Discuss the four Rightly Guided Caliphs, following the Shi'ite-Sunni split

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

• According to Arabic tradition, Mohammed's male heir should lead the community, but Mohammed claimed to have revealed a new law that said the importance of the community would take precedence over tribal rules of inheritance.
• Questions over leadership, which still affect the practice of Islam today, spawned a debate and eventually a civil war.
• The question of leadership focused on the community.
• One group of people believed the community should select its own leaders, but another group believed that Mohammed had designated Ali, his cousin and son-in-law, as the Muslim leader.
• The proponents of community selection carried the day, but Ali's followers came to believe that God had given a special inspiration to Mohammed's family.
• The community selected a political and religious leader, a caliph, but Ali's followers encouraged him to exercise the leadership authority they believed God had provided.
• When Ali's sons, Hasan and Hussein, were born, his followers believed they also carried special gifts based on their relationship with their grandfather Mohammed.
• The Muslim community eventually split over this question.
Mohammed's friend Abu Bakr became the first caliph? after his death Umar became caliph.
Umar was assassinated by a Persian captive, and another of Mohammed's friends, Uthman, was selected as caliph.
• As Uthman consolidated wealth, groups of Arab soldiers came to feel he favored his own family over the community.
• They broke into his house and assassinated him.
• The followers of Ali came forward, and proposed that he become caliph.
Ali believed that Uthman's family and Muslims in general were forgetting the straight path that had been revealed to Mohammed.
He led an army against Uthman's family, but sought a negotiated peace between both factions of Muslims? he too was assassinated.
• The family of Uthman assumed control of the Islamic movement and ruled the first Arab empire.
• Sunnis believe that Four Rightly Guided Caliphs: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali served as the true successors to Mohammed.
• Shi'ites recognize only Ali.