Page 109 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

io6 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

within Omani society. Roughly half the tribesmen are Sunni Muslim by
persuasion, the other half, Ibadi. Since Ibadism has played so decisive a part in
shaping the history of Oman, down to the present day, some notice must be
taken of its origins and attributes, as well as of the dissensions to which these
have given rise in Omani politics.

Ibadism is the third, as well as the smallest, of the three major divisions of
Islam (the others being the Sunni and the Shia). It originated with the
Khawarij, or outsiders, of the early years of Islam who repudiated thecaliphate
of Ali and who were, in consequence, put to death for their apostasy. One of the
few Kharijite groups which survived was led by Abdullah ibn Ibad, and it was
his followers who were largely responsible for implanting Kharijite doctrines

in Oman. Ibadism in Oman early acquired a militant character as a conse­
quence of the hostility of the Sunni tribes, and even more as a result of the
punitive expeditions periodically sent against the Ibadiya by successive
Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs from the seventh to the tenth centuries ad.
These harsh visitations had the unlooked-for effect of diminishing the antagon­
ism between the Ibadi and Sunni tribes, so that the survival of the Ibadiya

gradually became equated with the preservation of the independence of Oman
as a whole.
Doctrinally, the Ibadiya differed little from the adherents of the Sunni
schools. They were strict, even fanatical, in their observance of the duties and
prescriptions of Islam: no charge of heterodoxy could fairly be levelled against
them. Where they parted company with the majority of Sunni opinion was in

their attitude to the imamate or caliphate of Islam. They not only refused to
recognize any imams or caliphs other than the first two, Abu Bakr and Omar,
but they also rejected the notion that the succession to the imamate should be
the prerogative of any one family or clan, even that of the Prophet himself. The
imamate, they maintained, was not an unconditional necessity; the Muslim
community did not require a permanent and visible head, but if one were

desired he could be chosen from any of its members, the criterion of selection
being his moral and religious attainments, not his lineage or standing. The
prime duty of the imam was to direct the community in the ways of the Koran,
the sunna, or ‘customs’, of the Prophet, and the example of the early imams.
The community, in its turn, had the power as well as the duty to depose

incompetent or unworthy imams. If no worthy successor could be found, the
imamate could be left vacant and the community revert to a state of kitman, or
concealment.
For all their insistence upon the lack of necessity for an imam to lead them,
the Ibadiya of Oman have for the greater part of their history since the eighth
century AD been ruled over, in name or in fact, by an elected imam. Their

prolonged struggles against the Abbasid armies in the ninth and tenth cen­
turies made effective leadership indispensable, if the Ibadi community was to
survive; and as a consequence the character of the imamate gradually change ,