Sunni Islam
most populous Islamic denomination
Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam and the world's largest religious denomination. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad did not appoint any successor and left the choice of his successor to the Muslim community. They believe that his father-in-law and closest friend Abu Bakr rightfully succeeded him as the caliph, being appointed at Saqifa. This contrasts with Shia Islam, which holds that Muhammad appointed Ali, his cousin and son-in-law, as his successor at Ghadir Khumm. Nevertheless, Sunnis revere Ali, along with Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman as 'rightly-guided caliphs'. The Quran and ijma (scholarly consensus) form the basis of all traditional jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. The Sunni canonical hadith collections are The Six Books, known as Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Sunan Abi Dawud, Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Sunan al-Nasa'i, and Sunan Ibn Majah.
Sharia legal rulings are derived from these sources, in conjunction with consideration of public welfare and juristic discretion, using the principles of jurisprudence developed by the four legal schools: Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki and Shafi'i. In matters of creed, the Sunni tradition upholds the six pillars of Iman (faith) and comprises the Ash'ari and Maturidi schools of Kalam (theology) as well as the textualist Athari school. Sunnis regard the first four caliphs Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali as Rashidun (rightly-guided) and revere the Sahaba, Tabi'in, and Tabi al-tabi'in as the Salaf (predecessors).
The public source identifies “Sunni Islam” as most populous Islamic denomination. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Sunni, Islam and most.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q483654. The Library of Congress control number is sh85130552. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sunni Islam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.