The Start of the Trouble
THE APPROACH OF the long awaited hour for the realisation of their cherished hopes through the execution of their plans, acted as a stimulus to the mischievous minds to actuate them. The inordinate behaviour of the Visitors to the Holy Prophet, while he was about to breathe his last, made him turn out all of them from his presence. When the people were sure of the impending departure of the Holy Prophet, the Mohajirs (the immigrant Meccans) and the Ansars (the supporter Madinites) assembled at the Saqa-e-faeBani Saa'ada and started parading their respective rights for the paramount power and authority to rule over the vast Muslim empire, in the place of the Holy Prophet. (IQ, IA., Tb., Rs., EHI)
The contending arguments were that:
"The Mohajirs claimed preference in view of .heir priority in Islam, their kinship with the Holy Prophet, and their
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immigration with him, at the manifest end of their life and property.
The Ansars urged that they had as much right as any others whatsoever, on account of their receiving the Prophet in his escape from his Meccan enemies, of protecting him in the time of adversity, and of helping him making head against his powerful foes, resulting ultimately in the establishment of the paramount power and authority. They even alleged that they apprehended revenge if authority went to the people whose fathers and brothers they had killed in defending the Prophet. When Hobab expressed this view Omar indignantly retorted 'Thou shouldst die if Kalifate settled with such people as whom thou fearest." (E.H.I.)
The fears of Hobab were not unfounded for the spirit of retaliation was ingrained in the blood of the Arabs:
"Revenge was almost a religious principle among the Arabs. To revenge a relative slain was the duty of his family, and often involved the honour of his tribe; and these debts of blood sometimes remained unsettled for generations, producing deadly feuds." (WI.)
History proves that the fears of Hobab were not false:
"The fears of Hobab proved correct with the revengeful massacre of the Prophet's or Ali's posterity at Karbala condemning even a six months' Babe and with the hideous crimes perpetrated in the outrages and the massacre of the Ansars at Harra." (EHI)
Refusing the claim of the Ansars, Omar said:-
"The Qoreish did not deny the services rendered by the
Ansars to promote the cause of Islam, but with all their meritorious services they should not deem themselves entitled to aspire to the sole authority over the Qoreish." (TB., IA.,SHI.,EHI)
"The Ansars then said that they would be content to have
one Kalif from each of the two parties to exercise joint authority and even nominated Saa'd bin Obida, their leader to be elected from them." (I(L, RAi., RS)
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The Qoreish would by no means agree to any such proposal and they persisted saying that:
"The Government must remain in the hands of Qoreish while the Ansars should content themselves with the Wazirate or ministry." (Kt, RA., RS., EHI,)
The discussion developed into a regular quarrel and the tension got precipitated and the parties were about to come to blows:-
"The Ansars not yielding, the contention grew so hot that they were just upon falling to blows when Abu Bakr intervened and asked them if they had not heard the Holy Prophet saying 'that none was apt to exercise authority over the Qoreish but one from among themselves. Bashir Sa'd one of the Ansars who shared the views of the Mohajirs at once answered in favour of the Mohajirs.' Thus encouraged, Abu Bakr resolutely exclaimed that the Qoreish would not accept any one but a Qoreish to rule over them and stepping forth pointed out Omar and Abu Obeida to the Ansars to choose either of them as the Kalif."
"Now the Ansars began to say that they should prefer paying homage to Ali, the best of the Qoreish." (IA., TB., HS.,)
The question arises when the quarrel could be avoided by any saying of the Holy Prophet:-
I. Why the unchallengable verdict of the Prophet at the historic assembly at 'Ghadeer-e-Khum' about Ali, was not quoted?
2. Why the covenant taken from them by the Holy Prophet, by a definite 'Baiyat' about Ali, was not reminded of ?
3. If what was said about the rule over the Qoreish was true, the wording itself clearly indicates that the rule refers to the rule over the Qoreish, and not the rule over all the people, and the Kalifate contested for, was not a Tribal matter but of the Muslims as a whole. Besides the saying 'that Qoreish only to rule the Qoreish' assigned to the Holy Prophet, does not tally with the Holy Quran which declares
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superiority to he recognised only on the basis of piety :-
'Inna akramakum indallah ataqaakom' 49:13
Verily, the most honoured of you with God is the most pious of you and any saying attributed to the Holy Prophet not tallying with the Holy Qur'an is to he thrown on the wall.
4. If the Qoreish wanted only a. Qoreish to rule, why Ali was not accepted? who had a joint right, both, as one appointed by the Apostolic declaration at 'Ghadeer-eKhum' and also as a Qoreishite.
<>5. (a) Besides, if they wanted one with the highest knowledge to rule over them there was none but Ali about whom the Holy Prophet had said : am the City of knowledge and Ali is its Gate'.
(b) If they wanted the most just one to be their ruler, the people knew that the Holy Prophet had said : Aqzakum Ali ibne Abi Taleb (the most just among you is Ali).
(c) If they needed the bravest to rule over them, the position of Ali in this respect is unique, for it is he about whom the Holy Prophet had declared at Khaiber Warearan ghaira farrarin' the repeated attacker who knew no running away. History is there to vouch that it was Ali who stayed with the Holy Prophet in the worst of the situations in the battles for the faith, when most of the companions had deserted him and had fled away, disappearing for days together. The Holy Qur'an has a reference to this fact. Besides, in the Muslim World as a whole, none but Ali is called A' sadullah', the Lion of God, and it is Ali in whose praise the Muslims sing even to this day 'La fata ilia Ali la saf ilia Zulfiqar' , i.e., there is no youth braver than Ali and there is no sword save the unfailing Zulfiqar."
(d) If the nearest to the Holy Prophet was the one wanted, who else' was there save Ali about whom the Holy Prophet had openly said : "I and Ali are
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of the same Divine Light." "0' Ali thy flesh is my flesh and thy blood is my blood."
It is obviously peculiar and also amazing that not even one of the repeated declarations of the Holy Prophet about Ali's unique position was remembered at the Saqeefa, neither by Abu-Bakr nor even by Omar.
History says that Omar cried out to Abu-Bakr:
"Stretch forth thy hand 0' Abu Bakr, verily I will swear allegiance to thee!" (IA., TB., Etc.)
Thus Omar declared Abu-Bakr as the Chief and took the oath of fealty to him.
Hobab had an altercation with Bashir for his treacherous conduct in preferring Abu-Bakr over Sa'd bin Obada-(Is.)
Sa'd bin Obada, the head of the Ansars, was deeply chagrined at being thus superseded. He did not pay homage to Abu Bakr. He left Madina and retired in disgust, to Syria, where it is said he was found murdered in 15 A.H. (SM., AqF., RS., EHI.)
It is now left to the scholars of political science and the seasoned politicians to say if:
1. What took place at the Saqeefa was an election in any sense or the meaning of the term?
2. Or it was the nomination or the choice of any one individual which was forced upon the others?
3. Do the proceedings satisfy the demands of a democratic procedure?
4. If the procedure had any sanction from Qur'an, Hadith or of any of the canons of democracy?
5. Was it not that the right of Ali was totally forgotten or his position with the exclusive excellence of the unique godly qualities, deliberately or undeliberately was altogether ignored at the 'Saqeefa?'
6. Could the decision of the interested disputant few, assembled at the 'Saqeefa', be counted as the voice or the choice of the millions of the people of the whole of the Muslim World?
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The Logical Inference
SINCE BOTH THE Immigrants as well as the Ansars claimed the worldly privileges and the secular advantages in return for what they had done, any intelligent reader could reasonably say that neither the giving of the asylum to the Holy Prophet by those Ansars nor the immigration of those Immigrants with him, was exclusively for God and the Faith. The object of their respective services enumerated by them, as their respective claims, could be nothing but what they claimed in return for those services.
If what they enumerated had been done exclusively for God and for no worldly gains or material advantages, the people, both the disputant Mohajirs and the contestant Ansars would 'never, for anything in the world, have stirred from the side of the Holy Prophet in the last moments of his stay with them, and after his breathing his last, they would have only minded their first concern with the last services to the Apostle of God, observing the solemnity of the serious occasion and their sad plight of having lost the Best and the Holiest one of God's creation, from among their midst, as did the Holy Ahlul-Bait and the other Hashimites who never even cared to know about what went on in the 'Saqeefa.'
By the claims advanced by both the groups themselves, it gets quite evident that those of both the groups, were only waiting for the opportunity to establish their claims, the objects of all their respective services to the Holy Prophet and the Faith, each group apprehending to be forestalled by the other. This could be the only logical inference of any intelligent reading of the facts of the history of the dispute at the
'Saqeefa.'
The following are a few of the impartial opinions of the celebrated Non-Muslim historian scholars, about Ali :-
"Ali was the cousin-germain of Muhammad and husband of Fatema, his beloved daughter. The right of succession in order of consanguinity, lay with Ali ; and his virtues and services eminently entitled him to it. On the first burst of his generous zeal, when Islamism was a derided and a persecuted faith, he had been pronounced by Mohammad his Brother, his Vicegerent; he had ever since been devoted to him in word and deed, and had
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honoured the cause by his magnanimity as signally as he has vindicated it by his valour." W. Irving
"The birth, the alliance, the character of Ali which exalted him above the rest of his countrymen might justify his claim to the vacant throne of Arabia. The son of Abu Taleb was, in his own right, the Chief of the family of Hashim, and the hereditary prince or guardian of the city and the temple of Mecca. The light of prophecy was extinct, but the husband of Fatema might expect the inheritance and the blessings of her father; the Arabs had sometimes been patient of a female reign ; and the two grandsons of the Prophet had often been fondled in his lap, and shown in his pulpit, as the hope of his age, and the Chief of the Youth of Paradise. From the first hour of the mission to the last rites of his funeral, the Apostle was never forsaken by a generous Friend, whom he delighted to name his Brother, his Vicegerent and the faithful Aaron of a second Moses." Gibbon-abridged by W. Smith p. 466
Besides the above two quotations, the following is the one which the great learned scholar and the judicial head Amir Ali has chosen to quote in his famous work The Spirit of Islam:-
"Had," says Sedillot "the principle of hereditary succession in favour of Ali been recognised at the outset, it would have prevented the rise of those disastrous pretentious which engulfed Islam in the blood of Muslims. The husband of Fatema united in his person the right of succession as the lawful heir of the Prophet as well as the right by election. It might have been thought that all would submit themselves before his glory so pure and so grand." Spirit of Islam-Amir Ali
However, the right of Ali was ignored and later at a stage the fate of the people passed into the hands of those who enacted the gruesome scene of Karbala and the massacre of the godly members of the House of the Holy Prophet.
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The Funeral of the Holy Prophet
THOSE OF THE companions who were turned out by the Holy Prophet from his presence, got busy in the Saqeefa and did not return until he was buried.
When the Holy Prophet passed away, Ali assisted by his pupil Ibne Abbas and the other Hashimites, attended to the last rites to the Holiest one of God's creation and the grief of Fatema moved the hearts of those present there.
History says that Hazrat Abu Bakr and Hazrat Omar and the other companions being busy at the Saqeefa, could not attend the funeral of the Holy Prophet (KO., AM., EXI).
History repeats itself
THE DEALINGS OF the wicked ones with the men of God particularly the apostles from Him, had been indentical in all ages. The Holy Prophet had already prophecied that all that happened among the people of the ancient apostles particularly the people of Moses in the Israelites, will happen among his followers.
Moses was absent for only about forty days and his people revolted against his Deputy Aaron and followed the Samiri and started worshipping the Calf. Jesus was betrayed by his own disciples and was handed over to be crucified. The Last Apostle of God similarly suffered an identical desertion by his people even before his breathing his last.
The Love of the World-Maddens man
VERY RECENTLY EVEN when a worldly ruler of a big State was to be buried, (Mr. Kennedy of America) almost all the Paramount Powers in the world sent their representatives to attend the funeral as a token of their regard and human sympathy with the bereaved family and the sorrowful nation. But when the Prince of the Prophets, the Last Apostle of God, who was divinely sent to rule over the human hearts and the human affairs on earth and who was also the godly ruler of the state, had not even breathed his last, the people who called themselves his followers and claimed to be his close companions left him away to assert and establish their respective contentions about their claims to rule the state in the place of the Holy Prophet and returned only when he had left this world
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and was buried by his Ahlul-Bait and the people of his family the Hashimites.
Thus in the love of the world the people left away even the Apostle of God unshrouded. This is the worst record of the madness of man for the material world. The paradox is that yet man claims himself to be the lover of God, the lover of the Apostles of God and the lover of godliness.
