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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Shi’ite Islam: Orthodoxy Or Heterodoxy? Second Amended and Amplified Edition Chapter 7: Prophethood and Imamate, Two Inseparable Metaphysical Realities For Sunnī Muslims, the legitimacy of the Caliphate is an issue of secondary or relative importance.

According to Sunnī thought, even an illegitimate Caliph is acceptable as long as he has sufficient strength and ability to resolve the socio-economic problems of the society.[^1] It is easily understood how individuals with stubborn tribal mentalities and notions of superiority could perceive the Caliphate as being the pinnacle of Arabism.

Even the trials and tribulations they suffered due to their loyalty to Islām and the Prophet could not make them forget their prior status as oligarchic tribal chiefs. It is therefore not surprising that the election of Abū Bakr as Caliph was based on pre-Islamic tribal customs.

The Caliphate allowed the tribal chiefs to satisfy their nostalgia for the old order by giving the emerging system, despite its radical transformation, traits of political and economic centralism which has been abolished by Islām.[^2] Abū Bakr assumed the Caliphate, not through the legitimacy of his aspiration, but through the complicity of his peers from the tribe of Quraysh.

He gained the unanimous support of the leaders of his tribe and maneuvered himself into power at a time when differences in opinion and division of loyalties prevailed. History will never understand the cause of such a phenomenon without considering the rivalry between the Quraysh and the non-Quraysh and the muḥājirūn [the emigrants] and the anṣār [the allies]. Without such an understanding, any explication of the development of Shī‘ism would be nothing but a deceitful distortion.

Was not the rise of Shī‘ism the case of a revolt of the new over the old established order? Indeed it was. The political and economic centralism of the elders of Quraysh from the days of ignorance [ jāhiliyyah ] was not extinguished with the arrival of Islām. The partisans of the old order mobilized against the new Islamic order established by Muḥammad and embodied by ‘Alī.

The Quraysh defended the old order with the same drive and determination they demonstrated during the lifetime of the Prophet when the Makkan oligarchy had resisted with all their strength against Muḥammad’s divine and revealed message.