Following the First Fitnah, Caliph Mu’Awiya (r. 661-680), a member of the Umayyad family, managed to reunite the ummah by reestablishing control of the military and enforcing the separation of Arab soldiers and the populations they had conquered. Armstrong argues that the expansion of the ummah demanded a more absolutist form of government that was at odds with Muhammad’s egalitarian teachings. Dissatisfied with the Umayyads’ consolidation of power and wealth, Ali’s son Hussain launched an uprising, but he and his troops were slaughtered by Umayyad forces in Iraq. This conflict would come to be known as the Second Fitnah. The Umayyads were able to regain control of the ummah for a brief period, but the general population of the Caliphate was growing increasingly uneasy about the hierarchies that were central to the government’s structure.

Armstrong writes that the theological questions about the nature of political power that had been raised by the Fitnahs were as profound to the Muslim faith as the early Christological debates had been to Christianity. Several religious movements that opposed the absolutism and exorbitance of the Caliphs emerged, and a new jurisprudential culture aimed at standardizing legal interpretations of Islamic Law (