Succession and Authority in Islam: Who Leads and Who Interprets

Sunni Islam honours the first four caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali, as the Rightly Guided. On this view the caliph is a political and executive leader who safeguards the law but does not receive revelation or hold immunity from error.

Shia Islam holds that Muhammad designated Ali and then specified descendants, so the Imam is the authoritative interpreter of revelation and not merely a ruler. Shia branches differ over the line of succession, which separates Twelvers, Ismailis and Zaydis.

Zaydism, historically dominant in Yemen, requires a learned and pious descendant of Ali who publicly claims the office and rises against unjust rule. It has no hidden Imam and no doctrine of infallibility, which makes it closer to Sunnism than any other Shia branch.

Nizari Ismailis are distinguished by a living Imam, the Aga Khan, rather than a hidden or awaited one, so guidance is continuous. In Twelver Shiism the Imam is in occultation and jurists interpret in his absence.

Ibadism holds a third position between the Sunni caliphate and the Shia Imamate: a leader chosen for knowledge, piety and capacity, without regard to descent, who may be deposed if he rules unjustly. It is the majority tradition of Oman.

Sunni law is organised into the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii and Hanbali schools, which agree on the sources of law but differ on their weighting. The classical view is that all four are valid and a Muslim follows one, while Salafi movements reject the requirement of following a school.

The Mutazila held that the Quran is created, and the caliph al-Mamun made that position official in 833 and enforced it through the mihna, in which Ahmad ibn Hanbal was imprisoned. The policy was reversed within twenty years and the uncreated Quran became the settled Sunni position.

Batin is the conviction that revelation has an inner meaning beneath its apparent sense. It is most systematic in Ismailism, where disclosing it belongs to the Imam, and Salafi and much mainstream Sunni scholarship reject it, coining the term batiniyya for the charge.

Fana, the extinction of the self so that only God is experienced as real, is the Sufi account of spiritual authority through experience. It is delicate because divine oneness forbids confusing creature and creator: al-Hallaj was executed in Baghdad in 922, and al-Ghazali argued the language describes the mystic's perception rather than a change in being.

Alevism in Turkey venerates Ali as a manifestation of divine reality and centres worship on the cem led by a dede, not on the mosque. Whether it is a Shia branch, a heterodox Islamic tradition or a distinct faith is disputed, including among Alevis themselves.

The Ahmadiyya movement, founded in 1889, holds that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was the promised Messiah and Mahdi. Mainstream Sunni and Shia authorities reject it as outside Islam because of its prophetic language about the founder, and Pakistan declared Ahmadis non-Muslim in 1974.