Sunni Islam

Sunni Islam is the majority branch of the faith, defined by adherence to the sunna of the Prophet and to the consensus of the community and its scholars.

At a glance

The Sunnis — from ahl al-sunna wa-l-jamāʿa, “the people of the sunna and the community” — form the great majority of Muslims. Their name marks their two anchors: the sunna, the example of the Prophet ﷺ preserved in hadith, and the jamāʿa, the community whose collective agreement (ijmāʿ) they hold to be a source of authority. Where Shiʿism locates religious leadership in the divinely-guided imams of the Prophet's family, Sunnism locates it in the community and its scholars, and accepts the historical caliphate as a legitimate, if worldly, succession.

Sunni practice is organised into four surviving schools of law — Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī — regarded as equally valid, and its theology into the Ashʿarī and Māturīdī schools, with a traditionist current (associated with Ḥanbalism) wary of speculative theology. This combination of firm anchors and internal accommodation — a putative saying holds that “difference within my community is a mercy” — gave Sunnism both its cohesion and its breadth.

Related in Chronicle

Curated reference on Islamic belief and thought. On matters where traditions differ, positions are attributed rather than adjudicated; verify points of doctrine with qualified scholars.