SUNNAH. In every "founded" religious tradition, maintaining proximity to the founder has been an important source of legitimacy and authority, just as arguments about how to establish that proximity have been a source of conflict. In the Islamic tradition, the word sunnah has been the focal point of such issues. A word with a very old history in the Arabic language, sunnah comes from a root that is concretely associated with honing or molding, with something firmly rooted, like a tooth (sinn). Sunnah, by extension, came to mean habitual practice, customary procedure or action, norm, standard, or "usage sanctioned by tradition."

Early Evolution

Among pre-Islamic Arabs, sunnah had the force of what anthropologists would call "tribal custom," that is, the generally agreed upon "thing to do" in matters of piety, morality, and social activity. In fact, it was the sunnah of the prophet Muḥammad's Arab compeers that...