But all that he did...

But all that he did, was to design a jerry-built apparatus to find a leader for the umma even though he had gained long experience of government and politics. The dismantlement by Abu Bakr and Umar of the apparatus for transfer of power which Muhammad had given to his umma , proved to be the greatest tragedy in the history of Islam.

Maurice Latey, writing about the Roman Emperors, in his book, Patterns of Tyranny, published by Atheneum, New York (1969), says: “The means color the end: and for all Augustus' statesmanship, the methods by which he seized power, left a fatal flaw in the foundation of his empire which repeatedly shook the edifice and finally destroyed it.” For all the statesmanship of Abu Bakr and Umar, the methods by which they seized power, left a fatal flaw in the foundations of al-Khilafat er-Rashida, which repeatedly shook the edifice and finally destroyed it.

Al-Khilafat er-Rashida collapsed in the midst of civil wars, assassinations and chaos, just as Umar himself had predicted. Muawiya bin Abu Sufyan, who had been awaiting the opportunity for thirty years, to grab the caliphate, moved in to fill the power vacuum, and he did so with no pretense of piety or even of sanctimony.

As noted before, Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, was still alive when the potential candidates for power, and their supporters had worked out a plan or a master-plan which was designed to supersede his plan for succession. According to their plan, Abu Bakr was to be the first successor, and Umar and Uthman were to be the second and the third successors of Muhammad.

The latter knew what some of his companions were trying to do, and it was because of this knowledge that he placed all of them under the command of Usama bin Zayd bin Haritha, ordered them to leave Medina, and to go on a campaign to the Syrian frontier. But they defied his orders and did not go. The companions discarded Muhammad's plan for succession, and elevated Abu Bakr to the throne of khilafat. Before his own death, two years later, he appointed Umar as khalifa.

Ten years later, when Umar was dying, he “stage-managed” the selection of Uthman as his own successor, as noted before, and the “master-plan” worked with perfect precision. But there is no way of knowing what did Abu Bakr and Umar think would happen after Uthman. It appears that Umar tried to look beyond Uthman. Thinking of the times after Uthman, he “adopted” Muawiya as his protégé.