Muhammad's Successor Research Paper

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Who should Muhammad’s successor be? Different opinions on this answer have caused a massive dilemma between Muslims. The prophet Muhammad created the religion of Islam about fourteen hundred years ago, but it eventually split into two groups that share common qualities and disputes on beliefs. The struggle with the different beliefs is still occurring in the world today. Both groups of Muslims are unified by their similar beliefs, yet they are sundered by their disagreements.
To begin, Sunnis (followers of the Sunna) are the first group of Muslims. According to Muhammad’s teachings, all Muslims believe that they have a direct relationship with Allah, which allows them to pray directly to God. Additionally, Sunni Muslims believe that …show more content…

The Shiites believe that the caliphs of Islam should be a descendent of Muhammad, because Muhammad was the messenger of their god, Allah. When the first successor, Abu Bakr, was chosen to be the ruler, the Shiites became furious because he was not a blood relative of Muhammad. One of Muhammad’s daughters, Fatima, was arranged to marry Ali, Muhammad’s cousin. Naturally, because Ali was Muhammad’s cousin and the closest blood relative, many Muslims thought that he was compelled to be the next caliph of Islam. In addition, Shiites thought that Ali should have been caliph because he was spiritually closer to Allah than Abu Bakr and the other caliphs, due to his blood relation. To resolve this conflict, supporters of Ali rose up and terminated caliph Uthman, who ruled at that time. After his men succeeded in killing Uthman, Ali then became the Imam, the Shiites version of a caliph. This title of Imam means “divinely guided successor of Muhammad” in Arabic. As a matter of fact, the Shiites give the Imam the power to rule the Muslims politically and spiritually, unlike the Sunnis’ caliphs. The example of how the Shiites overthrew Uthaman shows an example of how the relations between the two groups were troubled. As you can see, these two different beliefs consequently have many conflicts, but surprisingly, they share some resemblances as

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