132 No god but God
of tribal leadership, though Mu‘awiyah himself seemed to be trying to
steer the Ummah in the direction of the great empires of the Byzan-
tines and Sasanians. No one was yet calling for the establishment of a
Muslim kingdom, but it was becoming increasingly clear that the
Ummah was now too large and too wealthy to maintain its unity
according to the “neo-tribal” system established by Muhammad in
Medina.
At the opposite end of the spectrum were the Shi‘atu Ali, who
were committed to preserving Muhammad’s original vision of the
Ummah, no matter the social or political consequences. Although it is
true that some factions within this group thought the Caliphate
should incorporate Muhammad’s religious authority, it would be a
mistake to consider this view the established Shi‘ite position it would
eventually become. At this point, there were no significant religious
differences between the Shi‘ah and the rest of the Muslim community,
later called the Sunni, or “orthodox.” The Party of Ali was nothing
more than a political faction that maintained the right of the ahl al-
bayt to rule the community in Muhammad’s stead.
However, there was a small faction within the Shi‘ah who held the
more extreme view that the Ummah was a divinely founded institu-
tion that could be run only by the most pious person in the commu-
nity, irrespective of his tribe, lineage, or ancestry. Eventually called
the Kharijites, this faction has already been cited for their justification
of Uthman’s murder on the grounds that he had broken the com-
mands of God and rejected the example of the Prophet, making him
no longer worthy of the Caliphate. Because the Kharijites stressed the
need for a religious authority as Caliph, they are often credited with
being the first Muslim theocrats. But this was a tiny, fractious group
whose radically theocratic position was rejected by nearly every other
faction vying for control of the Muslim community.
What makes the Kharijites so important to Islamic history, how-
ever, is that they represent the first self-conscious attempts at defining
a distinctive Muslim identity. This was a group obsessed with estab-
lishing who could and could not be considered a Muslim. According
to the Kharijites, anyone who disobeyed any of the Quranic prescrip-
tions, or violated the example of the Prophet Muhammad in any way,