7. Islam’s Early Anarchists Committed Horrific Atrocities
As their struggle with the Umayyad Caliphate and perceived sinners intensified, the Khawarij’s viciousness grew apace. Eventually, they came to view even neutral Muslims as enemies. As they saw it, their failure to support the Khawarij despite the glaringly obvious righteousness of their position proved their apostasy. That rendered them kafirs, and not fellow Muslims whose blood the Khawarij were prohibited from shedding. Horrific atrocities abounded. Captives were tortured and mutilated. Pregnant women had their bellies slit. Entire villages and towns were massacred.
Their most extreme faction, the Azariqah in southern Iraq, separated themselves from the entire Muslim community and declared death to all sinners – defined as all who did not share the Azariqah’s puritanical beliefs – and their families. Their rebellion was eventually crushed, but embers remained, and the Khawarij became the anarchists of Islam’s first centuries, an ever-present irritant and horrific menace. They rejected the Caliphate’s authority and pursued a campaign of terror and assassinations, combined with a low-level insurgency in backcountry regions that flared up every generation or two into a major rebellion that required considerable expense and effort to beat down.
