"Order Abū Bakr to Lead the People"

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) could no longer go out and lead the ṣalāh, so he ordered that Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq should lead the ṣalāh: murū Abā Bakrin fa-l-yuṣalli bi-al-nās — order Abū Bakr to lead the people in prayer (al-Bukhārī 664). ʿĀʾishah did not want her father to lead the ṣalāh, so she said: O Messenger of Allah, Abū Bakr is a very soft-hearted man, and I am afraid that if he stands in your place he will not be able to bear it, and he will not be able to complete the ṣalāh — meaning that if he were in that position, he might become too emotional to continue the ṣalāh. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: murū Abā Bakrin fa-l-yuṣalli bi-al-nās. ʿĀʾishah's objection was repeated. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: murū Abā Bakrin fa-l-yuṣalli bi-al-nās; innakunna ṣawāḥibu Yūsuf — you women are the companions of Yūsuf.

And what the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) meant by that is that the women of Yūsuf showed one thing but were hiding something else. When the wife of al-ʿAzīz invited all of those women to come, she invited them to what was apparently just a gathering; but in reality she wanted them there to see Yūsuf. And ʿĀʾishah's public statement was: my father is a soft-hearted man, so he will not be able to lead the prayer. But in reality, the reason she did not want her father to lead the prayer — and she actually mentions it — she said: the reason I did not want my father to lead the prayer was that the people would dislike him for standing in the place of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). The people were used to having the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) lead them in ṣalāh, and now they would have somebody else, and that might make them dislike the fact that Abū Bakr was in that place. But the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said — in another narration, because it says that ʿUmar led — yaʾbā Allāhu dhālika wa rasūluhu wa al-muʾminūn — Allah does not want that, and the Messenger of Allah does not want that, and the believers do not want that: it is Abū Bakr who must lead the Muslims in ṣalāh (Abū Dāwūd 4660). And this is also an indication that the imām after the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) was Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq, in matters of religion and in matters of the dunyā.