Was Abu Bakr Chosen or Appointed?

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

The Sīrah is usually reckoned to end not with the death of the Prophet ﷺ but with the election of Abū Bakr, and this is where the theological divide between Sunnism and Shīʿism begins. So this is not merely a historical question but a religious one: we hold that Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq was the most suitable to be khalīfah, and that this is a matter of religion, not only of politics.

❧Three opinions

Within Sunnī Islam there are three views on how he was chosen. First: the Companions themselves decided upon him, with nothing from the Prophet ﷺ on the political leadership, though all agree he ﷺ named Abū Bakr the best of the Companions in faḍl; some call this the majority view and Ibn Taymiyyah leans to it. Second, from al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and others: the Prophet ﷺ indirectly indicated Abū Bakr, nothing explicit, but not neutral either; there are hints, ishārāt. Third, held by Ibn Ḥazm of Andalus (the shaykh could find scarcely another name for it): the Prophet ﷺ explicitly commanded that Abū Bakr be khalīfah, the exact mirror of the Shīʿī claim about ʿAlī, a small minority view. In truth the first two are not mutually exclusive: if the aḥādīth make Abū Bakr the greatest, is that not itself an indication he should lead? So they collapse into one, the Prophet ﷺ did not explicitly name him, but left indications enough that the Companions understood.

❧The Qurʾanic indications

Scholars later sought Qurʾānic evidences for Abū Bakr's khilāfah, some strained, like al-Shanqīṭī deriving it by a long chain from al-Fātiḥah. Two carry real weight. The first is ثَانِيَ اثْنَيْنِ إِذْ هُمَا فِي الْغَارِ, the second of the two in the cave: if Abū Bakr is "the second of two," then when the first is gone the second stands in his place; and khalīfah itself, from khalafa, means precisely the one who takes over when another departs. The second is Sūrat al-Tawbah 100, وَالسَّابِقُونَ الْأَوَّلُونَ مِنَ الْمُهَاجِرِينَ وَالْأَنْصَارِ, the foremost, the first, of the Muhājirūn and then the Anṣār: and the first adult male convert of the Muhājirūn was Abū Bakr.

❧The dreams and predictions

The aḥādīth are many. In al-Bukhārī, the Prophet ﷺ dreamt he drew water from a well as long as Allah willed; then Abū Bakr drew a bucket or two with some weakness in it; then ʿUmar took it and it became a great bucket, and he ﷺ said he had never seen a man work as masterfully, an ʿabqarī, as ʿUmar, until the people watered their camels to their fill. The symbolism is plain: Abū Bakr carried on the work a year or two, with some jerkiness, not his fault, for the Ridda wars nearly tore the Ummah apart and he salvaged it, and then ʿUmar turned the well into a river, his conquests unequalled in fourteen centuries, wiping the Sassanid empire off the earth as though كَأَنْ لَمْ تَغْنَ بِالْأَمْسِ.

Also in al-Bukhārī: a woman was told to return for aid, and asked what if she did not find him ﷺ, and he said, if you do not find me, go to Abū Bakr; the context is money, but the wording is broad, and Ibn Ḥajar reads it as evidence the khilāfah was to be his. In al-Tirmidhī: اقْتَدُوا بِاللَّذَيْنِ مِنْ بَعْدِي أَبِي بَكْرٍ وَعُمَرَ, follow the two after me, Abū Bakr and ʿUmar. In Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, the glad tidings of Jannah carried to Abū Bakr, then ʿUmar, then ʿUthmān, the last "after trials he will face"; and the report of the Prophet ﷺ sitting at the well with Abū Bakr and ʿUmar beside him while ʿUthmān, finding no room, sat apart. And the Companion's dream, affirmed by the Prophet's ﷺ silence, of a scale from heaven weighing him ﷺ heavier than Abū Bakr, Abū Bakr heavier than ʿUmar, ʿUmar heavier than ʿUthmān, the same order, exactly as it came to pass.

❧The decisive sign, and why he did not simply say it

But for Sunnī Islam the strongest indication is the ṣalāh: on his deathbed, feverish and barely conscious, he ﷺ insisted Abū Bakr lead the prayer, and when ʿUmar once began he had him stopped, فَيَأْبَى اللَّهُ وَرَسُولُهُ إِلَّا أَبَا بَكْرٍ, Allah and His Messenger refuse anyone but Abū Bakr, never having ordered another to lead while he lived and was in the masjid. And in his last sermon from the minbar he ordered every door into the masjid shut but the door of Abū Bakr.

Why then not say outright, "when I die let Abū Bakr be khalīfah"? The strongest answer is that he ﷺ did not wish to make it binding that every ruler must name his successor. Had he decreed it, it would have become wājib; instead he left the door open, and so the four rightly-guided caliphs each did differently, Abū Bakr named ʿUmar; ʿUmar named a council of six; ʿUthmān named no one and the people chose ʿAlī. All are lawful. Naming one's own son is the least encouraged, it does not invalidate a caliphate, or there would have been none since the Umayyads, and it was Muʿāwiyah, the last of the Companions to rule, who for a maṣlaḥah he judged opened that door; lawful, jāʾiz, but not the best. So the Prophet ﷺ indicated without commanding, and left the matter open.