Destiny Disrupted

36 DESTINY DISRUPTED king, just someone to call meetings, moderate discussions, and hold the community together. "Choose one of ...

BIRTH OF THE KHALIFATE 37 had grown up mostly in their household, so in addition to being practi- cally like a brother to Mohamm ...

38 DESTINY DISRUPTED preparing Mohammed's body for burial, Mohammed's peer-group com- panions had been picking a successor for M ...

BIRTH OF THE KHALIFATE 39 engendered two different sects of Islam, the Sunnis and the Shi'i, each of whom has a different versio ...

40 DESTINY DISRUPTED Arabia. At home, however, in his dealings with the Muslim community, he exhibited nothing but the modesty, ...

BIRTH OF THE KHALIFATE 41 Before his conversion, Omar had been known to do a certain amount of brawling and drinking. Back then, ...

42 DESTINY DISRUPTED The Umma soon realized their second khalifa was a towering personal- ity, even more imposing than Abu Bakr, ...

BIRTH OF THE KHALIFATE 43 It's easy to suppose such stories are purely apocryphal, or that, if true, they merely show Omar the p ...

44 DESTINY DISRUPTED Omar's decision to call a war of conquest a "jihad" has obvious ramifi- cations for modern times and has be ...

BIRTH OF THE KHALIFATE 45 Rustum asked one envoy if he headed up the Muslim army. The man replied, "No, we're Muslims. Among us, ...

46 DESTINY DISRUPTED "Yes," said the courier. "What's the news, then? What's the news?" the old man asked eagerly. But the couri ...

BIRTH OF THE KHALIFATE 47 Omar's treatment of Jerusalem set the pattern for relations between Muslims and the people they conque ...

48 DESTINY DISRUPTED Muslim community during the early khalifate exemplified these ideals so much more than ordinary empires, th ...

BIRTH OF THE KHALIFATE 49 went humming from person to person through gossip and tale-telling, street talk and scholarly debate, ...

50 DESTINY DISRUPTED Whenever a difficult decision came up, Omar looked here for the an- swer. If the Qur'an didn't provide an a ...

BIRTH OF THE KHALIFATE 51 women and men pray separately, presumably so they wouldn't be thinking about sex during that ritual. T ...

52 DESTINY DISRUPTED some of the community's notables asked him to nominate his successor as Abu Bakr had done, in order to ensu ...

Schism 24-40AH 644-661 CE THE THIRD KHALIFA (22-36 AH, 644-656 CE) Othman was Mohammed's fifth cousin once removed, and he took ...

54 DESTINY DISRUPTED Reputedly, Othman had stopped someplace for the night and was lying under the stars, looking up at the blac ...

SCHISM 55 He spent lavishly for the public good; for example, he expanded the mosque in Medina for Mohammed, and when the Muslim ...