During the month of Ramadan in 610, Muhammad went to Mount Hira near Mecca to meditate. It was here that he received a vision from Archangel Jibril (Gabriel) and found himself speaking the words of God. Three years later, in 613, he began preaching his revelations publicly, marking the founding of Islam. The messages from Archangel Jibril were memorized and transmitted orally to his followers.
Muhammad proclaimed that “God is One” and preached that complete surrender to God is the only way acceptable to God.
Over the years, the passages recited by Muhammad and his followers were written down on pieces of pottery, stone, palm leaves, and the shoulder-bones of camels. Later they were compiled into a single book, the Quran. In her book Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, Karen Armstrong writes:
“The Quran had given the Muslims an historical mission: to create a just community in which all members, even the weakest and most vulnerable, would be treated with absolute respect. This would demand a constant struggle (jihad) with the egotism and self-interest that holds us back from the divine. Politics was therefore not a distraction from spirituality but what Christians would call a sacrament, the arena in which Muslims experienced God and that enabled the divine to function effectively in our world.”
In the eighteenth century, Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792) preached a puritanical vision of Islam which focused on the concept of tawid, or oneness with God. Al-Wahhab wanted to restore Islam to the purity of its beginnings. In her book Islam: A Short History, Karen Armstrong writes:
“Because the Ottoman sultans did not conform to his vision of true Islam, Abd al-Wahhab declared that they were apostates and worthy of death.”
Abd al-Wahhab believed that the period of Muhammad’s stay in Medina was the ideal of Muslim society and that all Muslims should aspire to emulate this period. Islam should be practiced as it was during the first three generations after the death of Muhammad. He demanded conformity and argued that all Muslims must individually pledge their allegiance to a single Muslim leader.
In her book Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, Karen Armstrong reports:
“He was particularly distressed by the popular veneration of holy men and their tombs, which he condemned as idolatry.”
In her book A History of God: The 4,000-year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Karen Armstrong writes:
“He was particularly hostile to mysticism. All suggestion of an incarnational theology was condemned, including devotion to Sufi saints and the Shii Imams.”
In her book On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines—and Future, Karen House reports:
“The imam had taught that belonging to the umma, or community of believers, took precedence over all other social bonds. Anyone who made a judgement based on anything other than the Koran was a kafir, or nonbeliever, Sheik Abd al Wahhab had preached.”
In 1740, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab formed an alliance with the House of Saud and Wahhabism began its spread across the Arabian Peninsula. The Saud family mounted a long series of military campaigns to win power.
In 1932, King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud established the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism became the dominant form of Islam in the Kingdom. Karen Armstrong writes:
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, founded in 1932, was based on the Wahhabi ideal. The official view was that a constitution was unnecessary, since the government was based on a literal reading of the Quran.”
Wahhabism opposes: (1) any prayer to saints or dead loved ones; (2) pilgrimages to tombs and special mosques; (3) religious festivals celebrating saints; (4) the honoring of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday; (5) the use of gravestones to mark the burial places of the dead.
According to Wahhabism, apostates, such as Sufis and Shiites, should be put to death. The Sufis are considered to be the mystical branch of Islam and seek a personal experience with God through practices such as dancing. In his book Religions, Philip Wilkinson writes:
“Because Sufism involves practices that sometimes lead to the union of the individual with God, Sufis have been accused of turning their backs on Islam.”
While the Sufis are an Islamic minority with only 9 million followers, the Shiites are the second major branch of Islam and have 180 million followers. This branch of Islam is highly organized and has a clergy. Shiites also make pilgrimages to Karbala in Iraq which is the site of a battle in which Hussain ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet was killed and to Samarra, also in Iraq, where the twelfth imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, was miraculously hidden by Allah.
The partnership between the House of Saud and the Wahhabis continues to this day. There are many who feel that the militant preaching of the Wahhabis forms the underlying philosophy of groups such as the Islamic State.
For Wahhabis, education should focus primarily on memorizing the Quran. Education should not involve thinking. Karen House writes:
“Most Wahhabi religious leaders see education as simply an extension of religion and want to see it consist of mostly Islamic theology and history. Indeed, to some of these religious purists, studying science, foreign languages, or anything about the rest of the world is not merely irrelevant but also distracting and even dangerous, luring Saudi youth to worldly wickedness.”
Karen House also writes:
“The fact is that all too many Saudi students emerge from school knowing little more than the Koran and believing not only in the tenets of their own religion but also that most of the rest of the world is populated by heretics and infidels who must be shunned, converted, or combatted.”
A Note on Terminology
In their book The Complete Illustrated Guide to Islam, Mohammad Seddon, and Charles Phillips report:
“Followers of scholar and religious reformer Muhammad idn Adb al-Wahhab (1703-92) were given the name Wahhabi (Wahhabiyyah) by their opponents. For this reason, they reject it, preferring to be known as ‘unitarians’ (Muwahiddun) because of their emphasis on the oneness of Allah.”
Raana Bokhari, Mohammad Seddon, and Charles Phillips also report:
“The Muwahiddun movement is identified by some as a form of the Sunni Islamic tradition of Salafiyyism, which draws on the actions and speeches of the Salaf (ancestors in the era of the Prophet Muhammad).”
With regard to the association of Wahhabism/Muwaddun to Salafiyyism, Raana Bokhari, Mohammad Seddon, and Charles Phillips point out:
“For all the possible connections to Salafiyyism, however, Abd al-Wahhab himself condemned overreliance on scholarly tradition and stressed the capacity of the individual to discern Allah’s will.”
For many people, particularly for non-Muslims living in the United States, Wahhabi Islam is viewed as a fundamentalist religion. Fundamentalist religions, according to this viewpoint, are religions which focus on a return to the mythical past when the religion was still pure and had not yet been polluted or perverted. In his book Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, Pascal Boyer writes:
“..fundamentalists want to return to a (largely mythical) past when local values and identity were taken for granted, when no one was aware that there were other ways of living.”
With regard to fundamentalism movements in Islam, such as Wahhabism, Pascal Boyer writes:
“Muslim intellectuals argue that fundamentalist movements are a caricature of a more authentic, nobler and more generous Islam (and can use considerable scriptural authority to back up that argument).”
In her book Islam: A Short History, Karen Armstrong writes:
“It should be pointed out that Muslims object to the use of the term ‘fundamentalism,’ pointing out quite correctly that it was coined by American Protestants as a badge of pride, and cannot be usefully translated into Arabic.”
Open Thread
Welcome to the Street Prophets Coffee Hour. This is an open thread cleverly located at the intersection of Politics and Religion. All topics are welcome.
