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In the atlas, twelve bodies within Islam take a position on the same question, who is entitled to hold the caliphate, and their answers sort into the same three camps historians already use to describe the tradition's major divisions.

Three Camps on One Question

Sunni Islam and its four schools of law, Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki, and Shafii, hold the classical Sunni account: the caliph is chosen by those qualified to choose and receives the pledge of allegiance of the community, and the first four successors to Muhammad are held to have been rightly guided.

Twelver Shia Islam, the Jafari school, and Ismailism reject that account outright. Twelver teaching holds that authority passed by explicit designation to Ali and to the imams descended from him, so the elected caliphate of the early successors is refused rather than reinterpreted.

Four smaller bodies, Ahmadiyya, Ibadism, the Kharijites, and Zaidiyyah, hold neither camp's account, and not the same account as each other either. Ibadi teaching allows any qualified Muslim to serve as imam regardless of descent, and holds that a community may lawfully live with no imam at all. The Kharijite position was that any qualified Muslim may hold the office whatever his lineage, and that a ruler who sins gravely forfeits it. The Zaidi imamate belongs to a qualified descendant of the Prophet's grandsons who claims it openly and takes up arms for it, neither the Sunni election nor the Twelver designation. The Ahmadiyya caliphate, established in 1908, succeeds the movement's own founder and is elected by a council for life, a spiritual and administrative office with no territorial claim at all.

A Sharper Case: Who Rejects Justice

A sharper example sits on a different question: adl, divine justice. Zaidi theology holds that God is just by the necessity of his own nature and cannot command or do wrong, a position it shares with Twelver thought. Sunni theology in its dominant form is recorded refusing that same claim, not because it holds God to be unjust, but because classical Sunni creed folds justice into God's oneness and will rather than treating it as a separate principle to take a position on. The record is not the atlas asserting that a major tradition denies justice. It is the atlas recording a real and technical argument inside Islamic theology about where one attribute of God belongs in a creed.

Where To Read More

• CaliphateOfficesThe single question all twelve bodies take a position on
• SunniIslamHolds the classical elective account, with its four schools
• Shia (Twelver)IslamRejects the elective account, holding designation to Ali instead
• IsmailismIslamRejects the elective account on the same designation ground
• AhmadiyyaIslamHolds a different account: an elected spiritual office with no territorial claim
• IbadismIslamHolds a different account: any qualified Muslim, or lawfully none at all
• KharijitesIslamHolds a different account: office open to any qualified Muslim, forfeit on grave sin
• ZaidiyyahIslamHolds a different account: a claiming descendant of the Prophet's grandsons
• AdlGod and Divine NatureThe sharper case: Zaidiyyah holds it, Sunni theology refuses it