The Khawarij in the Maghreb and the Nature of Their Religious and Political Doctrine

Abstract

Moroccan history has witnessed a series of major events that interacted together to build a great civilization in the western wing of the House of Islam. The conquest of this country was a turning point in its long history in light of the qualitative developments that it would witness, whether internally or in terms of its repercussions on the regional and international environment.

The conquest was not easy, nor was the situation that followed it. This event contributed to transferring aspects of the new reality in the Islamic East, religiously and culturally, to the western wing of the Islamic world, which became an integral part of the Islamic state, just as the infection of political and sectarian differences that the heart of the Islamic world witnessed was transmitted to it.

Among the events that were considered a historical extension of the events of the East were the revolutions that the Khawarij sparked on the stage of political events in the Maghreb, and were able to change the course of its general history, as they also affected various aspects of life in these regions.

The Kharijite doctrine formed the ideological front for these violent shocks that targeted the Umayyads and the Abbasids after them, and thus the conflict was transferred from the heart of the Islamic world to its western margin, especially after the series of killings and prosecutions that those revolutions and their symbols were met with in the East.

After the failure of attempts to eliminate the Kharijite doctrine in the Islamic East, the attention of its leaders and chiefs turned to spreading its ideas in the Moroccan sphere, especially after the series of prosecutions and suppression campaigns that targeted them by the mechanisms of the Umayyad and then Abbasid army.