��114 No god but God
life. And while it would be a mistake to consider these religious clerics
and scholastic theologians as constituting a single, monolithic tradi-
tion, the power of the Ulama and their influence in shaping the faith
and practice of Islam cannot be overstated. Caliphs will come and go,
and the Caliphate as a civil institution will rise and fall in strength, but
the authority of the Ulama and the power of their religious institu-
tions will only increase with time.
ABU BAKR WA S, in many ways, the perfect choice to succeed
Muhammad. Nicknamed as-Siddiq, “the faithful one,” he was a deeply
pious and respected man, one of the first converts to Islam and
Muhammad’s dearest friend. The fact that he had taken over the Fri-
day prayers during Muhammad’s lengthy illness was, in the minds of
many, proof that the Prophet would have blessed his succession.
As Caliph, Abu Bakr united the community under a single banner
and initiated a time of military triumph and social concord that would
become known in the Muslim world as the Golden Era of Islam. It
was Abu Bakr and his immediate successors—the first four Caliphs
who are collectively referred to as the Rashidun, the “Rightly Guided
Ones”—who tended the seed Muhammad had planted in the Hijaz
until it sprouted into a dominant and far-reaching empire. While the
Ummah expanded into North Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and
large swaths of Europe, the Rightly Guided Ones strove to keep the
community rooted in the principles of Muhammad—the struggle for
justice, the equality of all believers, care for the poor and marginal-
ized—yet civil strife and the incessant power struggles of the early
Companions ultimately split the community into competing factions
and turned the Caliphate into that form of government most reviled
by the ancient Arabs: absolute monarchy.
As with most sacred histories, however, the truth about the era of
the Rightly Guided Ones is far more complicated than the traditions
suggest. Indeed, the so-called Golden Era of Islam was anything but a
time of religious concord and political harmony. From the moment
Muhammad died, there arose dozens of conflicting ideas about every-
thing from how to interpret the Prophet’s words and deeds to who
should do the interpreting, from whom to choose as leader of the