Episode 10: Othman in the public eye

The quasi-political system devised by the Arabs to manage the community’s affairs was hastily put together and it mixed tribal norms and islamic ethics haphazardly. The pitfalls of the caliphate were numerous, and Omar’s many changes during his reign were aimed at addressing some of them. Othman’s reign was not marked with any such prophylactic foresight; his rule instead strained the authority of the caliph, one of the many undefined pitfalls of the caliphate as a political system. The tension between the tribal and islamic cultural forces acting on the Arabs begins to flare, and once invisible cracks within the Umma slide into view.