“Those words are true,” Ali countered, “but you twist
them and use them to mean something false.” It was
they who had insisted that he agree to arbitration at
Siffin, he said. They had ignored his warnings then; how
could they now attack him for doing what they had
insisted on?
But there is nobody as righteous or as blind to reason
as the reformed sinner. “When we wanted arbitration,”
Wahb replied, “we sinned and became unbelievers. But
we have repented. If you now do the same, we will be
with you. But if you will not, then as the Quran says,
‘We reject you without distinction, for God does not love
the treacherous.’ ”
As the rest of the mosque rose in uproar over the idea
of Ali as a traitor to Islam, Wahb declared that the whole
of Kufa was mired in a state of jahiliya, the pagan
darkness that had reigned before the advent of Islam.
“Let us go out, my brothers, from this place of wicked
people,” he said, and go out they did, some three
thousand strong. Fifty miles north of Kufa they
established a new settlement on the Tigris at Nahrawan.
It was to be a haven of purity, Wahb announced, a
beacon of righteousness in a corrupt world.
He and his men were to be the ɹrst Islamic
fundamentalists. They called themselves the
Rejectionists—khariji, meaning “those who go out.” The
reference was to the phrase “those who go forth to serve