Khawarij

The Khawarij (Arabic: الخوارج, romanized: al-Khawārij, singular Arabic: خارجي, romanized: khārijī) were an Islamic sect which emerged during the First Fitna (656–661). The first Khawarij 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 Khawarij at the Battle of Nahrawan in 658, but their insurrection continued. Ali was assassinated in 661 by a Kharji dissident seeking revenge for the defeat at Nahrawan.

After Mu'awiya established the Umayyad Caliphate in 661, his governors kept the Khawarij in check. The power vacuum caused by the Second Fitna (680–692) allowed for the resumption of the anti-government rebellion by the Khawarij, and the Kharji 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 Kharji rebellions broke out across the caliphate, but all were eventually suppressed. Although the Kharji revolts continued into the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258), the most militant Kharji 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 Khawarij of the Second Muslim Civil War and beyond, condemning them as extremists.

The Khawarij did not have a uniform set of doctrines. In terms of law, some Kharji sects believed in the Quran alone, such as the Haroori and the Azariqa, making them similar to Quranists.^[1][2][3] The Khawarij 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 Kharji 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 Khawarij were skilled orators and poets, and the major themes of their poetry were piety and martyrdom. The Khawarij of the eighth and ninth centuries participated in theological debates and, in the process, contributed to mainstream Islamic theology.

What is known about Kharji history and doctrines derives from non-Kharji authors of the ninth and tenth centuries and is hostile toward the sect. The absence of the Kharji version of their history has made unearthing their true motives difficult. Traditional Muslim historical sources and mainstream Muslims viewed the Khawarij as religious extremists who left the Muslim community. The term Khawarij is often used by modern mainstream Muslims to describe Islamist extremist groups that have been compared to the Khawarij for their radical ideology and militancy. On the other hand, some modern Arab historians have stressed the egalitarian and proto-democratic tendencies of the Khawarij. Modern, academic historians are generally divided in attributing the Kharji 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.