Abī Tālib seized the Kharijites’ property.

Anyone claiming scholarly learning, or anyone else, who believes that fighting these people is equivalent to fighting rebels who rise against the ruler on the basis of an admissible interpretation—as when the Commander of the Faithful, ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib, fought the people of the Camel and Siffīn—is mistaken and ignorant of the true nature of Islamic law and its particular treatment of those who depart from it. Had these people governed the lands they conquered according to Islamic law, they would have been kings like other kings. Rather, they depart from the very law and Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, more grievously than the Harūrī Kharijites departed from them.

They have no admissible interpretation to justify their actions. An admissible interpretation is a permissible one whose proponent is allowed to maintain it when there is no rebuttal to it, such as the interpretations of scholars who disagree on matters open to independent scholarly judgment. According to the Quran, the Sunnah, and scholarly consensus, these people have no such interpretation. Rather, theirs is an interpretation of the same kind as those of the people who withheld zakat, the Kharijites, the Jews, and the Christians. Their interpretation is the worst of the interpretations advanced by the followers of deviant inclinations.

Yet these students of jurisprudence have found no thorough examination of these questions in their abridged manuals. Many leading scholars who have written on Islamic law have discussed fighting those who depart from its doctrinal and practical foundations—such as those who withheld zakat, the Kharijites, and others like them—only as a form of fighting those who rebel against the ruler, such as the people of