From
the outset the emergence of Wahhabism was distinctly violent and ferocious in
form. Given the nature of their brand of Tawhid (better described as a form of
“monomania” rather than monotheism) it was not surprising that amongst the
first acts inspired by their pious wrath was the desecration of shrines. Under
the leadership of Saud b. Abdul Aziz these desecrations took place in Makkah and
Madinah during the years 1803 and 1805 respectively. Prior to that, in 1802,
they captured Kerbala that houses the shrine of Syedna Husayn (RA). In 1805 –
after fifteen years of warfare - a somewhat tired Sharif of Makkah, Ghalib,
entered into a negotiated settlement with Ibn Saud who went on to rule the Hijaz
until 1813. Nevertheless, the unremitting attempts of the Wahhabites to control,
not only the Arabian Peninsula, but also its surrounding areas including Iraq,
Syria, Oman, and Yemen, was cause for massive concern to the Ottomans. The
Ottomans, who, at the time, had admittedly little to be said in their favour,
felt that they had had enough. Muhammad Ali of Egypt and his son Ibrahim Pasha
were assigned by the Ottomans to remove the Wahhabites from the Hijaz. This they
did in 1813. In 1818 Ibrahim Pasha attacked and devastated Dir’iyyah. The
Wahhabites withdrew from Dir’iyyah, and, under the leadership of Turki, set up
their new capital in Riyad. This Muslim internecine fighting, however, was not
to stop there. It was during this period too that the Wahhabis committed one of
the worst atrocities in recent Muslim memory. That atrocity, recorded in many
works, was the massacre of Muslims in Taif. This is one incident that many with
Wahhabite inclinations would like to see buried. While it is not unislamic to
forgive the worst of barbarities, to forget them – or, even worse – to
consciously want to bury them, is to strip oneself of human integrity and
morality. We might as well start by claiming that atrocities elsewhere in the
world do not happen. As Muslims we need to be bold enough to face our own
indecencies and even bolder in examining its causes.
Nevertheless,
it must not be assumed that these Wahhabite attacks on Muslims either averse to
or expounding a different interpretation of Islam implied that they were
completely united in their own quest. On the contrary, like all forms of
political adventurism where power is the sole candidate there is bound to be
voracious infighting. A typical example of this infighting occurred after the
death of Faysal b. Turki in 1865. Between 1865 and 1877 there was an astonishing
eight changes of political leadership in the house of Saud. This reckless
pursuit for power was probably spurred on by the fact that Muhammad Abdul
Wahhab’s position was that political leadership was legitimate no matter what
the means employed to gain such leadership. The ends, according to his dictum,
were everything; the means simply irrelevant – even if those means were meant
to be writ in blood. 1891, however, saw the expulsion of the Sauds from Riyad.
The one responsible for this was Muhammad al-Rashid of Hail who vehemently
opposed Wahhabite doctrine. The Sauds took refuge in Kuwait. In 1901 there was a
change of fortune for the Sauds. Abdul Aziz b. Saud led a party of forty in a
daring raid on the governor of Riyad. The raid was a success and the governor
killed while on his way to the Masjid to perform Fajr prayers. With this Riyad
once again fell to the Sauds. Abdul Aziz was appointed king, consolidated the
Najd, and steadily started to increase the scope of his power. In 1924 he
captured the Hijaz, then the Asir region, until he finally consolidated the
boundaries of present day Saudi Arabia. The blessings of oil were on their side
that was discovered in Dhahran in 1938. Abdul Aziz signed an agreement with the
USA-based Standard Oil of California to exploit the newly found oil reserves.
Despite the destructive nature of Wahhabism, Abdul Aziz was, nonetheless, an
insightful leader that managed to return a measure of security to a country that
was by then the victims of all sorts of social dangers. Not least of them being
the hazardous nature of the Hajj that had its pilgrims plagued by a variety of
highwaymen that derived their annual sustenance from pillaging the hard-earned
wealth of those pilgrims. He also had a tough time introducing telephones to
wary Bedouins who were initially convinced that these were instruments of Satan.
Returning
to the theme of Wahhabism per se, recent research appears to have revealed a
degree of conflict between the positions of Abdul Wahhab himself. A few years
back the Imam Muhammad bin Saud University in Riyad made available a number of
letters written by Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab that appear to contradict the
excessive nature of his declarations of kufr and shirk on those who do not
espouse his cause or views. The culprit - according to the letters of Ibn Abdul
Wahhab - who spread these nefarious views, was one called Sulaiman b. Suhaim. I
will recount one of the letters in full as it is quoted by Sayyid Muhammad Alawi
al-Maliki in his book “Mafahim Yajib an Tusahhah.”
Abdul
Wahhab states:
“Let
it not be unknown to you (the people of Qasim) that the letter of Sulaiman b.
Suhaim has reached your hands and that some people who profess to be Ulama have
indeed accepted and believed the contents of the letter. Allah knows that that
person has fabricated and invented a number of lies against me. I have never
said those things and most of those opinions have not even occurred to me.
Amongst
the views appearing in that letter are the following:
-
That I have invalidated the four Madhabs
-
That for 600 years all Muslims have been unbelievers
-
That I have appropriated the right of absolute ijtihad to myself
-
That I am against taqlid (adopting the opinions of other schools of
thought)
-
That I have stated that “differences of opinion amongst the Ulama is a
curse”
-
That I have made Kafir those who practice intercession with the Salihin
(people known for their piety)
-
That I have pronounced a verdict of kufr on al-Busiri (of Qasida Burdah
fame) because he has referred to the Prophet in his Qasida as “O most
venerated of creation”
-
That I have said: “Had I had the opportunity then I would have
destroyed the shrine over the Prophet (SAW)
-
That had I had the opportunity then I would have removed the Mizab
(spout) of the Kaba and replaced it with a wooden one
-
That I have declared haram visitations to the grave of the Prophet (SAW)
-
That I find reprehensible visitations to the graves of the parents of
Muhammad (SAW)
-
That I have made Kafir those who swear in the name of other than Allah
-
That I charged with kufr both Ibn al-Farid and Ibn Arabi
-
That I have burnt the Dalail al-Kharat and the Rawid al-Riyahin and that
I have referred to the Rawid al-Riyahin as the Rawid al-Shayatin.
My
response to all of these allegations is the Quranic verse: ‘Glory to Allah.
This is indeed a serious slander! (24:16).”
These
statements of Muhammad Abdul Wahhab appear to fly in the face of the contents of
his book mentioned in a previous segment of this series “Kashf al-Shubahat”.
In the interests of scholarly fairness one would like to accept this. But there
are a number of things that demand explanation.
First
– even if we remove Ibn Abdul Wahhab from the equation – is Wahhabism’s
historical unfolding. Their approach, which is largely determined by their
takfir of others, has resulted in massive dislocations of Muslims and the
shedding of Muslim blood. This approach, coupled with the severity and extremism
with which they deal with others, confirms the thesis that they are
fundamentally a neo-Kharajite movement.
Second
is the reality of Wahhabism as represented by their institutions today. At
Madinah University, for example – and I do not imply by this that all their
graduates are people who lack critical discernment – it is virtually
impossible to express the views as they are apparently articulated by Muhammad
ibn Abdul Wahhab in the above-quoted letter.
Third
is the non-availability of these letters in published form in Saudi Arabia. Even
the “Mafahim” of Sayyid Muhammad is not available for public consumption.
The natural question is why? For whose sake and towards what end is such
intellectual suppression being perpetrated? There are, however, many who believe
that it is not the present-day Saudi government that is the dominant influence
in the suppression of these types of literature. Given the representative nature
of lecturers at Umm al-Qura University (where I graduated) there might be some
credibility in this view. In fact Dr Safar al-Hawali was vehemently opposed to
the appointment of many of these lecturers. They even tried to organise a
protest against the textbooks prescribed at the College of Shariah. It is
apparent, therefore, that there is a growing schism between those who want to
espouse a moderated and modified version of Wahhabism – which is difficult
since the roots of this movement are extremist – and those amongst the
Wahhabite ‘ulema and their followers who espouse the original and more
paranoid versions. The socio-political forces in that country are somewhat more
complex, as I mentioned previously, than they apparently appear.
Nonetheless,
and despite the nature of the debates surrounding Ibn Abdul Wahhab’s views,
his position seemed to have been sufficiently extremist, or deviant, to ignite
the worst concerns of his father, brother, and teachers. One of his teachers,
mentioned earlier, Shaikh Muhammad ibn Sulaiman al-Kurdi had the following to
say:
O Ibn Abdul Wahhab, I advise you, for the sake of Allahu Ta’aala, to hold your tongue against the Muslims…You have no right to label the majority of Muslims as blasphemers while you yourself have deviated from the majority of Muslims. In fact it is more reasonable to regard the one who deviates from the majority as a blasphemer than to regard the Muslims as a nation as blasphemers...
It
is against this reality as a backdrop that we will examine the impact of
Wahhabism on 20th century Islam. In this regard Faruqi was quite
correct when he observed that the movement of Muhammad Abdul Wahhab “spread
like wildfire throughout the Muslim world. Practically every corner was
affected, but the movement assumed different names and forms in different parts
of the world.”