Lessons from the Inaugural Sermon of Caliph Abu Bakr
By Iqbal Unus
Sep/Oct 2024
These extraordinary times challenge us to commit to a vision anchored in good leadership, to principles and core values that drive its exercise.
Throughout history, societies have prospered or suffered under leaders imposed or chosen by them due to circumstance or the peoples’ will. The everlasting question is how we comprehend leadership as a force for good or evil. What inspires goodness or evil, motivates effectiveness or chaos, undergirds benevolence or oppression?
Fifteen centuries ago, in the nascent Muslim polity, the first elected caliph Abu Bakr al-Siddiq (‘alayhi salam) gave his inaugural address. Each of its few sentences is remarkable, for they convey a fundamental tenet of good leadership pertinent to all groups and situations in which people struggle to accomplish their social goals.
Inaugural Sermon
“O People! I have been put in authority over you, and I am not the best of you. So, if I do the right thing, help me and if I do wrong, then put me straight. Truthfulness is a sacred trust, and lying is a betrayal. The weak amongst you are strong in my sight. I will surely try to remove his pain and suffering. And the strong amongst you is weak to me. I will, Allah willing, realize the right from him fully. No people abandon jihad in the path of God save that He strikes them with humiliation. When obscene things spread among any nation, calamities generally continued to descend upon them. As long as I obey Allah and His Messenger, you should obey me, and if I do not obey Allah and His messenger, then obedience to me is not incumbent upon you. Now stand for the prayer” (Ibn Hashim, “al-Sirah al-Nabawiyah,” 2/661)
It’s important to recognize this khutbah’s solemnity and profound significance. This was the first time that the Muslim polity, so aptly organized by Prophet Muhammad (salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam), would be governed by an ordinary man without the benefit of direct divine revelation. The Prophet had taught and demonstrated how Muslims should live among themselves and in the broader community. Abu Bakr laid down the social contours of how the Muslim polity should be led and governed.
• “I have been put in authority over you, and I am not the best of you.” While the process of Abu Bakr’s selection may not seem consistent with modern election practices, it embodied the central element of consultation among the Muslims unconstrained by the nominee’s undue pressure or demands.
By saying “I have been put in authority over you,” he acknowledged that he had not extracted or usurped authority. His authority was based on legitimacy offered by those who had elected him, leading to his obligation to the rule of law emanating from that legitimacy.
There is universal agreement that Abu Bakr stood tall among the Companions as an individual of character and commitment and was well-deserving of leadership. On that day, he stood before the Muslim community in humility, not pride. He knew that his commission was not to lord it over the people, but to serve them. “I am not the best of you,” was not simply a hollow statement of politeness, but a true rejection of any trace of arrogance.
• “So, if I do the right thing, help me. If I do wrong, then put me straight.” Authority is conferred on a leader to further the public good. Authority misused calls for accountability. Accountability demands willingness to subject oneself to the rule of law, whether it is divine law or the law promulgated by an authority within its domain, or even a law that the ruler establishes for the public good.
Abu Bakr places constraints on his own authority to make and enforce decisions. These decisions must be “right” for the public good and deserving of his followers’ compliance. He would hold himself accountable if he strayed from a shared understanding of what was right, asking his followers, “If I do wrong, then put me straight.”
By emphasizing the people’s right to do so, he referred to an implicit agreement between himself as the leader and the people as followers. In modern parlance, such an agreement is a social contract in which citizens yield their rights to a government in the hope that it will protect the rights they could not protect on their own.
• “Truthfulness is a sacred trust, and lying is a betrayal.” Both justice and stability are related to the value that society places on truth and the extent to which its members adhere to truthfulness. A legislative body cannot make meaningful laws if legislators cannot depend on each other’s truthfulness and of those who contribute information and ideas. Architects cannot design a safe building if they cannot depend on the building materials suppliers’ to design the needed materials truest to their specific requirements. From the narrowest to the broadest, from the least significant to the most consequential, any relationship within a society benefits from its members’ truthfulness.
Abu Bakr characterizes truthfulness as a sacred trust and declares lying to be a betrayal of that trust. To lie is to distort, discredit, or contradict what is true in a manner that facts or reality are ignored or compromised. The true relationship between a leader and his followers cannot be based on lying, if for no other reason than both of them must seek to achieve the same ends.
• “The weak amongst you are strong in my sight. … And the strong amongst you is weak to me.”
Justice rendered without fear or favor to all groups, and to all whom the leader leads and serves, is a fundamental trait of leadership. Just laws, fair policies, and ethical conduct are all hallmarks of a balanced social order. Individuals and groups, strong or weak, expect they will be treated equitably.
The weak suffer from “pain and suffering” caused by oppressive individuals or systems. By describing them as “strong in my sight,” Abu Bakr commits himself to focusing his attention on their plight. The strong may usurp the rights of the weak. By describing them as “weak to me,” Abu Bakr commits himself to extracting the rights so usurped, with no fear or favor.
• “No people abandon jihad in the path of God …” Abu Bakr’s mention of jihad following his reference to justice seems to emphasize that jihad is, in its essence, a desire for justice. A constant struggle, endeavor, confrontation, or fight by just and appropriate means to achieve a better condition (“the path of God”) is what the divine command calls for. In the absence of a response from the Muslim polity, he warns that God will respond by withdrawing the honor that is due to a community of obedience, thus striking them with humiliation.
• “When obscene things spread among any nation ….” Harmonious and peaceful relationships among people demand mutual respect and consideration, leading to decency in behavior toward one another and the community.
Decency and obscenity are contagious. As people respond to decency with decency, people may respond to obscenity with obscenity or numbness to increasing obscenity. Just as a chain is as strong as its weakest link, one or a group of individuals can, by their obscene behavior, weaken the society of which they are a part.
Leaders must act with, promote, expect, and reward decency. They must actively promote decent behavior by example, persuasion, setting expectations, and establishing rules as necessary. To make all that happen, leadership must rest in the hands of decent people.
• “As long as I obey Allah and His messenger, you should obey me, … No individual has absolute power or authority to demand obedience. All kings or emperors, conquerors or autocrats, heads of state or governments have a limit to their demand for obedience. Their right to be obeyed springs from their obedience to the higher authority from whom they derive their right to rule.
Abu Bakr makes the crucial point that he is subject to a higher authority’s command. If he fails to obey, he forfeits his own authority to be obeyed. On the flipside, followers have an obligation, not simply the right, to hold their leaders responsible to be faithful and obedient to the authority above them.
This principle reverberates through all human systems of governance, from ancient to modern. The higher authority may be a different scripture or tradition, or a set of agreements such as a constitution or a set of laws. In a contemporary secular society, for example, governors will be subject to the “rule of law,” where law represents the higher authority that deserves and demands the governors’ obedience before they can demand obedience from those they govern.
• “Now stand for prayer.” Leadership must have a purpose. Leaders must lead their followers to a goal that not only serves their best interest, but also meets their highest ideals. Abu Bakr concluded his inaugural sermon with a call that encapsulated the essence of that purpose.
“Now stand for prayer” affirms that worshipping the Divine is the end goal, the final objective, and the essence of all actions to which Abu Bakr had exhorted the community to commit itself. “Now stand for prayer” in a collective act of worship also binds the ruler and the ruled into a shared compact, surrendering to the sovereignty of one undisputed God of both.
The conscientious exercise of authority, humility, accountability, truthfulness, justice, jihad, decency, sovereignty, and purpose is what Abu Bakr would have us commit to, both the leaders and the led. These are rungs of the ladder and steps on the scaffold as we seek to strengthen our societies, from our neighborhoods to nation states at home and around the world.
These are words that must continue to ring in our ears, now and forever.
Iqbal Unus is the author of “A Caliph for Our Times: How Abu Bakr’s Inaugural Sermon can Transform Leadership Today” (2022).
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