oppositionists to revolt at any time. I think if Omar had noticed the dangers of the traditions, after Imam Ali pleaded with them in the time of his own reign[1] and they spread among his Shia, as the Umayyads noticed, he would have done away with them and he could have done what the Umayyads could not do to put out their light. Imam Ali perceived that if he used the traditions as his plea at that time, he would subject them to many dangers from the ruling party, so he pitied those holy traditions in order not to be crushed under the feet of the dominant policy. He kept to silence unwillingly but he took advantage of their inadvertence. Omar himself declared that Ali was the guardian of every believer man and every believer woman according to the Prophet’s saying.[2] Then was not it reasonable that Imam Ali feared for the honor of his beloved brother, the Prophet, to be disparaged where it was more precious for Ali than everything at all if he declared the prophetic traditions and he did not yet forget Omar’s situation when the Prophet (s) asked for an inkpot to write a decree for people, with which they would never deviate at all, then Omar said: “The Prophet is raving…or he is overcome by pain”?[3] Later on Omar confessed to ibn Abbas that the Prophet [1] Imam Ali asked some of the companions to witness if they had heard the Prophet’s tradition of al-Ghadeer. Refer to al-Bidayeh wen-Nihayeh by ibn Katheer, vol.7 p.360. Ali asked some people about the tradition of al-Ghadeer, in which the Prophet declared that Ali would be the caliph after the Prophet’s death, and thirty of them witnessed that they had heard it from the prophet (s). Refer to as-Sawa’iqul Muhriqa, p.122. [2] Thakha’irul Oqba p.67. The tradition showed that Omar intended sometimes to change the way that the party followed in the beginning towards the Hashimites but he was overcome by the political nature of the first reign at last. [3] Sahih of al-Bukhari, vol.1 p.37.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 10:28:13 +0000