ABSTRACT
The complexity of doctrinal developments, even within the Sunnite branch of Islam itself, prevents a monolithic categorization of "orthodoxy". Muslim heresiographers were largely responsible for the creation of the "orthodoxy/heterodoxy"dichotomy, however indirectly. The pre-Islamic traditional Arab mode of authority was manifested in more than one respect in the form of routinization of Muhammad's charismatic authority for the Muslim majority. The idea of "full-blooded" Arabs was clearly a pre-Islamic notion, embedded in the network of tribal affinities that persisted against the universality of the Islamic community. The establishment of ummah as the Islamic community was the most significant expression of Islamic solidarity against the traditional tribal structure. Despite the predominance of the ummah as the general and most significant form of the Islamic social structure, tribal affinities continued to be operative against the doctrinal universality of Islam.
