It was an argument for democracy, in however limited
a form—an argument against exactly what would
happen just ɹfty years into the future, when an
Umayyad Caliph in Damascus would establish a Sunni
dynasty by handing over his throne to his son, with
disastrous consequences for Ali’s son Hussein. It was in
fact an argument against all the dynasties to come over
the ensuing centuries, whether caliphates, shahdoms,
sultanates, principalities, kingdoms, or presidencies. But
it was also an argument for returning power to those
who were used to the exercise of it, the Umayyads.
Whether in the seventh century or the twenty-first, the
East or the West, the habit of power is ingrained in
certain families and clans. It is an attitude, a built-in
assumption of one’s right to rule, to carry on what in
democracies is called “a tradition of public service,” and
it is passed on from one generation to the next even
without the institution of hereditary kingship. It was
this attitude that distinguished the Quraysh as a whole,
and, among them, the Umayyads in particular. So if
there was one possible candidate at the shura who
seemed to have been born to power, it was Othman, the
Umayyad. But not in this city. Until Mecca had
submitted to Islam two years before, Meccan armies led
by Umayyads had fought two major battles against
Muhammad and Medina, not to mention countless
skirmishes. With the memory of those battles still fresh
in their minds and the scars still livid on their ɻesh,