caliph and everyone else reportedly followed suit. Even though Ali did not seriously challenged it, the appointment of Uthman was not received well by some quarters of the Muslim community and likely contributed toward the first civil war (). Uthman's reign as the third caliph was marked with nepotism and departure from Islamic piety. He was assassinated by discontented rebels in his residence in 656. Reaction of Ali Ali opposed the decision of the committee, and objected to what he viewed as Ibn Awf's partiality, but reportedly did not challenge the outcome. There are contradictory Sunni accounts about the reaction of Ali to the appointment of Uthman though they all end with his pledge to the new caliph. The ninth-century sources of Keaney are thus willing to include the disagreements between the companions but present them and the community united behind the new caliph in the end. As the reverence for companions gradually became a Sunni dogma, such reports were later dismissed as pro-Alid and largely censored by Sunni authors, even though the authors of these accounts reject the Shia claims and support their Abbasid caliphs. The Shia Nahj al-balagha reports that Ali agreed to go along with the committee's decision "so long as the affairs of [the] Muslims remain intact and there is no oppression in it save on myself." Reza Shah-Kazemi interprets this statement as Ali's tacit approval of the rules of Abu Bakr and Umar, adding that he nevertheless viewed himself as the rightful successor to Muhammad, and gave up his claims to the caliphate for the unity of Islam. In contrast, Hamid Mavani and Maria M. Dakake suggest that Ali viewed the succession of Abu Bakr as a digression which turned into a full-blown deviation with the rebellion of Mu'awiya during his own caliphate. This is also the Shia view, as represented by the Shia jurist Ruhollah Khomeini (). Ali's refusal to follow the precedent of the first two caliphs also became the hallmark of Shia jurisprudence and led to the later development of their independent schools of law. Status quo Laura Veccia Vaglieri () suggests that the caliphate of Ali would have endangered certain well-established interests because he did not view Abu Bakr and Umar as entirely aligned with the Quran and the Sunna. Aslan has a similar opinion, while McHugo adds that Ali would have opened the leadership to the Ansar and others, thus