that continues to this day. All the Muslims opposed him until he was killed, and they censured his actions. They said to him:

You were absent from Badr, fled on the day of Uhud, and did not attend the Pledge of al-Ridwān. The reports concerning this (1) are too numerous to count.”

The response is as follows:

Alī’s deputies betrayed and disobeyed him to a greater extent than Uthmān’s officials betrayed and disobeyed him. Indeed, people have written books about those whom Alī appointed (2), only for them to take the money and betray him, and about those who abandoned him and went over to Muāwiya. Alī—may Allah be pleased with him—appointed Ziyād ibn Abī Sufyān, the father of Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyād, who killed al-Husayn. He also appointed al-Ashtar al-Nakhaī, Muhammad ibn Abī Bakr, and others like them.

No rational person doubts that Muāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān—may Allah be pleased with him—was better than all of them.

What is astonishing is that the Shiites criticize Uthmān for something they claim Alī did to an even greater extent than Uthmān. They say:

“Uthmān appointed his relatives from Banū Umayya.” Yet it is well known that Alī appointed relatives from both his father’s and his mother’s sides, such as Abd Allah and Ubayd Allah, the two sons of al-Abbās. He appointed Ubayd Allah [ibn al-Abbās] (3) over Yemen, and Qutham ibn al-Abbās over Mecca and al-Tāif.

As for Medina, it is said that he appointed Sahl ibn Hunayf over it. It is also said that he appointed Thumāma ibn al-Abbās. As for Basra, he appointed Abd Allah ibn al-Abbās over it. Over Egypt, he appointed his stepson Muhammad ibn Abī Bakr, whom he had raised in his own household.

Then the Imamis claim that Alī explicitly designated his children for the caliphate, or that he designated