The Essentials of Ibadi Islam.

• Author: Francesca, Ersilia
• Position: Book review

The Essentials of Ibadi Islam. By Valerie J. Hoffman. Modern Intellectual and Political History of the Middle East. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2012. Pp. xii + 344. $39.95.

Western scholars and students with an interest in the history of Ibadi Islam and Oman are no doubt familiar with the name and some of the extensive works of the author of the book under review, in which she resumes her previous research devoted to Ibadism in Oman and Zanzibar in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During repeated research stays in Oman over a decade Hoffman collected the material for the present volume, which, as she phrases it in the introduction, "is an attempt to introduce Ibadi Islamic theology to students and scholars of Islam, mainly through annotated translations of two basic Ibadi theological texts, in order to address the general unavailability of Ibadi texts to all but the most specialized scholars of Islam" (p. 4). The relative lack of interest in Ibadi theology may be partly because Ibadi religious literature is often obscure and difficult to understand. In fact, the oldest Ibadi theological literature is mainly fragmentary intra-community correspondence: letters (generally termed sira, pi. siyar) from imams and ulema with advice and/or explanations to the members about controversial religious and political issues. Moreover, according to European works from the last century, of which the older ones rely on only a few Ibadi sources, the distinctive nature of Ibadism seems to consist chiefly of a quietist political doctrine and of a religious puritanism.

However, Ibadism presents a more complex reality. First of all, its sectarian nature is not so obvious. According to tradition, the Ibadi movement derives its name from 'Abd Allah Ibn Ibad, who broke from Khariji extremists in circa 65 A.H. (684/5) over the attitude to be adopted toward other Muslims. The Ibadis have been wrongly identified with the Kharijis by both Western scholars and non-Ibadi Muslim authors--Ibadis are instead very distant from them in political as well as religious matters. The connection between the two stems from the fact that most of the dissident Kharijis were from the Tamim tribe to which Ibn Ibad also belonged. Moreover, proto-Ibadis were part of the Muhakkima movement of the early Kharijls, sharing with them the principle that the rule on earth belongs to God alone (la hukma ilia li-llah). The Ibadi distinction from orthodox or Sunni Islam should be...