Documents of the Right Word

gathered around himself all the Umayyads living in Medîna.
Upon this the Hashimites took up arms to fight them. So hadrat
Huseyn, advised by Abû Hureyra ‘radiy-Allâhu anhumâ’, took his
brother to the cemetery of Bâkî’, thus preventing a tumult. Sa’îd
bin Âs, the governor of Medîna, who was an Umayyad, attended
the funeral. As it was customary, he conducted the namâz of
janâza.
Another writer who criticizes hadrat ’Uthmân ‘radiy-Allâhu
anh’ is an Egyptian named Sayyed Qutb, whose style of criticism
betrays the fact that he was misled by the Hurûfî publications.
This man, who is being represented as an Islamic scholar, a
mujtahid, and whose books are being translated into Turkish (and
English) and proposed to the younger generation by a certain
group of people, calumniates this blessed Khalîfa, who is loved
very much by Muslims, through a very sordid and profane
language in the hundred and eighty-sixth and later pages of his
book Al-adâlat-ul-Ijtimâ’iy-yat-u-fi-l-islâm, printed in 1377 (A.D.
1958). Our Islamic education would not let us quote all his
slanders. We shall therefore translate only a few lines from a few
pages:
“’Uthmân’s taking the office of caliphate at such an old age was
an unfortunate event. He was incapable of administering Muslims’
matters. He was vulnerable to Merwân’s tricks and to the
stratagems of Umayyads. He spent Muslims’ property in a
haphazard way. This conduct of his was often a subject of common
gossip. He appointed his relatives to positions to preside over the
people. Among them was Hakem, who had been dismissed by
Rasûlullah. When he married his son to the daughter of this man’s
son Hâris, he gave them two hundred dirhams as a gift from the
Bayt-ul-mâl. The following morning the treasurer of Bayt-ul-mâl
Zeyd bin Erqam came to him, weeping, and asked to be dismissed
from office. Realizing that Zeyd decided to resign because he
(hadrat ’Uthmân) was transferring property from the Bayt-ul-mâl
to his relatives, he asked him, ‘Are you weeping because I am
doing favours to my relatives?’ ‘No,’ was Zeyd’s answer. ‘I am
weeping because I think you are taking these things in return for
the property you donated for the sake of Allah when Rasûlullah
was alive.’ Angered by this answer, ’Uthmân said, ‘Leave the keys
belonging to the Bayt-ul-mâl and go! I shall find someone else.’
There are many other events exemplifying ’Uthmân’s
extravagance. He gave six hundred thousand dirhams to Zubeyr,
two hundred thousand to Talha, and one - fifth of the taxes
– 228 –