Some Sunnis would later say that Abu Bakr acted as
he did to spare the community the divisiveness it had
gone through before his own election; others, that as the
Arab conquest began, he wanted a strong military ɹgure
in command. The Shia would see it very diʃerently,
arguing that he was driven by his antagonism toward
Ali and his desire to keep the younger man out of power.
Whichever it may have been, Abu Bakr’s deathbed
declaration was clear: there would be no shura, no
conclave of tribal chiefs and elders. Though he had been
elected by consensus himself, Abu Bakr had good reason
to distrust the process.
How then to proceed? In the days before Islam, it
would have been simple enough; one of Abu Bakr’s sons
would have inherited his rule. Hereditary monarchy
lasted so long through history because it established a
clear line of succession, avoiding the messy business of
negotiation, the political maneuvering, the diɽcult,
wearing process of the fragile thing we now know as
democracy. But Islam was essentially egalitarian. As Abu
Bakr himself had argued when he prevailed over the
proponents of Ali, leadership, like prophecy, was not to
be inherited. He was thus faced with the questions that
still dog even the best intentions in the Middle East: How
does one impose democracy? How can it work when
there is no prior acceptance of the process, when there is
no framework already in place?
You might say that Abu Bakr settled on a middle