The origin of Kharijism lies in the first Islamic civil war: a struggle for political supremacy over the Muslim community in the years following the death of Muhammad.
The third Caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, was killed by mutineers in 656 AD, and a struggle for succession ensued between Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, and Muawiya, governor of Damascus. (The core of Ali's followers later became Shiites.)
In 658, Ali's forces met Muawiya's at the Battle of Siffin; at first, the battle went against Muawiya, but then he hit upon the idea of having his army hoist Qur'ans on their lances, proclaiming that he wanted to have the decision of who should be Caliph arbitrated using it.
Most of Ali's army was favorable to the idea, and he agreed to have the question decided by two arbiters. Some in his army( even a majority), however, regarded this as a betrayal; a large group of them (traditionally 12,000, mainly from the Bani Hanifah and Banu Tamim tribes) repudiated his cause, citing the verse "No rule but God's", leaving to fight both sides. In their opinion, the right of arbitration was God's alone, and the choice of caliph should not be questioned by mere mortals. Thus they opposed both Muawiya for his rebellion and Ali for submitting to the arbitration. They became known as Kharijites: Arabic plural Khawārij, singular Khārijī, derived from the verb kharaja "come out, leave the hold.
It is said that Ali agreed to the arbitration in a clever scheme of his, so that he could identify the sect that the Prophet had warned him from. It is reported that the Prophet said to Ali warning him of a future sect in Islam:
"Coming after me a sect that hurt me in my Itrati (posterity), They keep (meaning from time to time) coming out (khuruj from Kharijites) against Muslims, Kill them O 'Ali, kill them, for they will be the Shia Ad-Dajjal."
The Kharijites fitted the Prophet' description. So Ali hurridly divided his troops and ordered them to catch the dissenters before they reach major cities and disperse among the population. A few decades later, the Kharijites used taqīyah "dissimulation" and assimilated and posed as the Shia of Ali, especially that after Ali's death and the death of his son Hussein 20 years later, most of the Ṣahāba "Companions" who supported Ali had already died too either by age or on the hands of the Kharijites themselves so that they could not be identified, and then to seek protection from persecution which though started by Ali but neverthless continued unabated by the Umayyads.
Abdullah ibn Abbas is said managed to persuade a number of them to return to Ali. Ali defeated the remaining military rebellion in the battle of Naharwan in 658, but the Kharijites survived and, in 661, assassinated Ali. They had supposedly organized simultaneous attempts against Muawiya and ʕAmrū (one of the arbitrators at Siffin), in their view the other main sources of strife within the Muslim community.
It is said that the bulk of the population who invited Hussein to come to them in Kufah were from those Kharijites' original tribes of Eastern Arabia (namely Banu Hanifa of Iraq and Ihsa'a up to ad-Dumat al-Jandal west). Banu Hanifa (compared to Quraysh who dominated before Islam the western Arabia west of ad-Dumat al-Jundul. Those Banu Hanifa were not happy with Muhammad of the Quraysh controliing all Arabia, while they were the heroes of Dthi-Qar. They tried to assasinate Muhammad. Another man criticized the Prophet for being unjust (incident for the above Hadith). Later a false prophet came out of them Musailemah, and they constituted ALL the Kharijites. These days they still live in south Iraq and Ihsaa as Shia of south Iraq.
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