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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Caliphate Its Conception and Consequences Chapter Four : Why the Theory of Non-appointment Is Highly Improbable and Entirely Illogical One fact, which cuts to the root of the Theory of Non-appointment, is that its advocates are unable to find any sensible explanation or show any reasonable grounds for why the Prophet (P) should have adopted this attitude of "non-cooperation", so to speak, towards this very important problem of the Caliphate.

Without this explanation, no intelligible history of the Caliphate can be written. In fact, a true conception and thorough understanding of the History of Islam and the Muslim peoples is absolutely impossible without a correct answer to this very essential question. The entire course of Islamic History, for good or for bad, was shaped by the way in which this problem was handled after the death of the Prophet (P).

The innumerable wars and massacres which throughout the long period of Islamic rule almost continuously drenched the Muslim world with blood and eventually brought it to a sad close, and the sighs and sorrows of countless Muslim widows and orphans that saddened the heart of man and brought the wrath of God upon erring humanity, can be traced directly, with not a single "missing link", to the wrong and sinful manner in which this problem was approached on the death of the Prophet (P), I say sinful, because it implied a contumacious disregard of the orders and wishes of the Prophet (P), implicit obedience to which had been enjoined by the QUR'AN.

On account of this, Islamic History became a long tragedy of errors, from the horrible massacre of KARBALA' to the more recent times of AURANGZEBE whom a misguided zeal to serve his religion induced to invade the SHI'A States of DECCAN, and thus clear the way right up to Delhi for the pagan MARAHATTAS. How the succession to the state acquired by Muhammad was to be regulated was the question.

They rejected the principle of selection or nomination as not having been ordered by the Prophet (P); but at the same time they could not formulate any rules of their own. Sometimes the nomination of one man, sometimes the nomination of six candidates, out of whom the candidates themselves were to select one man -a queer method of succession- but no definite rule was fixed.