Kitman and the Doctrine of Concealment Under Hostile Rule

Ibadi doctrine permits believers, under conditions the tradition calls hostile or oppressive rule, to conceal their religious identity and even suspend the outward performance of practices that would expose them to persecution, a principle known as kitman, developed by Ibadi jurists as a response to the movement's repeated experience of minority status and persecution across early and medieval Islamic history. The doctrine sits alongside a related Ibadi framework describing different modes a community may adopt depending on its political circumstances, ranging from open manifestation of the faith under a just or tolerant ruler to concealment under conditions of active persecution, a graduated approach that gave Ibadi communities theological grounds for adjusting how openly they practiced without treating concealment itself as a compromise of belief. The Encyclopaedia of Islam situates kitman within Ibadism's broader theological distinctiveness as a school tracing its origins to the seventh century political disputes that also produced the Kharijite movements, while developing over subsequent centuries into a moderate, independent legal and theological tradition distinct from both Sunni and Shia Islam, one for which the practical question of how to survive as a religious minority under rulers it did not recognize as legitimate remained a live concern for much of its history.