Holly Lebowitz Rossi: Modern Wahhabism: A Mutation of Its Founder's Islamic Principles

Holly Lebowitz Rossi, from the Religion News Service (6-9-05)

The words are chilling, especially to non-Muslim ears.

"(We) will pursue this evil force to its own lands, invade its Western heartland and struggle to overcome it until all the world shouts by the name of the Prophet, and the teachings of Islam spread throughout the world."

This missive, found in a Houston, Tex., mosque, was identified by the Washington-based human rights organization Freedom House as an example of Wahhabism, a fundamentalist Muslim philosophy that is the state religion of Saudi Arabia.

Outside that country, Wahhabism is often regarded as an extremist interpretation of Islam that calls for the violent defeat of the world's non-Muslims. It is invoked by Osama bin Laden and other terrorists as the theological basis for their jihad, and some say that it is the religious foundation for Islamic terrorism.

Islamic scholars have a different view. They say today's Wahhabism is a mutation of the movement's founding principles, and that it must be understood in its historical context, from its founding in the 18th century up to its controversial status today.

"I do not believe in a Wahhabi conspiracy that is going to kill us in our beds," says Hamid Algar, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of California at Berkeley....

...Wahhabists are known for "litmus tests of belief," says Muqtedar Khan, a professor at Adrian College in Michigan. For Wahhabi Muslims, the central issue is the belief in uncompromised monotheism. "If you don't believe in that, they question whether you are a good Muslim or a Muslim at all," Khan says.

Wahhabism does not, however, inherently lead to violence, Khan says. "It is not just Wahhabism that has led to the emergence of al-Qaeda." Instead, he says, "Wahhabi intolerance, when combined with Cold War geopolitics, created terrorist jihadism."

Islamic scholars say the initial focus of Wahhabi theology was those inside the religion, not outside it.

"Wahhabism at its first emergence was a movement directed not against non-Muslims, but against other Muslims who they regarded as apostates, traitors to the faith," says Algar.

Wahhabism's anti-Western message really began to take shape during the 1940s, he says, when American forces were first stationed on the Arabian Peninsula, which by that time was controlled by the Saudi family with Wahhabism adopted as the state religion.

During the first Gulf War, tensions heightened, and through "the force of circumstance," according to Algar, bin Laden emerged in Saudi Arabia, citing Wahhabism as his theological foundation. But Algar is troubled, he says, that today, "any Muslim that is seen to be in any way hostile to American policies is labeled as Wahhabi." He called the Freedom House report, which chronicled more than 200 Saudi-connected Wahhabist documents discovered in U.S. mosques, a "malicious" attempt to overestimate the importance of Wahhabism in the American Muslim community.

"As someone who frequents mosques, I can tell you this is not the case."

So what should one make of Saudi-sponsored Wahhabism? Is it true to what the movement's founder taught?

Al-Wahhab's teachings have historically been adopted to fit political movements of various periods, says Natana DeLong-Bas, a visiting professor at Brandeis University who studied al-Wahhab's complete theological writings extensively in their original Arabic over four years....

...Today, DeLong-Bas says, officials in Saudi Arabia are concerned as terrorist, or "jihadist" groups, including al-Qaeda, are waging attacks on Saudi soil. Accordingly, she says, "change is starting in the kingdom (Saudi Arabia) today.

"They have been pressed into a position of realizing this is a very serious situation," she says. During her travels to Saudi Arabia, she has noticed the emergence of publications advocating a less rigid interpretation of Islam than the Wahhabi orthodoxy. She observed an increasing openness to reconnecting with the classical Islamic sources that al-Wahhab cited in his writings instead of focusing narrowly on a few historical interpretations.

"The religious establishment is in the best position to delegitimize jihadist ideology," she says. "If you can do it from within your own tradition, it's more likely to succeed than if something is imposed from the outside."