Thus it had been from the moment that Allah had
caused His light to shine over Arabia, and thus it must remain, if human
error was not to corrupt Islam.

At the moment when this conservative instinct began to assert itself among
the spiritual leaders, so much foreign matter had already been incorporated
into Islam, that the theory of the sufficiency of Qoran and Sunnah could
not have been maintained without the labelling operation which we have
alluded to. So it was assumed that as surely as Mohammed must have
surpassed his predecessors in perfection and in wonders, so surely must
all the principles and precepts necessary for his community have been
formulated by him. Thus, by a gigantic web of fiction, he became after his
death the organ of opinions, ideas, and interests, whose lawfulness was
recognized by every influential section of the Faithful. All that could not
be identified as part of the Prophet's Sunnah, received no recognition; on
the other hand, all that was accepted had, somehow, to be incorporated into
the Sunnah.

It became a fundamental dogma of Islam, that the Sunnah was the
indispensable completion of the Qoran, and that both together formed the
source of Mohammedan law and doctrine; so much so that every party assumed
the name of "People of the Sunnah" to express its pretension to orthodoxy.
The _contents_ of the Sunnah, however, was the subject of a great deal of
controversy; so that it came to be considered necessary to make the Prophet
pronounce his authoritative judgment on this difference of opinion. He
was said to have called it a proof of God's special mercy, that within
reasonable limits difference of opinion was allowed in his community. Of
that privilege Mohammedans have always amply availed themselves.

When the difference touched on political questions, especially on the
succession of the Prophet in the government of the community, schism was
the inevitable consequence. Thus arose the party strifes of the first
century, which led to the establishment of the sects of the Shi'ites and
the Kharijites, separate communities, severed from the great whole, that
led their own lives, and therefore followed paths different from those of
the majority in matters of doctrine and law as well as in politics. The
sharpness of the political antithesis served to accentuate the importance
of the other differences in such cases and to debar their acceptance as the
legal consequence of the difference of opin