��118 No god but God
As turbulent as the succession to Muhammad may have been, there is
one detail that should not be lost in the tumult and confusion that led
to Abu Bakr’s Caliphate. Implicit in the conflict over who should lead
the Ummah was the unanimous conviction among all Muslims that
some kind of popular sanction was required to approve the candidate.
Certainly this was not a democratic process; Abu Bakr was appointed
through the consultation of a select group of elders, not elected by the
Ummah. But the great effort that the Companions went through to
achieve some semblance of unanimity is proof that Abu Bakr’s
appointment would have been meaningless without the consensus of
the entire community. Thus, upon becoming Caliph, Abu Bakr stood
before the Ummah and humbly proclaimed, “Behold me, charged
with the cares of the government. I am not the best among you. I need
all your advice and help. If I do well, support me; if I make a mistake,
counsel me.... As long as I obey God and the Prophet, obey me; if
I neglect the laws of God and the Prophet, I have no right to your
obedience.”
From our privileged position, the succession to Muhammad may
seem a chaotic affair full of intimidation and disorder: a rigged
process, to say the least. But it was a process, nonetheless; and from
the Nile to the Oxus and beyond, nowhere else had such an experi-
ment in popular sovereignty even been imagined, let alone attempted.
A BU B AKR ’ SWA S a short but highly successful reign—only two
and a half years. His principal achievement as Caliph was his military
campaigns against the “false prophets” and those tribes who had
ceased paying the tithe tax because, in true tribal fashion, they consid-
ered Muhammad’s death to have annulled their oath of allegiance.
Recognizing that the defection of these tribes would greatly weaken
the political stability of the Ummah and economically devastate the
small Muslim régime in Medina, Abu Bakr sent his armies to deal
ruthlessly with the rebels. The Riddah Wars, as these campaigns came
to be known, sent a powerful message to the Arab tribes that their
pledge had been made not to any mortal Shaykh but to the immortal
community of God, making its retraction both an act of treason
against the Ummah and a sin against God.