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 Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
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Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
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Click here and add this page to your favorites!
{soo' - nights}
General Information
The term Sunnites refers to the great majority of the world's Muslims, distinguishing them as the ahl al - sunna wal - jamaa ("the people of the sunna and the community") from the Shiites. Sunnites are, by this definition, Muslims who strictly follow the sunna (practices) of the Prophet Muhammad and preserve the unity and integrity of the community. Anyone who stands within the mainstream of the Islamic tradition and acts in accordance with generally accepted practices of the community is, therefore, a Sunni. Most Muslims see the sunna as complementary to the Koran insofar as it explains certain points and elaborates some Koranic principles by offering details necessary for the practice of Islamic law.
Bibliography:
I Al Faruqi and L Lamya, The Cultural Atlas
of Islam (1986); J L Esposito, Islam and Politics (1984);
I M Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (1988).
Sunni Islam was defined during the early Abbasid period (beginning in AD 750), and it included the followers of four legal schools (the Malikis, Hanafis, Shafi'is, and Hanbalis). In contrast to the Shias, the Sunnis believed that leadership was in the hands of the Muslim community at large. The consensus of historical communities, not the decisions of political authorities, led to the establishment of the four legal schools. In theory a Muslim could choose whichever school of Islamic thought he or she wished to follow and could change this choice at will. The respect and popularity that the religious scholars enjoyed made them the effective brokers of social power and pitched them against the political authorities.
After the first four caliphs, the religious and political authorities in Islam were never again united under one institution. Their usual coexistence was underscored by a mutual recognition of their separate spheres of influence and their respective duties and responsibilities. Often, however, the two powers collided, and invariably any social opposition to the elite political order had religious undertones.
Ahmad S. Dallal
The Malaki legal school is the branch of Sunni that dominates in nearly all of Africa, except Egypt, the 'Horn' area and the East Coast countries.
These four schools are somewhat different from each other, but Muslims consider them all equally valid.
sunnites
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