MOHAMMEDAN SteTS. "My coiriniunity," Mohammed is reported to have said. "will separate, itself into. T3 sects; one only will be saved, all the others shall perish." This prophecy has :been largely fulfilled... EVen during the illness, and immediately after the death of the fizinder, malty, differenees of opinion arose among his earliest adherents. We have endeavored to show, both under KORAN and NOJt9IMEDANIS-, how the fundamental book of Islam left certain points undecided by the very fact of its poetical wording, arid hOW, further, the peculiarity of the Arabic idiom at times allowed many interpretationS to be put upon one cardinal and dogmatic sentence. To add to this uncertainty, ii vast number. of oral traditions sprang up and circulated as an expan sive corollary to the Koran. causes soon came toassist the confusion and con test, and religion Was made the pretext for fattion-fights, which in reality had their origin in the ambition of of influence. Thus "sects" increased in far larger num bers even than the prophet had foretold, and though their existence was but short-lived in most instances, they yet deserve attention, were it only its signs and tokens of the ever-fresh life of the human spirit, which, though fettered a thousand times by narrow and hard formulas. will break these fetters as often, and prove its everlasting right to freedom of thought and action.
The bewildering mass of these currents of controversy has by the Arabic historians been brought under four chief heads or fundamental bases. The first of these relates to the divine attributesandrioity. WhicIrof,these attribute's are essentiaLor eternal? Is the omnipotence Of God absolute? If what are its liraltS? 'Farther, as to time doctrine of God's predestination and man's liberty—a question of no small purport, and one which has been controverted in nearly all - revealed " religions—How far is God's decree influ enced by man's own will? How far can God countenance evil? • and questions of a simi lar kind belonging to this province. The third is perhaps the most comprehensive
" basis," and the one that bears most directly upon practical doctrines—viz., the promises and threats, and the names of God, together with various other questions chiefly relating to faith, repentance, infidelity, and error. The fourth is the one that concerns itself with the influence of reason and history upon the transcendental realm of faith. To this chapter belong the mission of prophets, the office of Imam, or head of the church, and such intricate subtleties as to what constitutes goodness and badness; how far actions are to be condemned on the gTOund of reason or the "law," etc.
One broad line, however, came to be drawn, in the course of time, among these innumerable religious divisions, a Hue that separated them all into orthodox sects and heterodox sects; orthodox being those only who adopted the oral traditions or Sunna (see Sussim:s).
Much more numerous than. the orthodox divisions are the heterodox ones. Imme diately after Mohammed's death, and during the early conquests, the contest was chiefly confined to the question of the Irmunat. But no sooner were the first days of warfare over, than thinking minds began to direct themselves to a closer examination of the faith itself, for which and through which the world was to be conquered, and to the book which preached it, the Koran. The earliest germs of a religious dissension are found in the revolt of the. Kharejitcs against Ali, in the 37th year of the Hegira; and several doctors shortly afterwards broached heterodox opinions about predestination and the good and evil to be ascribed to God. These new doctrines were boldly, and in a very advanced form, openly preached by Witsil Ibn Atli, who, for uttering a moderate opinion in the matter of the "sinner," had been expelled from the rigorous school of Basra. He then formed a school of his own—that of the Separatists or Motazilites (q.v.), who, together with a number of other " heretical" groups, are variously counted as one four, or seven sects.