Investigating the ties between Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, early Wahhabism, and ISIS

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study reviews the popular and scholarly literature concerning the connection between the ideas of the eighteenth-century founder of Wahhabism, Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and the foundational ideas of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). While the members of ISIS embrace many of the tenets of Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab as laid out in the cleric’s most substantive work, Kitab al-Tawhid (Book of Monotheism), Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s texts alone do not appear to sanction the violent compulsion with which adherents spread the faith. Recent studies that draw upon early source documents of the Wahhabi movement, however, make clear that Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was complicit in the early bloody wars of Wahhabi expansion; he encouraged violence in the spreading of the faith, as do leaders of ISIS today. Contemporary calls by ISIS leaders to reconstitute a modern caliphate, to evict crusading Western armies from the Middle East, to overthrow Muslim leaders in Middle Eastern states, and to disavow any connection to democratic systems, however, stem more from modern Islamic movements than from the preacher.