Umar bin al-Khattab, the Second Caliph of the Muslims
In the times of ignorance, Umar made his
living as a broker. Shibli, his biographer, says that in his youth he grazed
camels.
Before accepting Islam, Umar was one of
the most rabid enemies of Muhammad, the Messenger of God.
Some historians claim that Umar was a
most awe-inspiring man, and when he accepted Islam, the idolaters were gripped
with fear for their lives. But this is only a case of a dominant myth being in
conflict with ugly facts.
When Umar accepted Islam, the idolaters
remained where they were, and nothing changed for them; but it was Muhammad who
was compelled to leave his home, and had to find sanctuary in a desolate
ravine. He spent three years in that ravine, and during those years of exile,
his life was exposed to deadly perils every day and every night. During this
entire period of more than 1000 days, Umar, like many other Muslims in Makkah,
was the silent spectator of the ordeals of his master. He made no attempt to
bring those ordeals to an end.
Muhammad Mustafa established brotherhood
among Muslims both in Makkah and in Medina. In Makkah, he made Umar the “brother”
of Abu Bakr, and in Medina, he made him the “brother” of Utban bin Malik. For
his own brother, Muhammad chose Ali ibn Abi Talib in both cities.
In 3 A.H., Umar's daughter, Hafsa, was
married to the Apostle.
Umar was one of the fugitives of the
battle of Uhud (Baladhuri). He himself said later: “When Muslim were defeated
in Uhud, I ran toward the mountain.” (Suyuti in al-Durr al-Manthoor).
At the siege of Khyber, Umar made an
attempt to capture the fortress but failed.
Umar was one of the fugitives of the
battle of Hunayn. Abu Qatada, a companion of the Prophet, says: “In Hunayn when
the Muslims were fleeing, I also fled, and I saw Umar with others.” (Bukhari
and Kitabul-Maghazi).
In 8 A.H. the Apostle sent Umar as a
ranker with many others to report for duty to Amr bin Aas, their commanding
officer, in the campaign of Dhat es-Salasil.
In 11 A.H. the Apostle of God organized
the Syrian expedition and he appointed Usama bin Zayd bin Haritha as its
general. He ordered Umar to serve as a ranker in the expedition.
Though Umar spent eighteen years in the
company of Muhammad Mustafa, the Messenger of God, the latter never appointed
him to any position of authority – civil or military.
When the Apostle of God was on his
deathbed, he asked the companions to bring pen, paper and ink so he might
dictate his will but Umar defied him. He did not let the Apostle dictate his
will and testament.
Umar was not present at the funeral of
the Prophet of Islam. He was brawling with the Ansar in the outhouse of Saqifa
when the body of the Prophet was being buried.
Umar was the khalifa-maker of Abu Bakr.
During Abu Bakr's khilafat, Umar was his principal adviser.
The Banu Umayya were the traditional
champions of idolatry and the arch-enemies of Muhammad and his clan, the Banu
Hashim. Muhammad had broken their power but Umar revived them. The central
component of his policy, as head of the government of Saqifa, was the
restoration of the Umayyads. He turned over Syria to them as their “fief,” and
he made them the first family in the empire.
A modern student of history might find
claims made on behalf of some companions of the Prophet rather extravagant and
baffling. He might notice in them the clash of popular imagination with
historical reality. But if he wishes to make a realistic evaluation of the
roles they played
in the lifetime of the Prophet, there
is no better way of doing so than to turn away from rhapsody and rhetoric, and
to focus attention on facts and facts alone.
When Umar took charge of the caliphate,
the Muslim armies were fighting against the Persians in Iraq and the Romans in
Syria. The army in Syria was under the command of Khalid bin al-Walid, the
favorite general of Abu Bakr. Umar's first act as khalifa was to dismiss him
from all his commands, and to appoint Abu Obaida bin al-Jarrah as the supreme
commander of the Muslim forces in Syria.
Shibli says that Umar had, for a long
time, nursed a secret hatred of Khalid because of the latter's excesses. Umar
had indeed dismissed Khalid because of his excesses but it appears that
personal rancor was also at work. He was jealous of Khalid's fame and
popularity. If he disliked Khalid's transgressions, he ought to have formally
indicted him, and should have ordered full investigation of his crimes in murdering
Malik ibn Nuweira and in appropriating his widow. If Khalid had been proven
guilty, then Umar ought to have passed sentence on him according to the Islamic
law. But there was no indictment and no investigation. Khalid was summarily
dismissed and he died in poverty and obscurity in 21 A.H.
Umar's caliphate is notable for its many
conquests. His generals conquered Iraq, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kirman, Seistan,
Khurasan, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Egypt, and incorporated them into the
empire of the Muslims. All of these were permanent conquests. The Romans lost
Syria, Palestine and Egypt for ever; and in Persia, the Sassani empire ceased
to exist.
Among other events of the caliphate of
Umar, were the first outbreak of plague in Syria in 18 A.H., and a famine in Hijaz
in the same year. Between them, the plague and the famine killed more than
25,000 people (Suyuti and Abul Fida).
Since the empire had grown enormously in
all directions, Umar had to establish an administrative system. But the Arabs
did not have any experience in administration. Umar, therefore, left the
Persian and the Roman framework of administration in the conquered provinces
undisturbed. The Persian and the Roman staff carried on the day-to-day work as
before.
Umar founded numerous military
cantonments in Iraq, Syria and Egypt. Since he wanted the Arabs to be a purely
fighting and ruling class, he did not allow them to buy land and to settle down
or to become farmers in the conquered territories.
To assess land revenue, Umar again had
to retain the Persian and the Romans systems. But in Iraq it was found
necessary to survey the arable lands and to assess tax on them. Arabs knew less
than nothing about assessing land revenue. There was, however, one exception in
Uthman bin Hunaif of Medina. He was a man of outstanding ability as a revenue
expert.
Though it was Umar's policy not to
appoint the citizens of Medina (Ansar) to any important positions, in this
particular case he had no choice, and he appointed Uthman bin Hunaif as the
commissioner of land development in Iraq. Qadi Yusuf says that Uthman bin
Hunaif was an authority in all Arabia on taxation, assessment of land revenue
and land reclamation (Kitabul-Kharaj and Siyar-ul-Ansar).
Within less than a year, Uthman bin
Hunaif had completed the job of taking measurements of the whole new province,
and of making assessments for the collection of land revenue. He was, thus, the
first Financial Commissioner of Iraq, and incidentally, one of the few Ansaris
to hold any position of authority in the caliphates of Abu Bakr, Umar and
Uthman bin Affan.
When Syria, Jordan and Palestine were
conquered, Umar appointed Yazid bin Abu Sufyan the governor of Syria; Shurahbil
bin Hasana governor of Jordan, and Amr bin Aas the governor of Palestine. Abu
Obaida bin al-Jarrah was appointed governor of the city of Damascus. When Amr
bin Aas conquered Egypt, Umar made him its governor.
Yazid bin Abu Sufyan, the governor of
Syria, died in the plague of 18 A.H. When Umar heard the news of his death, he
went to see Abu Sufyan to offer condolences to him. But Abu Sufyan interrupted
Umar's commiseration, and asked him, “Whom are you going to appoint governor of
Syria in place of my late son, Yazid?” Umar said: “Of course, his brother,
Muawiya.” Abu Sufyan immediately forgot his sorrow at his son's death, and
rejoiced in the elevation of Muawiya, his second son, as governor. Umar
appointed Muawiya the new governor of Syria. When Abu Obaida died, Umar placed
Damascus also under Muawiya's jurisdiction. He fixed his salary at 60,000
pieces of gold a year (Isti'ab,Volume I).
After dismissing Khalid bin al-Walid as
supreme commander of the forces in Syria, Umar had appointed him, for a time,
governor of the district of Kinnisirin but dismissed him again for his alleged
“pomposity.”
Saad bin Abi Waqqas, the victor of the
battle of Qadsiyya fought against the Persians, was Umar's governor of Iraq. He
too was dismissed in 21 A.H.
Amr bin Aas was Umar's governor in
Egypt. Umar did not dismiss him but curtailed his powers by appointing Abdullah
bin Saad bin Abi Sarah as a “watchdog” over him in fiscal matters.
Umar was a most exacting taskmaster for
all his generals and governors. He was quick to lend his ears to any complaint
against them, and he was even quicker to dismiss them –with one exception –
Muawiya! He was forever indulgent to the sons of Abu Sufyan and the clan of
Banu Umayya.
Muawiya, the son of Abu Sufyan and
Hinda, the governor of Syria, lived in Damascus in imperial splendor, surrounded
by a glittering retinue. It was a lifestyle that Umar did not tolerate in any
other governor. But Muawiya, for him, was a “special,” and the rules which
applied to others, did not apply to him.
Tabari has recorded the following
incident in Volume VI of his History. Umar was in Damascus and Muawiya came to see him every
day – mornings and evenings – bedecked in regal outfit, with splendidly
caparisoned mounts and escorts. When Umar commented, rather acidly, upon his
pageantry, he said that Syria was swarming with Roman spies, and it was
necessary to impress them with the “glory” of Islam. His pageantry, he said,
was only the outward emblem of that glory - the glory of Islam.
But Umar was not convinced, and
remarked: “This is a trap laid by the slick and guileful man.”
Muawiya answered: “Then I will do
whatever you say, O Commander of the Faithful.”
Umar said: “If I raise an objection to
anything, you baffle and bewilder me with words. I am at a loss to know what to
do.”
Here Umar can be seen utterly “helpless”
before his own protégé. He could condone Muawiya anything and everything. He,
in fact, appeared to be ostentatiously courting Abu Sufyan and his sons. Once
he placed them at the helm of affairs, they consolidated their position, and it
became impossible to dislodge them. It was in this manner that the secular,
predatory, imperialist and economically exploitative Umayyads were foisted upon
the Muslims. The cultivation of the Umayyads, it appears, was one of the
constants in Saqifa's policy equation.
Umar's generals had conquered Persia,
Syria and Egypt. His successors in the Umayyad dynasty pushed those conquests
as far as southern France in the west, and the western frontiers of China and
the Indus valley in the east. The students of history have expressed amazement
at the speed and the extent of the conquests of the Arabs in the seventh/eighth
centuries. They achieved all those conquests within 100 years – truly one of
the most remarkable series of conquests in world history.
Many centuries later, the search goes on
for the answer to the question: How did the Arabs conquer so much so soon? Many
reasons have been given by the historians for the success of the Arab arms,
among them: civil war and anarchy in Persia; a war between Persia and Rome that
lasted for 26 years, and which left both empires utterly exhausted, bleeding
and prostrate; the disgruntlement of the Roman subjects in Syria and Egypt who
welcomed the Arabs as liberators, and the loss to Rome of the “umbrella” of
local support; the dependence both of the Persians and the Romans upon
mercenaries and conscripts who lacked morale; persecution on grounds of
religion of dissident sects and creeds by both the Persians and the Romans; and
the enormous burden of taxes that the alien races ruled by Persia and Rome, and
the peasants in both empires, had to carry.
Also, the Persians and the Romans were
handicapped by heavy baggage, and they lacked mobility. The Arabs, on the other
hands, were highly mobile. They could strike at a target of their choice, and
then retreat into the desert on their swift camels where the enemy cavalry
could not enter as it did not have logistical support.
In their campaigns, the Arabs were
invariably outnumbered by their enemies but this was not necessarily a handicap
for them. History abounds in examples of small forces of volunteers standing up
to and defeating large conscript armies.
But the Muslims themselves, discount
most of these reasons for their success. According to many of them, the secret
of their success was in the piety and the religious zeal of the Muslim
soldiers. The propulsive power behind the Arab conquests of the seventh
century, they say, came from Islam, and every Arab who left the peninsula to
attack the Fertile Crescent, was a mujahid or a holy warrior, fighting for the glory of God.
This claim, however, is only partly
true. Without a doubt there were those Muslims who wished to spread the light
of Islam in the world but also there were others, and they were the
overwhelming majority, who fought for the material rewards that the conquests
promised to bring to them. They had developed a distinctly secular appetite for
power and riches.
Joel
Carmichael
The predominant incentives that drove
the Bedouin out of the peninsula were bodily hunger and greed, natural
consequences of the straitened circumstances there and of the endless
opportunities for enrichment offered by the cultivated societies they overran.
Thus, though there were doubtless also men who “killed for the sake of the
hereafter,” the masses of tribesmen surely “killed for earthly lust.”
The otherworldly aspects of Mohammed's
preaching were completely eclipsed during the conquests by the incredible booty
that could be won: thus a Qurayshite notable, who was considered so pious that
he was one of the ten men to whom Mohammed could give his personal word during
their lifetime that they would get into paradise because of their zeal for
Islam, left behind an estate whose net worth seems to have been between 35 and
52 million dirhems; he had eleven houses in Medina alone, as well as others in
Basra, Kufa, Fustat and Alexandria.
Another of these ten pious men
personally promised paradise by Mohammed owned real property in the amount of
30 million dirhems; on his death his steward had over two million dirhems in
cash.
Once this process is seen in
perspective, it becomes clear how remarkably obtuse is the old, traditional
conception of the Arab expansion as being a pietist movement aroused by
Mohammed's personal religious zeal.
...there seems to be no doubt that the
last thing the Muslim Arabs were thinking of was converting anyone. More
particularly, the pietism that was to become the hallmark of later Islam, at
least in certain of its manifestations, was utterly alien to the initial Arab
conquerors.
It has been pointed out, the driving
force behind the Muslim Arab conquests was not religious in the least, but a
migratory impulse rooted in the millennial condition of the Arabian peninsula.
Men like Khalid and Amr (bin Aas), for instance, were obviously no pietists or
mystics; their interests were thoroughly practical.
The switching over of the Meccan
aristocracy to the side of the Muslims is a telling illustration of the swift
and irresistible injection of purely secular elements into the earliest
enterprises of the Umma, which though formulated on the basis of religion, was
articulated on the basis of politics. (The Shaping of the Arabs, New
York, 1967)
It is true that religion was the factor
that propelled the Muslims out of Arabia; but once it had done so, it did not
play any significant role in the conquests that followed. Its role was
catalytic in the eruption of the Arabs. If religion and piety were the cause of
the success of the Muslims in their campaigns, then how would one explain the
success of the nations which were not Muslim? Some of those nations were the
enemies of Islam yet they were, at one time, triumphant on a scale that
matched, and sometimes surpassed, the conquests of the Muslims.
The conquests of the Arabs were
astounding in their vastness but they were not, by any means, unique.
Almost one thousand years before the
rise of Islam, Alexander the Great, a young Macedonian, conquered, within ten
years, all the lands from the Balkan peninsula to the frontiers of China, and
from Libya to the Punjab in India. He was a polytheist. Wherever he went, he
worshipped the local gods. He worshipped Zeus in Greece, Ammon-Re in Libya;
Marduk in Babylon; and Ahura in Persepolis. His conquests were not inspired by
any religion. In fact, religion did not figure anywhere in his conquests. If he
had not died at 32, he would have conquered the rest of the world.
After the ancient Greeks, the Romans
were the greatest conquerors and administrators. They built one of the greatest
and most powerful empires of history, and one that lasted longer than any other
empire before or since. Like the Greeks before them, they too were worshippers
of idols, though the Eastern Roman Empire was converted to Christianity in
early fifth century A.D.
In the thirteenth century, the Mongols,
led by Genghiz Khan, shook the whole earth. They were the most dangerous
enemies that Islam ever met. All of Asia was at their feet, and they came
within an ace of blotting out Islam in that continent. Their conquests were
more rapid and on an even grander scale than the conquests of the Arabs.
Within fifty years, they had conquered
all of China, all of Russia, all of Central and Western Asia, and had
penetrated into Europe as far as Hungary. While the Muslims in their career of
conquest, were defeated at Tours in the West, and at Constantinople in the
East, the Mongols were consistently victorious everywhere. They retreated from
Central Europe only because of the death, in distant Karakorum, of their Great
Khan.
The Mongols did not have any religion at
all. What was it that launched them on the career of world conquest? Certainly
not religious zeal and piety.
In the 16thcentury, the Castilian
Conquistadores put Spain in the front rank of the nations of the world. A mere
handful of them left the shores of Spain, and conquered the whole new world.
They laid two continents at the feet of the king of Spain. It is true that they
were inspired by religious zeal even though they did not have much piety – but
it was Catholic zeal. Their zeal was not so much unIslamic as it was
anti-Islamic. Just before discovering and conquering the Americas, they had
defeated the Muslims of Granada in 1492, had expelled them from Spain, and had
obliterated every vestige of Islamic culture from the Iberian peninsula.
In the 17thcentury, the Dutch rode the
crest of glory. Their story of that epoch reads like a saga of great and heroic
deeds. At home they had been locked up in a deadly struggle against two enemies
– the Spaniards and the sea, and they had overcome both. They had expelled the Spaniards
from the Netherlands, and they had tamed the wild and the rampaging North Sea.
Having conquered these two enemies, the
Dutch looked outward for new worlds to conquer. The dynamics of war against
Spain and the North Sea, gave them a momentum of victory and success that
carried them around the world. In an outburst of energy, the Dutch girdled the
earth, conquering, colonizing and building.
The Dutch were not only good sailors and
navigators; they were also good merchants and colonizers. They built factories
in India, and they founded colonies in North and South America, and in South
Africa. Their colony in South Africa became one of the most successful in the
history of settlement and colonization in the whole world.
The Dutch were empire-builders too.
Twelve thousand miles away from home, they conquered the East Indies which was
much the richest of all the empires of the Age of Imperialism, and they held it
for 350 years.
And yet, in their Golden Age, the 17th
century, the Dutch were so few in number. But as few as they were, their
quality was superb. They did not allow lack of numbers to put a crimp upon what
they could accomplish, proving in this manner that there is no correlation
between large numbers and achievement.
It's a most remarkable record of
achievement for such a small nation as the Dutch. They also proved that there
is not, necessarily, a correlation between religion and achievement. Centuries
before the dawn of their greatness, the Dutch had been devout Christians but it
was only in the 17th century that their dizzying and dazzling rise began.
In the 19th century, the British carved
out an empire for themselves over which the sun never set. In North America,
they ruled the northern half of the continent; in Africa, their empire extended
from Alexandria in the north to Cape Town in the south; and in South Asia, they
conquered from Kabul to Rangoon. They colonized Australia and New Zealand. They
established Pax Britannia over all this immense area, one-fourth of the earth.
In the 18th century when the British
were building their empire, they had only 35,000 men in arms, and 7,500 out of
them were busy in pacifying Ireland.
While the Royal Navy held the British
Empire together, their merchant marine built another - an invisible empire. It
was their commercial empire which comprehended many of those countries which
were out of the orbit of their political power.
At one time, when the power of the
British was at its zenith, no nation on earth could challenge them on land or
on sea.
Concurrently, with the extension of
their political power and commercial influence, the British also established
their cultural hegemony. They spread the English language over most of the
world so that it is spoken or it is understood in most of the countries of the
world.
The British accomplished all this and
much more but not because of their piety and religious zeal. They were only
tepidly interested in religion. They did not conquer an inch of foreign
territory for the sake of Christ or the Bible; they conquered only for Britain,
and to build the British Empire.
The old imperial system of Britain,
France and the Netherlands held the world in an iron grip for nearly two
centuries. Muslim states everywhere were at the feet of these powers. But in
the aftermath of the two World Wars, their empires broke down. From the debris
of their empires rose a multitude of new nations. One of these new nations was
the Zionist State of Israel.
On May 14, 1948, the British
relinquished their mandate over Palestine, and the Jewish settlers of the
country proclaimed the birth of the State of Israel. On the following day (May
15) five Arab states invaded Israel with the avowed intention of “pushing
Israel into the sea.” But they could not push Israel into the sea. Israel
defeated them all, and they had to retreat into their own shells.
Since then, there have been other wars
between the Arabs and Israel. There was one in 1956 and another in 1967. In
both wars, Israel defeated the Arabs, and captured much territory from them
including Old Jerusalem.
In August 1969, a part of the Masjid-ul-Aqsa
in Jerusalem caught fire. It was an act of arson. All Muslims – Arab as well as
non-Arab – were inflamed at this outrage. The shock waves of the incident
reached the remotest corners of the Muslim world, the two ends of which are
10,000 miles apart – from Indonesia in the east to Mauritania in the west.
The Muslim nations held a conference in
Rabat(Morocco) to consider some action to recover Jerusalem from Israel. But
all they did, was pass resolutions and denounce Israel. An insolent Israel
dared and defied the vast, sprawling Muslim world, but the latter lacked the
grit and the gumption to take up the challenge.
In October 1973, Egypt attacked Israel
on Yom Kippur when the Jews were occupied with their devotions. The Jews were
caught off-guard but they recovered from the surprise, and immediately struck
back. They raced through the Sinai desert, crossed the Suez, established a
beachhead on the west bank of the canal – 60 miles from Cairo, and surrounded
the whole Egyptian Third Army!
It was American pressure on Israel that
saved the Egyptian Third Army. But curiously, Egypt claimed the military action
against Israel a “victory” for herself. War and “victory,” the Egyptian
government said, had restored the morale and self-respect of Egypt even though
it was the United Nations and the United States which on this, as on earlier
occasions, had rescued them from disaster.
In June 1982 Israel rode rough shod into
Lebanon. She evicted the Palestinian guerrillas from the country as the whole
Arab world sat gazing in silent despair – a truly helpless giant if ever there
was any.
In all these wars one thing the Arabs
did not lack was economic power. They had more of it than any other country in
the Third World. As for manpower, the Arabs outnumbered Israelis by more than
50 to 1.
And yet, never before did they face the
paradox of the combination of wealth and powerlessness; material abundance and
moral bankruptcy; strategic importance and humiliation, as they are doing in
their confrontation with Israel. It may even be said that some Arab countries,
e.g., Jordan, are enjoying their “independence” only by the “courtesy” of
Israel.
Thus it appears that religion, any
religion, pagan, animistic, Christian or Islamic, had little, if anything, to
do with the military conquests of a nation.
A recurring phenomenon in world history
is that at any given time, any one nation, is supreme, militarily, politically,
and in many cases, also intellectually. At that moment or in that epoch, it is
irresistible and invincible.
The hundred years from 632 to 732 were
the century of the Arabs. They were supreme, they were triumphant, they were
irresistible and they were invincible – in that century. Islam united them and
gave them a sense of direction, purpose and propulsive power. Without Islam,
their future would have been just as irrelevant and barren as their past had
been. But there is no correlation between their conquests on the one hand, and
piety and religious enthusiasm on the other.
One of the friends of Umar was a certain
Mughira bin Shaaba. Umar had appointed him governor, first of Basra, and later
of Kufa.
A slave of Mughira had a certain grouse
against him. He requested Umar's intercession, and upon the latter's refusal,
he attacked him, and mortally wounded him.
A physician was called. He gave Umar
some medicine to drink but all of it came out of the gaping wound in his navel.
When the physician noticed this, he told Umar that there was no hope of his
recovery, and advised him to make his will since little time was left for him
in this world.
Word rapidly spread that the khalifa was
mortally wounded, and the news caused much commotion in the city.
Many companions called on Umar to
enquire after his health. Some of them suggested that he designate someone as
his successor. Umar said:
“If I designate someone as my successor,
nothing would be amiss with it since Abu Bakr designated me as his successor,
and he was better than me. But if I do not designate anyone as my successor,
nothing would be amiss with that either since the Apostle of God did not
designate his own successor, and he was better than both of us (Abu Bakr and
Umar).”
Ayesha also sent word to Umar urging him
to appoint someone as khalifa before his own death, or else, she warned,
“anarchy and chaos may spread in the land.”
Umar asked Ayesha's messenger to tell
her as follows:
“I have considered this matter, and I
have decided to appoint six men as members of an electoral committee, and to
charge them with the task of selecting one out of themselves as khalifa. The
six men are: Ali, Uthman, Abdur Rahman bin Auf; Talha, Zubayr and Saad bin Abi
Waqqas. The Apostle of God was pleased with all six of them when he left this
world, and each of them is qualified to become the khalifa of the Muslims.”
Umar then called all six members of his
electoral committee to his home to explain to them what they had to do. When
they came, he addressed them as follows:
“O group of Muhajireen! Verily, the
Apostle of God died, and he was pleased with all six of you. I have, therefore,
decided to make it (the selection of khalifa) a matter of consultation among
you, so that you may select one of yourselves as khalifa. If five of you agree
upon one man, and there is one who is opposed to the five, kill him. If four
are one side and two on the other, kill the two. And if three are on one side and
three on the other, then Abdur Rahman ibn Auf will have the casting vote, and
the khalifa will be selected from his party.
In that case, kill the three men on the
opposing side. You may, if you wish, invite some of the chief men of the Ansar
as observers but the khalifa must be one of you Muhajireen, and not any of
them. They have no share in the khilafat. And your selection of the new khalifa
must be made within three days.” (Tabari, History)
Umar ordered his son, Abdullah, also to
attend the meetings of the newly-formed electoral committee, though not as a
candidate for caliphate, and said to him:
“If the members of this committee
disagree among themselves, you support those who are in majority. If there is a
tie with three on each side, then you support the party of Abdur Rahman bin
Auf.”
Sir
John Glubb
Umar had prescribed a maximum of three
days for their (the electoral committee's) deliberations. At the end of that
period, they must willy-nilly unanimously choose a khalif. In the event of the
decision not being unanimous, the majority candidate was to be adopted, the
members of the minority being all immediately put to death.” (The Great Arab Conquests,
1967)
When Umar was satisfied that he had done
his duty in the matter of his succession, he asked some of those men who were
around him, whom out of the six nominees, they would like to see as their new
khalifa. One of them present named Zubayr. Umar said: “Will you make your
khalifa a man who is a believer when he is happy, and an unbeliever when he is
angry?” Another man named Talha. Umar said: “Will you make your khalifa a man
who has mortgaged the gift of the Apostle of God to a Jewess?” A third named
Ali. Umar said: “If you make him your khalifa, he will not let you deviate from
truth but I know that you will not.”
Walid bin Aqaba, a half-brother of
Uthman, was also present in the assembly. When he heard Umar's comments on the
candidates, he exclaimed: “I know who will become the next khalifa.” Umar who
was lying down, sat up in the bed, and asked, who. Walid said: “Uthman.”
Umar ordered Abu Talha Ansari to lead
the Muslims in prayer during the interregnum, and also to watch the members of
the electoral committee during their deliberations. He also gave him fifty
armed men to enable him to carry out his duties. These men were to act, if
necessary, as executioners (Tarikh Kamil).
On the following day, Umar called the
members of the electoral committee again, and when they came, he said: “So
everyone of you wants to become the khalifa after me?” Everyone kept quiet.
Umar repeated his question whereupon Zubayr said: “And what's wrong with that?
You became khalifa and you managed it. Why can't we? “ Umar then asked: “Shall
I tell you something about each of you?” Zubayr answered: “Go ahead; tell us.”
Umar commented upon them as follows:
“Saad bin Abi Waqqas is a good archer
but he is arrogant, and khilafat is beyond his reach. Talha is rude, greedy and
conceited. Abdur Rahman is too much given to comfort and luxury; if he becomes
khalifa, his wives will run the government. Zubayr is a believer when he is in
a happy mood but is an unbeliever when he is angry. Ali is worthy of being the
ruler of the Muslims in every respect but he is too ambitious.”
Umar then turned to Uthman, and said:
“Take it from me. It is as if I am
seeing with my own eyes that the Quraysh have put this necklace (khilafat)
around your neck, and you have foisted the Banu Umayya and the Banu Abi Muayt
(Uthman's family) upon the Muslims, and have given them all the wealth of the
umma. Then the wolves of the Arabs came, and slaughtered you. By God, if they
(the Quraysh) do, you will certainly do; and if you do, they (the Arabs) will
certainly do.” (If the Quraysh make Uthman their khalifa, he would give all his
power and authority to Banu Umayya; and when he does so, the Arabs will come
and kill him).
Umar told the members of the electoral
committee that the Apostle of God was “pleased” with them when he left this
world. But was the Apostle pleased only with these six men? Was he displeased
with the rest of the Muhajireen and the Ansar? If he was not, then why did Umar
exclude all of them from his electoral committee? He did not give the rest of
the Muhajireen and Ansar the right even to express an opinion much less the
right to select their ruler.
Though Umar chose six Qurayshites as
electors because as he said, the Apostle was pleased with them, he himself
found nothing commendable in them. He found them arrogant, rude, greedy,
conceited, henpecked, temperamental, venal and ambitious.
If, at the election of Abu Bakr, the
principle was accepted that it is the right of the Muslim umma (people) to
select or elect its own rulers, then how is it that the leading companions of
the Prophet, and Ayesha, his widow, urged Umar to appoint his own successor?
Didn't they know that a ruler was to be chosen by the umma?
But Umar, instead of denying or affirming
this right of the umma, said that if he appointed someone as khalifa, he
would be following the precedent of Abu Bakr; and if he did not, then he would
be following the precedent of the Prophet himself.
In practice, however, he followed
neither the precedent of Abu Bakr nor the precedent of the Prophet. He named
six men as members of an electoral committee, and made them responsible for
selecting a khalifa out of themselves – regardless of the opinions and wishes
of the Muslim umma.
It is true that Umar did not name anyone
as his successor but his electoral committee was, in point of fact, a de facto
designation. Its constitution guaranteed the selection only of Umar's own
candidate. His first stipulation was that the candidate who gets most of the
votes, would become khalifa. There was no way for Ali to get most of the votes.
Abdur Rahman bin Auf was the husband of the half-sister of Uthman. (This lady
was the daughter of the mother of Uthman and her second husband). Saad bin Abi
Waqqas was the first cousin of Abdur Rahman, and was under his influence.
“Tribal solidarity” or “tribal chauvinism” was very strong among the Arabs.
Talha belonged to the clan of Abu Bakr, and was married to one of his daughters
(the sister of Ayesha).
Therefore, it was unthinkable that any
of them would vote for Ali. Thus Ali had to count out four votes even before
the beginning of the parleys. All he could do, was to hope that he might get
Zubayr's vote. In any case, Abdur Rahman bin Auf – the self-appointed
king-maker, had the casting vote. As Umar's confidante, it was inevitable that
he would give his vote and his support only to his (Umar's) favorite, and the
brother of his own wife – Uthman.
Now the minority in the electoral
committee had one of the two choices open before it, viz., either acquiesce in
the king-maker's selection and acknowledge Uthman as khalifa or pass the
sentence of death to itself!
Hudhaifa, a companion, reports that
sometime before the attempt was made on his life, a few companions had asked
Umar who would succeed him as khalifa, and he had told them, Uthman.
(Kanz-ul-Ummal and Tarikh-Ahmedi).
The author of Riyadh-un-Nadhra writes in the same connection as follows:
“In the Hajj season someone asked Umar
who would be the khalifa of the Muslims after him, and he said, Uthman bin
Affan.”
Umar desired nothing so much as to
appoint Uthman as his successor but for some reason known only to him, he did
not wish to do so openly. At the same time, he did not allow the Muslims to
exercise their freewill in the matter of choosing their ruler. Left to
themselves, they would not have chosen his favorite, and he knew it. He,
therefore, devised a new mode of giving the umma its leader. This new mode,
spun out with intricate sophistication, guaranteed the election of Uthman.
Umar had assembled the Electoral
Committee only to dissemble!
Perhaps it would have served the
interests of the umma better if Umar had openly appointed Uthman as his
successor instead of framing a panel of electors for this purpose. A direct and
open appointment would have averted the civil wars in Islam. His panel of
electors proved to be the catalyst of the battles of Basra, Siffin and Nehrwan.
He achieved his aim at the moment but only at the expense of the integrity of
Islam in the future.
Abdullah ibn Abbas ibn Abdul-Muttalib
was the first cousin of Muhammad Mustafa and Ali ibn Abi Talib. When he heard
that Umar had given special powers to Abdur Rahman bin Auf in the panel of
electors, he said to Ali:
“Khilafat is lost to us once again.This
man (Umar) wants Uthman to be the new khalifa. I know they will keep khilafat
out of the house of Muhammad.”
Ali made the following comment:
“I agree with what you say. I have no
illusions in this matter. Nevertheless, I shall attend the meeting(s) of the Shura (electoral committee), and the Muslims will see with
their own eyes the conflict between Umar's words and his deeds. By placing my
name in his electoral committee, he has, at least, acknowledged my right to
become caliph whereas in the past, he went around saying that prophethood and
caliphate ought never to combine in the same house.”
How did Abdullah ibn Abbas know that
Umar wanted Uthman to become the khalifa? As noted before, it was obvious from
the constitution of the electoral committee. One look at its terms of reference
was enough to convince anyone that the outcome of its quest was predetermined.
Those terms of reference declared, loudly and unmistakably, that khilafat was
going to be the prize of Uthman and the Umayyads.
Therefore, after the promulgation by
Umar of the constitution of his electoral committee, if Ali had any interest
still left in it, and in its professed purpose, it was purely academic and
abstract, and as he himself said, his participation in its meetings would do
nothing more than point up the contradictions inherent in it.
This is the age of democracy. The people
choose their leaders. Elections are held from the lowest to the highest levels
of public life; from the chairmen of school committees and fund-raising groups
to the heads of governments and states. But it has never so happened that those
candidates for office who lose the election to their opponents, are put to
death. The candidates who lose, become leaders of the opposition, and the
existence of a healthy opposition is considered essential for the existence of
democracy itself. If the opposition is liquidated, then democracy becomes a
casualty, and the state becomes totalitarian.
Umar's order to kill the minority in his
electoral committee has no parallel in the history of mankind. He ordered the
execution of all those companions of Muhammad Mustafa, who as candidates for
caliphate, would get fewer votes than their opposite numbers, even though he
knew that it is the job of others to give or to withhold their votes. In other
words, he decreed that it is a “crime” to get fewer votes than one's opponent,
and the penalty is death!
This was the last decision of the man
who once said: “The Book of God is sufficient for us.” Did he really believe in
what he said? Did he read that Book? Did he find sanction in that Book for his
order to kill a candidate for a certain office because he scored lower than his
opponent?
Here it should be pointed out that no
one out of the six Muhajireen had applied to Umar for membership in his
electoral committee. His action in choosing them was totally arbitrary. He then
imposed upon them the duty of electing a khalifa with the stipulation that if
anyone of them disagreed with the majority, he would forfeit his life.
Umar had obviously opted for the totalitarian
“remedy” of taking the right of dissent away from the Muslims.
For many centuries, the Sunni Muslims
have raved over what they call “the justice of Umar.” Is his order to kill the
dissenting member or members of his electoral committee a sample of that
“justice?” Is it the sample of justice that they proudly uphold to the nations
of the earth?
Umar died on the last Saturday of
Zil-Hajj (the last month of the Islamic calendar) of 23 A.H. (A.D. 644), and he
was buried next to the Prophet and Abu Bakr.
Umar, on his deathbed, had appointed six
Muhajireen as members of a panel which was to choose one out of themselves as
the future khalifa of the Muslims. They were Ali ibn Abi Talib, Uthman, Talha,
Zubayr, Abdur Rahman bin Auf and Saad bin Abi Waqqas. Except Ali, all other
members of the panel were capitalists, or rather, neo-capitalists.
When they came from Makkah, they were
penniless and homeless but within twelve years, i.e., from the death of
Muhammad Mustafa in 632 to the death of Umar in 644, each of them, except Ali,
had become rich like Croesus. Between these two dates, they had accumulated
immense wealth, and had become the richest men of their times.
Ali did not qualify as a member of this
exclusive “club” but Umar admitted him anyway. Apart from the fact that Ali
made his living as a gardener whereas his other five co-members lived on the
revenues of their lands and estates, there was another gulf, even more
unbridgeable, that separated him from them. In character, personality,
temperament, attitudes, philosophy and outlook on life, Ali and the rest of
them were the antithesis of each other.
In an earlier chapter, it was pointed
out that the famous line of Keats, “Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty,” can be
transposed to read as “Economic power is political power and political power
economic power.” Economic power and political power are reciprocal.
Karl Marx said: “Whatever social class
has economic power, also has political and social power.” And George Wald,
professor of Biology at the Harvard University, said in an address in Tokyo in
1974: “Private wealth and personal political power are interchangeable.”
There can be no doubt that economic
power is a springboard of political power. This has been a consistent pattern
throughout history.
President Abraham Lincoln had defined
democracy as the government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
In the American presidential elections
of 1984 when President Ronald Reagan was reelected, the Russians quipped:
“The United States Government is of the
millionaires, by the millionaires and for the millionaires.”
All the members of Umar's electoral
committee, were millionaires – except Ali ibn Abi Talib! Following is a
portrait left by historians of the members of Umar's Electoral Committee:
D.
S. Margoliouth
Othman, son of Affan, six years the
Prophet's junior, was a cloth merchant; he also did some business as a
money-lender, advancing sums for enterprises of which he was to enjoy half the
profits (Ibn Sa'd, iii, 111), and in money matters showed remarkable acuteness
(Wakidi W. 231). His sister was a milliner, married to a barber (Isabah, i.
714). He was no fighting man, as his subsequent history proved, for he shirked
one battlefield, ran away from another, and was killed, priest-like,
ostentatiously reading the Koran.”
Ibn Sa'd says in his Tabqaat about Othman: “When he died, he left 35 million
dirhems, 150,000 dinars, 3000 camels, and many horses. He built himself a
palace in Medina with marble and teakwood. He had 1000 slaves.” (Mohammed and the Rise of
Islam, London, 1931)
E.
A. Belyaev
In his youth, before the rise of Islam,
Uthman had been very rich and gained much money from profitable usurious
transactions. Uthman's acquisitiveness and business talents gained full scope
when he became caliph. He built himself a stone house in Medina with doors of
precious wood and acquired much real estate in that city, including gardens and
water sources.
He had a large income from his fruit
plantations in Wadi-ul-Qura, Hunain and other places, valued at 100,000 dinars,
besides large herds of horses and camels on these estates. The day Uthman died
his personal treasury was found to contain 150,000 dinars and one million
dirhems.
Multiplying his riches at the expense of
the Moslem treasury, Uthman also gave free use of the latter to some of the
closest companions of Muhammad, attempting to justify his illegal actions by
associating these most authoritative veteran Moslems with his own depredations.
The “companions” applauded the caliph Uthman for his generosity and
magnanimity, no doubt for solid reasons of self-interest.
Zubair ibn al-Awwam, for example, one of
the better known amongst them, built tenement houses in Kufa, Basra, Fustat and
Alexandria. His property was estimated at 50,000 dinars, in addition to which
he possessed 1000 horses and 1000 slaves.
Another “companion,” Talha ibn
Ubaidullah, built a large tenement house in Kufa and acquired estates in Irak
which brought in a daily 1000 dinars; he also built a luxurious house of brick
and precious wood in Medina.
Abd-ar-Rahman ibn Auf, also an outstanding
“companion,” also built himself a rich and spacious dwelling; his stables
contained 100 horses and his pastures 1000 camels and 10,000 sheep, and one
quarter of the inheritance he left after his death was valued at 84,000 dinars.
Such acquisitiveness was widespread
among the companions of the Prophet and Uthman's entourage. (Arabs, Islam and the Arab
Caliphate in the Early Middle Ages, New York, 1969)
Bernard
Lewis
Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas built his house in
Al-Aqiq. He made it high and spacious, and put balconies around the upper part.
Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib said that when Zayd ibn Thabit died, he left ingots of
gold and silver that were broken up with axes, in addition to property and
estates to the value of 100,000 dinars. (Islam in History, New York, 1973)
Dr. Taha Husain of Egypt writes in his
book, al-Fitna-tul-Kubra (The Great Upheaval), published by Dar-ul-Ma'arif,
Cairo, 1959, p. 47:
“When Uthman became khalifa, he not only
lifted the ban placed by Umar upon the companions to go to the other countries,
but also gave them rich present from the public treasury. He gave Zubayr
600,000 dirhems in one day, and he gave Talha 100,000 dirhems in one day
enabling them to buy lands, property and slaves in other countries.”
Abdur Rahman bin Auf was a member of the
inner circle of the friends of Uthman. About him Sir William Muir writes:
“Abd al-Rahman, when in after years he
used to fare sumptuously on fine bread and every variety of meat, would weep
while looking at his richly furnished table and thinking of the Prophet's
straitened fare.” (The
Life of Mohammed, London 1877)
The love that Abdur Rahman bore his late
master, Muhammad, was deeply moving. His wives and concubines prepared
delicacies of many colors and tastes for him. When he sat down to eat,
recollection came to him of the Spartan times of the Apostle. He “missed” him
and he “missed” those times, shed many a tear, and then gobbled up everything
on the table.
Sir William Muir sums up his impressions
of the companions of the Apostle of God as follows:
“In pursuing the annals of the
‘companions' and first followers of Mohammed, few things so forcibly illustrate
the spirit of Islam as, first, the number of their wives and concubines and the
facility of divorce; and, next, the vast riches they amassed; a significant
contrast with the early days of Christianity.” (The Life of Mohammed, London,
1877)
Sir William Muir has done a great
injustice, in the first place, in lumping the companions all together whereas
there were two distinct categories of them. The first category which comprised
the overwhelming majority, is the one he has correctly depicted in his book,
but there also existed another, though very small, category, and he has taken
no notice of it.
In the second place, Sir William Muir
has attributed the insatiable acquisitiveness of the companions to “the spirit
of Islam,” and this is an even grosser injustice. The acquisitiveness of the
companions, or rather, the acquisitiveness of most of the companions of the
Apostle, illustrates, not the spirit of Islam, but a reaction against that
spirit. The obsession with materialism runs counter to the spirit and genius of
Islam. Qur’an has castigated those people who amass gold and silver.
If anyone wishes to see the real spirit
of Islam, he will find it, not in the deeds of the nouveaux riches of Medina,
but in the life, character and deeds of such companions of the Apostle of God
as Ali ibn Abi Talib, Salman el-Farsi, Abu Dharr el-Ghiffari, Ammar ibn Yasir,
Owais Qarni and Bilal. The orientalists will change their assessment of the
spirit of Islam if they contemplate it in the austere, pure and sanctified
lives of these latter companions.
It may be noted that the members of the
electoral committee were all men of Makkah. There was no man of Medina among
them. Umar had studiously kept them out. When he was explaining to the members
of the committee what they had to do, he addressed them as “O group of
Muhajireen.”
He told them that the khalifa had to be
one of them, and that the men of Medina had no share in khilafat. Some
companions pressed Umar to appoint his own successor. He named a number of
people who were dead, and said that if any of them were alive, he would have
appointed him as his successor.
Dr.
Taha Husain
“The Prophet of Islam had been dead, not
days but only a few hours when Islam was confronted with its first crisis - in
the matter of his succession. The Ansar said to the Muhajireen: ‘One chief from
us and one from you.' But Abu Bakr did not agree to this, and he quoted the
following tradition of the Prophet: ‘The rulers shall be from the Quraysh.'
Then he said to the Ansar: ‘We shall be rulers and you will be our ministers.'
The Ansar accepted this arrangement (with the exception of Saad ibn Ubada).
This is how the ‘aristocracy' of Islam
was born. Its right to rule rested on its propinquity to Muhammad. All authority
was vested in the Quraysh. The Ansar were the advisers. Every Muslim has the
right to offer advice. The Quraysh were to rule, and the Ansar and the other
Muslims were to give advice but not to rule.
When Umar was dying, he was questioned
about his successor, and he said: ‘If Abu Obaida bin al-Jarrah were alive, I
would have made him the khalifa. If Khalid bin al-Walid were alive, I would
have appointed him the amir of the Muslims. And if Salim, the client of Abu
Hudhaifa, were living today, then I would have designated him as your ruler.'
This Salim was a slave who came from
Istakhar in Persia. He was emancipated, and became a ‘mawali' (client) of Abu
Hudhaifa. He was well-known for his piety. Many Muslims deferred to him in
matters of Faith even in the times of the Prophet. Sometimes he led the Muslims
in prayer also. He was killed in the Ridda wars during the khilafat of Abu
Bakr. He was a devout and God-fearing man.” (al-Fitna-tul-Kubra {The Great
Upheaval}, published by Dar-ul-Ma'arif, Cairo, 1959).
It was really unfortunate for the umma that Salim was dead or else Umar would have made him
his successor, and he might have made an excellent khalifa. At any rate, Umar
knocked down that “tradition” of the Apostle which Abu Bakr had quoted before
the Ansar in Saqifa according to which no one but the Quraysh had the right to
become rulers. Here was Umar, the greatest “pontiff” of the Sunni
establishment, ready, willing and eager to make Salim the khalifa of the
Muslims, who was:
(a)a non-Qurayshi
(b)a non-Arab
(c)a ‘non-free' man, a client, a man who was emancipated
by an Arab, and who was under his protection.
Umar “proved” on his deathbed that the
“tradition” of the “Qurayshi connection” by which the Muhajireen had claimed
their “superiority” over the Ansar in Saqifa, was spurious, and he “proved”
that to be a khalifa of the Muslims, it was not necessary to be a Qurayshi
after all.
Umar could consider a former slave who
was not distinguished for anything except for his piety, for the most important
position in Islam but he could not consider an Ansari for it, even if he had
distinguished himself in war and peace. The Ansaris, in fact, could not fill
even less important positions.
In his book, Al-Farooq, M. Shibli, the Indian historian, has published a list
of the names of the civil and military officers of his (Umar's) time. With one
solitary exception (Uthman bin Hunaif), the entire list is made up of names of
men who were noted for their animosity to Ali, to Banu Hashim, and to the
Ansar.
These Ansaris were the same people who
had, at one time, given sanctuary to Umar in their city. They had given him
food, clothing and shelter when he did not have any of these things. Now he was
repaying them!
Umar's attitude toward the Ansar is in
sharp contrast to the attitude toward them of Muhammad, the Messenger of God.
The latter loved the Ansar. He appointed many of them as governors of Medina,
and he made many of them commanders of various expeditions. On one occasion he
said that he would rather be with them (the Ansar) than with any other people.
He also considered them capable of and qualified to rule the Muhajireen.
Montgomery
Watt
The remark of Muhammad about Sa'd bin
Mu'adh when he was about to judge the case of Banu Qurayza, “Stand for your
chief (Sayyid),” could be taken to justify the view that the Ansar were capable
of ruling over Quraysh, and the story was therefore twisted in various ways to
remove this implication.(Muhammad
at Medina, Oxford, 1966)
The Apostle of God called Sa'd the Chief
of the Quraysh. Sa'd was obviously capable of ruling the Quraysh, and why not?
After all what was there in the “credentials” of the Quraysh that the Ansar
didn't have? Nothing. But the Ansar lost their capability of ruling the Quraysh
as soon as Muhammad, their master, died. During the caliphate of Abu Bakr and
Umar, it was a “disqualification” to be an Ansari to hold any important
position in the government.
Laura
Veccia Vaglieri
As he lay dying, Umar was anxious about
the succession and he appointed a committee of six, all Qurayshites, whose duty
it should be to choose one of their number as caliph. The inhabitants of Medina
no longer had any share in the election of the head of the state. (Cambridge History of Islam,
Cambridge, 1970)
Far from having a share in the election
of the head of the state, not to speak of themselves becoming the head of the
state, the inhabitants of Medina, did not have a share in anything. They might
have given some “advice” to Abu Bakr and Umar. In Saqifa, Abu Bakr and Umar had
told them that they would consult them (the Ansar) in all matters.
Few, if any, would challenge the general
interpretation of this poignant fact that the most important and most
indispensable single factor in the year 1 of Hijri, namely, the support of the
Ansar, had become the most striking non-factor in the year 11 Hijri.
The Cassandra utterances of Hubab ibn
al-Mandhir in the bedlam of Saqifa proved only too true. He had expressed the
fear that the children of the Ansar would beg for food at the doors of the
houses of the Muhajireen, and would not get any. Much worse was to come for
them in the times of Yazid bin Muawiya.
The Ansar fought in all the campaigns of
Abu Bakr and Umar but only as other ranks and never as generals. The new wealth
which came flooding into Medina after the conquest of Persia and the Fertile
Crescent, also appears to have bypassed them with the exception of a few, who
collaborated with the Saqifa government.
Among the latter were the two spies from
the tribe of Aus who had squealed on the Khazraj to Umar and Abu Bakr. Others
were Muhammad bin Maslama, Bashir bin Saad, and Zayd bin Thabit. They had shown
great zeal in taking the oath of loyalty to Abu Bakr in Saqifa.
Zayd bin Thabit was fanatically devoted
to Uthman, and for this reason, he received many gifts and rewards from the
treasury. He was the son of poor parents but during the caliphate of Uthman,
became one of the richest men in Medina.
Two officers of the public treasury in
Medina and in Kufa who had been appointed by Abu Bakr, had thrown the keys of
the treasuries in their charge, before Uthman, in protest against the plunder
of the public funds by himself and by one of his governors. Uthman gave both
keys to Zayd bin Thabit.
Zayd bin Thabit was also the chairman of
the committee appointed by Uthman to collect the verses of Qur’an, and to
publish them in one volume, as noted before.
Zayd bin Thabit was one of the few
Ansaris who shared the bonanza in the times of Umar and Uthman. He was also one
of the few Ansaris who did not take part in the campaigns of Ali in Basra,
Siffin and Nehrwan. Most of the Ansaris fought on Ali's side against his
enemies in these battles.
1. It
is not necessary for the khalifa of the Muslims to be a Qurayshi. Even an emancipated
slave like Salim can become their khalifa. The “tradition” that the leaders
must be members of the tribe of Quraysh, was cooked up and was attributed to
the Prophet on a special occasion, and for a special purpose; it worked in
Saqifa, and checkmated the Ansar.
2. The
incumbent khalifa can arbitrarily restrict the right and power to choose a new
khalifa to five or six men without any reference to the Muslim umma. The Muslim umma can be safely ignored.
3. Within
the electoral committee, if a man disagrees with the majority, he merits death,
even if he is a friend of the Prophet of Islam; even if he fought at Badr; and
even if he is a “Companion of the Tree.” Nothing can save him.
4. The
Muslim umma can be left leaderless for three days. It is not
necessary to select a new khalifa immediately after the death of the incumbent
khalifa. A khalifa was chosen immediately after the death but before the burial
of Muhammad Mustafa, on the ground that the Muslim umma ought not to be without a head even for a moment. Umar
thus set a new precedent, viz., flexibility in the application of political
“principles.”
5. Those
drawbacks and shortcomings of character which Umar found in the members of his
electoral committee, such as lust, anger, arrogance, conceit, greed, nepotism
and ambition, etc., are not a disqualification for khilafat. A man may be
arrogant, conceited, henpecked and greedy; he can still become a khalifa of the
Muslims. A khalifa does not have to be a man of outstanding character and
ability.
Ibn Abd Rabbeh writes in his famous
book, Iqd-ul-Farid (The Unique Necklace), Volume II, page 203, that many
years after Muawiya was firmly established on the throne, and had consolidated
his position as the khalifa of the Muslims, he posed, one day, the following
question to one of his courtiers:
Muawiya: You are a wise, intelligent and
knowledgeable man. I would like to know what in your opinion, exactly, was the
cause of the civil wars of the Muslims.
The Courtier: The murder of Uthman.
Muawiya: No.
The Courtier: Ali's accession to the
throne.
Muawiya: No.
The Courtier: Then I will request the
Commander of the Faithful to enlighten me in this regard.
Muawiya: Well, I will tell you what was
the real cause of the civil wars of the Muslims. All the conflicts and civil
wars of the Muslims had their origins in the electoral committee which Umar
appointed to choose a khalifa.
Muawiya was right. The seeds of civil
war in Islam were planted on the day when Umar picked out the members of his
electoral committee. Instead of one candidate for caliphate, he made six
candidates. If his decision to appoint his successor had been as direct and
forthright as that of Abu Bakr had been, Islam might have been spared the
traumatic and horrendous experience of civil wars so early in its career. The
Muslims who fought against and killed each other in these civil wars, did not
belong to the distant future; they belonged to the generation of the Prophet
himself.
Civil wars broke out in Islam at a time
when its idealism was supposed to be still fresh. But the elective system
devised by Umar had built-in confrontation, and it took Islam across a great
divide. His policy proved to be counter-productive, and his mode of giving the
Muslims a leader through his panel of electors turned out to be one of the
greatest misfortunes of the history of Islam.
Umar had accepted Islam at the end of
the year 6 of the Call. Seven years later, he migrated with other Muslims to
Medina. In Medina, these immigrants (Muhajireen) made a fresh start in life.
In Medina, there were occasions when
Umar had to remind Muhammad that in him (in Umar), he (Muhammad) had to reckon
with a man who had great reserves of moral courage. If he disagreed with him
(with Muhammad), he was not at all queasy about expressing his disagreement.
Thus, among all the companions, he (Umar) alone had the moral courage to show
his resentment and insolence to him (to Muhammad) at Hudaybiyya when he
(Muhammad) signed a treaty of peace with the Quraysh.
There were other occasions when Umar
found it his unpleasant “duty” to “correct” the “errors” of Muhammad, the
Apostle of God. Following are some incidents in which Umar figured as a critic
of the actions of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam.
When Abdullah bin Ubayy died, the
Apostle attended his funeral, and prayed to God to forgive him and to bestow
mercy upon his soul. Umar tried to dissuade him from doing so by pointing out
that Ibn Ubayy had been a Munafiq(hypocrite).
It is true that Abdullah bin Ubayy was a
hypocrite. But his hypocrisy was not a secret from anyone in Medina. Everyone
knew that he was a hypocrite. On the eve of the battle of Uhud, he withdrew his
contingent of 300 warriors from the army on the ostensible pretext that the
Muslims had not accepted his plan of the battle.
In that battle, the Muslims were
defeated. But they were defeated not because of Ibn Ubayy's defection but
because of their own greed and indiscipline. The withdrawal of Ibn Ubayy's
troops did not affect the fortunes of war in any way.
Since Ibn Ubayy played a divisive role
in a crisis, the Muslims were alert at all times for what he might do. He
could, therefore, never catch them off-guard. He was a known and an “open”
hypocrite.
Far more dangerous to Islam were the
hypocrites who were “hidden” from the sight of the Muslims. The true believers
considered them to be sincere Muslims and trusted them. This trust of the
Muslims in them made the Muslim society and the State of Medina much more
vulnerable to sabotage by them. Al-Qur’an al-Majid is a witness to the presence
in Medina, in large numbers, of these hypocrites, and has castigated them
repeatedly. It were they – the hidden hypocrites – and not Abdullah ibn Ubayy
and his supporters – who were the real source of danger to the security of
Islam.
Abdullah ibn Ubayy's son was a true
believer. He volunteered to kill him (his father). But Muhammad, the bringer of
mercy, did not let him. And when Ibn Ubayy died, he (Muhammad) condoned all his
transgressions, most of which, he knew, were products of frustration. Before
the Prophet's arrival from Makkah, he (Ibn Ubayy) had hoped to become the king
of Medina.
To forgive and to forget was
characteristic of Muhammad's magnanimity. Earlier, he had shown the same
magnanimity toward the idolaters of Makkah when he conquered that city, and
granted amnesty to them all. It was, therefore, entirely, “in character” for
him to conduct the funeral services for Ibn Ubayy, to see that he was given a
proper burial, to pray for his soul, and to offer condolences to his son,
notwithstanding Umar's remonstrance.
In late 630, Muhammad, the Messenger of
God, sustained a personal loss. His son, Ibrahim, from his Egyptian wife, Maria
the Copt, died when he was 11 months old (some say 16 months). Muhammad was
very much attached to him. He was deeply aggrieved at his death, and could not
withhold his tears. Umar took it upon himself to call his (Muhammad's)
attention to the “impropriety” of shedding tears at the death of his son.
If Umar was right in his attempts to
prevent the Apostle of God from commiserating with the bereaved members of the
family of Abdullah ibn Ubayy, and in invoking God's mercy upon his (Ibn
Ubayy's) soul; or if he was right in trying to prevent him from crying at the
death of his own son, then it must be said that Islam is a highly “dehumanized”
religion which denies Muslims even the “right” to forgive their enemies, and
withholds from them the freedom of expression of such innocuous feelings as
sympathy and sorrow.
But such is not the case. Islam is not
“dehumanized.” It is, in fact, the most humane of all religions, and urges its
followers to be forgiving, kind, courteous and considerate to others; and
commands them never to be vindictive. Vindictiveness was considered a pagan
characteristic. Islam also commands Muslims, in the following verses of Al-Qur’an
al-Majid, to return good for evil:
And
turn off evil with good. (Chapter 13; verse 22)
Repel
evil with that which is best. (Chapter 23: verse 96)
Nor
can goodness and evil be equal. Repel (evil) with what is better: then will he
between whom and thee was hatred, become as it were thy friend and intimate. (Chapter 41: verse 34)
Muhammad Mustafa, the Interpreter of
Al-Qur’an al-Majid, gave a demonstration of the application of these
commandments of Heaven at the death of Abdullah ibn Ubayy.
In the summer of A.D. 632, Muhammad, the
Messenger of God, lay on his deathbed in his house in Medina. His last wish was
to comply with the commandment in the Book of God to write his will and
testament. But Umar did not countenance this idea. In his opinion, writing a
will was not the right thing for the Prophet of Islam to do.
At Hudaybiyya, he had opposed the
Prophet but had failed in his opposition; this time, however, he had no
intention of failing. He opposed the dying Prophet, and he scored a brilliant
success in his opposition. The will the Prophet wished to write, was never
written.
If Umar was right in his attempts to
inhibit the freedom of action of Muhammad, the Messenger of God, then it means
that the latter was “wrong.” And if he (Muhammad) was “wrong,” then it means
that Al-Qur’an al-Majid was also “wrong” because it claimed that:
Nor
does he (Muhammad) say (anything) of (his own) desire. It is no less than
inspiration sent down to him. (Chapter 53; verses 3 and 4)
If Umar was right, then Muhammad and
Qur’an were “wrong.” This is the only conclusion to which such a line of
argument can lead. It is now for the Muslims to decide if this is the “logic”
which appeals to them, and therefore, is acceptable to them.
When Muhammad Mustafa died in A.D. 632,
his successors - Abu Bakr and Umar - lost no time in seizing the estate of
Fadak from his daughter. Umar was a conscientious man, and he was presumably
prompted by his moral courage to “rectify” the “error” which Muhammad had made
in giving the estate of Fadak to his daughter in A.D. 628.
Umar had, to all intents and purposes,
appointed himself a “censor” of the words and deeds of Muhammad while the
latter was still alive. If he countermanded his (Muhammad's) orders after his
death vis-à-vis his succession or the estate of Fadak, there is nothing odd
about it. If he had any inhibitions in this matter, he threw them overboard as
soon as Muhammad died.
Muhammad, the Apostle of God, had
expressed the wish, on his deathbed, to write his will, and as noted before,
Umar had thwarted him by shouting that the Book of God was sufficient for the
Muslim umma, and that it did not need any other writing from him.
Umar, it appears, actually believed in
what he said, viz., a will or any other writing of the Prophet was redundant
since Qur’an had the ultimate answers to all the questions. And if any doubts
still lingered in anyone's mind on this point, he removed them when he became
khalifa.
Muhammad lived in the hearts of his
companions and friends. After his death, they wished to preserve all their
recollections of his life. These recollections were of two kinds - his words
and his deeds. The two together formed hisSunnah (the
trodden path). Anything he said, and was quoted by a companion, is called a hadith or ‘tradition.'
But Umar did not want the companions to
preserve any recollection of the words and the deeds of the Prophet. He,
apparently, had many reservations regarding the usefulness, to the Muslim umma,
of these recollections. He, therefore, forbade the companions to quote the
sayings of the Prophet in speech or in writing. In other words, he placed the Hadith of the Prophet under a proscription.
Following is the testimony of two modern
Sunni historians on Umar's ban onHadith:
Muhammad
Husayn Haykal
Umar ibn al-Khattab once tried to deal
with the problem of committing theHadith to
writing. The companions of the Prophet whom he consulted, encouraged him, but
he was not quite sure whether he should proceed. One day, moved by God's
inspiration, he made up his mind and announced: “I wanted to have the
traditions of the Prophet written down, but I fear that the Book of God might
be encroached upon. Hence I shall not permit this to happen.”
He, therefore, changed his mind and
instructed the Muslims throughout the provinces: “Whoever has a document
bearing a prophetic tradition, shall destroy it.” The Hadith, therefore, continued to be transmitted orally and was
not collected and written down until the period of al-Mamun. (The Life of Muhammad, Cairo,
1935)
Dr.
Mohammad Hamidullah
Abu-Dhahabi reports: The Caliph Abu-Bakr
compiled a work, in which there were 500 traditions of the Prophet, and handed
it over to his daughter 'Aishah. The next morning, he took it back from her and
destroyed it, saying: “I wrote what I understood; it is possible however that
there should be certain things in it which did not correspond textually with
what the Prophet had uttered.”
As to Umar, we learn on the authority of
Ma'mar ibn Rashid, that during his caliphate, Umar once consulted the companions
of the Prophet on the subject of codifying the Hadith. Everybody seconded the idea. Yet Umar continued to
hesitate and pray to God for a whole month for guidance and enlightenment.
Ultimately, he decided not to undertake
the task, and said: “Former peoples neglected the Divine Books and concentrated
only on the conduct of the prophets; I do not want to set up the possibility of
confusion between the Divine Qur’an and the Prophet's Hadith.” (Introduction
to Islam, Kuwait, pp. 34-35, 1977)
One of the companions whom the Sunni
Muslims consider one of the greatest authorities on Hadith, was Abu Hurayra. He was ever ready to quote a Hadith.There was never an occasion when recollection did not
come to him of something he had heard the Prophet saying or something he had
seen him doing. Once Umar asked him:
“O Abu Hurayra! Tell me this. Did the
Messenger of God have nothing in the world to do except to whisper Hadith in your ears?”
Umar then ordered Abu Hurayra not to
narrate any more Hadith.
Abu Hurayra was a very gregarious and a
garrulous man. When Umar gagged him, he felt bottled up. But he was a patient
man, and quietly awaited the time when he would be unmuzzled. His opportunity
came when Umar died, and he returned, with a vengeance, to the business of
relating Hadith. Today, the books of Hadith, compiled by Sunni collectors, are brimming with
traditions narrated by him.
It is perhaps interesting to speculate
on Umar's decision in placing the traditions of the Prophet under proscription.
Did he believe that the proscription would outlast his own caliphate? There is
no way of knowing the answer to this question. But he could not have meant the
proscription to be effective only during his own lifetime; he could only have
meant it to be everlasting. If so, then did he want to deprive the Muslims of
the record of the precepts and precedents of their Prophet forever?
Muhammad Husayn Haykal says in the
passage quoted above from his book that Umar was “moved by God's inspiration”
to place the Hadith of the Apostle of God under proscription. This means
that Umar's authority to order the suppression of Hadith, was implicit in the “inspiration” of which he was
the recipient, and he didn't hesitate to exercise it. In exercising his
“inspired” authority, he overrode even the consensus of the companions.
Consensus, incidentally, is a very
important principle in Sunni jurisprudence. But Umar was right in overriding
it. After all the consensus of fallible, earth-bound mortals could never
supersede the authority of Umar's “inspiration.”
But Umar's ordinance suppressing Hadith leaves one vital question unanswered, viz., is it
possible to understand and to practice Islam at all, and to obey the
commandments of God embodied in Al-Qur’an al-Majid, without the knowledge and
understanding of the sermons, statements, speeches, commands, prohibitions,
precedents, examples and explanations of Muhammad Mustafa?
Was it, for example, possible for the
companions to know, merely by reading Qur’an, how to say the five canonical
prayers if Muhammad himself had not taught them? Or, would they have known how
much Zakat (poor-tax) to pay, when to pay and whom to pay if they had not seen
the Apostle himself paying it?
Without Hadith, Muslims could never understand the ideology of Islam
nor could they grasp its practicability. In this regard, the contemporary,
Austrian-born scholar, translator and commentator of Qur’an, Muhammad Asad,
writes in his book, Islam
At The Crossroads, as follows:
The Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad is,
(therefore) next to Qur’an, the second source of Islamic law of social and
personal behavior. In fact we must regard the Sunnah as the only valid
explanation of the Qur’anic teachings and the only means to avoid dissension
concerning their interpretation and adaptation to practical use.
Many verses of the Qur’an have
allegorical meaning and could be understood in different ways unless there was
some definite system of interpretation. And there are, furthermore, many items
of practical importance not explicitly dealt with by the Qur’an. The spirit
prevailing in the Holy Book is, to be sure, uniform throughout; but to deduce
from it the practical attitude which we have to adopt is not, in every case, an
easy matter.
So long as we believe that this Book is
the word of God, perfect in form and purpose, the only logical conclusion is
that it never was intended to be used independently of the personal guidance of
the Prophet which is embodied in the system of Sunnah. (pp. 117-118)
The Apostle's statements and his actions
were a detailed interpretation and application of the principles of the Book of
God. That Book has repeatedly and emphatically called upon the Muslims to obey
him and to follow him, as per the following verses:
Say:
if ye do love God, follow me: God will love you and forgive your sins; for God
is oft-forgiving, most Merciful. (Chapter 3; verse 31)
God
did confer a great favor on the believers when He sent among them an Apostle
from among themselves, rehearsing unto them the signs of God, sanctifying them,
and instructing them in Scripture and Wisdom, while before that they had been
in Manifest Error. (Chapter 3: verse 164)
Those
are limits set by God: those who obey God and His Apostle, will be admitted to
the Gardens with Rivers flowing beneath, to abide therein (forever) and that
will be the supreme achievement. (Chapter 4: verse 13)
O
ye who believe! Obey God, and obey His Apostle, and those charged with
authority among you. if ye differ in anything among yourselves, refer it to
Allah and his apostle... (Chapter4: verse 59)
We
sent an Apostle but to be obeyed, in accordance with the will of God. (Chapter
4: verse 64)
But
no, by thy Lord, they can have no (real) faith, until they make thee judge in
all disputes between them, and find in their souls no resistance against thy
decisions, but accept them with the fullest conviction. (Chapter 4: verse 65)
He
who obeys the Apostle, obeys God. (Chapter4: verse 80)
Obey
God and His Apostle, if ye do believe. (Chapter 8: verse 1)
It
is such as obey God and His Apostle, and fear God and do right, that will win
(in the end). (Chapter 24: verse 52)
Ye
have indeed in the Apostle of God a beautiful pattern of conduct for everyone
whose hope is in God and the final day, and who engages much in
remembering God. (Chapter 33: verse 21)
O
ye who believe! Obey God, and obey the Apostle, and make not vain your deeds.
(Chapter 47: verse 33)
Whatever
the Messenger assigns to you, take it, and deny yourselves that which he
withholds from you, and fear God. (Chapter 59: verse 7)
From the foregoing verses, it is clear
that Umar's ban on Hadith was in a head-on collision course with the
commandments of Al-Qur’an al-Majid. Quran as the explicit Word of God, and Hadith as the explicit word of His Last Messenger, form one
integral whole, each elucidating, amplifying and illuminating the other.
Sunni jurists perhaps did not want to
set themselves at odds with Umar but they also realized that there was no way
for them to dispense with Hadith, and still call themselves Muslims, and that his ban
(on Hadith) could not coexist with Islam. They, therefore,
discreetly tiptoed around the issue. “Let the Hadith of our Prophet be free of bans,” was their tacit
consensus even if such a reorientation of thought was painful to some of them,
and they decided to address themselves to the most vital task of collecting,
collating, and preserving, for themselves and for posterity the record of the
sayings and the deeds of Muhammad Mustafa, their Guide and Leader in this world
and in the world
to come
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