re: #175 winston06

You’ll be surprised to know that Shi’ism was a break from Sunni sect of religion and a minor reform of tight sunni rules.

What’s your source, and what are your criteria?

Shi’ism started out as a partisan movement against what we might call “Umayyadism”. The Umayyads declared themselves “people of the house” as Muhammad’s relatives. Shi’ism declared themselves “people of the house” as Muhammad’s CLOSEST relatives. And there were other movements, like the Kaysanites and ‘Abbasids, who found other relatives of Muhammad to rally around. “Sunnism” is a total anachronism prior to the 700s CE.

As a legal movement, Shi’ law holds to the practice and rulings of the ‘Alid Imams. Again, this is pretty much like Umayyad legal theory (usul al-fiqh, as opposed to pure legal codes which is fiqh alone), which in non-Shi’ populations didn’t long survive the ‘Abbasid takeover (Awza’ism and Thawrism, for instance; which are not, or rather no longer, among the Four Sunni Schools).

The closest thing the Sunnis have to Shi’ usul al-fiqh is Malikism, which follows the rulings of ‘Umar; but even then the analogy isn’t all THAT close, because ‘Umar’s rulings were lost and/or filtered through his family (which is even worse than being lost, because so many of ‘Umar’s family isnads are forged). Of the other three, Shafi’ism and Hanbalism are hadith fundamentalist breakoffs from Malikism, and Hanafism is Shi’ite in law leavened with a hefty dose of Abu Hanifa’s personal opinion.

This much I’ve gathered from Crone’s “God’s Caliph” and Dutton’s “The Origins of Islamic Law”; also good, if a bit outdated, is Schacht’s “Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence”.