��136 No god but God
remains the model of Muslim piety: the light that illuminates the
straight path to God. He is, in the words of Ali Shariati, “the best in
speech... the best in worship... the best in faith.”
It is this heroic vision of Ali that has been firmly planted in the
hearts of those who refer to the person they believe to have been the
sole successor to Muhammad not as the fourth Caliph, but as some-
thing else, something more.
Ali, the Shi‘ah claim, was the first Imam: the Proof of God on Earth.
THE CALIPHATE, WROTESir Thomas Arnold, “grew up without
any pre-vision.” This was an office that developed not so much
through the conscious determination of the Rightly Guided Caliphs,
but as the result of conditions that the Ummah encountered as it
matured from a tiny community in the Hijaz to a vast empire stretch-
ing from the Atlas Mountains in West Africa to the eastern edges
of the Indian subcontinent. It is not surprising, therefore, that dis-
agreements over the function of the Caliphate and the nature of the
Ummah ultimately tore the Muslim community apart, forever shat-
tering any hope of preserving the unity and harmony that Muhammad
had envisioned for his followers. Nor is it surprising that two of the
first four leaders of Islam were killed by fellow Muslims, though it is
important to recognize that both the rebels who murdered Uthman
and the Kharijites who assassinated Ali were, like their spiritual suc-
cessors al-Qaeda, far more concerned with maintaining their personal
ideal of Muhammad’s community than with protecting that commu-
nity from external enemies.
After Ali’s death, Mu‘awiyah was able to seize absolute control of
all the Muslim lands. Moving the capital from Kufa to Damascus,
Mu‘awiyah inaugurated the Umayyad Dynasty, completing the trans-
formation of the Caliph into a king, and the Ummah into an empire.
Mu‘awiyah’s Arab dynasty lasted a very short time, from 661 to 750
C.E. Ultimately, it was supplanted by the Abassid Dynasty, which was
carried to power with the help of the non-Arab (mostly Persian) con-
verts who so greatly outnumbered the Arab élites. The Abassids
claimed descent from Muhammad’s uncle al-Abass and rallied support
from the Shi‘ite factions by moving their capital to Baghdad and mas-