Sunni Islam

• 1. Introduction

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  Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam and the largest religious denomination in the world. A study by the Pew Research Center, conducted in 2010 and released in January 2011, counted 1.62 billion Muslims, and estimated that over 85 to 90 percent of them are Sunni. The story begins with a single contested question. When Muhammad died, who should lead the Muslim community? Sunnis hold that he appointed no successor, and that his closest companion, Abu Bakr, rightfully succeeded him at a gathering known as the meeting of Saqifa. The rival Shia view holds that Muhammad named Ali ibn Abi Talib instead. From that fork flow centuries of theology, law, and politics. How did a word borrowed from pre-Islamic Arabic become the name of a global faith? Why do four schools of law all recognize each other as valid? And how did a community without any formal hierarchy come to define what it means to be orthodox? Those questions shape everything that follows.

• 2. Naming The Path

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  Sunna, the Arabic word Sunnis are named after, dates back to pre-Islamic language. It once meant the right path that has always been followed. The term gained political weight after the murder of the third caliph, Uthman. At the Battle of Siffin, Malik al-Ashtar, a famous follower of Ali, is said to have used the expression that Mu'awiya kills the sunna. After the battle, both sides agreed to consult the righteous Sunnah, the unifying and not the divisive, to resolve the conflict.

  Masruq ibn al-Adschda, a Mufti in Kufa who died in 683, recorded a need to love the first two caliphs and acknowledge their priority. His disciple ash-Shabi, who died between 721 and 729, first sided with the Shia in Kufa but turned away in disgust at their fanaticism. He joined the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik and popularized the concept of Sunnah. Ash-Shabi also took offense at hatred toward Aisha bint Abi Bakr, treating it as a violation of the Sunnah.

  The short form Sunna, used as a group name rather than the longer ahl as-sunna, is a relatively young phenomenon. It was probably Ibn Taymiyyah who used the short term first. The pan-Islamic scholar Muhammad Rashid Rida later popularized it in a treatise published in 1928 to 1929. In modern Arabic discourse, Sunnah designates Sunni Muslims chiefly when they are being contrasted with Shias.

• 3. Becoming Orthodoxy

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  One of the earliest documents for the phrase ahl as-sunna comes from the Basran scholar Muhammad Ibn Sirin, who died in 728. He is quoted in the Sahih of Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj saying that, before the fitna, no one asked about the chain of informants. After it began, people demanded to know their sources, accepting hadith only from Sunnah people and rejecting it from people of the Innovations. The scholar G.H.A. Juynboll linked this fitna to the second Civil War of 680 to 692, when the community split into four parties.

  Abu Hanifa, who died in 769, insisted his group were righteous people and people of the Sunnah. Among Hanafites, ahl as-sunna and ahl al-adl, people of the righteous, long remained interchangeable. The Kufic Quran scholar Abu Bakr ibn Ayyash, who died in 809, was asked how he was a sunni. He answered that a sunni is one who, when heresies are mentioned, does not get excited about any of them.

  The fuller phrase ahl as-sunna wa l-jamaah carried a demand for righteous belief. Al-Jubba'i, who died in 916, records that Ahmad ibn Hanbal gave his students the label sunni jamaah, suggesting the Hanbalis were first to adopt it as a self-designation. At-Tahawi, in his Sunni Creed, set the word jamaah, meaning community, against furqa, meaning division and sectarianism, calling one truth and the other aberration and punishment.

• 4. Caliphate To Dynasty

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  The first four caliphs are known among Sunnis as the Rashidun, the Rightly-Guided Ones: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali. After Ali's murder, Sunnis rarely added anyone to that honored list, even as they recognized later rulers as caliph. The caliphate itself was constitutionally abolished in Turkey on the 3rd of March 1924. Sunnis revere not only these four but also the sahaba, the tabi'in, and the tabi al-tabi'in, together called the salaf, the predecessors.

  The seeds of monarchy were sown, as the second caliph Umar had feared, under Uthman, who appointed kinsmen from his clan Banu Umayya, including Marwan and Walid bin Uqba, to important posts. This nepotism became a main cause of the turmoil that led to his murder. According to the historian El-Hibri, Uthman used religious charity revenues, zakat, to subsidize family interests, justifying it as al-sila, pious filial support. Ali tried to restore the egalitarian system but faced war after war.

  After Ali was killed, his followers elected his elder son Hasan, who soon signed a treaty with Mu'awiya relinquishing power. Hasan was later poisoned, and Mu'awiya, dishonoring the treaty, nominated his son Yazid. When Husain, Ali's younger son and Muhammad's grandson, refused allegiance, his caravan was cordoned at Karbala. He was killed there with all his male companions, a total of 72 people, in a day-long battle. Banu Umayya ruled until they were overthrown by Banu Abbas, who ushered in their own dynastic monarchy styled as caliphate from 750.

• 5. Schools Of Law

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  Four legal schools shape traditional Sunni jurisprudence: Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki, and Shafi'i. Their founders, Abu Hanifa, Malik ibn Anas, Shafi'i, and Ahmad bin Hanbal, all practiced during the Abbasid period, which is seen as formative in Sunni Islam. Rulings draw on the Quran, hadith, especially the Six Books, and ijma, scholarly consensus, alongside public welfare and juristic discretion.

  Many traditional scholars saw two groups: Ahl al-Ra'y, people of reason, who emphasized scholarly judgment, and Ahl al-Hadith, people of traditions, who restricted thought to scripture. Ibn Khaldun instead defined three schools, placing Hanafi for reason, the Zahirite school for tradition, and a middle school covering the Shafi'ite, Malikite, and Hanbalite. During the Middle Ages, the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt recognized only Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali, excluding the Zahiri.

  The Ottoman Empire reaffirmed the four schools as a reaction to the Shiite character of their rivals, the Persian Safavids. In the contemporary era, the former Prime Minister of Sudan, Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, and the Amman Message issued by King Abdullah II of Jordan recognize the Zahiris, keeping the number of Sunni schools at five. While conflict between the schools was often violent in the past, the four recognize each other's validity and have interacted in legal debate over the centuries.

• 6. Three Theologies

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  Since the early modern period, three groups have been counted within the Sunnis: the Ash'arites, named after Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari, who died in 935; the Maturidites, named after Abu Mansur al-Maturidi, who died in 941; and a traditionalist group that rejects the rational discourse of Kalam. The Syrian scholar Abd al-Baqi Ibn Faqih Fussa, who died in 1661, called the third group the Hanbalites.

  Ash'ari theology stresses divine revelation over human reason, teaching that ethics come from God's commands rather than from human reason. The Ash'aris held that the Quran is eternal and uncreated. On the divine attributes, they rejected the Mu'tazili idea that all such references were metaphorical. They argued instead that attributes are as they best befit His Majesty, noting that one Arabic word can carry 15 different meanings.

  Maturidiyyah, founded on Hanafi law, was the major tradition in Central Asia, more influenced by Persian interpretations. Unlike the traditionalists, it allows rejecting hadiths on the basis of reason alone, and holds that ethics can be understood by reason without prophecy. Athari, or traditionalist theology, rejects rationalistic kalam in favor of strict textualism, accepting the text without asking how, a stance captured by the phrase Bi-la kaifa. In the modern era, Salafism represents a continuation and revival of the Athari school. The twentieth-century theologian Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani argued that not every Ash'ari should be excluded from Ahl al-Sunna wal Jama'ah.

• 7. The Mystics Within

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  There is broad agreement that the Sufis are part of Sunnism, a view already found in the Shafi'ite scholar Abu Mansur al-Baghdadi, who died in 1037. In his work al-Farq baina l-firaq, he divided Sunnis into eight categories, ranking the Sufi ascetics sixth, after the theologians, jurists, hadith scholars, language scholars, and Quran scholars. Murtada az-Zabidi later counted four groups: hadith scholars, Sufis, Ash'arites, and Maturidites.

  Not everyone agreed. The Yemeni scholar Abbas ibn Mansur as-Saksaki, who died in 1284, wrote that Sufis associate themselves with the Sunnis but do not belong to them, because they contradict them in belief and turn toward the hidden inner meaning of the Quran. He compared them to the Batinites. The Grozny Conference's final document admitted only those Sufis described as people of pure Sufism, following the method of al-Junaid al-Baghdadi.

  In the 11th century, Sufism began to be ordered and crystallized into tariqahs, the orders that continue today. Each was founded by a major Sunni saint, among them the Qadiriyya after Abdul-Qadir Gilani, who died in 1166, the Chishtiyya after Moinuddin Chishti, who died in 1236, and the Naqshbandiyya after Baha-ud-Din Naqshband Bukhari, who died in 1389. Eminent defenders of orthodoxy, including Al-Ghazali and Saladin, were connected with Sufism. The Salafi and Wahhabi strands, by contrast, do not accept many mystical practices of the contemporary Sufi orders.

• 8. The Caliphate's End

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  At the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire fell. It had been the biggest Sunni empire for six centuries, and its collapse brought the caliphate to an end. The shock reached far-off places, including the Khilafat Movement in India, a land later divided on independence from Britain into Sunni-dominated Pakistan and secular India. Pakistan, the most populous Sunni state at its dawn, was itself later partitioned into Pakistan and Bangladesh.

  The demise of the Ottoman caliphate also gave rise to Saudi Arabia, a dynastic absolute monarchy that championed the reformist doctrines of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the namesake of the Wahhabi movement. These movements revived the doctrines of the Hanbali theologian Taqi Al-Din Ibn Taymiyyah, who lived from 1263 to 1328 and was a fervent advocate of the traditions of Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Cold War pressures then radicalized Afghan refugees in Pakistan, giving birth to the Taliban movement led by Mohammed Omar, addressed as the Emir of the faithful.

  The latest attempt to re-establish a Sunni caliphate came with the militant group ISIL, whose leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was known among followers as caliph and Amir-al-mu'mineen, the Commander of the Faithful. Such jihadism is opposed by many imams, Muslim organizations, and faithful across the ummah. Alongside these struggles, the broader Sunni tradition still rests on the six pillars of iman, beginning with belief in the Oneness of God and the conviction that the Quran is the uncreated speech of God.