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THE DEVIATORS, THE RENEGADES AND THE REBELS:

During his caliphate Ali repelled three elements and drew sword against them, i.e., the people of the Camel, whom he himself called "the Deviators", the people of Siffeen, who were called by him "the Renegades", and the people of Nahrwan, known as the Kharijites, who by him were called "the Rebels".

"So when I (Ali) issued decrees of caliphate, one group betrayed allegiance, the other became Renegade, and the third became recalcitrant and Rebellious".

The deviators were mentally greedy people, they were voracious and advocated inequality. Most of Ali's discourses, underlining justice and equality, are often meant for them.

The mentality of the Renegade was that of diplomacy, duplicity and hypocrisy. They struggled to usurp power and to root out the authority of Ali. Some of them had made offers of getting close to him, meaning that in this way he might fulfil their ambitions. He did not accept it because he was not used to it. He had come to fight against tyranny and not to acquiesce in it.

On the other hand, Mo'awiyah and his type were against the very basis of Ali's government, they wanted to capture the seat of Islamic caliphate. In fact, Ali's battle against them is a battle against hypocrisy and duplicity.

The mentality of the third group viz. the rebels was a mentality of unfair prejudices, dry asceticism, and dangerous ignorance. Ali had forceful repulsion against all of them. He adopted a non-compromising attitude towards them.

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One of the manifestations of Ali's being a perfect man and a magna­nimous personality is that from the position of authority and assertion he had to confront multifarious groups and divergent resilences and he com­bated them all. Some times we find him in the battlefield fighting with the greedy and voracious", "camelists", and at others we find him in the battlefield confronting the multifaceted treacherous diplomats and at times facing idiots and perverts of the self-styled sacerdotalism.

We revert to our debate about the last group viz. the Kharijites. Although they have been liquidated yet they have left an instructive and admonitory piece of history. Their thoughts have circulated amongst all the Muslims. Consequently, during the fourteen centuries, inspite of the fact that their manpower and even their name stand extinct, their spirit has been always and continues to dominate the formalists and is held to be the greatest resistance in the way at progress of Islam and the Muslims.