With the appointment of the Prophet (PBUH) to his prophetic mission and the ever-increasing culmination and spread of his Divine invitation, some converted to Islam freely out of faith and some others for fear of losing their wealth and power or gaining them after conversion to Islam. Among the second group, there were people with no social rank who gathered around the Prophet (PBUH). In the beginning, they pretended to be obedient to the Prophet (PBUH) but gradually pursued their own whims and gathered fellows and followers to increase their own influence.
After years of planning to gain social rank and winning kinship of the Prophet (PBUH) when they felt signs of appointment of some other one as the Prophet’s successor and leader of the Muslim Ummah after the demise of the Prophet (PBUH), they did their best to neutralize it. After the demise of the Prophet (PBUH) the issue of the leadership of Imam Ali (A.S) fell into oblivion as a result of banning writing or expressing genuine hadiths on the superiority of Imam Ali (A.S), harsh treatment of the true companions of the Prophet (PBUH) and fabrication of false hadiths to destroy the rational and traditional reasons for his imamate.
However, in addition to the hadiths and speeches of the Prophet (PBUH) the explicit and expressing verses of the Holy Qur’an indicated that leadership of Islamic Ummah after the demise of the Prophet (PBUH) belonged to Imam Ali (A.S). One crystal clear example is the Verse of Proclamation in Chapter Maidah. Various evidences suggest that this verse has been revealed exclusively on the leadership of Imam Ali (A.S) as the unquestionable Imam, Caliph and Leader of Islamic Ummah. Any common sense and wise mind will accept this fact if judged fairly free from prejudices.
