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Further reading: Daniel Brown, Rethinking Tradition in
Modern Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1996); Yasin Dutton, The Origins of Islamic
Law: The Quran, the Muwatta, and the Madinan Amal
(London: Routledge Curzon, 2002); Wael B. Hallaq, The
Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2005); G. H. A. Juynboll, “Some
New Ideas on the Development of Sunna as a Technical
Term in Early Islam,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and
Islam 10 (1987): 97–118; Fazlur Rahman, Islam, 2d ed.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 43–84.
Sunnism
Sunnism was the last of the major traditions of
Islam to be clearly articulated. In fact, it is possible
to think of Sunnism as comprising the broad swath
of Muslims who did not incline toward the other
two early traditions, s
hiism
and Kharijism. The
k
haWariJ
broke with the rest of Muslims over the
question of whether the sinner could be considered
a Muslim. They defined the community narrowly,
and they were initially disposed to fight those with
whom they disagreed; the consensus among Mus-
lims grew that this position was too extreme and
the Khawarij eventually became a tiny sect with few
adherents. Shii identity formed around a dispute
over the leadership of the community, but it fairly
quickly culminated in a belief that the leadership of
the community was no mere matter of human pref-
erence, but rather formed part of a divinely inspired
plan for the salvation of the community.
The Sunnis, then, are those Muslims who
eventually united in a belief that only God knows
the hearts, and so judgment should be left to
God—thus rejecting Khariji extremism—and that
the leadership of the community as it emerged his-
torically was part of God’s plan, thus rejecting the
heart of Shii claims about legitimate leadership;
subsequent leadership would not be considered
very significant theologically because the Sunni
orthodoxy that eventually emerged held that the
caliph
, while theoretically necessary for the exis-
tence of an Islamic state, was less important than
the
caliphate
as an institution. Finally, it was held
that the scholars (
Ulama
) were the keepers of the
community’s morals, not the caliphs.
The term sunni is an abridgement of ahl al-
sunna wa’al-jamaa, meaning the people of the
prophetic tradition and community. This refers to
the focus, especially dating from the ninth cen-
tury, on the collection of accounts of the prophet
Muhammad, the
sUnna
, and following in the path
of that sunna. All Muslims accept the primacy of
the q
Uran
, but the Sunnis place a unique empha-
sis on the sunna of Muhammad.
Today, Sunnis make up some 85 percent of
Muslims worldwide. The sunni legal schools have
traditionally been the means by which Sunni Mus-
lims actually learned the specifics of their Islam.
The importance of these schools has broken down
in the 20th century, causing contemporary Sunn-
ism to break with its traditional educational and
intellectual roots in a way that has not happened
K 646
Sunnism
as noticeably in Shiism. This has led to some prob-
lems facing contemporary Sunni Islam, especially
because the most vigorous intellectual leadership,
that of the Islamists, has not, in the main, come
from the ulama class but rather from those edu-
cated in the modern methods, especially the hard
sciences. In this respect, then, it could be argued
that Sunnism finds itself in a real crisis of identity
and direction quite similar to the period of crisis
that European Christianity endured after the Prot-
estant Reformation began in the 16th century.
Some tensions exist between Sunnis and Shiis,
especially in regions where sizeable populations
of both sects exist, such as p
akistan
, i
raq
, and
l
ebanon
. But on the whole, these differences are
submerged in the larger contexts of agreement,
whether they be religious, nationalistic, or ethnic.
Where these differences are reemerging, such as
in i
raq
after the American invasion, the divisions
reflect at least in part the failure of nationalism to
provide an effective source of cohesion.
John Iskander
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