ألا إِنَّ فيهِ عِلمَ ما يَأتي وَالحَديثَ عَنِ الماضي ودَواءَ دائِكُم ونَظمَ ما بَينَكُم... .“Verily, in it [the Qur'ān] there is the knowledge of the future, the accounts of the past, the remedy to your maladies, and (what brings) order of your affairs.”1
He would continuously advise his administrators to attempt to maintain administrative discipline and not to forget orderliness in affairs, doing whatever they plan to in its due time and not wasting their time in disorder and confusion.
5. Appointment of Competent and Capable Administrators
Administrators are the executive arms of the rulers and they are the agents of establishing justice and spreading the law in society. Their competence, capability, steadfastness and behavioral soundness have doubtlessly the most effective function in organizing the society in its various dimensions. Therefore, from the perspective of Imām Ali (a.s.), in the appointing of administrators, competence and merits must be the criteria, rather than kinship or any kind of social relations. ‘Meritocracy’ is the quintessence of appointment in Imām Ali’s (a.s.) politics. Moral competence, nobility, expertise and capability should be the criteria for the appointments, and not kinship, or any kind of causal, factional, and sectarian relations, particularly if they are with political motivations( and void of truth).
The Imām maintains that, directors and officials do not have the right to grant governmental posts to people on the basis of familial or political relations. They do not have the permission to consign people’s affairs to those who do not come from a noble and righteous family; they are not privileged to assign those who are far from moral virtues and good disposition. They cannot employ those who do not possess the proper expertise and necessary cheerfulness in performing executive jobs. He (a.s.) viewed the job of an administrator as a ‘trust’ that should not be consigned to anyone but a trustworthy person.
6. Providing the Administrators with Their Financial Needs
Imām believed that the administrators must enjoy sufficient remuneration. According to Imām Ali (a.s.), in preventing 0the
