LECTURE ELEVEN
- Caliphs and Imams
a. Muhammad had made no provision for his successor, so after his
death in 632 CE, the Meccan and Medinan factions of Muslims con-
ferred and chose Abu Bakr to be the first “successor”
(khalifa>caliph). That meant he was the executive head of the com-
munity but assuredly not a prophet.
b. Abu Bakr was succeeded by three other early pillars of Islam: Umar,
Uthman and Ali, who are all remembered as the “Right Directed Caliphs.”
c. There were Muslims who disagreed with this appointment. They thought
that the office, which they preferred to call the “Imamate,” belonged by
divine appointment to Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, and then
to members of his family descending in the male line from Ali’s union with
Muhammad’s daughter Fatima.
d. This group also believed that the office was not merely a political
one, as the majority of the Muslims, the Sunnis, were willing to set-
tle for in regard to the Caliph.
e. The Imam, they believed, was a spiritual as well as political guide.
Indeed, he was infallible. Such partisans are called Shi’ites. They
never managed to get one of the revered line of Imams into power. In
the ninth century it began to be understood among Shi’ites that the
Imam had gone into hiding and would not return until the End Time.
Today he rules through his surrogates, like the Ayatollah Khomeini
(1900-1989), the Father of the Islamic Republic of Iran.