Part
5
During
the last 300 years one of the most controversial figures to emerge on the
landscape of Islam is Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab.
Documentation
on his birth and death dates conflicts somewhat, but most of his life was lived
during the 18th century from approximately 1703-1792CE. He was born
in Uyayna in the Najd area of present day Saudi Arabia.
He was also born into the Tamim branch of the Banu Shinan tribe. His
quest for knowledge took him to Madina, Iraq, and Syria. It appears, however,
that the dominant influence on his thought was that of Taqiyyiddin Ahmad ibn
Taimiyya (d. 1328CE). Nevertheless, there are significant divergences from ibn
Taimiyya in his own perspectives – particularly with regard to what does or
does not constitute shirk (idolatry).
What
is known about him too, is that he invoked the ire of two of his prominent
Shaikhs in Madina, Shaikh Muhammad ibn Sulaiman al-Kurdi and Shaikh Muhammad
Hayat al-Sindi. Moreover, his father, Abdul Wahhab and his brother, Sulaiman ibn
Abdul Wahhab vigorously expressed their opposition to his views. In fact his
brother composed a work called “al-Sawaiq al-Ilahiyya fi al-Radd ‘ala
al-Wahhabiyya” (Divine Flashes in the Refutation of the Wahhabis).
Muhammad
ibn Abdul Wahhab might have remained an insignificant figure had it not been for
an alliance forged between himself and a contemporary of his – the Najdi
tribal chief of a small but growing urban clan in the market town of Diriyya,
Muhammad ibn Saud. The alliance was cemented in two ways. First, by an essay
Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab wrote to Ibn Saud entitled “Kashf al-Shubahat ‘an
Khaliq al-‘Ard wa l-Samawaat” (Clarifying the Obscurities Surrounding the
Creator of the Heavens and Earth); and second, by the marriage of the daughter
of Ibn Saud to Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab.
The
essay was a massive attack on the Iman (faith) and Islam of Muslims stretching
from his time to approximately 600 years back in history. While efforts have
been made to exonerate Ibn Abdul Wahhab – discussed in the next segment –
from his more grievous excesses, the evidence simply remains too overwhelming to
dismiss his role in the fostering of the extremism that has since dogged the
Muslim world. Nonetheless, Muhammad ibn Saud adopted this work that declared
most of these Muslims infidels and unbelievers. On this fundamental premise that
all Muslims – apart from themselves – were now mushrikin (polytheists) and
kuffar (unbelievers) they declared the surrounding lands inhabited by Muslims as
one huge Dar al-Harb (Abode of War). The Hijaz was a typical example and a
typical victim.
There
are, needless to say, many perspectives on this alliance. Let us look at two;
one in favour, the other critical.
The
first one is that of the late Ismail al-Faruqi (who was killed, along with his
wife, in rather unfortunate circumstances in his home).
In
his introduction to his own English translation of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s
“Kitab al-Tawhid” (The Book of Divine Unity) he states:
“What
was indeed extraordinary was the coincidence of the ‘alim and the prince,
Muhammad ibn Su’ud, who felt the need for each other, and who saw the wedding
of idea to arm as key to a new page in history. Such was the greatness of the
two men that they saw the fateful wedlock of one’s mind with the other’s
sword as a duplicate of another bay’ah or covenant entered into by the Prophet
(SAAS) and the Ansar, Muslims of Madinah, at al ‘Aqabah on the eve of the
Hijrah. The ‘alim and the prince utilized many of the same words used to seal
the Prophetic covenant. The theater where all this took place was Dar’iyyah, a
village in east central Arabia.”
In
these dramatic and romanticised terms Faruqi continues to extol, throughout his
introduction, the virtues of this alliance. Moreover, he reinvents the Najd as
one of the “isolated corners of the Muslim world” that has been untouched by
the “encounter between the Muslim East and the Christian West taking place in
Eastern Europe.” They were free, as it stood, from the impact of the West on
the Caliphate in Istanbul.
Through
this reinvention the stage is set for the Najd to appear as a carbon copy of the
“isolatedness” of Arabia during the time of the Prophet (SAW). The stage is
set, in other words, for an acceptance of a renewed and purified version of
Islam as a mirror image of the time of the Prophet (SAW). This facile attempt of
Faruqi’s simply does not work. The social conditions prevalent during the time
of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s Najd and those of the Najd during the time of
the Prophet (SAW) and the Kharajite rebellion against Syedna Ali were not
significantly different. It would have been more appropriate and more
instructive for Faruqi to compare these two conditions rather than that of
Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s Najd and the conditions prevalent in the Hijaz at
the time of the Prophet (SAW). For example, we know that Muhammad ibn Abdul
Wahhab emanates from the same clan that formed the most powerful base of the
Kharajites during the time of Syedna Ali, namely, the Banu Tamim. It would,
therefore, have been of immense interest to examine any ideological linkages
that might have existed between the Kharajites of then and the ideological
conditions prevailing in the Najd during Muhammad Abdul Wahhab’s time. After
all – and this is one of their great virtues – Arabian tribal life is known
for its integrity in oral traditions. Moreover, both the principles and
consequences of his version of “Tawhid” were almost identical to those of
the Kharajites. We shall return to these themes and their impact on 20th
century Islam later.
Let
us look at another more critical view. In his “Islams and Modernities” Aziz
al-Azmeh states:
“The
most direct aspect of the social alliance between divines and Saudi princes is
the direct political role of the former. Though it may be true that the original
compact between Muhammab b. ‘Abd al-Wahhab and Muhammad b. Su’ud at
Dir’iyya, the first Saudi capital, was the one in which the divine was the
‘senior partner’, this is only so in the sense that it was he who was in
charge of the legal system. Yet the pre-eminence of the Al Shaykh, the
descendants of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, in the legal and religious institutions of
successive Saudi states is a factor connected with both their position in family
alliances and their capacity to formally charter transfers of power.”
Further
on he observes:
“By
requiring subjection in principle to the authority whose voice is Wahhabism,
this doctrine simultaneously renders these subjects open to the dictation of
cultural and societal relations whose ground and condition are this authority.
In short, Wahhabite fundamentalism puts forward a model whose task is to subject
local societies with their customs, authorities, devotions, and other
particularities to a general process of acculturation which prepares them for
membership in the commonwealth whose linchpin and exclusive raison d’etre is
the absolute dominance of the house of Su’ud.”
This,
in my opinion, is a far more accurate interpretation of the realities of
Wahhabite politics than Faruqi’s romanticised version of a renewed and
liberating form of Islam emerging from the untainted and untouched soil of an
“isolated” Najd.
Nevertheless,
the politics in the Arabian Peninsula are not as simple as both its detractors
and supporters often imagine. Wahhabism itself has undergone a number of
revisions; and with revisions come conflict. This is clearly indicated by the
present tension between the Saudi state –which promotes itself as a moderate
form of Wahhabism - and its more extremist Wahhabite opposition in the form of
Dr Safar al-Hawali and his supporters on the one hand, and the Muhajirun
movement stationed in London on the other. In addition the Wahhabites and the
Tabligh Jama’at – which has the Kitab al-Tawhid of Muhammad Abdul Wahhab as
its founding inspiration – are also anathema to one another.
It
is not Wahhabism that sustains the present Saudi state. It’s a strong economy
fuelled by oil and massive foreign interests that maintains its integrity.
Meanwhile the Wahhabite propaganda machinery persists in trying to
“acculturate” the rest of the Muslim world into acceptance of its
“purified” version. While we are definitely not blind to the politics of the
situation, our chief concern remains to examine the impact of Wahhabism on 20th
century Islam and Muslims. In the next segment we shall look at the rise of
Wahhabite power and the principles that informed that movement.