Mazhamddin Siddiqi

In his book Development of Islamic State and Society, Mazharuddin Siddiqi observes:

"There were too many interests to be reconciled, the Ansar against the Muhajreen; the Hashimite against the Umayyads; the bedouin tribes against the aristocracy of Madina. In a democratic set up which did not provide for a regular constitutional machinery with well defined rights and duties, everything depended on the personal quality of the ruler. Uthman would have succeeded if he had been a dictator either temperamentally or constitutionally, or if there had been an adequate constitutional machinery behind the social democracy of Islam. But it was clearly a dangerous solution to have democratic liberties such as the Arabs had without a strong hand like Umar, or without a full fledged democratic constitution which was inconceivable in an age like that or in a country like Arabia."