26 Facts About Kharijites

Kharijites, called al-Shurat, were an Islamic sect which emerged during the First Muslim Civil War .

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.

Kharijites believed that any Muslim, irrespective of his descent or ethnicity, qualified for the role of caliph, provided they were morally irreproachable.

Many Kharijites were skilled orators and poets, and the major themes of their poetry were piety and martyrdom.

Kharijites was challenged by Muhammad's early companions, Talha ibn Ubayd Allah and Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, and Muhammad's widow, A'isha, who held that his election was invalid as it involved Uthman's murderers and hence a had to be called to elect a new caliph.

Related searches

Kharijites was urged by his followers, who feared for their families and property in Kufa, to deal with the Kharijites first.

One of the earliest Kharijites who had seceded at Siffin, he was held in the highest esteem by the Basran quietists.

Kharijites's fate is said to have aroused the quietists and contributed to the increased Kharijite militancy in the subsequent period.

Ibn al-Azraq and other militant Kharijites took over the city, killed the deputy left by Ibn Ziyad and freed 140 Kharijites from prison.

Kharijites's followers are called Azariqa after their leader, and are described in the sources as the most fanatic of the Kharijite groups, for they approved the doctrine of : indiscriminate killing of the non-Kharijite Muslims, including their women and children.

Kharijites became leader of Abu Talut's Kharijite faction, which became known as the Najdat after him.

Kharijites was thus deposed for having gone astray and subsequently executed in 691.

Kharijites did not have a uniform and coherent set of doctrines.

The Kharijites held that the first four caliphs had not been elected for their Qurayshite descent or kinship with Muhammad, but because they were among the most eminent and qualified Muslims for the position, and hence were all legitimate caliphs.

An exception are the Najdat, who, as a means of survival, abandoned the requirement of war against non-Kharijites after their defeat in 692, and rejected that the imamate was an obligatory institution.

Kharijites asserted that faith without accompanying deeds is useless, and that anyone who commits a major sin is an unbeliever and must repent to restore the true faith.

The Kharijites had a scrupulous attitude towards non-Muslims, respecting their dhimmi status more seriously than others.

Some Kharijites rejected the punishment of adultery with stoning, which is prescribed in other Islamic legal schools.

Many Kharijites were well-versed in traditional Arabic eloquence and poetry, which the orientalist Giorgio Levi Della Vida attributes to the majority of their early leaders being from Bedouin stock.

Kharijites argues that the Kharijite dogmatism was based on enforcement of the rule of God on Earth—an otherwise Islamic principle, taken too far by the Kharijites: "By tightening onto the principles of Islam, they are taken beyond Islam itself".

Hawting has suggested that the use of the slogan by the Kharijites to denounce the arbitration is a later reworking by the Muslim sources.

Kharijites's view is that Kharijism was the nomadic response to the newly-established organized state.

Kharijites were the first group to declare other Muslims, a designation previously reserved for non-Muslims.

Kharijites drew condemnation by traditional Muslim historians and heresiographers of subsequent centuries.

However, Islamic State and al-Qaeda preachers reject being compared to the Kharijites, instead calling themselves the true Muslims and their opponents lax Muslims.

Related searches

The latter group argue that the Kharijites rebelled against economic injustice and had valid grievances.