Abstract
The study uses books of Shīite adīth (including the Kāfī of Kulaynī) collected before the Occultation of the Twelfth Imam in 941 to demonstrate a significant change in social attitudes in the Shīite community. The change, which appears to have taken place some time in the ninth century, involved a shift from electionism and isolationism to a more open stance toward the non‐Shīte majority. The revised view is expressed in adīths that offer a view of faith (īmān) and unfaith (kufr) that grants non‐Shīites some measure of faith and salvation and promotes social integration by allowing marriage with and inheritance from other Muslims. Other adīth narratives, however, suggest that some Shīites strongly resisted this view. The account of Shīte views on faith offered by the contemporaneous (d. 935) heresiographer al‐Asharī confirms the picture of a community divided between attitudes of segregation and rapprochement—between rejection of and participation in the great religious consensus taking place under Abbāsid rule.
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