The word Khawarij, meaning “those who went out,” is now commonly used as a label for religious extremism. Its origins, however, lie in a political dispute that divided the early Muslim community. Following the assassination of the third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, in 35/656, Ali ibn Abi Talib became the fourth caliph. His authority was challenged by Mu’awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, the governor of Syria and a relative of Uthman, who demanded that Uthman’s killers be brought to justice. The confrontation escalated into the First Fitna, the first Muslim civil war, culminating in the Battle of Siffin in 37/657.
When the fighting reached a stalemate, the two sides agreed to submit their dispute to human arbitrators. This decision fractured Ali’s own army. A faction of his soldiers, including some who had initially urged him to accept arbitration, came to denounce the agreement as a violation of God’s exclusive authority to judge. When Ali refused to repudiate it, they abandoned his army and withdrew to Harura, earning them the names Khawarij and Haruriyya. Ali later fought and defeated them at Nahrawan in 38/658, and in 40/661 a man associated with their movement assassinated him. Over time, the Khawarij divided into sects with very different temperaments, some militant and others quietist. One branch, the Ibadis, survives today in Oman and parts of North Africa.
What turns the Khawarij from a chapter in early political history into a real puzzle is how the tradition describes them. The hadith collections portray them as people whose Quran recitation, prayer and fasting would make ordinary Muslims feel inadequate, and who nonetheless pass through Islam like an arrow through its target. Meanwhile, theological sources from the ninth and tenth centuries report that at least some Khariji sects held that the Quran alone, without hadith and without consensus, was the source of religious knowledge. These two facts sit uncomfortably together. Either a group of devout reciters happened also to be dangerous heretics, or the category “Khariji” absorbed something broader: a Quran-first way of reasoning about religious authority that the emerging hadith tradition needed to place outside the community.
This essay argues that the second reading explains more of the evidence, and it tries to say plainly where the evidence stops.
Siffin: who gets to judge
At Siffin, as the standard narratives have it, Mu’awiya’s troops raised copies of the Quran on their spears and called for the book to decide between the two armies. Ali’s camp divided. A large part of it, including many who would soon leave him, pressed him to accept, and he agreed. Two men were appointed to arbitrate, Abu Musa al-Ash’ari for Ali and ‘Amr b. al-‘As for Mu’awiya.
The group that withdrew gave this political grievance a theological shape almost at once. A study of the Mu’tazila translated in Martin and Woodward’s Defenders of Reason in Islam describes how they quickly raised the dispute to the level of faith and unbelief, turning a question about the caliphate into a question about who was and was not a Muslim. Their scriptural anchor was sura 5, verse 44: wa man lam yahkum bi-ma anzala Allah fa-ulaika humu l-kafirun, “whoever does not judge by what God has sent down, those are the unbelievers.” Their slogan, la hukma illa lillah, “judgment belongs to God alone,” draws on the same theme in 6:57 and 12:40. The question they put was how Ali could accept arbitration when God says the decision is only for God. The study notes that Ali and Mu’awiya settled their dispute not by turning to theology but by following the pre-Islamic tradition of arbitration, and that from the Khariji perspective this made them kafir. The same verdict fell on the two arbitrators.
This is not to say that Ali actually chose tradition over the Quran. There were Quranic grounds for seeking a peaceful resolution. Quran 49:9 explicitly addresses warfare between two groups of believers and commands that efforts be made to reconcile them, while also instructing that the aggressing party be fought until it returns to God’s command.
49:9 If two groups of believers fought with each other, you shall reconcile them. If one group aggresses against the other, you shall fight the aggressing group until they submit to GOD’s command. Once they submit, you shall reconcile the two groups equitably. You shall maintain justice; GOD loves those who are just.
Elsewhere, the Quran instructs believers to appoint arbiters in marital disputes (4:35) and two just men to assess compensation for hunting while in the sacred state (5:95). Taken together, these verses establish that human mediation and judgment are not inherently contrary to God’s authority. The real disagreement was whether arbitration at Siffin satisfied these Quranic principles or compromised them. That was an exegetical dispute, and both sides could appeal to scripture.
What the episode shows is a disposition. One party treated an explicit scriptural judgment as overriding human procedure and custom, and treated those who relied on custom as having abandoned the faith. The sources describe many of the early seceders as qurra’, reciters, and report that they called themselves shurat, those who sell their souls to God, after sura 2, verse 207. Everything that the later argument over hadith would turn on is already visible at Siffin: how far the Quran’s own words control, and who has standing to supplement them.
Khawarij Advocated Quran Alone
The strongest evidence that some Khariji groups carried this disposition into a full theory of sources comes from Hüseyin Hansu’s 2016 study of al-Shafi’i’s Jima’ al-‘ilm, which draws on a manuscript of Abu l-Qasim al-Balkhi’s Kitab al-Maqalat. Al-Balkhi, the leading Mu’tazili of Baghdad in the early tenth century, preserves a report from Abu l-Husayn al-Khayyat about the Mu’tazili Ja’far b. Mubashshir. Ja’far held that the Khawarij should not be counted in consensus, partly because they have no forebears among the Companions and denounce the early Muslims who transmitted legal rulings from the Prophet, and partly because they consider transmission categorically invalid and hold that nothing need be known except the Scripture’s text verbatim. As Hansu notes, this tells us that rejecting hadith was a recognized Khariji position in the ninth century, and that it was one of the main reasons Sunni scholars gave for excluding them from consensus.
Earlier theological texts agree. Dirar b. ‘Amr, who died around 200/815, said that the two Khariji sects known as the Azariqa and the Bazighiyya took the Quran as the only source of religious knowledge and rejected consensus and all reports. Al-Nashi’ al-Akbar, who died in 293/906, reported that the Bid’iyya rejected hadith altogether, and Hansu cites several sources that say the great majority of Khawarij did the same. Al-Balkhi adds that all of them except the Najadat rejected analogy and independent reasoning, recognizing only the plain text of the Quran and the Prophet’s explanation of general matters on which there was universal agreement. An early letter attributed to the Khariji ‘Abd Allah b. Ibad, sent to the caliph ‘Abd al-Malik in 76/695, urges adherence to the Quran alone. Michael Cook dated it to the mid-eighth century and thought it a forgery, which Hansu accepts as possible while arguing that it still reflects views that were around before al-Shafi’i’s time.
The most striking application is in al-Shafi’i himself, though it reaches us only through his report of his opponents and Hansu’s summary of it, not in the opponents’ own words. In Jima’ al-‘ilm al-Shafi’i describes a group that rejected hadith as a whole and sets out the arguments he says they made. The Quran calls itself an explanation of all things (16:89), so it already contains what is needed to derive law and no report is required to interpret it. Since it gives no number or times for prayer and no amount for the alms-tax, a person who prays once a day or gives the smallest sum has done what was required. What the Quran declares forbidden on certain proof cannot be made permissible by proof that is only probable. Hansu stresses that the group was not uniform: some held that a report merely explaining a Quranic verse could be accepted, and others that a topic already addressed in the Quran needs no report at all.
Al-Shafi’i never names these opponents. Earlier scholars, including al-Khudari and Schacht, assumed they were Mu’tazilis. Hansu argues otherwise, and his case has two parts. Al-Shafi’i’s chapter heading and introduction describe a group that rejected all reports from the Messenger, not one that raised a theological objection to single-transmitter reports. And the prayer-and-alms argument does not fit the Mu’tazili positions preserved in al-Balkhi: the second group in al-Shafi’i’s treatise, whom Hansu identifies as Mu’tazili, treat the number of prayers as certain knowledge. Hansu adds that the first group’s reasoning matches what later writers attribute to the Khawarij. Ibn Hazm reports the once-a-day view for certain extremist Khariji groups, and Ibn al-Murtada attributes prayer twice a day, morning and evening, to the Bid’iyya. Hansu’s conclusion is that the group was very likely Khariji. That is a well-argued identification, not a certainty, and it should be presented as one.
It is worth mentioning one clarification regarding the Mu’tazilites that is often misunderstood. The Mu’tazilites were not a monolith regarding their views on the authority of Hadith. Usman Ghani, summarizing Racha El-Omari and Josef van Ess, reports that Dirar b. ‘Amr wrote a book on the contradictions of hadith and rejected single reports in favor of the Quran and reason, and that al-Nazzam doubted that either single or mass-transmitted reports could yield certainty, which led al-Baghdadi to complain that he seemed to invalidate the branches of the law by invalidating its roots. Ghani adds that the early Mu’tazila tended to apply conditions so strict that few reports could pass, and that because reason outranked revelation in their system, and only the Quran counted as God’s literal word, a report that failed a rational test could be set aside whatever its chain. On that reading, the corpus could be undone indirectly, by raising the bar until almost nothing cleared it, without any Mu’tazili saying “reject hadith.” This shows that skepticism toward hadith, grounded in the Quran and reason, was wider than any single label. However, by the classical period, the Mu’tazila themselves had largely compromised, with al-Balkhi and al-Jubba’i requiring two narrators in legal matters and ‘Abd al-Jabbar, a Shafi’i in law, accepting single reports for legal rulings.
Hadith: Virtue in Killing the Khawarij
The hadith concerning the Khawarij offer perhaps the clearest example of how the movement came to be portrayed in the later Islamic tradition. Numerous reports attributed to the Prophet describe a group of exceptionally devout Muslims whose prayer, fasting, and Quran recitation would surpass those of ordinary believers, yet who would nevertheless be condemned as having departed from Islam. Although most of these reports never explicitly identify the group as the Khawarij, their association with the movement is established through the narratives themselves and the way the hadith collections organize them. In Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, these reports appear under chapter headings explicitly identifying the Khawarij or Haruriyya, the latter being an early name for the movement derived from Harura, a settlement near Kufa where Ali’s soldiers withdrew after rejecting the arbitration agreement at Siffin. The narratives further reinforce this identification by connecting the predicted group to Ali’s subsequent battle against the Khawarij at Nahrawan.
This distinction matters because these hadith do more than condemn a rebellious faction. They portray people whose extraordinary devotion to the Quran is itself insufficient, even misleading, and in some versions explicitly command their killing while promising divine reward to those who carry it out. The following reports illustrate how the hadith tradition came to associate intense Quranic devotion with religious deviation and, ultimately, with a justification for violence against those so identified.
One of the most prominent accounts comes from Abu Sa’id al-Khudri and is set during the Prophet’s own lifetime (Bukhari 3610 and 3344; Muslim 1064). According to the narration, while the Prophet was distributing gold that Ali had sent from Yemen, a man from Banu Tamim named Dhu al-Khuwaysira challenged him to act justly. When one of the Companions asked permission to kill the man, the Prophet refused but warned that people associated with him would emerge whose devotion to prayer and fasting would surpass that of other Muslims. Despite their recitation of the Quran, it would not pass beyond their throats, and they would pass out of Islam like an arrow passing through its target. Another version adds that they would kill Muslims while sparing idol-worshippers. The identification with the Khawarij becomes explicit in Abu Sa’id’s concluding testimony: he claims to have witnessed Ali fight these very people and to have been present when a man matching the Prophet’s description was found among the dead.
Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri: While we were with Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) who was distributing (i.e. some property), there came Dhu-l- Khuwaisira, a man from the tribe of Bani Tamim and said, “O Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ)! Do Justice.” The Prophet said, “Woe to you! Who could do justice if I did not? I would be a desperate loser if I did not do justice.” Umar said, “O Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ)! Allow me to chop his head off.” The Prophet (ﷺ) said, “Leave him, for he has companions who pray and fast in such a way that you will consider your fasting negligible in comparison to theirs. They recite Qur’an but it does not go beyond their throats (i.e. they do not act on it) and they will desert Islam as an arrow goes through a victim’s body, so that the hunter, on looking at the arrow’s blade, would see nothing on it; he would look at its Risaf and see nothing: he would look at its Na,di and see nothing, and he would look at its Qudhadh ( 1) and see nothing (neither meat nor blood), for the arrow has been too fast even for the blood and excretions to smear. The sign by which they will be recognized is that among them there will be a black man, one of whose arms will resemble a woman’s breast or a lump of meat moving loosely. Those people will appear when there will be differences amongst the people.” I testify that I heard this narration from Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) and I testify that `Ali bin Abi Talib fought with such people, and I was in his company. He ordered that the man (described by the Prophet (ﷺ)) should be looked for. The man was brought and I looked at him and noticed that he looked exactly as the Prophet (ﷺ) had described him.
Sahih al-Bukhari 3610
https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3610
The second major group comes from Ali himself, speaking to his troops on the way to Nahrawan (Muslim 1066, Abu Dawud 4768, Ahmad 706). He reports that a people would arise from the Prophet’s community whose recitation, prayer and fasting would make yours look insignificant beside theirs. They would recite the Quran thinking it supports them, while it is evidence against them. Their prayer does not pass the collarbone. The narrators then describe the battle at the bridge, with ‘Abd Allah b. Wahb al-Rasibi at the head of the Khawarij and only two men lost on Ali’s side, and the long search among the dead for the man with the crippled hand, which ends when he is found and the prophecy is confirmed.
‘Ali said: Whenever I narrate to you anything from the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) believe it to be absolutely true as falling from the sky is dearer to me than that of attributing anything to him (the Holy Prophet) which he never said. When I talk to you of anything which is between me and you (there might creep some error in it) for battle is an outwitting. I heard the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) as saying: There would arise at the end of the age a people who would be young in age and immature in thought, but they would talk (in such a manner) as if their words are the best among the creatures. They would recite the Qur’an, but it would not go beyond their throats, and they would pass through the religion as an arrow goes through the prey. So when you meet them, kill them, for in their killing you would get a reward with Allah on the Day of Judgment.
Sahih Muslim 1066a
https://sunnah.com/muslim:1066a
A third set comes from Abu Dharr (Muslim 1067, Ibn Majah 170), in which such people leave the religion, never return, and are the worst of creation.
Abu Dharr reported Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) as saying: Verily there would arise from my Ummah after me or soon after me a group (of people) who would recite the Qur’an, but it would not go beyond their throats, and they would pass clean through their religion just as the arrow passes through the prey, and they would never come back to it. They would be the worst among the creation and the creatures. Ibn Samit (one of the narrators) said: I met Rafi’ b. ‘Amr Ghifari, the brother of Al-Hakam Ghifari and I said: What is this hadith that I heard from Abu Dharr, i. e. so and so? and then I narrated that hadith to him and said: I heard it from the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ).
Other reports go further. Muslim files a set of them under a chapter heading that calls for killing the Khawarij. Some versions say that killing them brings reward on the day of resurrection. Others call fighting them a duty on every Muslim, and one has the Prophet say he would kill them as ‘Ad were killed. Ibn Abi Shayba preserves a Companion-level report in which Abu Sa’id, in old age, says fighting them was more virtuous than fighting the polytheists.
As noted above, most of these reports never use the word Khawarij. They speak of “a people,” “a group from my Ummah,” or “the offspring of this man,” and some place them in the east or in Iraq. Muslim 1064 contains a particularly revealing exchange. Abu Salama and ‘Ata’ b. Yasar ask Abu Sa’id about the Haruriyya, and he says he does not know who they are, but he relays what the Prophet said about a people who would arise. The identification comes from events, from Ali’s battle and from Abu Sa’id’s statement that Ali fought them, and from the chapter titles later compilers attached.
Abu Said Khudri reported that ‘Ali (Allah be pleased with him) sent some gold alloyed with dust to the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ), and the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) distributed that among four men, al-Aqra b. Habis Hanzali and Uyaina b. Badr al-Fazari and ‘Alqama b. ‘Ulatha al-‘Amiri, then to one person of the tribe of Kilab and to Zaid al-Khair al-Ta’l, and then to one person of the tribe of Nabhan. Upon this the people of Quraish felt angry and said: He (the Holy Prophet) gave to the chiefs of Najd and ignored us. Upon this the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: I have done it with a view to conciliating between them. Then there came a person with thick beard, prominent cheeks, deep sunken eyes and protruding forehead and shaven head. He said: Muhammad, fear Allah. Upon this the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: “If I disobey Allah, who would then obey Him? Have I not been (sent as the) most trustworthy among the people of the world? But you do not repose trust in me.” That person then went back. A person among the people then sought permission (from the Holy Prophet) for his murder. According to some, it was Khalid b. Walid who sought the permission. Upon this the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ), said: From this very person’s posterity there would arise people who would recite the Qur’an, but it would not go beyond their throat; they would kill the followers of Islam and would spare the idol-worshippers. They would glance through the teachings of Islam so hurriedly just as the arrow passes through the pray. If I were to ever find them I would kill them like ‘Ad.
حَدَّثَنَا هَنَّادُ بْنُ السَّرِيِّ، حَدَّثَنَا أَبُو الأَحْوَصِ، عَنْ سَعِيدِ بْنِ مَسْرُوقٍ، عَنْ عَبْدِ الرَّحْمَنِ، بْنِ أَبِي نُعْمٍ عَنْ أَبِي سَعِيدٍ الْخُدْرِيِّ، قَالَ بَعَثَ عَلِيٌّ – رضى الله عنه – وَهُوَ بِالْيَمَنِ بِذَهَبَةٍ فِي تُرْبَتِهَا إِلَى رَسُولِ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم فَقَسَمَهَا رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم بَيْنَ أَرْبَعَةِ نَفَرٍ الأَقْرَعُ بْنُ حَابِسٍ الْحَنْظَلِيُّ وَعُيَيْنَةُ بْنُ بَدْرٍ الْفَزَارِيُّ وَعَلْقَمَةُ بْنُ عُلاَثَةَ الْعَامِرِيُّ ثُمَّ أَحَدُ بَنِي كِلاَبٍ وَزَيْدُ الْخَيْرِ الطَّائِيُّ ثُمَّ أَحَدُ بَنِي نَبْهَانَ – قَالَ – فَغَضِبَتْ قُرَيْشٌ فَقَالُوا أَتُعْطِي صَنَادِيدَ نَجْدٍ وَتَدَعُنَا فَقَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم ” إِنِّي إِنَّمَا فَعَلْتُ ذَلِكَ لأَتَأَلَّفَهُمْ ” فَجَاءَ رَجُلٌ كَثُّ اللِّحْيَةِ مُشْرِفُ الْوَجْنَتَيْنِ غَائِرُ الْعَيْنَيْنِ نَاتِئُ الْجَبِينِ مَحْلُوقُ الرَّأْسِ فَقَالَ اتَّقِ اللَّهَ يَا مُحَمَّدُ . – قَالَ – فَقَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم ” فَمَنْ يُطِعِ اللَّهَ إِنْ عَصَيْتُهُ أَيَأْمَنُنِي عَلَى أَهْلِ الأَرْضِ وَلاَ تَأْمَنُونِي ” قَالَ ثُمَّ أَدْبَرَ الرَّجُلُ فَاسْتَأْذَنَ رَجُلٌ مِنَ الْقَوْمِ فِي قَتْلِهِ – يُرَوْنَ أَنَّهُ خَالِدُ بْنُ الْوَلِيدِ – فَقَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم ” إِنَّ مِنْ ضِئْضِئِ هَذَا قَوْمًا يَقْرَءُونَ الْقُرْآنَ لاَ يُجَاوِزُ حَنَاجِرَهُمْ يَقْتُلُونَ أَهْلَ الإِسْلاَمِ وَيَدَعُونَ أَهْلَ الأَوْثَانِ يَمْرُقُونَ مِنَ الإِسْلاَمِ كَمَا يَمْرُقُ السَّهْمُ مِنَ الرَّمِيَّةِ لَئِنْ أَدْرَكْتُهُمْ لأَقْتُلَنَّهُمْ قَتْلَ عَادٍ ” .
Sahih Muslim 1064a
https://sunnah.com/muslim:1064a
The pattern in these reports repays attention. They concede the opponents’ mastery of the Quran in the strongest terms and then declare it worthless: it does not pass the throat, it works against them, it fails to reach the heart. That is a diagnosis aimed at the very thing the Khawarij are said to have claimed as their authority. It disarms the Quranic appeal before it is made, because anyone who sets the Quran against the community’s practice can be told that this is exactly what the prophecy described.
Despite the dubious origins of these reports, the reports gave the later community a ready-made frame in which a Quran-first position, in any sect that held it, could be read as the fulfillment of a prophecy and justification for their execution.
Khawarij Redefined
The usual story is that the Khawarij were wiped out and that with them gone, the tradition won. The evidence does not support that, and a more accurate account is more interesting.
Armies did the fighting. Ali fought at Nahrawan, and Umayyad and Abbasid governors fought later Khariji revolts. What hadith added was religious sanction, the framing of those campaigns as a duty with a promised reward. That is not the same as traditionalists exterminating a rival school, and the later history shows why the distinction matters. The Khawarij were still present in the intellectual life of al-Shafi’i’s day. Hansu cites Ibn al-Nadim and Josef van Ess for Khariji scholars active in this period and argues that it is reasonable to place al-Shafi’i in debate with them. Al-Shafi’i’s own surviving texts record opponents who rejected hadith wholesale, and an early biography says he once debated an Ibadi scholar named Maslak in Egypt, on faith.
A second mechanism worked through consensus. Al-Balkhi’s report shows that Khariji rejection of transmission was a stated ground for excluding them from the count. Because consensus was becoming the test of what the community held, a position that denied transmission could be set aside by a procedure that presupposed transmission. The argument is circular, but it is also effective, and Hansu observes that the topic appears to have been extensively debated, even though later legal works preserve little of the reasoning.
The decisive step, though, was not exclusion. It was an argument. Al-Shafi’i’s reply to the group that rejected all reports was not that tradition outranks scripture. His reply, as Hansu summarizes it, was that the Quran itself commands obedience to the Prophet, and that obedience cannot be carried out without relying on what is reported from him, so rejecting the reports amounts to rejecting a direct Quranic command. This was Shafi’i’s attempt to answer the Quran-alone position on its own terms. Joseph Schacht and later Ahmed El Shamsy describe this period as the point at which the Sunna of the Prophet, restricted to Prophetic hadith, became the accepted basis of legal derivation. Even the Mu’tazila, who had their own disagreements with al-Shafi’i over single-transmitter reports, came largely to adopt his position, as Hansu shows in the later work of ‘Abd al-Jabbar and Abu l-Husayn al-Basri. Not coincidentally, the great hadith collections that preserve the Khariji prophecies were compiled in the same century.
Khawarij Ideology: Eternal Punishment
The clearest example of where the shift toward tradition touched doctrine is the question of what happens to a believer who dies unrepentant after serious sin. The Khawarij and the Mu’tazila, whatever they disagreed on about the label for such a person, agreed that the punishment is eternal. The Sunni majority, and the Murji’a before them in a different form, held that a believing sinner may be punished for a time and then released.
The Quran addresses a claim of this shape directly. In 2:80, repeated in 3:24, some of the Jews say that the Fire will touch them only for a few numbered days, and the Prophet is told to ask whether they have received a pledge from God, since God never breaks His pledge, or whether they are speaking of Him without knowledge. The verses that follow (2:81-82) give the criterion: those who earn evil and are surrounded by their sin are the people of the Fire, abiding in it, while those who believe and do righteous deeds are the people of Paradise. Elsewhere the Quran uses the language of abiding for deliberate killing of a believer (4:93), and for persistent disobedience to God and His messenger (72:23). Taken together, these suggest that what the verses reject is the idea that membership in a community, or a profession of faith, shields a person from the consequences of his actions.
The doctrine that believers are brought out of the Fire after punishment rests mainly on the intercession reports. A method that treats the Quran as the sole source has no footing for it, and a method that treats hadith as binding has a means to qualify the Quran’s language of abiding. This is where the outcome of the earlier struggle shows. The position that the Quran’s wording should control was marginalized, and the position that supplementary reports could modify it became the norm.
Conclusion
The Khawarij were not erased. They were defined, and the definition did a particular job. A movement born in a quarrel about who has the right to judge, and in an instinct that scripture’s explicit words outrank human custom, produced in some of its branches a theory that scripture alone suffices. The hadith tradition, assembling its canon in the following centuries, described the movement as a people who recite the Quran without understanding it and are to be killed. The theory was answered by al-Shafi’i on Quranic grounds, excluded from consensus on procedural grounds, and framed by prophecy on religious grounds. Those who held to it either disappeared from the mainstream or, like the Ibadis, built their own hadith literature and joined the conversation on the tradition’s terms.
What makes the Khawarij history particularly revealing is that a movement born from an appeal to God’s exclusive authority came to be remembered through hadith portraying its devotion to the Quran as evidence of misguidance. Al-Shafi’i offered an argument against rejecting prophetic reports, but the hadith tradition went further, attributing to the Prophet himself a condemnation of the very people who challenged the authority of such reports. The enduring question is whether their scriptural arguments were defeated on their merits or whether their reputation made those arguments easier to dismiss without examination. Condemning the excesses of the Khawarij is one thing; treating their appeal to the Quran as an excess in itself is quite another.
Principal sources
Hüseyin Hansu, “Debates on the Authority of Hadith in Early Islamic Intellectual History: Identifying al-Shafi’i’s Opponents in Jima’ al-‘Ilm,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 136.3 (2016): 515-533, drawing on al-Balkhi, Kitab al-Maqalat; Dirar b. ‘Amr, Kitab al-Tahrish; al-Nashi’ al-Akbar, Kitab Usul al-Nihal; Ibn Hazm, al-Fisal; and Ibn al-Murtada, al-Munya wa-l-amal.
Usman Ghani, “The Concept of Sunna in Muʿtazilite Thought,” in The Sunna and Its Status in Islamic Law, ed. Adis Duderija (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 59–73.
Richard C. Martin and Mark R. Woodward, Defenders of Reason in Islam: Mu’tazilism and Rational Theology from Medieval School to Modern Symbol, p. 181, translating an Indonesian study of the Mu’tazila.
Hadith: Sahih al-Bukhari 3344, 3601, 3610, 6932, 6934, 7123; Sahih Muslim 1064, 1066, 1067; Sunan Abi Dawud 4768; Sunan Ibn Majah 170; Musnad Ahmad 706 and 20342; Ibn Abi Shayba, al-Musannaf, chapter on the Khawarij.
On the Ibadis: Amr Khalifa Ennami, Studies in Ibadism (al-Ibadiyya); Sa’d b. ‘Abd Allah Al Humayyid, “Musnad al-Rabi’ b. Habib al-Ibadi: Dirasa naqdiyya,” Majallat Jami’at Umm al-Qura 47 (2009).