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Historical analysis

According to Rudolf Ernst Brünnow, the first academic historian to systematically study the Kharijites, the qurra supported the arbitration proposal because as pious believers in the Qur'an, they felt obliged to respond to the call of making the Qur'an the arbitrator. The people who objected to the treaty were Bedouin Arabs, and hence separate from the qurra who had settled in Kufa and Basra following the wars of conquest. They had devoted themselves to the cause of Islam and perceived the arbitration by two people as an acute religious injustice, which drove them into secession and later into open rebellion. Julius Wellhausen has criticized Brünnow's hypothesis because all Basran and Kufan inhabitants were Bedouins, and since Brünnow regards these Bedouins as pious people anyway, it makes them little different from the qurra in this regard. Hence, the the same group of people first favored and then rejected the arbitration. They accepted arbitration of the Qur'an but some of them later realized that it was their mistake, acknowledged it as such, repented, and demanded the same from Ali. In his view, the Kharijites thus emanated from the qurra. He argues that the Kharijite dogmatism was based on enforcement of the rule of God on Earth—an otherwise Islamic principle, taken too far by the Kharijites: "By tightening onto the principles of Islam, they are taken beyond Islam itself". They gave precedence to it over the integrity of the community as it was openly opposing God's commands in their view. He rejects the notion that they were anarchists for they strived to build their own pious communities. But their goals were impractical and hostile to culture: "let the justice be done, though the world perish". According to Fred Donner, the qurra might have been motivated by the fears that the treaty could result in them being held accountable for their involvement in the murder of Uthman. Analyzing early Kharijite poetry, Donner has further suggested that the Kharijites were pious believers who often expressed their piety in militant activism. Their religious worldview was based on Qur'anic values and they may have been the "true believers of the early community". Their militancy my have been caused by the expectation of imminent end of the world for they wanted to trade this life for reward in the hereafter.

The traditional view that Kharijism originated at Siffin as militant protest to the arbitration without having any prior causes is rejected by several historians. According to Patricia Crone, the story of the dispute over the arbitration is inadequate and perhaps there was more to the dispute between Ali and the Kharijites. G. R. Hawting has suggested that the use of the tahkim by the Kharijites to denounce the arbitration is a later reworking by the Muslim sources. In his view, the Kharijites originally espoused the slogan, amid the religious disputes among the Muslims over the scriptural authority, to reject the authority of the sunna and the oral law in favor of the Qur'an.

M. A. Shaban and Martin Hinds see socio-economic factors at the root of Kharijite rebellions. Rejecting the notion that the qurra were the Qur'an readers, Shaban holds that they were villagers who had gained status in Iraq during the caliphate of Umar for their loyalty to the state during the wars of apostasy and were thus awarded the trusteeship of the fertile lands of Iraq. They were dissatisfied with the economic policies of Uthman and saw Ali's caliphate as a means of restoring their status. When he agreed to talks with Mu'awiya they felt their status threatened and consequently rebelled. According to him, the main role in forcing Ali to accept the arbitration was not of the qurra but of the tribal chiefs, as the latter group had benefited from the policies of Uthman. They were not enthusiastic supporters of Ali and considered the prospect of continued war not in their interests. The Kharijite rebellions after the Siffin event were also of economic origins. In Hinds' view, the status of the qurra was based on Umar's principle of sabiqa (early conversion to Islam) and their participation in the early conquests. They hoped that Ali would continue Umar's system and only for that reason threw their lot with him. They supported the arbitration because they assumed it would bring an end to the war but Ali would remain caliph and would return to Medina, leaving the administration of Iraq in the hands of the local population including themselves. They denounced it once they discovered that Ali was not recognized as caliph in the document and that the arbiters could also use their own judgment in addition to the Qur'anic principles.

In the view of Montgomery Watt, it was neither religious grounds, nor economic factors that gave rise to the Kharijites. His view is that Kharijism was the nomadic response to the newly established organized state. The nomads, accustomed to an independent life style of the desert, suddenly found their freedoms curtailed by the powerful bureaucracy of a "vast administrative machine", in the words of Watt. The rebellion at Siffin was thus an expression of this rejection of state control. From thereon, they strived to recreate the pre-Islamic tribal structure and Bedouin lifestyle with a religious basis. Hugh N. Kennedy describes the Kharijites as ultra-pious people who were dissatisfied with perceived laxity in religion on the part of other people and the state, and felt that the religion was being exploited for personal gains. They thus came to reject both the traditional tribal society and the urban life style that the state had forced upon the people by relocating them to the garrison towns. The movement was an attempt to find a third way: an independent, egalitarian, nomadic society based on unadulterated religion.

In the long term, the activism of the militant Kharijites meant that the government was forced to crush them, and essentially resulted in their disappearance. No militant Kharijite sect survived beyond the 12th century. The quietists' more nuanced and practical approach, whereby they preferred taqiyya over hijra, and more organized and sustainable military campaigns and institution building over aggressive pursuit of martyrdom, contributed to their survival.