“The Other” Among Us: The Perception of Khārijī and Ibāḍī Islam in the Muslim Exegetical Traditions

This article analyses the perception of Khārijī and Ibāḍī Islam in Sunni and Shi‘i Qur’anic commentaries and compares the depiction of these groups by their opponents with the actual teachings of the Ibāḍiyya as expressed in their exegetical, legal and theological literature. As will be shown, misrepresentations abound: the Khārijīs and Ibāḍīs assume the role of the paradigmatic “other,” characterised by heresy, takfīr, excessiveness and the spreading of discord (fitna). This negative image has certain roots in the early history of Islam, but is maintained by exegetes and historians of exegesis until today, even though the target of their polemics has long disappeared and in spite of the availability of sources that provide a more accurate idea of Khārijī, and specifically Ibāḍī, beliefs. The need to construct a cautionary tale of an internal enemy provides a motivation to adopt the anti-Khārijī narrative from earlier exegetes instead of verifying stereotypes about the alleged theological, ritual and juridical differences between the Khārijiyya and other branches of Islam. In reality, the differences between Ibāḍī Islam and mainstream Sunni and Shi‘i beliefs are relatively small in many respects. Still, most exegetes go so far as to ahistorically assign an anti-Khārijī agenda to the Qur’anic text itself, which shows that self-assertion and the drawing of boundaries are functions of tafsīr that are at times more powerful than the quest for the meaning of the text.