Wahhabism
Wahhabism is a Salafi revivalist movement within Sunni Islam named after the 18th-century Hanbali scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. It was initially established in the central Arabian region of Najd and later spread to other parts of the Arabian Peninsula, and was the official policy of Saudi Arabia until 2022. Despite being founded on the principles of Sunni Islam, the Hanbalite scholars Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim in particular, Wahhabism may also refer to doctrinal differences distinct from other forms of Sunni Islam. Non-Wahhabi Sunnis also have compared Wahhabism to the belief of the Kharijites and loyalist monarchism. In 2013, the European Parliament identified Wahhabism as the main source of global terrorism.
The Wahhabi movement staunchly denounced rituals related to the veneration of Muslim saints and pilgrimages to their tombs and shrines, which were widespread amongst the people of Najd. Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab and his followers were highly inspired by the Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya who advocated a return to the purity of the first three generations to rid Muslims of and regarded his works as core scholarly references in theology. While being influenced by Hanbali school, the movement repudiated taqlid to legal authorities, including oft-cited scholars such as Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim.
Wahhabism has been characterized by historians as "puritanical", while its adherents describe it as an Islamic "reform movement" to restore "pure monotheistic worship". Socio-politically, the movement represented the first major Arab-led revolt against the Turkish, Persian and other foreign empires that had dominated the Islamic world since the Mongol invasions and the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate in the 13th century, and later served as a revolutionary impetus for 19th-century pan-Arab trends. In 1744, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab formed a pact with a local leader, Muhammad bin Saud, establishing a politico-religious alliance with the Saudi monarchy that lasted for more than 250 years. The Wahhabi movement gradually rose to prominence as an influential anti-colonial reform trend in the Islamic world that advocated the re-generation of the social and political prowess of Muslims. Its revolutionary themes inspired several Islamic revivalists, scholars, pan-Islamist ideologues and anti-colonial activists as far as West Africa.
For more than two centuries, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's teachings were championed as the official creed in the three Saudi States. As of 2017, changes to Saudi religious policy by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have led to widespread crackdowns on Islamists in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world. By 2021, the waning power of the religious clerics brought about by the social, economic, political changes, and the Saudi government's promotion of a nationalist narrative that emphasizes non-Islamic components, led to what has been described as the "post-Wahhabi era" of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia's annual commemoration of its founding day on 22 February since 2022, which marked the ascension of Muhammad ibn Saud in 1727 and de-emphasized his pact with Ibn Abd al-Wahhab in 1744, has led to the official "uncoupling" of the religious clergy by the Saudi state.
Name and definition
Etymology
The designation for this movement was likely first used by Sulayman ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an ardent critic of his brother's views, who used the term in his purported treatise. The movement's political opponents widely used the term to denounce it. The word is primarily an exonym and was not used by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab or by his partisans, who called themselves derived from, the central Islamic tenet denoting the oneness of God. Later, many followers adopted the term instead, ascribing themselves to the first three generations known as the.Modern-day followers of the movement continue to reject the term for themselves. Another prominent term used for the movement is that is derived from Najd, the central Arabian region where Ibn Abd al-Wahhab started his movement.
The term "Wahhabi" is distinct from Wahbi, which is the dominant creed within Ibadism.
Definition
Alongside its basic definition as an 18th century reformist/revivalist movement, the Wahhabi movement has also been characterized as a "movement for sociomoral reconstruction of society", "a conservative reform movement", and a sect with a "steadfastly fundamentalist interpretation of Islam in the tradition of Ibn Hanbal".Supporters of the Wahhabi movement characterize it as being "pure Islam", indistinct from Salafism, and in fact "the true Salafist movement" seeking "a return to the pristine message of the Prophet" and attempted to free Islam from "superimposed doctrines" and superstitions". Opponents of the movement and what it stands for label it as "a misguided creed that fosters intolerance, promotes simplistic theology, and restricts Islam's capacity for adaption to diverse and shifting circumstances". The term "Wahhabism" has also become as a blanket term used inaccurately to refer to "any Islamic movement that has an apparent tendency toward misogyny, militantism, extremism, or strict and literal interpretation of the Qur'an and hadith".
Abdallah al Obeid, the former dean of the Islamic University of Medina and member of the Saudi Consultative Council, has characterized the movement as "a political trend" within Islam that "has been adopted for power-sharing purposes", but not a distinct religious movement, because "it has no special practices, nor special rites, and no special interpretation of religion that differ from the main body of Sunni Islam".
Naming controversy
Ibn Abd al-Wahhab himself or his followers typically refer to themselves as Salafi, Sunni or Muwahhidun. The term Wahhabi was probably first used by Sulayman ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a staunch opponent of his brother's views until /AH 1190, who declared the Wahhabi movement as the personal interpretation of its leader. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and his movement's early followers referred to themselves as "al-muwahhidun". The movement's present-day followers continue to reject the term and instead often refer to themselves as Salafi.The term "Wahhabism" has frequently been used by external parties as a sectarian The term used in this manner "most frequently used in countries where Salafis are a small minority" with the intent of "conjuring up images of Saudi Arabia" and foreign interference. Labelling by the term "Wahhabism" has historically been expansive beyond the doctrinal followers of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, who tend to reject the label.
Since the 19th century, the epithet "Wahhabi" has been commonly invoked by various external observers to erroneously or pejoratively denote a wide range of reform movements across the Muslim world. The term was applied by colonial authorities in British India to Islamic religious movements perceived as a threat to imperial security, such as the Indian jihad movement promoted by Salafi leaders such as Syed Ahmad Barelvi and Siddiq Hasan Khan. The usage of the term by British officials led to a backlash from Indian Muslims and it was banned from being used in official discourse by 1889. Despite sharing little resemblance with the doctrines of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, outside observers of the Muslim world have frequently traced various religious purification campaigns across the Islamic World to Wahhabi influence. According to Qeyamuddin Ahmed:
In general, the so-called Wahhabis do not like – or at least did not like – the term. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab was averse to the elevation of scholars and other individuals, including using a person's name to label an Islamic school. Due to its perceived negative overtones, the members of the movement historically identified themselves as "Muwahhidun", Muslims, etc. and more recently as "Salafis". According to Robert Lacey "the Wahhabis have always disliked the name customarily given to them" and preferred to be called Muwahhidun. Another preferred term was simply "Muslims", since they considered their creed to be the "pure Islam". However, critics complain these terms imply that non-Wahhabi Muslims are either not monotheists or not Muslims. Additionally, the terms Muwahhidun and Unitarians are associated with other sects, both extant and extinct.
Other terms Wahhabis have been said to use and/or prefer include Ahl al-Hadith, Salafi dawah, or al-da'wa ila al-tawhid, al-Tariqa al-Salafiyya, "the reform or Salafi movement of the Sheikh", etc. Their self-designation "People of the Sunnah" was important for Wahhabism's authenticity, because during the Ottoman period only Sunnism was the legitimate doctrine.
Other writers such as Quinton Wiktorowicz, urge use of the term "Salafi", maintaining that "one would be hard pressed to find individuals who refer to themselves as Wahhabis or organizations that use Wahhabi in their title, or refer to their ideology in this manner ". A New York Times journalist writes that Saudis "abhor" the term Wahhabism, "feeling it sets them apart and contradicts the notion that Islam is a monolithic faith".
Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud for example has attacked the term as "a doctrine that doesn't exist here" and challenged users of the term to locate any "deviance of the form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia from the teachings of the Quran and Prophetic Hadiths". Professor Ingrid Mattson stated that "Wahhbism is not a sect: It is a social movement that began 200 years ago to rid Islam of rigid cultural practices that had acquired over the centuries." In an interview given to The Atlantic magazine in 2018, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman asserted that the Western usage of the term itself has been a misnomer. Stating that the terminology itself is indefinable, Mohammed bin Salman said: "When people speak of Wahhabism, they don't know exactly what they are talking about." However, there has been a multiyear "Conscious Uncoupling" in Saudi Arabia to separate the history of the state from Wahhabism. In 2019, prominent Saudi academic Khalid Al-Dakhil argued that most Saudis have been told the history of their state is that "Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab came to fight polytheism, Muhammad bin Saud joined him, and together they fought polytheism" and that what Saudis have been taught needs to change.
According to authors at Global Security and Library of Congress the term is now commonplace and used even by Wahhabi scholars in the Najd, a region often called the "heartland" of Wahhabism. Journalist Karen House calls Salafi "a more politically correct term" for Wahhabi. In any case, according to Lacey, none of the other terms have caught on, and so like the Christian Quakers, Wahhabis have "remained known by the name first assigned to them by their detractors". However, the confusion is further aggravated due to the common practice of various authoritarian governments broadly using the label "Wahhabi extremists" for all opposition, legitimate and illegitimate, to justify massive repressions on any dissident.
Another movement, whose adherents are also called "Wahhabi" but whom were Ibaadi Kharijites, has caused some confusion in North and sub-Saharan Africa, where the movement's leader – Abd al-Wahhab ibn Abd al-Rahman – lived and preached in the eighth century CE. This movement is often mistakenly conflated with the Muwahhidun movement of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.