However, the notion of Muslim unity has remained an important ideal and in modern times intellectuals have spoken against sectarian divisions.
[15] The description non-madhhabi may be used for example in relation to Islamic studies at educational institutions that are not limited in scope to one particular madhhab or school of jurisprudence.
[19][20][21] The term ghair-muqallid, i.e., "non-blind-follower", can be used to describe the adherents of movements such as Salafism and Ahl-e-Hadith who do not necessarily follow the rulings of a particular traditional madhhab but identify as Sunni Muslims.
Some Muslims, who believed that Muhammad never clearly named his successor, resorted to the Arabian tradition of electing their leader by a council of influential members of the community.
[28] This perception is partly due to the reliance on highly ideological sources that have been accepted as reliable historical works, and also because the vast majority of the population is Sunni.
An example of this was the Zia regime in Pakistan, who used sectarian divisions between the Sunni and Shia to counter the growing geopolitical influence of Iran, as well as to distract from the domestic political problems.
[34] Post-Zia governments in Pakistan continued to "cynically manipulate sectarian conflicts for short term political gain.
[35] The seventh Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun (r. 813–833) was known for his attempts to end sectarian rivalry in Islam and to impose upon his subjects a rationalist Muslim creed.
[36] Talking about sectarianism, Persian Muslim poet Hafiz (d. 1389-1390) said, "Forgive the war of the 72 sects; since they did not see the truth they have struck out on the road to fancy".
In 1578, Akbar forced all major ulama to sign a mahzar, in this case a declaration that he alone was the caliph and that, consequently, his opinion in religious matters prevailed.
[39] Condemning the historically prevailing trend of blindly imitating religious leaders, the pan-Islamist revolutionary Jamal al-Din al-Afghani refused to identity himself with a specific sect or imam by insisting that he was just a Muslim and a scholar.
[41] Believing in the unification of Muslims in order to go back to the "true Islam", Egyptian scholar Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) held that the extreme fervour of sects was responsible for the divide of Muslims, and this division, alongside unsubstantiated religious practises and false religious doctrine such as the exaggerations of the Sufi order, was one of the reasons for their decline.
[49] Faisal, who abhorred sectarianism,[50] was an advocate of a mild and inclusive form of Arab nationalism, around which a consensus could be built, and as a shared platform that could span the differences between the sects.
[56] At the end of the 1950s, the movement reached a wider public, as the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser discovered the usefulness of pan-Islamism for his foreign policy.
[57] During his reign, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan of the Emirates urged solidarity and co-operation between nations, Arab and non-Arab.
[58] Similarly, his son Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (r. 2022-present) has advocated against sectarian conflicts amongst Arabs and Muslims.
[62] According to Thomas West and Sonia Alianak, Jordan and Morocco withstood the tidal wave of revolutions during the Arab Spring of 2011 because King Abdullah II of Jordan and King Muhammad VI of Morocco, both descendants of Prophet Muhammad and non-sectarian, resorted to reform instead of being toppled by making use of their religious credentials and pedigrees.
"[65] In Lithuania, non-denominational Muslims fall into the category of "non-traditional religious communities", and are formally separated by law from Sunnis.
[67] Non-denominational Muslims have been adopted by some theocratic governments into their fold of pan-Islamism as a means to tackle unreasoning partisanship and takfirism.
[68] In other jurisdictions, some officials have applied a mandatory religious instruction that purportedly gives students a non-denominational outlook in an attempt to appear pluralistic, but in practice, does no such thing.
[2] Some non-denominational Muslims consider their unaffiliated stance to be a shield against the risk of becoming docile and meek subjects of domineering clergymen.
[78] In 2013, there were 156 non-denominational Muslim prayer rooms and places of worship in the U.K, although according to Mehmood Naqshbandi, the congregation does not necessarily subscribe to the same viewpoints as the staff.