every believing man and woman,” he said.
Surely this meant that Omar had taken Muhammad’s
declaration to mean that Ali was now formally his heir,
and it is hard to imagine that Omar was the only one to
understand Muhammad’s words this way. But again,
there is that fatal ambiguity. If Muhammad had indeed
intended this as a formal designation, why had he not
simply said so? Why rely on symbolism instead of a
straightforward declaration? In fact, why had he not
declared it during the hajj, in Mecca, when the greatest
concentration of Muslims were all in one place? Was this
just a spontaneous outpouring of love and aʃection for
his closest kinsman, or was it intended as more?
In the three months to come, as in the fourteen
hundred years since, everything was up for
interpretation, including what it was exactly that
Muhammad had said. We know what words were used,
but what did they mean? Arabic is a language of
intricate subtleties. The word usually translated as
“master” is mawla, which can mean leader, or patron, or
friend and conɹdant. It all depends on context, and
context is inɹnitely debatable. Omar could simply have
been acknowledging what every Muslim, Shia and Sunni
alike, still acknowledges, which is that Ali was a special
friend to all Muslims.
Moreover, the second part of Muhammad’s declaration
at Ghadir Khumm was the standard formula for pledging