But Amir al-mu'minin could never think of strengthening his...

But Amir al-mu'minin could never think of strengthening his power by fraud or duplicity of behaviour on any occasion.

Thus when people advised him to retain the officers of the days of `Uthman in their position and to befriend Talhah and az-Zubayr by assigning them governorship of Kufah and Basrah, and make use of Mu`awiyah's ability in administration by giving him the government of Syria, Amir al-mu'minin rejected the advice and preferred the commandments of religious law over worldly expediency, and openly declared about Mu`awiyah as follows: If I allow Mu`awiyah to retain what he already has I would be one "who taketh those who lead (people) astray, as helpers" (Qur'an, 18:51).

Those who look at apparent successes do not care to find out by what means the success has been achieved.

They support anyone whom they see succeeding by means of cunning ways and deceitful means and begin to regard him an administrator, intelligent, a politician, intellectually brilliant and so on, while he who does not deploy cunning and fraudulent methods owing to his adherence to Islamic commandments and divine instructions and prefers failure to success secured through wrong methods is regarded as ignorant of politics and weak in foresight.

They do not feel it necessary to think what difficulties and impediments exist in the way of a person who adheres to principles and laws which prevent him from proceeding forward even after approaching near success." Previous…