The Khawarij: The First Deviant Sect
The Khawarij were the first group to split from the Muslim community. The Prophet ﷺ described them with extraordinary precision centuries before they appeared. Their defining characteristics (takfir of Muslims for sins, outward piety combined with inner deviation, and violence against the Muslim community) have reappeared across Islamic history.
Contents
The Prophetic Description
The Prophet ﷺ described a group that would emerge from among the Muslims with a precision that his companions found astonishing:
"There will emerge from the east a people who recite the Quran but it does not go past their throats. They will pass out of the religion as an arrow passes through game. Their sign is that they shave their heads." (Bukhari)
He said: "They will kill the people of Islam and leave the people of the idols." (Bukhari and Muslim), meaning they would direct their violence at Muslims, not at the enemies of Islam.
He said: "If I were to live until the time they appear, I would kill them as the people of Ad were killed." (Bukhari and Muslim)
He also described their outward piety: "One of you would look down on his own prayer compared to their prayer, and his fasting compared to their fasting." (Bukhari); they would appear more devout than ordinary Muslims while being further from the truth.
Who They Were
The Khawarij emerged during the caliphate of Ali ibn Abi Talib after the arbitration at Siffin (657 CE). When Ali accepted arbitration with Muawiya, a group of his own supporters rejected this, declaring that judgment belongs to God alone (la hukma illa lillah), and that both Ali and Muawiya had committed kufr by accepting human arbitration. They separated from Ali's army and declared him an apostate.
Ali debated them and refuted their arguments. Many returned. Those who did not continued to commit violence against the Muslim community, declaring every Muslim who disagreed with them to be an unbeliever deserving of death. They killed Abdullah ibn Khabbab, a companion of the Prophet ﷺ, and cut open the stomach of his pregnant wife.
Ali fought them at the Battle of Nahrawan (658 CE) and defeated them. They scattered but did not disappear. A Kharijite assassinated Ali ibn Abi Talib in 661 CE, the same man they had originally followed and then declared an apostate.
Their Theological Error
The Khawarij made a single catastrophic theological error that produced all their subsequent violence: they declared that major sins constitute kufr: that a Muslim who commits a major sin exits Islam and becomes an apostate deserving death.
This contradicted the Quran, the Sunnah, and the consensus of the companions. The Quran addresses the believing fornicator, the believing thief, the believing murderer; it does not call them kafirs. The Prophet ﷺ said: "Whoever says there is no god but God and dies upon that will enter paradise." The companions held that major sins do not remove a person from Islam.
The Kharijite position (that they alone were the true Muslims and that everyone who disagreed was an apostate) is a self-referential error that has no consistent stopping point. Once the logic is accepted, the category of "true Muslims" shrinks indefinitely until only the group itself remains.
Their Role as the Origin Point
The Khawarij are the origin of several patterns that have recurred across Islamic history:
- The use of Quranic language to justify deviation (la hukma illa lillah sounds correct; its Kharijite application was wrong)
- The declaration of the Muslim community as apostate
- The targeting of Muslims rather than the enemies of Islam
- The combination of outward piety with inner deviation
- The killing of scholars and leaders of the Muslim community
Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal included them among the most dangerous groups in Islamic history precisely because their outward piety made them convincing to ordinary Muslims.
The Contemporary Pattern
The Kharijite pattern has recurred in Islamic history and recurs today. Contemporary groups that target Muslim civilians, declare Muslim rulers and scholars apostates without due process, combine ostentatious outward piety with wholesale killing, and hold that their political programme is a religious obligation: these groups exhibit the defining Kharijite characteristics. Major contemporary scholars including Shaykh Ibn Baz, Ibn Uthaymeen, and the Council of Senior Scholars in Saudi Arabia have explicitly identified ISIS and similar organisations as manifesting these traits. The Kharijites are not a historical phenomenon safely in the past; recognising their characteristics is a current obligation.
Scholar References
- Sahih Bukhari and Muslim: prophetic descriptions of the Khawarij
- Ibn Taymiyyah, Majmu al-Fatawa: on the Khawarij and their theological error
- Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wal-Nihaya: historical account of the Khawarij
- Al-Dhahabi, Siyar Alam al-Nubala: on the Battle of Nahrawan