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Are There Any Divisions In Islam?
As a world religion, Islam is practiced in diverse cultures in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and America. Differences in religious and cultural practices are therefore wide-ranging. There are over 40 denominations in Islam (Sunni, Shi’a, Sufi, etc.), each with dozens of sects, just as there are many in the Christian faith (Roman Catholic, Methodist, Episcopalian, Baptist, Southern Baptist Converge Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, etc.). Like all faiths, Islam has developed divisions, sects, and schools of thought over various issues. While all Muslims share certain beliefs and practices, such as belief in Allah, the Qur’an, Muhammad, and the Five Pillars of Islam, divisions have arisen over questions of political and religious leadership, theology, interpretations of Islamic law, and responses to modernity and the West.
The division of opinion about political and religious leadership after the death of Muhammad led to the division of Muslims into two major branches — Sunni (85 percent to 95 percent of all Muslims) and Shi’a (5 percent to 15 percent). In addition, a small but significant radical minority known as the Kharijites should be mentioned. Although they have never won large numbers of followers, their unique theological position continues to influence political and religious debate up to the present day.
Sunni Muslims believe that because Muhammad did not designate a successor, the best or most qualified person should be either selected or elected as leader (caliph). Because the Qur’an declared Muhammad to be the last of the prophets, this caliph was to succeed Muhammad as the political leader only. Sunni believe that the caliph should serve as the protector of the faith, but he does not enjoy any special religious status or inspiration.
Shi’a, by contrast, believe that succession to the leadership of the Muslim community should be hereditary, passed down to Muhammad’s male descendants (descended from Muhammad’s daughter Fatima and her husband Ali), who are known as Imams. Imams are to serve as both religious and political leaders. Shi’a believe that the Imam is religiously inspired, sinless, and the interpreter of Allah’s will as contained in Islamic law (Shari’a), but not a prophet. Shi’a consider the sayings, deeds, and writings of their Imams to be authoritative religious texts, in addition to the Qur’an and Sunna. Shi’a further split into three main divisions as a result of disagreement over the number of Imams who succeeded Muhammad.
The Kharijites (from kharaja, to go out or exit) began as followers of the caliph Ali, but they broke away from him because they believed him to be guilty of compromising Allah’s will when he agreed to arbitrate rather than continue to fight a long-drawn-out war against a rebellious general. After separating from Ali (whom they eventually assassinated), the Kharijites established a separate community designed to be a “true” charismatic society strictly following the Qur’an and Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad. The Kharijite world was separated neatly into believers and nonbelievers: Muslims (followers of Allah) and non-Muslims (enemies of Allah). These enemies could include other Muslims who did not accept the uncompromising Kharijite point of view. Sinners were to be excommunicated and were subject to death unless they repented. Therefore, a caliph or ruler could only hold office as long as he was sinless. If he fell from this state, he was outside the protection of law and must be deposed or killed.
This mentality influenced the famous medieval theologian and legal scholar. Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) and has been replicated in modern times by Islamic Jihad, the group that assassinated Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat, as well as by Osama bin Laden and other extremists who call for the overthrow of “un-Islamic” Muslim rulers.
Differences of opinion about political and religious leadership have led Sunni and Shi’a to hold very different visions of sacred history. Sunni experienced a glorious and victorious history under the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs and the expansion and development of Muslim empires under the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties. Sunni can thus claim a golden age in which they were a great world power and civilization, which they see as evidence of Allah’s guidance and the truth of the mission of Islam. Shi’a, on the other hand, struggled unsuccessfully during the same time period against Sunni rule in the attempt to restore the imamate they believed Allah had appointed. Therefore, Shi’a see in this time period the illegitimate usurpation of power by the Sunni at the expense of creating a just society. Shi’a historical memory emphasizes the suffering and oppression of the righteous, the need to protest against injustice, and the requirement that Muslims be willing to sacrifice everything, including their lives, in the struggle with the overwhelming forces of evil (Satan) in order to restore Allah’s righteous rule.
Divisions of opinion also exist with respect to theological questions. One historical example is the question of whether a ruler judged guilty of a grave (mortal) sin should still be considered legitimate or should be overthrown and killed. Most Sunni theologians and jurists taught that the preservation of social order was more important than the character of the ruler. They also taught that only Allah on Judgment Day is capable of judging sinners and determining whether or not they are faithful and deserving of paradise. Therefore, Sunni concluded that the ruler should remain in power since subjects could not judge the ruler. Ibn Taymiyya was the one major theologian and jurist who rejected this position and taught instead that a sinful ruler should and must be overthrown.
Ibn Taymiyya’s ire was directed at the Mongols. Despite their conversion to Islam, they continued to follow the Yasa code of laws of Genghis Khan instead of the Islamic law (shari’a). For Ibn Taymiyya this made them no better than the polytheists of the pre-Islamic period. He issued a fatwa (formal legal opinion) that labeled them as unbelievers (kafirs) who were thus excommunicated (takfir). This fatwa established a precedent: despite their claim to be Muslims, their failure to implement Shari’a rendered the Mongols apostates and hence the lawful object of jihad. Muslim citizens thus had the right, indeed the duty, to revolt against them, to wage jihad. Ibn Taymiyya’s opinions remain relevant today because they have inspired the militancy and religious worldview of organizations like Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.
Other examples of divisions over theological questions include arguments over whether the Qur’an was created or uncreated and whether it should be interpreted literally or metaphorically and allegorically. Historically, Muslims have also debated the question of free will versus predestination. That is, do human beings have their own agency to choose their actions, or are all actions predetermined by an omniscient Allah? What are the implications of such beliefs for human responsibility and justice?
Islamic law provides one of the clearest and most important examples of diversity of opinions. Islamic law developed in response to the concrete realities of daily life. Since the heart of Islam and being a Muslim is submission to Allah’s will, the primary question for believers was “What should I do and how?” During the Umayyad Empire (661–750), rulers set up a rudimentary legal system based upon the Qur’an, the Sunna, and local customs and traditions. However, many pious Muslims became concerned about the influence of rulers on the development of the law. They wanted to anchor Islamic law more firmly to its revealed sources and make it less vulnerable to manipulation by rulers and their appointed judges.
Over the next two centuries, Muslims in the major cities of Medina, Mecca, Kufa, Basra, and Damascus sought to discover and delineate Allah’s will and law through the science of jurisprudence. Although each city produced a distinctive interpretation of the law, all shared a general legal tradition. The earliest scholars of Islamic law were neither lawyers nor judges nor students of a specific university. They were men who combined professions such as trade with the study of Islamic texts. These loosely connected scholars tended to gather around or associate with major personalities. Their schools of thought came to be referred to as law schools.
While many law schools existed, only a few endured and were recognized as authoritative. Today, there are four major Sunni law schools (Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki, and Shafii) and two major Shi’a schools (Jafari and Zaydis). The Hanafi came to predominate in the Arab world and South Asia; the Maliki in North, Central, and West Africa; the Shafii in East Africa and Southeast Asia; and the Hanbali in Saudi Arabia. Muslims are free to follow any law school but usually select the one that predominates in the area in which they are born or live.
Perhaps nowhere are the differences in Islam more visible than in the responses to modernity. Since the nineteenth century, Muslims have struggled with the relationship of their religious tradition developed in premodern times to the new demands (religious, political, economic, and social) of the modern world. The issues are not only about Islam’s accommodation to change but also about the relationship of Islam to the West, since much of modern change is associated with Western ideas, institutions, and values. Muslim responses to issues of reform and modernization have spanned the spectrum from secularists and Islamic modernists to religious conservatives or traditionalists, “fundamentalists,” and Islamic reformists.
Modern secularists are Western oriented and advocate a separation between religion and the rest of society, including politics. They believe that religion is and should be strictly a private matter. Islamic modernists believe that Islam and modernity, particularly science and technology, are compatible, so that Islam should inform public life without necessarily dominating it. The other groups are more “Islamically” oriented but have different opinions as to the role Islam should play in public life. Conservatives, or traditionalists, emphasize the authority of the past and tend to call for a reimplementation of Islamic laws and norms as they existed in that past. “Fundamentalists” emphasize going back to the earliest period and teachings of Islam, believing that the Islamic tradition needs to be purified of popular, cultural, and Western beliefs and practices that have “corrupted” Islam. However, the term fundamentalist is applied to such a broad spectrum of Islamic movements and actors that, in the end, it includes both those who simply want to reintroduce or restore their pure and puritanical vision of a romanticized past and others who advocate modern reforms that are rooted in Islamic principles and values. There are a significant number of Islamic reformers, intellectuals, and religious leaders who also emphasize the critical need for an Islamic reformation, a wide-ranging program of reinterpretation (ijtihad) and reform urging fresh approaches to Qur’anic interpretation as well as to issues of gender, human rights, democratization, and legal reform.
Are Women Second-Class Citizens In Islam?
The status of women in Muslim countries has long been looked to as evidence of “Islam’s” oppression of women in matters ranging from the freedom to dress as they please to legal rights in divorce. The true picture of women in Islam is far more complex.
The revelation of Islam raised the status of women by prohibiting female infanticide, abolishing women’s status as property, and establishing women’s legal capacity. This includes granting women the right to receive their own dowries, which changed marriage from a proprietary to a contractual relationship, and allowing women to retain control over their property and use their maiden names after marriage. The Qur’an also granted women financial maintenance from their husbands and controlled the husband’s free ability to divorce.
The Qur’an declares that men and women are equal in the eyes of Allah; man and woman were created to be equal parts of a pair (51: 49). The Qur’an describes the relationship between men and women as one of “love and mercy” (30: 21). Men and women are to be like “members of one another” (3: 195), or like each other’s garment (2: 187).
Men and women are equally responsible for adhering to the Five Pillars of Islam. Qur’an 9: 71–72 states, “The Believers, men and women, are protectors of one another; they enjoin what is just, and forbid what is evil; they observe regular prayers, pay zakat and obey Allah and His Messenger. On them will Allah pour His mercy: for Allah is exalted in Power, Wise. Allah has promised to Believers, men and women, gardens under which rivers flow, to dwell therein.” This verse draws added significance from the fact that it was the last Qur’an verse to be revealed that addressed relations between men and women. Some scholars argue on the basis of both content and chronology that this verse outlines the ideal vision of the relationship between men and women in Islam — one of equality and balance.
Most Islamic societies have been patriarchal, and women have long been considered to be the culture-bearers within these societies. Prior to the twentieth century, men interpreted the Qur’an, hadith (traditional stories of the Prophet), and Islamic law. These interpretations therefore reflect this patriarchal environment. Women were not actively engaged in interpreting the Qur’an, hadith, or Islamic law until the twentieth century. Since then, however, reformers have argued that Qur’anic verses favoring men need reinterpretation in light of the new social, cultural, and economic realities of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Often Muslim scholars have interpreted Qur’an 4:34 as indicating that women have been assigned second-class status in Islam, “Men have responsibility for and priority over women, since Allah has given some of them advantages over others and because they should spend their wealth [for the support of women].” However, contemporary scholars have noted that the “priority” referred to in this verse is based upon men’s socioeconomic responsibilities for women. It does not say women are incapable of managing their own affairs, controlling themselves, or being leaders. Nowhere in the Qur’an does it say that all men are superior to, preferred over, or better than all women. Allah’s expressed preference for certain individuals in the Qur’an is based upon their faith, not their gender. Thus, the noted Qur’an expert and translator M. Abdel Haleem has therefore rendered this verse as “Husbands should take good care of their wives, with [the bounties] Allah has given to some more than others and with what they spend out of their own money.”
Qur’anic interpretation is at the center of many debates. Some note that the Qur’an itself specifically distinguishes between two types of verses: those that are universal principles and those that were responding to specific social and cultural contexts or questions and were subject to interpretation (3:7). They believe that those verses that assign greater rights to men (such as 2:223 and 2:228) reflect a patriarchal context in which men were dominant and solely responsible for supporting women. Today, rather than being interpreted literally, these verses should be reformulated to reflect the interests of public welfare. Reformers further argue that gender equality is the intended order established by Allah, because Allah does not make distinctions based upon gender in matters of faith.
However, Muslims who advocate a literal interpretation of the Qur’an believe that the gender inequalities it prescribes apply to every time and place as Allah’s revealed social order. Biology is often used as a justification; because only women can bear children, they argue, the man must provide for and maintain the family so that the woman can do her job of bearing and raising children.
Another apparent example of second-class status for women appears in the Qur’anic stipulation (2:282) that two female witnesses are equal to one male witness. If one female witness errs, the other can remind her of the truth: “And call to witness two of your men; if two men are not available then one man and two women you approve of, so that if one of them is confused, the other would remind her.” Over time, this was interpreted by male scholars to mean that a woman’s testimony should always count for one-half of the value of a man’s testimony. Contemporary scholars have revisited this question also, offering several observations about the socio-historical context in which the verse was revealed.
First, the verse specifies that witnessing is relevant in cases of a written transaction, contract, or court case. At the time the Qur’an was revealed, most women were not active in business or finance. A woman’s expertise in these fields would most likely have been less than a man’s. Another interpretation argues that the requirement for two female witnesses to equal the testimony of one man was based upon the concern that male family members might pressure a woman into testifying in their favor.
Some contemporary female scholars have argued that the requirement of two female witnesses demonstrates the need for women to have access to education, both secular and religious, in order to receive the training and experience to be equal to men in a business environment — something that is not prohibited by the Qur’an. In light of the right of women to own property and make their own investments, this interpretation is in keeping with broader Qur’anic values.
One other area in which gender discrimination has been apparent historically is the matter of divorce. Women have had little right to initiate divorce, whereas men did not have to provide any justification or reason for declaring a divorce. However, the Qur’an counsels compassion and tolerance as well as mediation in divorce and stresses that spouses “be generous towards one another” (2:237). Ideally, divorce is a last resort, discouraged rather than encouraged, as reflected in a tradition of the Prophet, “Of all the things permitted, divorce is the most abominable with Allah.” Historically this ideal has been undermined and compromised by the realities of patriarchal societies. This situation has been compounded by the fact that women have been unable to exercise their rights either because they were unaware of them or because of pressures in a male-dominated society. In many Muslim countries, modern reforms have been introduced to limit a husband’s rights and expand those of women. However, these reforms have been limited and challenged by more conservative and fundamentalist forces.
The Qur’an has also served as a reference point for restricting the practice of polygamy. Qur’an 4:3 commands, “Marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if you will not be able to deal justly [with them] only one.” A corollary verse (4:129) states, “You are never able to be fair and just between women even if that is your ardent desire.” Contemporary reformers have argued that these two verses together prohibit polygamy and that the true Qur’anic ideal is monogamy.
The twenty-first century has brought numerous and significant reforms for women’s rights in both the public and the private spheres. In the overwhelming majority of Muslim countries, women have the right to public education, including at the college level. In many countries, they also have the right to work outside of the home, vote, and hold public office. Particularly notable in recent years have been reforms in marriage and divorce laws.
Among the most important of these reforms are the abolition of polygamy in some countries and its severe limitation in others. Women have received expanded rights within marriage as well; they can participate in contracting their marriage and stipulate conditions favorable to them in the marriage contract. Reforms also increased the minimum age for marriage for both spouses, prohibiting child marriage. In regard to divorce, women have the right to financial compensation, to require that the husband provide housing for his divorced wife and children as long as the wife holds custody over the children, and to have custody over their older children.
Are There Any Divisions In Islam?
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Last Updated: 11/2021
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