The Ideal Society of the Kharijites and Its Social Structure in the First Islamic Century

This study explores the Kharijites' conceptual vision of an ideal society and its social structure during the first Islamic century. Drawing on their political-religious discourse, the Kharijites emphasized principles such as equality in leadership selection, a consultative system, and a social structure rooted in absolute equality and extreme piety, while rejecting existing ethnic and class hierarchies. Employing a historical method and a descriptive-analytical approach, this research addresses the question of how the Kharijites envisioned and sought to realize their ideal society and its social structure. The hypothesis posits that the Kharijites, guided by their slogan "No rule but God's," developed a discourse that rejected the legitimacy of contemporary caliphs and reserved sovereignty exclusively for God. By employing the principle of takfir (excommunication), they isolated themselves from the broader Islamic community, and due to their extremism and ambiguous discourse, they failed to establish a sustainable political and social system. The findings reveal that the Kharijites' vision depicted a seemingly populist society, yet one sharply divided into believers (insiders) and non-believers (outsiders), grounded in radicalism. Their pursuit of justice and emphasis on consultation led to isolation and repeated uprisings, posing challenges to the caliphate but resulting only in continuous suppression by the caliphal authorities and successive migrations by the Kharijites. Ultimately, their ideal society found limited acceptance or realization, confined primarily to their like-minded followers.A mental idea, as a fundamental concept in political philosophy and cognitive psychology, can be defined as an innovative and creative conceptual construct that emerges in the context of an individual's cognitive interactions with external stimuli, such as social challenges, structural needs, or ideological crises. This initial idea is not simply an abstract fantasy, but the starting point of a dialectical process of thought that carries the potential to transform social and political structures, such that it can act as a new paradigm and offer potential solutions other than those currently existing in society.The Khawarij sect, one of the first and most influential political and religious sects in Islamic history, had its roots in the early history of Islam. The traces of Khawarij thought can be traced back to the event of the division of the spoils of the Battle of Hunayn (8 AH) in Ja'ranah. This event was indicative of the social context of the emergence of the Khawarij, which had its roots in marginal tribes dissatisfied with the traditional class system of the Arabian Peninsula (Waqidi, 1418 AH, vol. 2, p. 944). This group was mainly composed of primitive and underprivileged tribes who, as simple warriors, were dissatisfied with the unfair distribution of spoils and, with an egalitarian interpretation of Islam, felt that justice was not being done and moved from intellectual protest to violent action. These factors formed the ideological and social foundations of the Khawarij movement and practically manifested themselves in the Battle of Siffin (37 AH). This group, having separated from the body of the Islamic Ummah, preferred the absolute sovereignty of God to any human domination based on the central slogan "There is no judgment except the judgment of God." From the perspective of the Khawarij, the qualification to lead the Islamic community depended not on lineage, but on a practical commitment to justice and the ability to establish it; this meant that any believer who was capable of realizing justice was qualified for the caliphate. This view, together with the necessity of revolting against the oppressive Caliph and the Takfiri tendency, challenged the political and social stability of the Ummah in the first century AH and provoked numerous rebellions. The political and social thought of the Khawarij, as the ideological backbone of this sect, focused on the reconstruction of the governmental system and developed a discourse around an idealistic idea of ​​the Islamic government. An idea that was based on the principles of egalitarianism, meritocracy, justice, and especially enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong. However, the inability of the Khawarij to operationalize this schema, coupled with the mixture of their discourse with takfir, made it impossible for it to be accepted by the majority of Islamic society. From the perspective of the Caliphate, this group was seen as an existential threat and was trying to marginalize them through continuous repression. The sectarian diversity among the Khawarij, such as the I'tezil, the Saffarid, and the Ibadi, and the political and social transformations of the first century AH, including civil wars and power shifts, caused this political and social mental idea to evolve and branch out.