The Ummah of Islaam is in a state of disagreement and divergence in many different areas, both with regard to aqidah and other matters besides, and they have taken divergent paths. Then a number of calamities have befallen them as a result of this divergence, and due to the fact that in matters of disagreement they do not refer back for their resolution to the Book of their Lord and the Sunnah of their Prophet. As a result, there emerged the appearance of ideologies in the Islamic field having their own particular programmes and methodologies to rescue and rectify the condition of the ummah. Some are political, some are intellectual, some are spiritual. The followers of each of these ideologies claim that their ideology is the true methodology of Islaam which must be followed and which can alone save the ummah. In order to sustain this argument, the proponents of these ideologies often attempt to distinguish between aqidah and manhaj with a view to justifying the permissibility of the method they have adopted and made as part of their group's mode of operation. In reality, they try to make such distinctions to allow them to abandon the ways and means found in the revealed texts and instead follow what their intellects deem to be better and sounder ways towards rectification.