RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Mohammed
four of the first caliphs were legitimate; Shiah holds that the office of caliph is not elective and not I usurpable, that it comes by divine right and is spiritual, and that Ali was the first caliph or Imam, , kept from his own by Ayesha, and finally dislodged by Mu'awiya.
Possibly the tradition is apocryphal which attributes to Mohammed the prediction that Islam would split into seventy-two divisions, but for a man who knew his people as did the prophet the prediction is not improbable. Within his own lifetime the seeds of division were sown in the honor paid to the Muhajirs, " companions in the Hegira," who
went with him from Mecca to Medina
3. Shiites (together with the Ansar, " helpers,"
and who invited him thither), and in the
Sunnites. distinction of these from the converts
who accepted Islam because they must, among whom developed the Ummayads, so important in the very near future of Mohammed's time. The events of the succession created a party to whom the name "legitimists" may be applied, because they held that succession was through appointment by Allah and not through election by men. The election of the third caliph was a triumph for the Ummayads, his assassination and the election of the fourth caliph (Ali) was a triumph for the legitimists. The contest between Ali and Mu'awiya was fruitful in divisions. Thus the promise by Ali given to Mu'awiya, to submit his right to the caliphate to arbitration, evoked the active disapproval of a large party of his followers on the ground that the duly elected caliph had no right to submit to question his unquestionable right. These were the Kharijites, " seceders," who differed from the legitimists in that they held election to give an undisputed title. The Kharijites in turn continued for centuries to split into factions, each of which differed from the others on various counts, practical or theoretical, and their survivors in the present are the sect of Ibadites. But the great division ; was between Shiah and Sunnah, already defined.' Shiah started as a political tenet, concerned primarily with the succession to the caliphate; but this had a theological basis, and naturally the distinction between Shiites and Sunnites became essentially theological. From the Shiah doctrine of the inherent right of Ali developed divisions in the body of Shiites according as the conception of Ali's personality varied — Ali being regarded at one time as an incarnation of deity, at another as an Imam in whom the heavenly light existed (see Babism), and so on — or as opinions varied concerning the line through which legitimacy flowed, whether through descendants of Ali by his wife Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed, or through some other of Ali's descendants. The great freedom in speculation which has always characterized Shiah contributed further to division into sects as pantheism and mysticism and rationalism evolved positions around which those to whom the variant doctrines appealed easily gathered. Especially fruitful of divisions was the doctrine of the Imamate, the two great parties of the " Seveners " and the " Twelvers " differing on the question whether the Imamate descended to the twelfth or only to the seventh
generation from Ali before it suffered occultation. The Druses (q.v.) and the Assassins are but extreme developments in the circle of Shiah. The distinction between Shiites and Sunnites in its total intra-Islamic effect is that between the heterodox and the orthodox, the latter term being applicable to Sunnah doctrine alone. The Sunnites were, so to speak, driven into existence by the necessity of opposing Shiah tenets and their developments. Hence Sunnites are the traditionalists of Mohammedanism, whose central position is that in the four bases of authority named above all necessary guidance is contained. But even while they thus explicitly disavowed philosophizing, this activity claimed its workers among them, and as differences of theory and practise grew up in the larger life opened up by Islamic conquests, discord arose, and the history of Sunnah is no less a story of division than is that of Shiah. But the Sunnites are by far the more numerous, constituting nine-tenths of Mohammedan religionists.
The reasons for this great diversity of sects in a system theoretically so rigid as Mohammedanism may be given as follows: (1) Advance in culture through contact with the peoples of the world brought its immediate consequences in an acquired bent for speculative and analytical 4. Causes philosophizing — not a native trait in of Sec- Semites (see Arabia). Thus the imtarianism. plicit contradictions in the Koran respecting predestination and free will, the interpretation and methods of interpreting that book, difficulties in eschatology — all these challenged individual opinion, prejudice, and passion, and opened chasms between bodies of believers. (2) The diversity in the human make-up of the great realm covered by the faith had its influence. Peoples as diverse as the Negro races of Africa, the Aryans and native races of India and Persia, Malays and Mongolians own its sway. Peoples so different could not be expected to hold the faith in the same way. An illustration of the modifications thus brought in is furnished by Persia, where the decided trend of the mind of the Eastern Aryan toward pantheism and the liking for the theory of reincarnation have compelled Islam to include within its fold believers in both these originally un-Mohammedan principles. (3) The fanaticism which Mohammed evoked and fostered contributed to the ardor with which any tenet once enunciated and received with any degree of favor was embraced and its propaganda carried on. (4) Coordinate elements were the Semitic tendency to segregation and the hugeness of the Mohammedan realm. Arabs of unnumbered clans, Babylonians, Assyrians, Syrians, Arameans, Copts — indeed the whole Semitic world except the Jews — accepted the faith. Scission was in the very material of which the fabric was built, even if no account be taken of the alien races, each with its own psychological history and categories of religious intuitions. The mystery is not that sects developed, but rather that the religion has held together the hordes of Semites, not to mention the swarms of other peoples whom it dominates. From these roots therefore sprang division. Scholasticism developed, and logical, theological, and
Iffohammed Mohammedan s