The Sahaba’s Faith in the Quran: A Consideration and Critique of the Theory of the Righteousness of the Sahaba

Since Sunni Muslims do not accept textually implied imamate and caliphate, they propounded the theory of the righteousness of all the Sahaba—Prophet Muhammad’s companions—in order to establish a trust in the media of conveying Islamic doctrines and rulings from the Prophet to the next generations, and they did so by making a recourse to a number of Quranic verses and hadiths. In this article, I adopt a descriptive and analytic method to criticize the theory. The question here is: Are Quranic verses concerning the Sahaba’s faith compatible with the theory of Sahaba’s righteousness? In this article, we consider Quranic verses associated with the theory, such as those regarding forerunners in faith, persistence on faith, the pledge of faith, degrees of faith, false profession of faith, weakness in faith, and giving up the faith. I conclude that the theory of the Sahaba’s righteousness does not rest on a firm ground. In fact, Sahaba were, just like other followers of Islam, susceptible of major sins as demanded by the human creation and personal desires, and some of them actually committed such sins.