What is meant
The author links the historical emergence of the Kharijites to the political conflict that followed the killing of Uthman. Their breakaway was not a purely religious event, but came in the context of a struggle over power and the ensuing division.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: Historical
- Direction of the argument: Returns the emergence of the Kharijites to the political conflict after the killing of Uthman.
- Key terms: Kharijites, political conflict, killing of Uthman, division, power.
- Degree of centrality: Secondary.
It explains the emergence of the Kharijites as the result of a power struggle turning into a historical split, which softens readings that isolate the phenomenon from its political and social conditions.
Links to help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur, Religion and Authority
- History, Evolution, and the Sunnas
- The mixing of religion and authority produced coercion
Grounding
- Supporting text: «It links the historical emergence of the “Kharijites” to the political conflict after the killing of Uthman».
Place of the grounding in the book
- Book: Religion and Authority.
- Location: Near the beginning of the book within the critique of the political attribution of hadiths.
- Type of grounding: Close witness.
- Marker that helps verification: the political attribution of hadiths
- Reading note: The location is close because it mentions the emergence of the Kharijites in the context of prophecies and fabricated hadiths serving the political struggle.
Degree of documentation
- Level: Directly documented
- Meaning of the level: The atom rests on an explicit witness close to the formulation of the claim.
- Limits of the reading: The formulation above is an analytical summary, and is not treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is cited verbatim.
Its function in the book
Its function here is declarative; it establishes a result on which what follows in the argument depends.
Related to
Editorial note
This atom is useful for reinterpreting the beginnings of religious violence in Islamic history.