Kharijites

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Kharijites (Arabic Khawārij خوارج, literally "Those who Go Out) is a general term embracing various Muslims who, while initially supporting the caliphate of the fourth and final Rightly Guided Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib, later rejected him. They first emerged in the late 7th century AD, concentrated in today's southern Iraq, and are distinct from the Sunnis and Shiites.

Whereas the Shiites believed that the imamate (leadership) was the sole right of the house of Ali, the Kharijites insisted that any pious and able Muslim could be a leader of the Muslim community. And whereas the Sunnis believed that the imam's impiousness did not, by itself, justify sedition, the Kharijites insisted on the right to revolt against any ruler who deviated from the example of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the first two Caliphs. From this essentially political position, the Kharijites developed a variety of theological and legal doctrines that further set them apart from both Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims.

Kharijites were also known historically as the Shurat, meaning "those who have sold their souls to God", which, unlike the term "Kharijite", was one that many Kharijites used to describe themselves. The only surviving group, the Ibāḍī of Oman, Zanzibar and North Africa, reject the "Kharijite" appellation and refer to themselves as ahl al-'adl wal istiqama ("people of justice and uprightness").

Origin

The origin of Kharijism lies in the first Islamic civil war: a struggle for political supremacy over the Muslim community in the years following the death of Muhammad. The third Caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, was killed by mutineers in 656 AD, and a struggle for succession ensued between Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, and Muāwiyah, Governor of Damascus and cousin of Uthman. According to John Esposito, they were the first radical dissent in Islam who combined "a rigorous puritanism and religious fundamentalism with an exclusivist egalitarianism".

In 658, Alī's forces met Muāwiyah's at the Battle of Siffin. Initially, the battle went against Muāwiyah. At the edge of defeat Muāwiyah directed his army to hoist Qur'āns on their lances. This initiated discord among some of those who were in ˤAlī's army. Muāwiyah wanted to put the dispute between the two sides to arbitration in accordance with the Quran. A group of ˤAlī's army mutinied, demanding that ˤAlī agree to Muāwiyah's proposal. As a result, ˤAlī reluctantly presented his own representative for arbitration. The mutineers, however, put forward Abu Musa al-Ash'ari against Alī's wishes. Muāwiyah put forward Amr Ibn Al-As. Abu Musa al-Ash'ari was convinced by Amr to pronounce Alī's removal as caliph even though Ali's caliphate was not meant to be the issue of concern in the arbitration. The mutineers saw the turn of events as a fundamental betrayal of principle, especially since they had initiated it; a large group of them (traditionally believed to be 12,000, mainly from Banu Hanifah and Banu Tamim tribes)repudiated ˤAlī. Citing the verse, "No rule but God's", an indication that a caliph is not a representative of God, this group turned on both ˤAlī and Muˤāwiya, opposing Muˤāwiya's rebellion against whom they considered to be the rightful caliph, and opposing ˤAlī's subjecting his legitimate authority to arbitration. They became known as Kharijites: Arabic plural khawārij, singular Khārijī, derived from the verb kharaja "come out, leave the fold''.

ˤAlī quickly divided his troops and ordered them to catch the dissenters before they reach major cities and disperse among the population. Ali's cousin, Abdullah ibn Abbas, managed to persuade a number of Kharijites to return to ˤAlī. ˤAlī defeated the remaining rebels in the Battle of Nahrawan in 658 but some Kharijites survived and, in 661, ultimately assassinated ˤAlī. They are said to have organized simultaneous attempts against Muˤāwiya and ˤAmr as well, as the three men were in their view the main sources of strife within the Muslim community, but were only successful in assassinating Ali.

Beliefs and practices

Kharijite theology was a form of radical extremism, preaching uncompromising observance of the teachings of the Qur'an in defiance of corrupt authorities. They preached absolute equality of the faithful, in opposition to the aristocracy of the Quraysh which had grown more pronounced under the Umayyad Caliphate. They spread their views by violent conflict, which they considered to be a righteous jihad (struggle) and the sixth pillar of Islam.

They believed that anybody who commits a grave sin is no longer a Muslim and is subject to excommunication, warfare and death unless the person repented. They believed that the leader of the Muslim community can be any good Muslim, even a slave, provided that he had the community support, in contrast to the dominant opinion among Muslims at the time that the ruler should be a member of Muhammad's tribe, the Quraysh. Having a strong emphasis on the need to depose unjust rulers and believing that the current leaders of the Muslim community were guilty of grave sins, they withdrew themselves from the rest of the Muslim community, started camping together and waged war against their perceived enemies. They believed that they are the people of God fighting against the people of evil.

Azraqī

The most extreme were the Azraqīs or Azariqah, founded in Persia in 685 by . These pronounced Takfir on all other Muslims, considering them to be Kuffar ('unbelievers') who could be killed with impunity. Their distinctive practices included:

A test of sincerity (إمتحان "examination") required of each new recruit, in which the neophyte was required to cut the throat of a captive enemy.
Religious murder (إستعراض "demonstration"), not only of men, but also of their wives and children (the killing of non-combatants is disallowed in Islam)

They regarded the territory occupied by other Muslims as part of Dar al-Kufr,the territory of unbelief where it was permitted to attack both people and goods - but also a territory from which one must exile oneself, as Muhammad had exiled himself from Mecca to escape the unbelievers there.

Sufrī

Less brutal was the Sufri sect, founded by Ziyād ibnu l-Asfar in an environment hostile to Kharijism. These condemned political murder, adhered the practice of taqiyya, and rejected the massacre of the unbelievers' children. They considered Sura 12 to be not truly part of the Qur'an.

Najdat

The Najdat were the followers of Najdah ibn 'Amir, of Bani Hanifa, who established a Kharijite state in al-Yamamah (east-central Arabia). Like the Sufris, Najdah had split from the Azraqi movement over the issues of the killing of the enemy's women and children and over the status of those who refuse to join in battle, as the Azraqis believed that whoever stayed behind had become an unbeliever.

Ibādī

A third sect, the Ibādīs, developed further than the others. Founded by ˤAbdullāh ibn-Ibād, they maintained attitudes of political intransigence and moral rigor. They were, however, more flexible in their dealings with other Muslims - for example, they would not attack without first extending an invitation to join.

Harūrīyya

The branch founded by Habib ibn-Yazīd al-Harūrī held that it was permissible to entrust the imamate to a woman if she was able to carry out the required duties. The founder's wife, Ghazāla al-Harūriyya, commanded troops; in this she followed the example of Juwayriyya, daughter of Abu Sufyan, at the battle of Yarmuk. In one battle, she put the famous Umayyad general Hajjāj ibn-Yūsuf to flight.

History

The high point of the Kharijites' influence was in the years 690-730 around Basra in south Iraq, which was always a center of Sunni theology. Kharijite ideology was a popular creed for rebels against the officially Sunni Caliphate, inspiring breakaway states and rebellions (like Maysara's) throughout the Maghrib and sometimes elsewhere.

The Azraqī revolted against the Caliphate in 685 after separating from the Ibādī near Basra and departing for Fars. They were suppressed by Abd al-Malik's armies, under the command of Amir al-Hajjaj; their leader was killed, and by 699 they had vanished. Another revolt occurred in 695; Sunni traditions underline the massacre of Muslims at a mosque in Kufa as an example of Kharijite fury and brutality. Agitations such as these fatally weakened the Ummayad caliphate and paved the way for its overthrow by the Abbasids.

During this period, the Najdat, led by Najdah ibn 'Amir, established a state in al-Yamamah, in central Arabia, and annexed the eastern Arabian region of Bahrayn, including al-Qatif. Najdah also moved westwards and captured the city of Taif, south of Mecca, and was only dissuaded from taking Mecca and Medina by Abdullah ibn Umar, the son of the second Muslim caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, who was particularly revered by the Kharijites. Najdah was assassinated by some of his followers in 692, and the Najdat movement quickly disintegrated thereafter.

From the beginning of the Arab conquest of the Maghreb, the Kharijites sent representatives to join the local Berber population. The Berbers, used to a communal system of government and opposed to Arab domination, found in Kharijism an ideological framework for rebellion. In the last years of the Umayyad dynasty, the western part of the Islamic empire escaped from the central authority; Spain came under the rule of the Umayyad emirs of Cordoba, while several independent states were founded in the Maghrib.

A Sufrī community from southern Tunisia captured Kairouan in 755, at the price of fearful massacres. The Ibādī of Jebel Nafusa, outraged by the excesses of their rival sect, took the city and wiped out its Sufrī population. They proclaimed an imamate c. 757, founding a state which would cover parts of Tripolitania and Ifriqiya before it was conquered by Abbasid armies in 761. Among the leaders of this state was Abd ar-Rahman ibn Rustam, a Persian convert who would later found the Rustamid dynasty at Tahert.

Around the same time, a Sufri kingdom was founded in Tlemcen (western Algeria). Berber Sufrī from the tribe of Meknasa established the Midrarid state at Sijilmassa on the eastern slope of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. Abū Qurra, a Sufrī of the Ifren tribe of Tlemcen, reconquered Ifriqiya from the Arabs in 771.

The region stabilized in 778, when ibn Rustam made a peace treaty with the Abbasid governor of Kairouan, and remained so until the arrival of the Fatimids in 909.

Modern times

The Ibadis have survived into the present day, though they now reject the designation "Kharijite". They form a significant part of the population of Oman (where they first settled in 686), and there are smaller concentrations of them in the Mzab of Algeria, Jerba in Tunisia, Jebel Nafusa in Libya, and Zanzibar.

In modern times, Muslim scholars and governments have called terrorist groups which emphasize the practice of Takfir and justify the killing of innocent people as the new Kharijites; notable examples of groups described as such include the Groupe Islamique Armée of Algeria and the Takfir wal-Hijra group of Egypt.

References

External links

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Last updated on Thursday March 13, 2008 at 10:08:01 PDT (GMT -0700)
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