six individuals appointed by Umar. In other words, the first three caliphs were appointed in three different ways.
The third and last option thus would be for the Prophet to appoint a knowledgeable and pious man as his successor and, in this way, prevent any possible conflict and confusion in the Muslim society. This is the option which the Shia argue for, based on a study of the Muslim society of the Prophet’s day (Ṣadr, Tārīkh al-Imāmiyya, 5–16).
Source: en.shafaqna.com
