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- Their origins are quite obscure. They are identified as those who seceded from {Aliat Siffin in protest against his acceptance of the Syrian call for arbitration, but the story does not offer a satisfactory explanation of the issues between them and {Ali, and contrary to what is often said, it was not with reference to their departure from {Ali’s camp that they were known as Kharijites (‘those who go out’). It was a self-designation, probably coined with reference to Q. 4:100 (cf. Crone and Zimmermann, Epistle, 275).
- To the Ibadis, who are the only Kharijite sect to survive to this day, they merely meant that any rule laid down in the Qur}an must be applied: humans cannot make their own decisions on questions settled by God.
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- One point is clear, however. Of the rebels against {Uthman, only the Kharijites retained a clear conviction that it had been right to kill him. The Kharijites were originally concentrated in Kufa, where they survived into the {Abbasid period, but their main home soon came to be Basra.
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- According to the Kharijites, AbuBakr and {Umar had been true imams of guidance (a view that the Najdiyya were to modify, without however in any way wishing to belittle their righteousness). {Uthman and {Alihad also started as legitimate caliphs, but both had violated God’s rules and so forfeited their status as caliphs and Muslims alike, and all their followers had likewise lost their membership of the community of believers.
- The only Muslims left were the Kharijites, and the only true imams after {Uthman and {Ali’s forfeiture of their position were those of the Kharijites themselves.
- One had to affirm belief in the obligatory nature of the imamate and rebel in order to establish one if one could. It was not allowed to doubt God’s command to “fight the insolent until they return to God’s command” (Q. 49:9). But rebellion was not always possible, and in the meantime the believers could live under the kings of “their qawm”, that is, non-Kharijite Muslims, following their own law as expounded by their own scholars.
- Unlike all other Muslims, the Kharijites rejected hereditary succession outright, whether within a tribe or lineage or from father to son.
- The Kharijite vision and its fate
- The overall effect of the Kharijite tenets was to downgrade the position of the communal leader. He was not distinguished from the rest of the community by anything other than superior merit: he had no special tribal status, no sacred descent, no residue of Prophetic blood in his veins. He was just a man like any other, as the Ibadis explicitly say (Abu‘l-Mu}thir in Kashif, i, 157.9; Shabib b. {Atiyya in Crone and Zimmermann, Epistle, 246). If it is true that some Kharijites accepted women as imams, that too was meant in a downgrading vein. The vision is anti-authoritarian.
- The balance of power is in the community’s favour, and for this reason the Kharijites have been described as ‘democratic’ ( E.g. Goldziher, Theology and Law, 172; Macdonald, Development, 23).
- The Najdiyya:
