Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

DEFINING AND DEFENDING BELIEVERS t 201
The Umma Divided: Early Muslim Sects and Sectarianism
The issue of the “genuine Muslim” and so of membership in the
community arose as early in Islam as it did in Christianity, where it
already concerned Paul no more than twenty-five years after Jesus’
death. The Medina suras of the Quran speak often of “hypocrites”
(munafiqun), and though the allusion, like much else in the Quran,
is not entirely clear, it seems reasonably certain that the reference
was to Medinese Arabs who had at least nominally professed Islam
but were not Muslims in their heart. Some hearts were easier
to read. At the death of the Prophet in 632, many of the opportunistic
Bedouin tribes of Arabia bethought themselves of leaving
Islam, at least to the extent of not paying into the Muslim treasury
the alms-tithe that was a sign of their submission. Muhammad’s
successor as head of the umma had to make an immediate decision:
was it possible to secede from the Islamic community? The
answer was a decisive “no.” The “secession” (ridda) was put
down when armies were sent against the tribes to coerce their once
declared and now irrevocable adherence to Islam.
It was clear, then, that entry into the community of Muslims was
regarded, as it was among Christians, as an only partially reversible
act: a Muslim may be banished from the community, that is,
denied the means of salvation, but may not willfully withdraw
from it. That latter act is called apostasy and is viewed exceedingly
gravely in all three faiths. In most cases apostasy requires a formal
act of disavowal on the part of the believer, but the question was
raised in Islam, as it was among radical Reform Christians we
lump together as Anabaptists, as to whether nonobservance was,
in fact, a kind of apostasy. The early Muslim sect called the Kharijites
certainly thought so, and were willing to visit the fatal consequences
of apostasy on those who did not pray daily or fast during
Ramadan.
In the classic form cited above, the shahada is purely a verbal
formulation and leaves open the questions of interior intention
and of the relative importance to be placed on interior faith and
external good works. The Kharijites, a group that was part of Ali’s