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Despite the notion of a unified and consolidated community, as taught by the Prophet Muhammad, serious differences arose within the Muslim community immediately after his death. According to the Sunnis—the traditionalist faction whose followers now constitute the majority branch of Islam—the Prophet had designated no successor. Thus, the Muslims at Medina decided to elect a chief. Two of Muhammad’s fathers-in-law, who were highly respected early converts as well as trusted lieutenants, prevailed upon the Medinans to elect a leader who would be accepted by the Quraysh, Muhammad’s tribe, and the choice fell upon Abū Bakr, father of the Prophet’s favoured wife, ʿĀʾishah. All of this occurred before the Prophet’s burial (under the floor of ʿĀʾishah’s hut, alongside the courtyard of the mosque).
According to the Shiʿah, however, the Prophet had designated as his successor his son-in-law ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, husband of his daughter Fāṭimah and father of his only surviving grandsons, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn. His preference was general knowledge. Yet, while ʿAlī and the Prophet’s closest kinsmen were preparing the body for burial, Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and Abū ʿUbaydah, from Muhammad’s companions in the Quraysh tribe, met with the leaders of the Medinans and agreed to elect the aging Abū Bakr as the successor (khalīfah, hence “caliph”) of the Prophet. ʿAlī and his kinsmen were dismayed but agreed for the sake of unity to accept the fait accompli because ʿAlī was still young.
After the murder of ʿUthmān, the third caliph, ʿAlī was invited by the Muslims at Medina to accept the caliphate. Thus, ʿAli became the fourth caliph (656–661), but the disagreement over his right of succession brought about a major schism in Islam, between the Shiʿah—those loyal to ʿAlī—and the Sunni “traditionalists.” Athough their differences were in the first instance political, arising out of the question of leadership, theological differences developed over time.
The Khārijites
During the reign of the third caliph, ʿUthmān, certain rebellious groups accused the caliph of nepotism and misrule, and the resulting discontent led to his assassination. The rebels then recognized the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, ʿAlī, as ruler but later deserted him and fought against him, accusing him of having committed a grave sin in submitting his claim to the caliphate to arbitration. The name Khārijite (khārijī) is derived from the word khārajū, meaning “to withdraw,” because the Khārijites withdrew (by active dissent or rebellion) from a state of affairs they considered to be gravely impious.
The basic doctrine of the Khārijites was that a person or a group who committed a grave error or sin and did not sincerely repent ceased to be Muslim. Mere profession of the faith—“there is no god but God; Muhammad is the prophet of God”—did not make a person a Muslim unless this faith was accompanied by righteous deeds. In other words, good works were an integral part of faith and not extraneous to it. The second principle that flowed from their aggressive idealism was militancy, or jihad, which the Khārijites considered to be among the cardinal principles, or pillars, of Islam. Contrary to the orthodox view, they interpreted the Qurʾānic command about “enjoining good and forbidding evil” to mean the vindication of truth through the sword. The placing of these two principles together made the Khārijites highly inflammable fanatics, intolerant of almost any established political authority. They incessantly resorted to rebellion and, as a result, were virtually wiped out during the first two centuries of Islam.
Because the Khārijites believed that the basis of rule was righteous character and piety alone, any Muslim, irrespective of race, colour, and sex, could, in their view, become ruler—provided he or she satisfied the conditions of piety. This was in contrast to the claims of the Shiʿah (the party of Muhammad’s son-in-law, ʿAlī) that the ruler must belong to the family of the Prophet and in contrast to the doctrine of the Sunnis (followers of the Prophet’s way) that the head of state must belong to the Prophet’s tribe, the Quraysh.
A moderate group of the Khārijites, the Ibāḍīs, avoided extinction, and its members are to be found today in North Africa and in Oman and in parts of East Africa, including the island of Zanzibar. The Ibāḍīs do not believe in aggressive methods and, throughout medieval Islam, remained dormant. Because of the interest of 20th-century Western scholars in the sect, the Ibāḍīs became active and began to publish their classical writings and their own journals.
Although Khārijism is now essentially a story of the past, the reaction against it left a permanent influence on Islam. It forced the religious leadership of the community to formulate a bulwark against religious intolerance and fanaticism. Positively, it has influenced reform movements, which sprang up in Islam from time to time and treated spiritual and moral placidity and status quo with a quasi-Khārijite zeal and militancy.
The Muʿtazilah
The question of whether good works are an integral part of faith or independent of it, as raised by the Khārijites, led to another important theological question: Are human acts the result of a free human choice, or are they predetermined by God? This question brought with it a whole series of questions about the nature of God and of human nature. Although the initial impetus to theological thought, in the case of the Khārijites, had come from within Islam, full-scale religious speculation resulted from the contact and confrontation of Muslims with other cultures and systems of thought.
As a consequence of translations of Greek philosophical and scientific works into Arabic during the 8th and 9th centuries and the controversies of Muslims with dualists (e.g., gnostics and Manichaeans), Buddhists, and Christians, a more powerful movement of rational theology emerged. Its representatives are called the Muʿtazilah (literally “those who stand apart,” a reference to the fact that they dissociated themselves from extreme views of faith and infidelity). On the question of the relationship of faith to works, the Muʿtazilah—who called themselves “champions of God’s unity and justice”—taught, like the Khārijites, that works were an essential part of faith but that a person guilty of a grave sin, unless he repented, was neither a Muslim nor yet a non-Muslim but occupied a “middle ground.” They further defended the position, as a central part of their doctrine, that human beings were free to choose and act and were, therefore, responsible for their actions. Divine predestination of human acts, they held, was incompatible with God’s justice and human responsibility. The Muʿtazilah, therefore, recognized two powers, or actors, in the universe—God in the realm of nature and humanity in the domain of moral human action.
The Muʿtazilah explained away the apparently predeterministic verses of the Qurʾān as being metaphors and exhortations. They claimed that human reason, independent of revelation, was capable of discovering what is good and what is evil, although revelation corroborated the findings of reason. Human beings would, therefore, be under moral obligation to do the right even if there were no prophets and no divine revelation. Revelation has to be interpreted, therefore, in conformity with the dictates of rational ethics. Yet revelation is neither redundant nor passive. Its function is twofold. First, its aim is to aid humanity in choosing the right, because in the conflict between good and evil human beings often falter and make the wrong choice against their rational judgment. God, therefore, must send prophets, for he must do the best for humanity; otherwise, the demands of divine grace and mercy cannot be fulfilled. Secondly, revelation is also necessary to communicate the positive obligations of religion—e.g., prayers and fasting—which cannot be known without revelation.
God is viewed by the Muʿtazilah as pure Essence, without eternal attributes, because they hold that the assumption of eternal attributes in conjunction with Essence will result in a belief in multiple coeternals and violate God’s pure, unadulterated unity. God knows, wills, and acts by virtue of his Essence and not through attributes of knowledge, will, and power. Nor does he have an eternal attribute of speech, of which the Qurʾān and other earlier revelations were effects; the Qurʾān was, therefore, created in time and was not eternal.
The promises of reward that God has made in the Qurʾān to righteous people and the threats of punishment he has issued to evildoers must be carried out by him on the Day of Judgment, for promises and threats are viewed as reports about the future; if not fulfilled exactly, those reports will turn into lies, which are inconceivable of God. Also, if God were to withhold punishment for evil and forgive it, this would be as unjust as withholding reward for righteousness. There can be neither undeserved punishment nor undeserved reward; otherwise, good may just as well turn into evil and evil into good. From this position it follows that there can be no intercession on behalf of sinners.
When, in the early 9th century, the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Maʾmūn raised Muʿtazilism to the status of the state creed, the Muʿtazilah rationalists showed themselves to be illiberal and persecuted their opponents. Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (died 855), an eminent orthodox figure and founder of one of the four orthodox schools of Islamic law, was subjected to flogging and imprisonment for his refusal to subscribe to the doctrine that the Qurʾān, the word of God, was created in time.
Sunnism
In the 10th century a reaction began against the Muʿtazilah that culminated in the formulation and subsequent general acceptance of another set of theological propositions, which became Sunni, or “orthodox,” theology. The issues raised by these early schisms and the positions adopted by them enabled the Sunni orthodoxy to define its own doctrinal positions in turn. Much of the content of Sunni theology was, therefore, supplied by its reactions to those schisms. The term sunnah, which means a “well-trodden path” and in the religious terminology of Islam normally signifies “the example set by the Prophet,” in the present context simply means the traditional and well-defined way. In this context, the term sunnah usually is accompanied by the appendage “the consolidated majority” (al-jamāʿah). The term clearly indicates that the traditional way is the way of the consolidated majority of the community as against peripheral or “wayward” positions of sectarians, who by definition must be erroneous.
The way of the majority
With the rise of the orthodoxy, then, the foremost and elemental factor that came to be emphasized was the notion of the majority of the community. The concept of the community so vigorously pronounced by the earliest doctrine of the Qurʾān gained both a new emphasis and a fresh context with the rise of Sunnism. Whereas the Qurʾān had marked out the Muslim community from other communities, Sunnism now emphasized the views and customs of the majority of the community in contradistinction to peripheral groups. An abundance of tradition (Hadith) came to be attributed to the Prophet to the effect that Muslims must follow the majority’s way, that minority groups are all doomed to hell, and that God’s protective hand is always on (the majority of) the community, which can never be in error. Under the impact of the new Hadith, the community, which had been charged by the Qurʾān with a mission and commanded to accept a challenge, now became transformed into a privileged one that was endowed with infallibility.
Tolerance of diversity
At the same time, while condemning schisms and branding dissent as heretical, Sunnism developed the opposite trend of accommodation, catholicity, and synthesis. A putative tradition of the Prophet that says “differences of opinion among my community are a blessing” was given wide currency. This principle of toleration ultimately made it possible for diverse sects and schools of thought—notwithstanding a wide range of difference in belief and practice—to recognize and coexist with each other. No group may be excluded from the community unless it itself formally renounces Islam. As for individuals, tests of heresy may be applied to their beliefs, but, unless a person is found to flagrantly violate or deny the unity of God or expressly negate the prophethood of Muhammad, such tests usually have no serious consequences. Catholicity was orthodoxy’s answer to the intolerance and secessionism of the Khārijites and the severity of the Muʿtazilah. As a consequence, a formula was adopted in which good works were recognized as enhancing the quality of faith but not as entering into the definition and essential nature of faith. This broad formula saved the integrity of the community at the expense of moral strictness and doctrinal uniformity.
On the question of free will, Sunni orthodoxy attempted a synthesis between human responsibility and divine omnipotence. The champions of orthodoxy accused the Muʿtazilah of quasi-Magian dualism (Zoroastrianism) insofar as the Muʿtazilah admitted two independent and original actors in the universe: God and human beings. To the orthodox it seemed blasphemous to hold that humanity could act wholly outside the sphere of divine omnipotence, which had been so vividly portrayed by the Qurʾān but which the Muʿtazilah had endeavoured to explain away in order to make room for humanity’s free and independent action.
Influence of al-Ashʿarī and al-Māturīdī
The Sunni formulation, however, as presented by al-Ashʿarī and al-Māturīdī, Sunni’s two main representatives in the 10th century, shows palpable differences despite basic uniformity. Al-Ashʿarī taught that human acts were created by God and acquired by humans and that human responsibility depended on this acquisition. He denied, however, that humanity could be described as an actor in a real sense. Al-Māturīdī, on the other hand, held that although God is the sole Creator of everything, including human acts, nevertheless, a human being is an actor in the real sense, for acting and creating were two different types of activity involving different aspects of the same human act.
In conformity with their positions, al-Ashʿarī believed that a person did not have the power to act before he actually acted and that God created this power in him at the time of action; and al-Māturīdī taught that, before an action is taken, a person has a certain general power for action but that this power becomes specific to a particular action only when the action is performed, because, after full and specific power comes into existence, action cannot be delayed.
Al-Ashʿarī and his school also held that human reason was incapable of discovering good and evil and that acts became endowed with good or evil qualities through God’s declaring them to be such. Because humanity in its natural state regards its own self-interest as good and that which thwarts this self-interest as bad, natural human reason is unreliable. Independently of revelation, therefore, murder would not be bad nor the saving of life good. Furthermore, because God’s Will makes acts good or bad, one cannot ask for reasons behind the divine law, which must be simply accepted. Al-Māturīdī takes an opposite position, not materially different from that of the Muʿtazilah: human reason is capable of finding out good and evil, and revelation aids human reason against the sway of human passions.
Despite these important initial differences between the two main Sunni schools of thought, the doctrines of al-Māturīdī became submerged in course of time under the expanding popularity of the Ashʿarite school, which gained wide currency particularly after the 11th century because of the influential activity of the Sufi theologian al-Ghazālī. Because these later theologians placed increasing emphasis on divine omnipotence at the expense of the freedom and efficacy of the human will, a deterministic outlook on life became characteristic of Sunni Islam—reinvigorated by the worldview of Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, which taught that nothing exists except God, whose being is the only real being. This general deterministic outlook produced, in turn, a severe reformist reaction in the teachings of Ibn Taymiyyah, a 14th-century theologian who sought to rehabilitate human freedom and responsibility and whose influence has been strongly felt through the reform movements in the Muslim world since the 18th century.
