Sunni Islam

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Muhammad Ali • Abu Bakr Companions of Muhammad Household of Muhammad Prophets of Islam

Texts & Laws

Qur'an • Hadith • Sharia Jurisprudence • Theology Biographies of Muhammad

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Sunni • Shi'a • Sufi

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See also

Vocabulary of Islam Index of articles on Islam

Sunni Muslims are the largest denomination of Islam. They are referred to as Ahl ul-Sunna ( Arabic: أهل السنة), the folks of the tradition. The word Sunni comes from the word sunna (Arabic : سنة ) that means the tradition of the prophet of Islam Muhammad. Sunni ( Arabic: سني ) means follower of the sunna of the prophet, with some details. The plural of Sunni in Arabic is also sunna.

The word al-Jama'ah (Arabic : الجماعة) was established by Mu'awiya to distinguish the followers of Ahl-ul-Bayt and prosecute them. Shi'a were not of the Jama'ah. The name comes from "the year of Jama'ah", "the year of the union" the year the Muslim civil war ended after a peace treaty between Hasan ibn Ali and Muawiya I. See Historic background of the Sunni-Shi'a split for detail on the split between Sunni Islam and Shi'a Islam.

Later on the word Ahl ul-Sunna wa-l-Jama'ah (Arabic: أهل السنة والجماعة), was used by the salafis in order to push for unity among the sunnis and to segregate against the non-sunnis of the muslims.

Demographics

Present calculations indicate that some 90% of the world's Muslims are Sunni and approximately 10% are Shi'a, but the Shi'a are certainly undercounted. Further work is needed before these statistics are defensible.

Sunni schools of law ( Madhab)

There are four Sunni schools of law:

• Hanafi (based on work of Abu Hanifa)
• Maliki (founded by Malik)
• Shafi'i (founded by Shafi'i, a student of Malik)
• Hanbali (founded by Ahmad bin Hanbal, a student of Shafi'i)
• Salafis although they are mostly followers of Hanbali school, they still have their own laws that can agree with any of the above schools.

A madhab is a particular tradition of interpreting Islamic law, or shari'a. The schools were started by eminent Muslim scholars in the first four centuries of Islam. Most Sunnis believe that there are no living jurists of the stature of the founders of the four madhabs. Contemporary scholars can comment on the traditions, but they cannot start new ones. This belief is called "the closing of the gate of ijtihad".

A madhab is not to be confused with a religious sect. There may be scholars representing all four madhabs living in larger Muslim communities, and it is up to those who consult them to decide which school they prefer.

Some Sunni Muslims say that one should choose a madhab and then follow all of its rulings. Other Sunnis say that it is acceptable to mix madhabs, to accept one madhab's ruling regarding one issue, and accept another madhab's ruling regarding a different issue.

Some modern Sunni, such as liberals, reject some or all of the intricate structure of hadith and shari'a erected over the centuries. Some Salafis reject strict adherence to traditional jurisprudence and others follow the Hanbali school of thought.

Sunni theological traditions ( kalam)

Some Islamic scholars faced questions that they felt were not specifically answered in the Qur'an, especially questions with regard to philosophical conundrums like the nature of God, the possibility of human free will, or the eternal existence of the Qur'an. Various schools of theology and philosophy developed to answer these questions, each claiming to be true to the Qur'an and the Muslim tradition ( sunnah). There were the following dominant traditions:

• Mu'tazilah was the school established in Iraq by Wasil bin 'Ata (699-749), a student of the distinguished scholar Hasan al-Basri (642-728). The Mu'tazilites rose to prominence in 750, under the new Abbasid dynasty of caliphs. One caliph, al-Ma'mun, declared Mu'tazilah doctrine to be the state creed, and persecuted dissenters. This completely alienated the Sunni Muslim clergy, the ulema, and Mu'tazilism fell into disrepute after the death of al-Ma'mun. There are no current Sunni adherents of Mu'tazilism, though their texts are still read and preserved as important to understanding the history of Sunni theology. The Shi'a follow a Mu'tazili tradition.
  • The Mu'tazilites were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, and attempted to establish religion and ethics on the basis of reason alone. While they accepted the authority of the Qur'an, they argued that it should be accepted because it was reasonable. They understood many Qur'anic passages metaphorically, particularly those implying that God has a human body. They stressed human free will, and taught that the Qur'an was created in time, existing only from the moment it was revealed to Muhammad.
• Ash'ariyyah, founded by Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari (873-935). The dominant theology, and the tradition embraced by al-Ghazali, a Muslim jurist and mystic whom many Sunnis follow and revere.
  • Ash'ariyyah theology stresses divine revelation over human reason. Ethics, they say, cannot be derived from human reason: God's commands, as revealed in the Qur'an and the practice of Muhammad and his companions (the sunnah, as recorded in the traditions, or hadith), are the source of all morality.
  • Regarding the nature of God and the divine attributes, the Ash'ari rejected the Mu'tazilite position that all Qur'anic references to God as having physical attributes (that is, a body) were metaphorical. Ash'aris insisted that these attributes were "true", since the Qur'an could not be in error, but that they were not to be understood as implying a crude anthropomorphism.
  • Ash'aris tend to stress divine omnipotence over human free will. They believe that the Qur'an is eternal and uncreated.
• Maturidiyyah, founded by Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (d.944). Maturidiyyah was a minority tradition until it was accepted by the Turkish tribes of Central Asia (previously they had been Ashari and followers of the Shafi school, it was only later on migration into Anatolia that they became Hanafi and followers of the Maturidi creed). One of the those tribes, the Seljuk Turks, migrated to Turkey, where later the Ottoman Empire was established. Their preferred school of law achieved a new prominence throughout their whole empire although it continued to be followed almost exclusively by followers of the Hanafi school while followers of the Shafi Maliki and Hanbali schools followed the Ashari school. Thus, wherever can be found Hanafi followers, there can be found the Maturidi creed).
  • Maturidiyyah argue that knowledge of God's existence can be derived through reason.
• Athariyyah (meaning Textualist) or Hanbali, no specific founder, but Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal played a key historic role in keeping this school alive.
  • This school does not employ logic in understanding the names and attributes of God, but rather affirms all of God's names and attributes as they are found in the Qur'an and Sunnah (prophetic traditions), with the disclaimer that the "how" of the attribute is not known. They say that God is as He described Himself "in a way befitting of His majesty." Thus, regarding verses where God is described as having a "yad" (hand) or "wajh" (face), the textualists say that God is exactly as He described himself in a way befitting of His majesty, without inquiring as to the "how" of these attributes.
  • The Athariyyah still believe that God does not resemble His creation in any way, as this is also found in the texts. Thus, in the Athari creed, it is still prohibited to imagine an image of God in any way. The Athariyyah say that the "yad" (hand) of God is "unlike any other yad" (since God does not resemble His creation in any way) and prohibit imagining what God would like, even though this attribute of a "yad" is still affirmed.

Sunni view of hadith

The Qur'an as we have it today was written down in approximately 650 A.D., and is accepted by all Muslim denominations. However, there were many matters of belief and daily life that were not directly prescribed in the Qur'an, but simply the practice of the community. Later generations sought out oral traditions regarding the early history of Islam, and the practice of Muhammad and his first followers, and wrote them down so that they might be preserved. These recorded oral traditions are called hadith. Muslim scholars sifted through the hadith and evaluated the chain of narration of each tradition, scrutinizing the trustworthiness of the narrators and judging the strength of each hadith accordingly. Most Sunni accept the hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim as the most authentic (sahih, or correct), and grant a lesser status to the collections of other recorders. There are however, six collections of hadith that are held in particular reverence by Sunni Muslims:

• Sahih al-Bukhari
• Sahih Muslim
• Sunan Abu Dawud
• Sunan ibn Majah
• Sunan at-Tirmidhi
• Sunan an-Nasa'ii

There are also other collections of hadith which, although less well-known, still contain many authentic hadith and are frequently used by specialists such as:

• Sahih Ibn Hibban
• Mustadrak of Al Haakim
• Musonnaf of 'Abd Ar Razzaq
• Sahih ibn Khuzaima
• Muwatta of Imam Malik
• Musnad of Ahmed ibn Hanbal
• Musnad of Umar ibn Abdul Aziz