David E. Originally posted: October Since then, it has been one of the most maligned of any religious reform movement in modern history. That in itself is not so extraordinary. Reform movements advocating major doctrinal changes are always likely to be threatening to those who resist any change of the existing status quo. In addition, over the years Wahhabism has acquired a political dimension that has been threatening to a broad spectrum of people. In order to understand what Wahhabism is and is not, therefore, one must look both at what it actually advocates as a religious reform movement and what political implications have evolved since its founding.
For example, he condemned intercessional prayers tawassul to Muslim saints and viewed pilgrimages to their tombs as heresy. He preached that the only valid intercession was to the one true God. Its founder, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, was a religious reformer, not a political ideologue.
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On 16 November, the militants released a video showing that they had beheaded a fifth western hostage, the American aid worker Peter Kassig, as well as several captured Syrian soldiers.
Yet although IS is certainly an Islamic movement, it is neither typical nor mired in the distant past, because its roots are in Wahhabism, a form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia that developed only in the 18th century.
Other members of the Saudi ruling class, however, look more kindly on the movement, applauding its staunch opposition to Shiaism and for its Salafi piety, its adherence to the original practices of Islam. This inconsistency is a salutary reminder of the impossibility of making accurate generalisations about any religious tradition. In its short history, Wahhabism has developed at least two distinct forms, each of which has a wholly different take on violence.
During the 18th century, revivalist movements sprang up in many parts of the Islamic world as the Muslim imperial powers began to lose control of peripheral territories.
In the west at this time, we were beginning to separate church from state, but this secular ideal was a radical innovation: as revolutionary as the commercial economy that Europe was concurrently devising. No other culture regarded religion as a purely private activity, separate from such worldly pursuits as politics, so for Muslims the political fragmentation of their society was also a religious problem.
If the poor were oppressed, the vulnerable exploited or state institutions corrupt, Muslims were obliged to make every effort to put society back on track. So the 18th-century reformers were convinced that if Muslims were to regain lost power and prestige, they must return to the fundamentals of their faith, ensuring that God — rather than materialism or worldly ambition — dominated the political order. One of the most influential of these revivalists was Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab , a learned scholar of Najd in central Arabia, whose teachings still inspire Muslim reformers and extremists today.
He was especially concerned about the popular cult of saints and the idolatrous rituals at their tombs, which, he believed, attributed divinity to mere mortals. Like Luther, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab wanted to return to the earliest teachings of his faith and eject all later medieval accretions.
This naturally incensed the clergy and threatened local rulers, who believed that interfering with these popular devotions would cause social unrest. He also forbade the Arab custom of killing prisoners of war, the deliberate destruction of property and the slaughter of civilians, including women and children. Nor did he ever claim that those who fell in battle were martyrs who would be rewarded with a high place in heaven, because a desire for such self-aggrandisement was incompatible with jihad.
Two forms of Wahhabism were emerging: where Ibn Saud was happy to enforce Wahhabi Islam with the sword to enhance his political position, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab insisted that education, study and debate were the only legitimate means of spreading the one true faith. Muslims had, therefore, been traditionally wary of takfir , the practice of declaring a fellow Muslim to be an unbeliever kafir. This was made possible by the burgeoning oil trade with the West from the s onwards.
The corruption engendered resentment toward the regime among some Saudi Salafis neo-Wahabbis , particularly wealthy and educated younger people — including Osama bin Laden. A government decision to allow a large American military presence in the country in pursuit of the Gulf War in only aggravated the tension. Neo-Wahhabis remain by far the greatest potential threat to the regime. The advance of IS in Syria and Iraq, as well as its counterparts in Africa and elsewhere, presents a serious religious challenge to the Saudi regime and its Wahhabi establishment.
But they are also sworn enemies, since Saudi Arabia has officially joined the American-led coalition against IS, with whom a many neo-Wahhabi Saudis are actually fighting. The problem for the new Saudi leadership is how to put more religious and political distance between themselves and IS. King Salman also faces the rising assertiveness of Shia groups both in Iran and Iraq, as well as the resurgent Houthis in Yemen. These presumably expect the new king to deliver greater liberalisation and democratisation of the Saudi polity and society — but he could only do so by undermining the pact with Wahhabism that has secured the very existence of the Saudi monarchy.
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