The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From the Extremists (8 page)

‘Abd al-Wahhab argued, for example, that Muslims who en- gage in acts of
shirk
(heresy) must be fought and killed, and he interpreted precedents set by the first “Rightly Guided” caliph in Medina,
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Abu Bakr (d. 13/634), in support of the argument that although people might hold themselves out as Muslims, they could, and should, be killed as hypocrites. ‘Abd al-Wahhab claimed that Abu Bakr fought and killed many so-called hyp- ocrites, despite the fact that they practiced the five pillars of Islam. Arguing that his followers were justified in killing their Muslim opponents, he contended that the Ottoman Turks, their allies, and all other heretical and hypocritical Muslims were in truth infidels deserving of the worst death.

‘Abd al-Wahhab was also fond of citing a precedent in which Abu Bakr reportedly burned so-called hypocrites to death, and he used this purported precedent to argue that his supporters were justified in torturing their opponents.
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There is no doubt that this precedent is apocryphal, and nearly all Muslim scholars dismiss it as an invention. ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s reliance on this bizarre historical report is very telling. It clearly demonstrates his willingness to select precedents from the Is- lamic tradition that support cruel and inhumane behavior— precedents that jurists and scholars of the past had already ex- pended considerable effort challenging and deconstructing.

For instance, most scholars in the Islamic tradition who studied the purported Abu Bakr precedent concluded that the claim that Abu Bakr accused people of hypocrisy who upheld

the five pillars and fought them is without support or founda- tion. Furthermore, the use of fire against Muslim or non- Muslim enemies is severely condemned in classical Islamic law. Many classical scholars carefully documented that the re- port of Abu Bakr using fire against Muslim opponents was in- vented by Abu Bakr’s enemies and reported by highly suspect individuals.
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Not only did classical scholars challenge the au- thenticity and historical veracity of these Abu Bakr incidents, they also argued that precedents of cruelty were contrary to the ethics of the Qur’an and the Prophet.

‘Abd al-Wahhab ignored this considerable body of contra- vening literature in his effort to justify killing and torturing those he considered heretical Muslims, and his students em- braced and legitimated these precedents of cruelty.
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By dis- carding and at times demonizing the classical heritage and its interpretations, ‘Abd al-Wahhab gained unfettered access to the precedents of cruelty, unencumbered by the challenges posed by past scholars. ‘Abd al-Wahhab was able to reinject these precedents of cruelty into the heart of Muslim theology and law, thereby reinventing Islam on the basis of a new im- morality.

The reason this is extremely significant is that Muslim ex- tremists such as Bin Laden and Omar ‘Abd al-Rahman fol- lowed in the footsteps of ‘Abd al-Wahhab by relying on the same exact precedents of cruelty as a means of justifying killing innocent people. In fact, it is very disturbing that the very precedents that ‘Abd al-Wahhab defended were cited in Web sites set up by groups that butchered hostages in Iraq. It is not all that surprising that these extremists appear to have been directly influenced by the writings of ‘Abd al-Wahhab and by his unabashed efforts to defend the credibility of his- torical reports that justified murder and torture.

Considering the dismissive attitude of the Wahhabis toward Islamic history and law and the whole classical tradition, it is not surprising that the movement came under severe criticism by a considerable number of contemporaneous scholars— most notably, ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s own brother, Sulayman, and reportedly, ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s father as well. Sulayman, Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s brother, wrote a full trea- tise dedicated to criticizing the manners, education, and teach- ings of his puritanical brother. The
mufti
of the Hanbali in Mecca, Ibn Humaydi (d. 1295/1878), a man of considerable note and authority at the time, reported that Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s father was upset with his son because Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Wahhab was not a good student of Islamic jurisprudence and was arrogantly defiant toward his teachers. In fact, the younger ‘Abd al-Wahhab did not com- plete his Shari’a studies, and it is not clear whether he dropped out of law school or was expelled. Ibn Humaydi claimed that, fearing the wrath of his father, Muhammad bin ‘Abd al- Wahhab did not dare to start preaching his puritan message until after his father’s death.
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On the whole, the criticisms leveled against ‘Abd al-Wahhab and his followers by their contemporaries were not that sur- prising. The Wahhabis were criticized for showing very little regard for Islamic history, historical monuments, shrines and relics, the Islamic intellectual tradition, or the sanctity of Mus- lim life.
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‘Abd al-Wahhab’s brother, as well as other critics, claimed that ‘Abd al-Wahhab was an ill-educated, intolerant man who was ignorantly and arrogantly dismissive of any thoughts or individuals that disagreed with him.
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Sulayman complained that except among the most extreme and fringe fanatical elements, his brother’s views were without precedent in Islamic history. For instance, Sulayman asserted, the major- ity of the scholars of Islam refrained from accusing the ratio-

nalists and mystics of heresy, and instead debated them peace- fully.
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‘Abd al-Wahhab, according to his brother’s treatise, did not concern himself with reading or understanding the works of the juristic predecessors. And yet, while ‘Abd al-Wahhab was dismissive toward the works of most jurists, he treated the words of some, such as Hanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), as if they were Divinely revealed, not to be ques- tioned or debated. But even then, ‘Abd al-Wahhab was very selective with the works of Ibn Taymiyya, citing only what he liked and ignoring the rest. Rather tellingly, Ibn Humaydi, a strong admirer of Ibn Taymiyya as well, repeated the same ac- cusation against ‘Abd al-Wahhab.
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Sulayman and other scholars noted the irony in the fact that ‘Abd al-Wahhab and his followers, while prohibiting
taqlid
(imitating or following the precedents of jurists), ended up affirming and even mandating it, but in a different form. They prohibited the practice of
taqlid
as far as it related to ju- rists whom they did not like, but demanded that Muslims im- itate Wahhabi thinking blindly and unthinkingly, a double standard that Sulayman condemned. Effectively, Sulayman ar- gued, the Wahhabis acted as if the only actual measure of commitment to Islam was to follow and obey them, since if a Muslim disagreed with them, they deemed that Muslim a heretic by definition.
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Indeed, the Wahhabis used to label themselves
al-Muslimun
(the Muslims) or
al-Muwahidun
(the monotheists), intimating that those who did not accept their creed were neither Muslims nor monotheists.
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In short, Sulayman insisted that the Wahhabi methodology was based on a profound sense of despotism, wherein the whole of the Islamic intellectual tradition was dismissed offhandedly and Muslims were given the choice of either ac- cepting the idiosyncratic Wahhabi interpretations of Islam or

being declared
kuffar
(infidels) and killed. And indeed, during their conquest of Arabia in the eighteenth century, every time the Wahhabis conquered a town or city they would demand that the Muslim inhabitants repeat the testament of faith, but this time, the inhabitants must proclaim the testament while vowing to adhere to Wahhabi beliefs and practices. Those in- habitants who would not declare their commitment to Islam as it was understood and interpreted by the Wahhabis were presumed to be infidels and swiftly put to the sword.
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Histor- ical sources describe horrendous massacres committed by Wahhabi forces in the eighteenth century all across Arabia.
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Sulayman argued in his treatise that the Wahhabis in effect pretended as if they alone, after many centuries of Islamic his- tory, had discovered the truth about Islam and considered themselves infallible. Sulayman noted that from a theological point of view, this claim was very dangerous. It was impossi- ble for Muslims to have been deluded and mistaken in under- standing and practicing their religion for so many centuries and then to discover the truth only after Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Wahhab was born. Sulayman pointed out that the implica- tions of such a claim were nothing short of disastrous for the Muslim faith.
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He was careful to note that the act of declaring Muslims to be infidels was a grave sin in Islam, and even Ibn Taymiyya, the jurist ‘Abd al-Wahhab was so fond of, prohib- ited the practice of
takfir
(branding Muslims as infidels).
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In order to prove his point, Sulayman concluded his treatise by quoting fifty-two traditions, attributed to the Prophet and some to the Companions of the Prophet, on the sin of accus-

ing a Muslim of being an unbeliever or heretic.
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I have focused here on Sulayman’s treatise in which he crit- icized his brother and the Wahhabi movement because of the historical importance of that text. Not surprisingly, Sulay- man’s treatise is banned by Saudi Arabia, and there has been

considerable effort expended in that country and elsewhere to bury that text. Presently, this important work is not well known in the Muslim world and is very difficult to find. I was forced to go to considerable lengths to locate it even in Egypt. But it presents a powerful contextual picture of the birth of the puritan movement that would later play such an important role in the twentieth century and beyond. The Wahhabi move- ment would have a powerful impact upon defining the creed and theology of all subsequent puritan movements, but Sulay- man’s text demonstrates that many of the beliefs and practices of Wahhabism were considered an aberration and a corrup- tion of mainstream Islam.
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Puritan Islam was a deviance that was thought of as marginal to the mainstream, and several ju- rists, including Sulayman, believed that it would be a short- lived phenomenon.

Other jurists also expressed grave concerns about the po- tential danger that Wahhabism posed to the integrity of Is- lamic ethics. Sulayman bin Suhaym (d. 1175/1761), a prominent Hanbali jurist from Najd and a former supporter of ‘Abd al-Wahhab, wrote what was at the time an influential treatise appealing to Muslim jurists to take the Wahhabi threat seriously and to take active measures to counter it.
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Several mainstream jurists writing during this period, such as the Hanafi jurist Ibn ‘Abidin (d. 1253/1837) and the Maliki jurist al-Sawi (d. 1241/1825), described the Wahhabis as a fanatic fringe group, and because of the Wahhabi’s bloody practices, labeled them the “modern-day Khawarij of Islam.”
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The Khawarij was a violent and fanatical sect that appeared in Arabia in early Islam but was eventually weakened and marginalized. Like the Wahhabis, the Khawarij considered all Muslims except themselves to be infidels; and like the Wah- habis, they also massacred untold numbers of Muslims in Arabia. The Khawarij even assassinated ‘Ali, who was the

Prophet’s revered cousin and the fourth caliph. Eventually, be- cause of the unrelenting hostility and criticism of the classical jurists and the sustained campaigns by various Muslim states, the Khawarij was forced to reform or perish. Today, the only offshoot of the original Khawarij is a sect known as the Ibadiyya, which survives in Oman and parts of Algeria. The law and theology of the Ibadiyya is nothing like that of their fanatic ancestors; in fact, the Ibadiyya were pressured into moderating their views and becoming much closer to the Mus- lim mainstream. Unfortunately, however, the prediction of many jurists that the Wahhabis would inevitably end up shar- ing the fate of the Khawarij turned out to be flatly wrong.

The simplicity, decisiveness, and absolutism of the religious thought of ‘Abd al-Wahhab made it attractive to the desert tribes, especially in the area of Najd. At the time, Najd was the most tribal and least developed and cosmopolitan area of the Saudi state. Ultimately, however, ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s ideas were too radical and extreme to have widespread influence on the Arab world, let alone the entire Muslim world. Contem- porary scholars have already established the relative marginal- ity of Wahhabi extremist thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and have shown that the thought of moderate revivalists such as Muhammad al-Shawkani (d. 1250/1834) and Ali Jalal al-San‘ani (d. 1225/1810) were quite dissimilar to Wahhabi thinking, and far more influential at that time.
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It is quite likely that ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s ideas would not have spread even in Arabia had it not been for the fact that in the late nineteenth century the Al Sa‘ud family united itself with the Wahhabi movement and rebelled against Ottoman rule in Arabia. Armed with religious zeal and a strong sense of Arab nationalism, the rebellion was considerable, at one point reaching as far as Damascus in the north and Oman in the

south. Egyptian forces under the leadership of Muhammad Ali in 1818, after several failed expeditions, quashed the rebellion, and Wahhabism, like other extremist movements in Islamic history, seemed to be on its way to extinction.
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But that was not to be.

The Al Sa‘ud/Wahhabi alliance from 1745 to 1818 is known as the first Saudi state, which ended when the Egyptian and Turkish forces destroyed the city of Dhar‘iyya, the home- town of the first Saudi kingdom, and massacred its inhabi- tants. If anything, this massacre stayed in the Wahhabi memory and further ignited their zeal by becoming a symbol of their suffering and sacrifices.

Wahhabi ideology was resuscitated once again in the early twentieth century under the leadership of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz bin Al Sa‘ud (r. 1319–73/1902–53), the founder of the modern Saudi state, who adopted the puritanical theology of the Wahhabis and allied himself with the tribes of Najd, thereby establishing the nascent beginnings of what would become Saudi Arabia. The first Wahhabi rebellions in Arabia in the eighteenth cen- tury aimed to overthrow Ottoman control and enforce ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s puritanical brand of Islam upon as much of the Arab-speaking world as possible. The Wahhabis also sought to control Mecca and Medina, and by doing so, gain a huge symbolic victory by controlling the spiritual center of the Muslim world.
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