Kharijites

The Kharijites (Arabic: الخوارج, romanized: al-Khawārij, singular Arabic: خارجي, romanized: khārijī) were an Islamic sect which emerged during the First Fitna (656–661). The first Kharijites were supporters of Ali who rebelled against his acceptance of arbitration talks to settle the conflict with his challenger, Mu'awiya, at the Battle of Siffin in 657. They asserted that "judgment belongs to God alone", which became their motto, and that rebels such as Mu'awiya had to be fought and overcome according to Qur'anic injunctions. Ali defeated the Kharijites at the Battle of Nahrawan in 658, but their insurrection continued. Ali was assassinated in 661 by a Kharijite dissident seeking revenge for the defeat at Nahrawan.

After Mu'awiya established the Umayyad Caliphate in 661, his governors kept the Kharijites in check. The power vacuum caused by the Second Fitna (680–692) allowed for the resumption of the Kharijites' anti-government rebellion, and the Kharijite factions of the Azariqa and Najdat came to control large areas in Persia and Arabia. Internal disputes and fragmentation weakened them considerably before their defeat by the Umayyads in 696–699. In the 740s, large-scale Kharijite rebellions broke out across the caliphate, but all were eventually suppressed. Although the Kharijite revolts continued into the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258), the most militant Kharijite groups were gradually eliminated. They were replaced by the non-activist Ibadiyya, who survive to this day in Oman and some parts of North Africa. They, however, deny any links with the Kharijites of the Second Muslim Civil War and beyond, condemning them as extremists.

The Kharijites did not have a uniform set of doctrines. In terms of law, some Kharijite sects believed in the Quran alone, such as the Haroori and the Azariqa, making them similar to Quranists. The Kharijites believed that any Muslim, irrespective of his descent or ethnicity, qualified for the role of caliph, provided he was morally irreproachable. It was the duty of Muslims to rebel against and depose caliphs who sinned. Most Kharijite groups branded as disbelievers (kuffar; sing. kafir) Muslims who had committed a grave sin, and the most militant declared killing of such unbelievers to be licit, unless they repented. Many Kharijites were skilled orators and poets, and the major themes of their poetry were piety and martyrdom. The Kharijites of the eighth and ninth centuries participated in theological debates and, in the process, contributed to mainstream Islamic theology.

What is known about Kharijite history and doctrines derives from non-Kharijite authors of the ninth and tenth centuries and is hostile toward the sect. The absence of the Kharijite version of their history has made unearthing their true motives difficult. Traditional Muslim historical sources and mainstream Muslims viewed the Kharijites as religious extremists who left the Muslim community. The term Kharijites is often used by modern mainstream Muslims to describe Islamist extremist groups that have been compared to the Kharijites for their radical ideology and militancy. On the other hand, some modern Arab historians have stressed the egalitarian and proto-democratic tendencies of the Kharijites. Modern, academic historians are generally divided in attributing the Kharijite phenomenon to purely religious motivations, economic factors, or a Bedouin ie nomadic challenge to the establishment of an organized state, with some rejecting the traditional account of the movement having started at Siffin.

The term al-Khariji was used as an exonym by their opponents for leaving the army of Caliph Ali during the First Fitna. The term comes from the Arabic root خ ر ج, which has the primary meaning "to leave" or "to get out", as in the basic word خرج, ḵẖaraja, "to go out". The term Khawarij is anglicized to 'Kharijites' from the singular Khariji. They called themselves al-Shurat ("the Exchangers"), which they understood within the context of Islamic scripture (Quran 2:207) and philosophy to mean "those who have traded the mortal life (al-Dunya) for the other life [with God] (al-Akhirah)".

Almost no primary Kharijite sources survive, except for works by authors from the sole surviving Kharijite sect of Ibadiyya, and excerpts in non-Kharijite works. As the latter are the main sources of information and date to later periods, the Kharijite material has suffered alterations and distortions during transmission, collection, and classification.

Non-Kharijite sources fall mainly into two categories: histories and heresiographical works—the so-called firaq (sects) literature. The histories were written significantly later than the actual events, and many of the theological and political disputes among the early Muslims had been settled by then. As representatives of the emerging orthodoxy, the Sunni as well as Shia authors of these works looked upon the original events through the lens of this orthodox viewpoint. The bulk of information regarding the Kharijites, however, comes from the second category. These sources are outright polemical, as the authors tend to portray their own sect as the true representative of original Islam and are consequently hostile to the Kharijites. Although the authors in both categories used earlier Kharijite as well as non-Kharijite sources, which are no longer extant, their rendering of the events has been heavily altered by literary topoi.

Based on a hadith (saying or tradition attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad) prophesying the emergence of 73 sects in Islam, of which one would be saved (al-firqa al-najiya) and the rest doomed as deviant, the heresiographers were mainly concerned with classifying what they considered to be deviant sects and their heretical doctrines. Consequently, views of certain sects were altered to fit into classification schemes, and sometimes fictitious sects were invented. Moreover, the reports are often confused and contradictory, rendering a reconstruction of 'what actually happened' and the true motives of the Kharijites, which is free of later interpolations, especially difficult. According to the historians Hannah-Lena Hagemann and Peter Verkinderen, the sources sometimes used the Kharijites as a literary tool to address other issues, which were otherwise unrelated to the Kharijites, such as "the status of Ali, the dangers of communal strife, or the legal aspects of rebellion". The Ibadi sources, on the other hand, are hagiographical and are concerned with preserving the group identity. Toward this purpose, stories are sometimes created, or real events altered, in order to romanticize and valorize early Kharijite revolts and their leaders as the anchors of the group identity. These too are hostile to other Kharijite groups. The sources, whether Ibadi, historiographical, or heresiographical, do not necessarily report events as they actually happened. They rather show how their respective authors viewed, and wanted their readers to view, these events.