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أهل السنة
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| Beliefs |
| Monotheism Prophethood / Messengership Holy Books · Angels Judgement Day · Predestination |
| Five Pillars |
| Declaration of Faith · Prayer Charity · Fasting · Pilgrimage |
| Rightly guided Caliphs |
| Abu Bakr · Umar ibn al-Khattab Uthman ibn Affan · Ali ibn Abi Talib |
| Schools of Law (Shariah) |
| Hanafi · Maliki · Shafi`i · Hanbali |
| Schools of Theology |
| Maturidi · Ash'ari · Athari · |
| Movements |
| Barelvi · Deobandi · Salafi Muslim Brotherhood · Jamaat-e-Islami · Ahl al-Hadith |
| Hadith collections |
| Sahih al-Bukhari · Sahih Muslim Al-Sunan al-Sughra Sunan Abu Dawood Sunan al-Tirmidhi Sunan ibn Majah · Al-Muwatta Sunan al-Darimi |
Sunni Islam ( /ˈsuːni/ or /ˈsʊni/) is the largest branch of Islam.[1] Sunni Muslims are referred to in Arabic as ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah wa āl-Ǧamāʿah (Arabic: أهل السنة والجماعة, "people of the tradition [of Muhammad] and the community") or ʾAhl ūs-Sunnah (Arabic: أهل السنة) for short; in English, they are known as Sunni Muslims, Sunnis or Sunnites.
Sunni Islam is sometimes referred to as the orthodox version of the religion.[2] The word "Sunni" comes from the term Sunnah (Arabic: سنة), which refers to the sayings and actions of Muhammad that are recorded in hadiths (collections of narrations regarding Muhammad).[3] Sunni Muslims consider these six Books of hadith as entirely authentic and accurate;[4]
These hadith in conjunction with the Quran form the basis of all jurisprudence methodologies within Sunni Islam, where all laws are either derived from each of the texts or from a scholarly analogy (qiyas) or consensus (ijma). There are a multitude of scholarly opinions in each field however these can be summarised as either being from the four major schools of thought (Madh'hab) or from an expert scholar who exercises independent derivation of Islamic Law (ijtihad), where either is respectively valid due to acceptable difference of opinion as was present at the time of the early Muslims (Salaf). In summary Sunni Muslims are those who conform to the way of the Sunnah and the majority.
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Sunnī (Classical Arabic: سُنِّي /ˈsunniː/) is a broad term derived from sunnah (سُنَّة /ˈsunna/, pl. سُنَن sunan /ˈsunæn/), means "habit" or "usual practice".[5] The Muslim usage of this term refers to the sayings and living habits of Muhammad. In its full form, this branch of Islam is referred to as "Ahl al-Sunnah wa Jama'ah" (literally, "People of the Sunan and the Community"). People claiming to follow the Sunnah who can demonstrate that they have no action or belief against the Prophetic Sunnah can consider themselves to be Sunni Muslims.
Islamic law is known as the Sharī'ah. The Sharī'ah is based on the Qur'an and the Sunnah. The Madh'hab translates to "way", and different Madhaheb (plural of Madh'hab) reflect different opinions on some laws and obligations of the sharia, for example when one Madh'hab sees a certain act as an obligation, while the other does not. It has to be clear that each one of these schools consider the others to be fully valid and accepted and one does not have to follow any of them. Schools of law are not sects, but different opinions in issues that are not the core of Islamic belief. Below are the four madhabs of Sunni Islam.
Abu Hanifah (died 767), was the founder of the Hanafi school and student of Ja'far al-Sadiq. He was born in the year 702 CE in Kufa, Iraq[6][7] in an Afghan-Persian family. Muslims of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Mauritius, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Muslim areas of Southern Russia, the Caucasus, most of the Muslim areas of the Balkans and Turkey and parts of Egypt, all follow this school of jurisprudence.
Malik ibn Anas (died 795) Student of the imam Abu Hanifah's eldest student, Muhammad, Malik ibn Anas developed his ideas in Medina. His doctrine is recorded in the Muwatta which has been adopted by most North African and West African countries like Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Mali, Nigeria and others except Egypt, Horn of Africa and Sudan. Also, the Maliki school of jurisprudence is the official state madhab of Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. He was one of the teachers of Imam al-Shafi'i. One of greatest historical centers of Maliki teaching, especially during the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, is the Mosque of Uqba also known as the Great Mosque of Kairouan (in Tunisia).[8][9]
Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi`i (died 820 CE) was a student of Malik. He taught in Iraq and then in Egypt. Al-Shafi'i placed great emphasis on the Sunnah of Muhammad, as embodied in the Hadith, as a source of the Shari'ah.
The Shafi'i madhab today is the dominant school of jurisprudence in Yemen, Lower Egypt, Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the North Caucasus, Kurdistan (East Turkey, North west Iran, North Iraq, Northern Syria), Maldives, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam and Indonesia.
It is also practised by large communities in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia (in the Hejaz and Asir), the United Arab Emirates, Israel, the Swahili Coast, Mauritius, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan (by Chechens) and Indian States of Kerala (most of the Mappilas), Karnataka (Bhatkal, Mangalore and Coorg districts), Maharashtra (by Konkani Muslims) and Tamil Nadu.
Ahmad bin Hanbal (died 855), the namesake of the Hanbali school, was born in Baghdad. He learned extensively from Imam al-Shafi'i. This school of jurisprudence is followed predominantly in the Arabian Peninsula. The methodology focuses primarily on sound textual evidence and scholarly consensus in deriving fiqh. The majority of Hanbali scholars, as well as many from the other schools of thought, follow the Athari Aqeedah which adopts the middle path of accepting the texts of Qur'an and Hadeeth without extensive philosophical interpretation or denial. This being the way of the early generations of Muslims (the salaf) and those that followed them (the Tabi‘un), and so on, where the key points of Islamic belief are established and any attributes regarding Allah are accepted as they are without delving into possible rational and philosophical explanations, thus keeping far from anthropomorphism or complete denial.
The followers of these four schools follow the same basic belief system but differ from one another in terms of practice and execution of rituals, and in juristic interpretation of "divine principles" (or Shariah) as envisaged in Quran and Hadith. However Sunni Muslims consider them all equally valid.
There are other Sunni schools of law. However, many are followed by only small numbers of people and are relatively unknown due to the popularity of the four major schools; also, many have died out or were not sufficiently recorded by their followers to survive.
Interpreting the Shari'ah to derive specific rulings (such as how to pray) is known as fiqh, which literally means understanding. A madh'hab is a particular tradition of interpreting fiqh. These schools focus on specific evidence (Shafi'i and Hanbali) or general principles (Hanafi and Maliki) derived from specific evidences. The schools were started by eminent Muslim scholars in the first four centuries of Islam. As these schools represent clearly spelled out methodologies for interpreting the Shari'aa, there has been little change in the methodology per se. However, as the social and economic environment changes, new fiqh rulings are being made. For example, when tobacco appeared it was declared as 'disliked' because of its smell. When medical information showed that smoking was dangerous, that ruling was changed to 'forbidden'. Current fiqh issues include things like downloading pirated software and cloning. The scholarly consensus (ijma) is that the divine laws of Islam (Sharia) do not change, however the understanding and interpretations change accordingly and are given as rulings codified in Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh).
A madh'hab is not to be confused with a religious sect, they are simply scholarly schools of thought. There may be scholars representing all four madh'habs living in larger Muslim communities, and it is up to those who consult them to decide which school they prefer.
Estimates of the world Sunni population varies from over 75% to 90% of all Muslims.[1] There is no accurate statistics but a comprehensive 2009 demographic study of 232 countries and territories by the Pew Research Center reported that 87–90% of the global Muslim population follow Sunni Islam. The Encyclopedia Britannica explains that Sunnis constitue 90% of all the adherents of Islam while the World Factbook states over 75%.[10]
Some Islamic scholars faced questions that they felt were not explicitly answered in the Qur'an, especially questions with regard to philosophical conundra like the nature of God, the existence of human free will, or the eternal existence of the Qur'an. Various schools of theology and philosophy developed to answer these questions, each claiming to be true to the Qur'an and the Muslim tradition (sunnah). Among Sunnites, the following were the dominant traditions, however the key beliefs of the Ahl al-Sunna wa al-Jama`a are founded upon the treatise on Aqeedah by Imam al-Tahawi:
Due to the emphasis of the Hanbali school of thought on textualism, Muslims who are Hanbali usually prefer the Athari methodology in Aqidah. However, Atharis are not exclusively Hanbali, many Muslims from other schools of thought adhere to the Athari school of Aqidah also.
Atharism is also the select interpretation as followed by the Salafi movement (including the "Ahle Hadith" movement). As such, their theological system of Aqidah is often called Aqidat al-Salaf (or in fewer occasions: Aqidat As-hab al-Hadith).
The Qur'an as it exists today in book form was compiled by Muhammad's companions (Sahaba) in approximately 650 CE, and is accepted by all Muslim denominations. However, there were many matters of belief and daily life that were not directly prescribed in the Qur'an, but were actions that were observed by Muhammad and the early Muslim community. Later generations sought out oral traditions regarding the early history of Islam, and the practices of Muhammad and his first followers, and wrote them down so that they might be preserved. These recorded oral traditions are called hadith. Muslim scholars have through the ages sifted through the hadith and evaluated the chain of narrations of each tradition, scrutinizing the trustworthiness of the narrators and judging the strength of each hadith accordingly.
Most Sunni Muslims accept the hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim as the most authentic (sahih, or correct), and while accepting all hadiths verified as authentic, grant a slightly lesser status to the collections of other recorders. There are, however, four other collections of hadith that are also held in particular reverence by Sunni Muslims, making a total of six:
There are also other collections of hadith which also contain many authentic hadith and are frequently used by scholars and specialists. Examples of these collections include:
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