Read After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam for Free Online Page B

home—Ali had arranged for Muhammad to escape along with Abu Bakr, and stayed behind as a decoy. It was Ali who slept that night in Muhammad’s house, Ali who dressed in Muhammad’s robes that morning, Ali who stepped outside, risking his own life until the assassins realized they had the wrong man. Ali, that is, who for the space of that night stood in for Muhammad and who finally escaped himself to make the long journey to Medina in the humblest possible fashion, alone, on foot.
    In a way, it seemed fated that Ali should take on the role of Muhammad’s double. Despite the twenty-nine-year age difference between the two cousins, there was a kind of perfect reciprocity in their relationship, for each had found refuge as a boy in the home of the other. After his father’s death, the orphaned Muhammad had been raised in his uncle Abu Talib’s household, long before Ali was even born, and years later, when Abu Talib fell on hard times financially, Muhammad, by then married to Khadija and running the merchant business she had inherited from her first husband, had taken in his uncle’s youngest son as part of his own household. Ali grew up alongside Muhammad’s four daughters and became the son Muhammad and Khadija never had. The Prophet became a second father to him, and Khadija a second mother.
    Over time, the bonds of kinship between the two men would tighten still further. In fact, they would triple. As if Ali were not close enough by virtue of being Muhammad’s paternal first cousin and his adoptive son, Muhammad handpicked him to marry Fatima, his eldest daughter, even though others had already asked for her hand.
    Those others were the two men who would lead the challenge to Ali’s succession after Muhammad’s death: Aisha’s father, Abu Bakr, who had been Muhammad’s companion on the flight to Medina, and thefamed warrior Omar, the man who was to lead Islam out of the Arabian Peninsula and into the whole of the Middle East. But whereas Abu Bakr and Omar had given Muhammad their daughters in marriage, he had refused each of them when they asked for the hand of Fatima. The meaning was clear: in a society where to give was more honorable than to receive, the man who gave his daughter’s hand bestowed the higher honor. While Abu Bakr and Omar honored Muhammad by marrying their daughters to him, he did not return the honor but chose Ali instead.
    It was a singular distinction, and to show how special he considered this marriage to be, the Prophet not only performed the wedding ceremony himself but laid down one condition: the new couple would follow the example of his own marriage to Khadija and be monogamous. Ali and Fatima, he seemed to be saying, would be the new Muhammad and Khadija, and would have the sons Muhammad and Khadija never had.
    Sure enough, the man who remained without sons of his own soon had two adored grandsons, Hasan and Hussein. Only a year apart, they instantly became the apples of their grandfather’s eye. It is said that there is no love purer than that of a grandparent for a grandchild, and Muhammad was clearly as doting and proud a grandfather as ever lived. He would bounce the young boys on his lap for hours at a time, kissing and hugging them. Would even happily abandon all the decorum and dignity of his position as the Messenger of God to get down on all fours and let them ride him like a horse, kicking his sides with their heels and shrieking in delight. These two boys were his future—the future of Islam, as the Shia would see it—and by fathering them, Ali, the one man after Muhammad most loyal to Khadija, had made that future possible.
    When Khadija died, two years before that fateful night of Muhammad’s flight to Medina, Ali had grieved as deeply as Muhammad himself. This was the woman who had raised him as the son she never had, and then became his mother-in-law. Devoted as he was to Muhammad, he had been equally devoted to her. It was clear to him that no matter how many