It would be no exaggeration, therefore, to say that quite soon after Muhammad’s death, those men who took upon themselves the task of interpreting God’s will in the Quran and Muhammad’s will in the hadith—men who were, coincidentally, among the most powerful and wealthy members of the Ummah—were not nearly as concerned with the accuracy of their reports or the objectivity of their exegesis as they were with regaining the financial and social dominance that the Prophet’s reforms had taken from them.
