ABSTRACT
Before we discuss the tragic events of the first civil wars in Islam following the assassination of the caliph ‘Uthman, several remarks are in order about the applicability of the terms “orthodoxy” and “heresy” to the early stages of Islamic history. We should keep in mind that in the first decades of its existence, Islam as religion lacked an institutional authority that would make definitive and binding pronouncements about matters pertaining to religious creed and practice. As we saw, ‘Umar’s decisions regarding civil, administrative, military, and religious matters rested on his personal prestige and his intimate knowledge of the Prophet’s ways. However, the boundaries of what was religiously correct or incorrect as well as the notions of Islamic legitimacy (for instance, of the Muslim ruler) at that time were still in flux and shifted with the perspective of the individual viewer. The terms “heresy” and “orthodoxy” that are frequently invoked in the context of the Christian tradition can be misleading when applied to early Islam. This is not to say that we do not find early Muslims denouncing each other as “deviators” from the correct Islam of the Prophet. These denunciations were routinely couched in a religious terminology, since religion was the dominant, if not the only, expressive idiom of the age. Thus, for some members of the early Muslim community, ‘Uthman’s rule, dominated as it was by the Umayyad clan of the Quraysh, marked a radical departure from the Prophet’s teaching about the equality of all Muslims regardless of their tribal or clan affiliation. The Umayyads, on the other hand, considered themselves to be the only legitimate rulers and custodians of the Qur’anic revelation and the Prophet’s legacy. Furthermore, they viewed themselves as indispensable guarantors of the unity of all Muslims in the face of external and internal challenges. The vilification of the Umayyads in later Islamic sources penned by their rivals and opponents should be taken with a grain of salt, as it were. It reflected the understanding of “correct” Islam either by the political victors, namely the rulers of the ‘Abbásid dynasty who had dislodged the Umayyads, or by the supporters of ‘Ali b. Abi Talib’s rights to the caliphate, who came to be known as Shi‘ites. For the latter in particular, Umayyad rule constituted a major deviation from the divinely foreordained
course of events that, in their view, should have led to the rise of a just and legitimate Muslim state under the leadership of the members of the Prophet’s family.
