The Rightly Guided Ones 117that a great many of the prophets and patriarchs of the Bible were suc-
ceeded by their kin: Abraham to Isaac and Ismail; Isaac to Jacob;
Moses to Aaron; David to Solomon; and so on. Faced with this fact,
opponents of the Banu Hashim claimed that, as the Seal of the
Prophets, Muhammad could have no heir. But considering that the
Quran goes to such great lengths to emphasize the congruence
between Muhammad and his prophetic predecessors, and recognizing
the numerous traditions that parallel Ali’s relationship to Muhammad
with Aaron’s relationship to Moses, one would be hard pressed to
ignore Ali’s candidacy simply on the grounds that it violated the Arab’s
distaste for hereditary leadership.
Clearly Ali had a far greater claim to the leadership of the Ummah
than tradition has afforded him. The truth is that Ali’s deliberate
exclusion from the shura was a result neither of his age nor of the Arab
aversion for hereditary leadership. Ali was excluded because of a
growing fear among the larger and wealthier clans of the Quraysh that
allowing both prophethood and the Caliphate to rest in the hands of a
single clan—especially the insignificant Hashim—would too greatly
alter the balance of power in the Ummah. Furthermore, there seemed
to be some anxiety among certain members of the community, most
notably Abu Bakr and Umar, that maintaining a prolonged hereditary
leadership within the ahl al-bayt would blur the distinction between
the religious authority of the Prophet and the secular authority of the
Caliph.
Whatever the justifications, Ali’s proponents would not be silenced;
so it was left to Umar to silence them himself. Having already beaten
the leader of the Ansar, Sa‘d ibn Ubayda, into submission, Umar went
to the house of Fatima, Ali’s wife and Muhammad’s daughter, and
threatened to burn it down unless she and the rest of the Banu Hashim
accepted the will of the shura. Fortunately, Abu Bakr restrained him at
the last moment, but the message was clear: the Ummah was too
unstable, and the political situation in the Hijaz too volatile, for this
kind of open dissent to be tolerated. Ali agreed. For the sake of the
community, he and his entire family surrendered their claim to lead-
ership and solemnly swore allegiance to Abu Bakr, though it took
another six months of cajoling for them to do so.
* * *