Muḥammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb and Wahhābism

Abstract

Few figures in the history of Islām have attracted such controversy as Muḥammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb (c. 1115/1703-1206/1791).1 For some American authors, particularly those writing in the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001, the legacy of Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb is entirely negative. The majority of the suicide bombers involved in the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were of Sa‘ūdī origin. The Sa‘ūdī state is inextricably linked with Wahhābism. Therefore the evil of 11 September 2001 is attributed to the Wahhābī tradition and even to the views of Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb himself (though there is no necessary congruence between the ideas of the founder of a movement and his successors). For Stephen Schwarz, himself a Ṣūfī, anything of Ṣūfī, origin is automatically acceptable (even though historically Ṣūfīs, too, have led ‘jihads of the sword’: see Chapter 7). He talks of ‘Wahhābī obscurantism and its totalitarian state’, ‘fundamentalist fanaticism’ as well as describing it as ‘Islāmofascism’.2 Muslims from other traditions denounce Wahhabis because they call themselves ‘the asserters of the divine unity’, thus laying exclusive claim to the principle of monotheism (tawḥīd) which is the foundation of Islām itself. This implies a dismissal of all other Muslims as tainted by polytheism (shirk). Thus Hamid Algar, Khomeini’s official biographer, argues that Wahhabism is ‘intellectually marginal’, with 4no genetic connection’ with movements that subsequently arose in the Muslim world. In his judgement, it should be viewed as ‘an exception, an aberration or at best an anomaly’.3