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frie
nd, Abu Bakr, the first male adult to embrace the Koran.36 From the
moment of his conversion, Abu Bakr had stood by The Prophet with an
astonishing loyalty. When Mohammed fled from Mecca, the only man
he trusted to travel with him was Abu Bakr. When Mohammed had
moments of doubt or weakness, it was Abu Bakr who sustained him.
In 632, Mohammed grew sick and feverish. Then he weakened
and died. His last words: "No one is needed now but that friend
[Allah]." But someone else was needed: a Caliph, a successor. Abu
Bakr became that successor. He organized armies of Arabs and sent
them out to conquer. And conquer they did, beginning the process
that would quickly dismantle the ancient empires of the Byzantines
and Persians, digesting them as segments of an entity whose name the
world was only now beginning to hear--the Empire of Islam.37
Ali waited patiently in the wings as Abu Bakr led the faithful.
The young man was certain that his day of justice would come. When
Abu Bakr died, Ali and his Shiite followers were confident the mantle
of power would descend on him. But it did not. Instead, it passed to
members of the Banu Umayya tribe. The Banu Umayya, like
Mohammed himself, were Mecca's merchants. They were men of the
world, accustomed to dealing with the polished citizens of Damascus,
Cairo and Baghdad. They were organizers, able to understand and
administer the affairs of state. All these skills were desperately needed
in a superorganism that would go from the possession of one town to
the digestion of Persia, Armenia, Syria and Egypt in only 33 years.38
But the Shiites were not willing to take the Banu Umayya's
succession lying down.39 They claimed that the usurpers had stained
the holiness of Islam. With their captured wealth and expropriated
palaces, their elegant robes and princely ways, the Shiites claimed that
the Umayyads had strayed from the spiritual path of Mohammed's
truth. The followers of Ali staged a series of battles and murders to
purge The Prophet's legacy. And they lost.40
On one level, the conflict between the Shiites and the Umayyads
(whose successors are today's Sunni Moslems41) was over religion. It
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