among these truthful, genuine believers, nor among those who enter Paradise without punishment. Rather, such a person has acts of obedience and disobedience, good deeds and evil deeds. He possesses enough faith to keep him from remaining in the Fire forever, yet has committed major sins that warrant entering it.

Some people call a person in this category “a sinful person who remains within the Muslim community.” People have disputed both his designation and his religious status. This was the first dispute to arise in Islam concerning “the fundamentals of religion.”

We therefore say: After the Commander of the Faithful, ‘Uthmān ibn ‘Affān, was killed, ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib went to Iraq, and the well-known strife and division arose within the Muslim community at the Battle of the Camel and then at Siffīn. The renegade Khārijites rebelled against both sides. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) had foretold their emergence and explained the ruling concerning them. Imam Ahmad said, “The hadith concerning the Khārijites has been authentically transmitted through ten routes.” Muslim included these ten routes in his Sahīh, in keeping with Ahmad’s statement. Al-Bukhārī also related several of these routes, while the compilers of the Sunan and Musnad collections transmitted reports concerning them through other routes.

Among the most authentic reports concerning them are those narrated by ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib and Abū Sa‘īd al-Khudrī. In the two Sahīh collections, ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib is reported to have said:

“When I relate a hadith to you from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), then, by Allah, I would rather fall from heaven to earth than tell a lie about him. But when I speak to you about matters between us, war is deception. I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) say: ‘At the end of time, a people will emerge