The beginning of divisions within the Islamic community (the Ummah) can be attributed to two main causes:  first, the early and unexpected death of Muhammad, and the fact that he had not chosen a successor, and this of course led to political maneuvering on the part of his followers to see who would control the destiny of the fledgling religion, soon to be a world empire, that he had founded; second, the differing theological views of Muhammad's followers as it concerned the concept of authority within the community and how that authority was to be exercised.  In addition to theological questions about the exercise and limits of authority, there were other pressing theological topics, including, but not limited to, qualifications for membership in the community, the extent of commitment to the moral principles of the faith particularly on the part of leaders in the community, and the difficult question of the extent to which God predetermines (qadar) events and whether man acts freely.

          With Muhammad's death several leading members of the community, including several close companions of the prophet, acted quickly in order to try to avoid divisions among believers which they recognized would ultimately have undermined the new religion.  Abu Bakr was chosen as the first Caliph, and with this done unity was preserved, though a future problem in reference to the succession was already present, because some of the followers of Muhammad believed that Ali, Muhammad's son-in-law and cousin, should have been chosen as Caliph.  With the death of Abu Bakr in A.D. 634 a shura council was called which chose Umar as the next Caliph.  Umar ruled from A.D. 634 to 644. 

          In A.D. 644 Umar was assassinated by a Christian and Uthman was chosen to succeeded him, but this choice was not popular with everyone, because Uthman came from the Quraysh tribe, which had initially resisted Muhammad and his religious message.  It is important to note that Uthman was a companion of Muhammad's and was also an early convert.  Uthman was assassinated by a group of Muslim soldiers from Egypt in A.D. 656 and after this occurred Ali became Caliph.  Although it is unlikely that Ali had anything to do with the assassination, he did protect the men who had assassinated Uthman and in doing this he alienated a powerful group within the Muslim community.  The Uthmaniyyah (a group including such notables as:  A'isha, one of Muhammad's wives; Zubayr; and others) demanded that the men who murdered Uthman be turned over to the Umayyad family for justice (the law of revenge), but of course Ali refused, and civil war broke out.  Those opposing Ali were led by Mu'awyya, a cousin of Uthman, and the representative head of the Umayyad family.  These events led to the first divisions within the Muslim community, and the eventual establishment of the Umayyad dynasty as the ruling family of the new Islamic empire.

          The Kharijite sect began after Ali, the fourth Caliph, agreed to arbitrate his dispute with Mu'awiyya the cousin of the murdered Caliph Uthman.  The Kharijites who had been aligned with Ali in the war, seceded from the party (shi'at) of Ali and decided to go their own way.  They held that Ali had betrayed the cause of justice by agreeing to arbitrate the dispute with Mu'awiyya.  In their view the Caliph had to be a pious God fearing Muslim, and if he in anyway fell from proper belief, as they felt Ali had, he should be removed and a new pious Caliph should be chosen by a consensus (ijma) of the Islamic community (the Ummah).  Ali eventually massacred a group of Kharijites and in doing this lost what little support he still had in the empire, shortly after this he was assassinated by a Kharijite and Mu'awiyya declared himself Caliph.

          Another of the groups which began at this time where the Mu'tazilites.  They wanted to remain neutral in the conflict, and so, they refused to take sides.  This is one of the most important sects during the first 300 years of Islamic history, and they are often called the rationalists of Islam.  The Mu'tazilites developed a rationalist philosophy which denied certain fundamental tenets of what came to be accepted as orthodox Islamic belief.  First, they asserted the freedom of the human will, and taught that God was in no way responsible for evil or for the sins of mankind.  Now, this doctrinal position irritated the orthodox ulema, who held that God's omnipotence in some way meant that God must be the cause of all actions both good and evil.  But it was the position that the Mu'tazilites took on the Quran, asserting that it was created rather than eternal and uncreated, that was a greater problem as far as the orthodox religious scholars (ulema) were concerned. 

          One of the other controversial positions taken by the Mu'tazilites was held also by a group called the Muraji'ites.  The two groups, the Mu’tazilites and Muraji’ites, both refused to take sides in the conflict between Ali and Uthman's cousin Mu'awiyya as it concerned which of the two men should be the Caliph; instead, they were concerned about protecting the unity of the Islamic community (the Ummah).  They saw the conflict as being destructive of the life of the religious community, and so both groups remained neutral.

          The main concern of the Muraji'ites was, as indicated above, to preserve the unity of the Islamic community, but this desire did not manifest itself simply in a refusal to take sides in the Caliphal civil war, they also were concerned about the definition of who was or was not a Muslim.  The Muraji'ites took what could be seen as a liberal view of membership in the community, because for the Muraji’ite religious scholars a man simply had to have faith (i.e., faith alone) in order to be a member of the community.  Moreover, they refused to make any judgment about the validity of a man's faith.  The Kharijites argued that a man in a state of grave sin was no longer a Muslim, but the Muraji'ites said that even if he was lacking in works (actions) he should still be counted as a Muslim, and to this they would add that such a man should be punished if his actions were contrary to morality, but that he should not be excluded from the community so long as he professed the shahada, performed the salat, and paid the zakat.  In other words, for the Muraji’ites the validity of a man's faith or belief (iman) would be determined by Allah on the day of judgment, and not by any human authority.  Now, of course, I should point out that W. Montgomery Watt in his book "The Formative Period of Islamic Thought" holds that the earliest form of the shahada "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His messenger (prophet)," may not have contained the second proposition, i.e., the one concerning Muhammad.  He indicates that while Muhammad was alive the second proposition would in some sense have been implied, and may not have been stated explicitly [cf., Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought, 128-129].

          It is important to note that the Muraji'ites were not a unified group; instead, they were composed of several sub-groupings, and the two most important sub-groups where the Qadarites and the Jabrites.  The Qadarites believed that man possessed free will and that his actions were not predetermined by God, while the Jabrites were predestinarians, holding that all things were set by God from the beginning.  Thus, two of the major groups within the Muraji’ite movement held diametrically opposed positions.  The doctrine of absolute predestination had political overtones, because the Umayyad dynasty used the doctrine in order to justify its rule and its political and economic policies, claiming ". . . that the Caliphate had been bestowed on them by the will of God," and because of this predestinarian outlook they were often accused of ". . . defending unjust actions by saying that they had been predetermined by God" [Watt, Islamic Creeds, 6].

          As time went on it is likely that the Qadarites were absorbed into the Mu'tazilite school of thought, while the Jabrites may have been in some sense Proto-Sunnites, although later Sunnite theology tended to view the Muraji'ites as heretics, but the references in these Sunni texts may actually have been aimed at the Qadarites.

          The Shi'ites (the party of Ali) of the early period of the Islamic era should probably be called Proto-Shi'ites, because fully developed Shi'ite doctrine took centuries to become fixed.  In the earlier period the distinctive feature of this group would have to be its support of the Caliphate of Ali and the idea that the Alid dynasty (bayt) should rule the community.  The Shi'ites believed that Ali was chosen by Muhammad to rule in his place, and eventually they rejected the first three Caliphs (Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman) as illegitimate (tabarra).  The Shi'ites rejected the rule of the Umayyad dynasty, but were unable to overthrow it.  When the Abbasids came to power the Shi'ites initially supported them, only to be disappointed because the family of Ali did not come to power.  The distinctive beliefs of the Shi'ite sect began to take form during the second century of the Abbasid's rule, but the theology of Shia Islam is far too complex to describe in this limited essay.  The main tenet of early Shi'ite belief was its insistence on the idea that the Alid family should rule the Islamic community and that it should do so because a divine spark had in some sense been transferred from Muhammad to Ali, and from Ali to his sons.  At the same time that Shi'ite theology was taking shape, the theology of the Sunnite sect began to develop, and it developed mainly in opposition to the views of the Mu'tazilites.

          The Sunnites may descend from the Jabrites, which were a group within the larger group called the Muraji'ites, though the exact genesis of the Sunnite sect is unclear.  It must be noted that later Sunnite theology holds that many of the Muraji'ites were heretical, but this may be due to the anti-predestinationist group called the Qadarites.  Sunnite beliefs are centered on the affirmation that the Quran is the eternal and uncreated Word of God, and that it is thus inspired and of irrevocable authority.  The Sunnites also recognize the authority of the Hadith, which are texts (matn) which relate the practices (sunna) of the prophet, and each Hadith is supported by a chain of witnesses (isnad) which indicates the authority underlying the story and the degree of authenticity that it possesses.  The last element of authority in Sunnite belief is the consensus (ijma) of the community, this consensus is centered especially in the companions of the prophet and in the religious scholars (ulema).  Sunnism continues to hold to the doctrine of predestination, but it is slightly modified by the Ash'arite school of theology.  The Ash'arites held that acts, though predetermined by God, are in some sense acquired by the individual so that they truly become acts of the person involved.  This theological distinction is an attempt to preserve God as the source of all that is, while in some way asserting, albeit in a limited way, man's freedom.

          The last two sects, the Sunnites and the Shi'ites, are the two enduring systems of thought within Islam, while the others have all faded from existence.  But though the other groups no longer exist in any organized way, the effect they had on the two prevailing forms of Islam remain to this day.  Sunnism and Shi'ism both were effected theologically by either their opposition to the other schools of thought, or by their assimilation of concepts found within those groups.

BIBILIOGRAPHY

Books:

Binyamin Abrahamov.  Islamic Theology:  Traditionalism and Rationalism.  (Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, 1998).

Ira M. Lapidus.  A History of Islamic Societies.  (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1999).

W. Montgomery Watt.  The Formative Period of Islamic Thought.  (Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, 1998).

W. Montgomery Watt.  Islamic Creeds:  A Selection.  (Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, 1994).

Early Islamic Sects

by Steven Todd Kaster

San Francisco State University

History 604:  Islamic World I

Professor Fred Astren

4 October 2001

Copyright © 2001-2025 Steven Todd Kaster