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Founded on a rigid understanding of monotheism, Wahhabism has come to terms with political power over the centuries, but has not renounced its main tenets

Founded on a rigid understanding of monotheism, Wahhabism has come to terms with political power over the centuries, but has not renounced its main tenets Last update: 2022-04-22 09:59:46 DOWNLOAD THIS ARTICLE AS A PDF “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.” For centuries, this profession of faith provided the foundation for Muslim unity in the face of diverse popular religious customs such as seeking the intercession of holy men, paying respect to the graves of honored ancestors, and appealing to Sufi saints for spiritual blessings. Muslim theologians criticized popular customs as deviations from prescribed canonical prayers, but they also maintained that as long as one professed the faith and performed the ritual duties—prayer, charity, fasting, and the pilgrimage to Mecca—one counted as a Muslim. In 1740, an Arabian theologian named Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb (1702-1792) made a startling break with consensus by asserting that popular religious customs were inexcusable expressions of idolatry. His dissent sparked a controversy that has divided Muslims ever since. The root of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb’s dissent lay in his bold claim that Muslims had forgotten the true meaning of “there is no god but God:” Not only all worship is owed to God, as all Muslims believe, but any word or action that implies worship for another creature makes one an idolater. Other theologians denied that seeking intercession and the like were acts of worship, but he insisted they were. He therefore felt compelled to call for the purification of religious life, which he declared had lapsed into the very same idolatrous “spiritual ignorance” the Prophet Muhammad combated a thousand years before. In practical terms, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb’s creed implied the excommunication of fellow Muslims. The Arabic term for excommunication, takfīr, has become familiar in the West because of its association with the extremist violence committed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, whose theologians draw extensively from Wahhabi doctrine. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb’s critics accused him of reckless, wrongful excommunication of Muslims. He deflected the accusation, maintaining that he carefully restricted excommunication to situations where individuals received a clear explanation of the meaning of monotheism and then rejected it. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb embarked on a mission to establish a domain of perfect worship, the elimination of idolatrous customs, obedience to divine law, and the exclusion of idolaters. At first, he pursued his mission by proselytizing, in accord with the customary Muslim path of calling (da‘wa) to true belief. For the most part, other religious scholars condemned him. His critics coined the term “Wahhabi” to marginalize his message as the false notion of a misguided rustic preacher. Of course, he rejected the Wahhabi label, and insisted he was reviving Islam’s true monotheism. The Alliance with the Sa‘ūd clan Critics were able to have him expelled from two Arabian towns before he found backing from the ruler of an oasis settlement—Muhammad ibn Sa‘ūd—giving birth to the alliance of Wahhabism and the Sa‘ūd clan. The alliance provided Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb the political support he needed to create a domain cleansed of idolatry and to expand the domain through expansionist warfare. After his death in 1792, religious leadership passed to his sons and then to later descendants who upheld Wahhabi theology and kept close ties with Saudi rulers. From the 1740s to the early 1900s, Saudi political fortunes had their ups and downs. During periods of political strength, Wahhabi clerics used their monopoly over religious authority to construct a puritanical religious culture by suppressing dissent and excluding non-Wahhabi Muslims. Citing the religious duty to bear enmity toward infidels and friendship toward believers, Wahhabi clerics even tried to ban travel to neighboring lands such as Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, for fear that interaction with non-Wahhabi Muslims, whom they considered infidels, would lead to sympathy with them and their religious ideas. Wahhabism’s dependence on Saudi power meant that sustaining religious purity required a strong ruler. Consequently, Wahhabi clerics made obedience to the ruler a religious duty. This is in accord with the Sunni Muslim tradition that believers must obey a ruler who upholds Islam as long as a ruler does not command believers to violate Islamic law. But Wahhabism sets a high bar for “upholding Islam.” It requires a ruler to prohibit deviations from a strict definition of correct worship. It also requires a ruler to rigorously undertake the duty to “command right and forbid wrong,” a formula that envisions a society conforming to Wahhabism’s definition of right and wrong. Since the 1920s, conformity has been enforced by religious police with the authority to enforce gender segregation, the closure of shops and offices at prayer times, and public morality in general. Dependence on a strong ...

Wahhabi Doctrine and its Development