He has said...

The Origin of the Issue of Khilafah From the first days of the prophetic mission ( bi`thah ) the issue of leadership of the Islamic Nation after the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) was more or less in people’s minds. The story of the man who made his acceptance of Islam conditional upon becoming the leader after the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his family), which the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) did not accept, is well known.

The Shi‘a viewpoint about successorship of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) is a point that was announced by divine command before the people during the time of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) by the Prophet himself. At that time, none opposed it; rather, all the people – even those who later were involved in the events at Saqifah – celebrated it, and while pledging allegiance congratulated the Imam (peace be upon him).

But from that very instant they began covertly planning and plotting and reached a point where they wished to assassinate the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his family)!

After the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his family), the issue became a crisis and the opponents, with unusual severity and hard-heartedness, acted in the name of expediency and by threats and plotting created such an atmosphere that in the end they opposed the arrangements the Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) had announced, to the extent that they insulted and transgressed the personality of Fatimah az-Zahra (peace be upon her) and distanced the course of Muslim history from the path the Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) had specified.

With the limitless cruelty they showed, they even trampled the dignity of the Prophet’s (peace be upon him and his family) only offspring. Of course, because of the policy ‘Ali (peace be upon him) pursued, two schools – Shi‘a and Sunni – did not come into open and violent confrontation.