Sunni Sect
The religion of Islam has several sects or branches, of whcih the largest
denomination is the Sunni (Sunnah)
interpretation.
Sunni Islam is based on the
belief that the Prophet
Muhammad died without appointing a
successor to lead the Muslim community
(ummah). According
to Sunni Muslims, after Muhammad's death,
the confusion that ensued from not having
a person to head the community led to
the election of Abu
Bakr, the Prophet's close friend
and father-in-law, as the first Caliph.
This contrasts with the Shi'a Muslim belief that Muhammad himself appointed
his first successor to be Ali ibn Abi Talib
as the first Caliph and the first Muslim imam.
The sectarian split that occurred in Islam
between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims is based
upon this early question of leadership.
Thirty years after Muhammad's
death, the various factions of the Islamic
faith were embroiled in a civil war known
as the Fitna. Many of
Muhammad's relatives and companions were
involved in the power struggle, and the
war finally stabilized when Mu'awiyya ,
the governor of Syria,
took control of the Caliphate. This marked
the rise of the Umayyad
dynasty which ruled Islam until 750.
Three sects of Islam developed and emerged
at the conclusion of the Fitna:
Sunni and Shi'a Islam, and the Khwarij
sect, which is generally rejected by Islamic
scholars as illegitimate and is today only
practiced in Yemen and Oman.
Islamic sects that have materialized since
the 7th century Fitna, such as The
Nation of Islam, are not regarded as
legitimate Muslims by Sunni Muslims.
Traditional Islamic law,
or Shari'a, is interpreted in four different
ways in Sunni Islam. The schools of law,
or madhab, developed in
the first four centuries of Islam. The four
schools of law are the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i,
and Hanbali traditions, each based on the
beliefs of their founders. Some Sunni Muslims
say that one should choose a madhab and
then follow all of its rulings. Other Sunnis
say that it is acceptable to mix madhabs,
to accept one madhab's ruling regarding
one issue, and accept another madhab's ruling regarding a different
issue. Sunnis also view the hadith, or Islamic oral law, differently than Shi'a
Muslims. Hadith are found in several collections,
and Sunnis view some of these collections
to be more holy and authentic than others,
especially the Bukhari collection of hadith.
Even though the main split in Islamic
practice is between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims, there are
several rifts within the Sunni community. There are
some liberal and more secular movements in Sunni Islam
that say that Shari'a is interpreted on an individual
basis, and that reject any fatwa or religious edict by religious Muslim authority figures.
There are also several fundamentalist movements in Sunni
Islam, which reject and sometimes even persecute liberal
Muslims for attempting to compromise traditional Muslim
values. The Muslim
Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami organizations are
fundamentalist Islamic groups that have given rise to
offshoot groups like Hamas who wish to destroy secular Islam and Western society
through terrorism to bring back to the world a period
of religious Muslim rule.
Some estimates say that
Muslims constitute 20 percentof the world's
population. Although the exact demographics
of the branches of Islam are disputed, most
scholars believe that Sunni Muslims comprise
87-90 percent of the world's 1.5 billion
Muslims.
Sources: Wikipedia;
Hussein Abdulwaheed Amin, "The Origins of the Sunni/Shia
split in Islam," IslamForToday.com |