A Bungled Medieval Double Assassination Triggered a Violent Dispute That Endures to This Day
The rival Caliphs went to war, but before the issue was settled in battle, Ali accepted arbitration. That led some of Ali’s supporters, known thereafter as the Khawarij, or “Outsiders”, to abandon him. Viewing the Caliphate as the Muslim community’s collective property, they reasoned that Ali lacked authority to decide on who gets to be Caliph. Election by the community was the sole legitimate process to bestow the Caliphate, argued the Khawarij, and the Muslim community had already elected Ali. When Ali accepted arbitration to decide who would be Caliph, he overstepped his boundaries to make decision that was not his. Ali went ahead with the arbitration to settle the dispute, but it turned into a fiasco without settling the issue, and weakened him politically.
The Khawarij soured on Ali, whom they now viewed as much of a usurper as his rival. So they decided to get rid of both, and hatched an assassination plot to kill the rival Caliphs on the same day during Friday prayers. Ali’s assassins were successful, and stabbed him to death in the Great Mosque in Kufa, Iraq. However, those sent after his rival only wounded him. Muawiyah survived, emerged as sole Caliph, and went on to found the Umayyad Dynasty. The Khawarij rose in rebellion against Muawiyah, who eventually crushed them. Embers remained, however, and the Khawarij became the anarchists of Islam’s first centuries. Rejecting the Caliph’s authority, they engaged in a campaign of terror and assassinations, combined with a low level insurgency that flared up every generation or two into a major rebellion. They became the model for modern Islamist terrorists, such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.
