Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, the first caliph of Islam, is often remembered as gentle and deeply emotional. But when the young Muslim state faced a crisis of survival after the death of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), three decisions showed his firmness and foresight, Prothom Alo's religion desk writes.
The first concerned the army of Usama ibn Zayd, which the Prophet had prepared days before his death for the Byzantine frontier. As the Ridda (apostasy and rebellion) spread across Arabia, senior companions urged that the army stay to defend Medina. Abu Bakr refused, saying he had no right to halt an army whose banner the Prophet had tied. Citing Ali Muhammad al-Sallabi's biography, the piece says the sight of so large a force marching out in a time of crisis deterred the rebel tribes from attacking Medina.
The second concerned those who prayed but refused to pay zakat to the state. Umar and many companions advised leniency, but Abu Bakr held that prayer and zakat are equal pillars of Islam and could not be separated. When envoys failed to persuade them, he sent out 11 armies, according to Ibn Kathir's al-Bidaya wa'l-Nihaya, as quoted in the piece.
The third was the compilation of the Quran. After some 700 companions who knew the Quran by heart were killed at the battle of Yamama, Umar urged that the whole Quran be gathered into one volume. Abu Bakr hesitated at first, asking how he could do what the Prophet had not, then agreed and charged Zayd ibn Thabit, a scribe of revelation, with collecting the written portions on the testimony of two witnesses (Sahih al-Bukhari, hadith 4986).
The piece ends by arguing that Abu Bakr's uncompromising decisions on the survival of the state and the fundamentals of the faith saved the community from a grave crisis after the Prophet's death.
Photo: calligraphy of the name of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, Abu Bakr al-Suri / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: Prothom Alo
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