This chapter explores several legal opinions (pl. fatāwa) from the minority theological and legal tradition known as Ibāḍism, as represented by the work of the modern Ibāḍī jurist Ibrāhīm Bayyūḍ (d. 1401/1981). The Ibāḍiyya are usually regarded as the inheritors of the early Khārijite movement and are thus neither Sunnī nor Shīʿī. Important Ibāḍī communities are today found in Oman and in smaller numbers in North Africa (Jerba Island in Tunisia, the Jabal Nafūsa mountains of Libya and the M’zab valley in Algeria). Ibrāhīm Bayyūḍ was the most prominent figure of the so-called ‘Ibāḍī Rennaisance’ (al-Nahḍa al-Ibāḍiyya) of the late 19th and 20th centuries, in which the Ibāḍī community in M’zab sought to find a place for themselves in their Sunnī-dominated environment, leading to an upsurge of Ibāḍī legal and theological scholarship. The fatwās excerpted here discuss the lawfulness of television and radio, eating the meat of non-Muslims, Pepsi and Coca Cola, smoking and various drugs.

Chapter 3 provides an overview of the history and development of the medieval group known as the Khārijites. It first discusses the many problems with scholarship and sources on them: there are vitually no sources from the Khārijites themselves, and much of what exists is polemic against them. Nevertheless, the chapter delves into the origins of the group at the Battle of Ṣiffīn, the shurāt rebellions that followed, and the emergence of the militant Khārijites during the first Muslim civil war (fitna). It emphasizes how the militant groups achieved self-definition earlier than their moderate counterparts, but that their militancy resulted in their early demise at the hands of the Umayyads. The last segment of this chapter follows the development of the moderates, namely, the Ṣufriyya and Ibāḍiyya, the latter of whom survive to the present.