Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad

Rating:
Summary: Unveiling a Work of Pseudo-scholarship
Review: Natana J. Delong-Bas's book, "Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad," which purportedly explains Wahhabism "accurately" and dispels "myths" propagated by "polemics" of all colors, media pundits and all, is a rather welcome contribution - or so it seems, at first glance. The three-page Introduction portrayed several people - including Stephen Schwartz (footnote 1,7,9,11), Khaled Abou El Fadl (footnote 3), and myself (footnote 6) -- as examples of misinformed individuals, in the least, who portrayed Wahhabism inaccurately in their works. To the author, their anti-Wahhabi rhetoric, like many others, flew in the face of the facts that she allegedly gathered in her more than 300 pages of research, much of it translated into English for the first time. Delong-Bas's point: Wahhabism just isn't the scary monster it is said to be. Maybe it really was a "pathbreaking" (Oxford Press), "groundbreaking" (John L. Esposito), endeavor, I thought.

Could the portrayal of Wahhabism as intolerant and fanatical by hundreds, maybe thousands, of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars, authors, activists, students, etc. in 200+ years past be flawed? Should their positions be construed merely as a load of sophisticated/polemical gobbledygook? Does the author really open "the way for historians to reconsider and revise the standard, perhaps mistaken, notions about it" (David Commins)? One need not go to far into the book to answer such questions. Because of the author's main sources, the book fails miserably as a work of diligent scholarship.

In the Preface,Delong-Bas says: "Thanks are due to Faisal bin Salman, Abd Allah S. al-Uthaymin, and Dr. Fahd al-Semmari, Director of the King Abd al-Aziz Foundation for Research and Archives, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for making the full corpus of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab's works available to me [...]." This same research foundation was also one of three sources that provided "financial support" for her book. What follows is a brief description of who the author is thanking.

The Foundation is named after King Abd al-Aziz (1902-1953), the Wahhabi founder of Saudi Arabia who slaughtered non-Wahhabi Muslims (and even Wahhabi Muslims of the Ikhwan) in his path to "victory".

Abd Allah S. al-Uthaymin, a Wahhabi, is the author of "History of Saudi Arabia: From the Movement Reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab to King Abd al-Aziz."

Faisal bin Salman, known as "H.R.H. (His Royal Highness)" in Saudi Arabia, is one of the princes of the Wahhabi Al-Sa'ud monarchy. Somehow, Delong-Bas (Oxford Press?) did not add the "H.R.H." acronym before the prince's name in the Preface -obviously a part of the book read by many. However, she remembered to add the acronym in a tiny-lettered footnote #8 (Introduction) hidden well in the back of the book that few readers would perhaps bother to read. Why did Delong-Bas/Oxford Press do this? Were they trying to hide something?

Dr. Fahd al-Semmari, a Wahhabi, was deputy secretary of the kingdom's 100th Anniversary Committee, in addition to his current role as general director of the King Abd al-Aziz Foundation for Research and Archives. The foundation's mandate is to glorify the heritage of Saudi Arabia, including Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab who is a part of the heritage.

On page 14, Delong-Bas states the four main sources of biographical information of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab:

(1) contemporary chronicles written by his supporters, the most important of whom were Husayn Ibn Ghannam and Uthman Ibn Bishr; (2) polemical works written by his opponents, the most important of whom was Ahmad bin Zayni Dahlan; (3) accounts written by Western travelers to Arabia; and (4) Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's own written works.

She then says, "Of all of these accounts, the chronicles contain the most biographical information and are considered to be the most accurate in terms of biographical information because of the proximity of the writers to their subjects."

Does close proximity to Ibn Abd al-Wahhab/"subjects" necessarily mean the sources will be the "most accurate in terms of biographical information"? Common sense says no because Ibn Ghannam and Ibn Bishr are clearly stated to be Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's "supporters". It's like contacting a pro-Nazi foundation for a biography of Adolph Hitler, and portraying sources by Hitler's admirers as the "most accurate" because they were among the closest in "proximity" to him. Is there not a high possibility that Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's "supporters" mainly focused on his peaceful biographical aspects, and concealed his more extremist/jihadist aspects? Is it not possible that they, like any other supporter, would care to cast the biography of a man they like in a positive manner than in a negative manner? Common sense, again, says: In all likelihood.

There is, in fact, a high probability of inaccuracy from those sources, though this somehow escapes Delong-Bas's mind. Moreover, according to my count, the author has footnoted Ibn Ghannam only 4 times, but Ibn Bishr no less than 45 times, meaning that the bulk of "most accurate" biographical information of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab comes almost entirely from one source - again, from a pro-Wahhabi. How, then, can Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's biography, as presented in Delong Bas's book, be taken seriously by any objective scholar? It cannot.

While pro-Wahhabis are used as "most accurate" sources, information from Wahhabi opponents "has not been used extensively" because they (1) are "extremely polemical in style rather than factual or straightforward"; (2) they address "later developments" of the Wahhabi movement; and (3) "because of their polemical nature, these accounts tend to be more useful in reconstructing impressions of the movement than in recounting events or teachings." And that's why "polemical works have been largely discarded" in giving the biography of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the "early teachings of the movement."

But what makes the sources of two Wahhabi supporters more accurate than the works of Wahhabi opponents? While the former are closer in time to Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, they are his biased supporters. The latter, however, though further away in time from the Wahhabi founder's period of existence, may - and indeed, do - have accurate information, especially on how Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's teachings contradicted the teachings that orthodox Sunni Muslims had been following for over 1,000 years.

For example, Delong-Bas provides Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's interpretations of intercession (tawassul) in his "Kitab al-Tawhid" without stating that he contradicted many verses of the Qur'an, hadeeth, and interpretations provided by Sunni orthodox scholars (ulema) throughout the history of Islam (except Ibn Taymiyah and his followers who were the first to deviate from mainstream Sunni Islam on the issue). With an unorthodox interpretation of a genuinely valid Islamic practice, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab accuses the vast lot of Muslims who do 'tawassul' of committing polytheism (shirk) -- the only unforgivable sin in Islam. He then allows his followers to massacre them, believing that they are doing a very noble deed and following the footsteps of the Prophet Muhammad when, in fact, they are doing exactly the opposite.

From a source perspective, how, to any basic researcher, can this book be called a "pathbreaking" and "groundbreaking" work when sources for a book on Wahhabism are provided by Wahhabis, when the sources themselves are written by Wahhabis, and when the research endeavor is partially financed by Wahhabis? I'm sure you see how "objective" and "balanced" Delong-Bas's research is.

Contact me by e-mail for a more detailed unveiling of Delong-Bas's pseudo-scholarship and insult to the moderate/orthodox Muslims. (...)



Rating:
Summary: Wahhabi Islam
Review: The cotton-candy/apologetic tone of this work makes it difficult to read if one is interested in the 'thought' of Muhammad 'Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The author seems to go to such great lengths in defense of 'Ibn Abd al-Wahhab that one feels they are being baited into a propaganda trap set by the Saudis to somehow counter the tendencies in contemporary Islamic scholarship which convict 'Ibn Abd al-Wahhab of ushering in the bankruptcy of the Islamic tradition.
Certainly there are dimensions of 'Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's discourse which have been overshadowed by his secular hermeneutics (hermeneutics which flatten the sources of Islam into a veritable pancake for the masses to devour), but these unseen dimensions could have been presented without the shameless sugar coated interpretations of Delong-Bas. The authors interpretations of 'Ibn Abd al-Wahab seem to depreciate his (`Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's) self-styled and arrogantly exclusivist interpretations of a 'pure Islam' in favor of presenting some moderate themes in his writings as being the `heart and soul' of his 'thought', thus presenting the `boogey man' as a `not so scary' sort of progressive thinker.
While 'Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was innovative in his denial of most of the Islamic tradition, except of course the sources he found most important (the Sunni hadith corpus which, according to his mind, escaped any defilement during the formative period), his neo-Hanbalism in the disguise of a 'pure Islam' remains dull and lackluster; not to mention its consequences in the violent rejection of any 'other' that might come into view.
Delong-Bas also insists on a similarity or continuity between the example of the Prophet Muhammad and the example of 'Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. I find these interpretations of all to express more the linear interpretations of Delong-Bas, influenced by 'Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's own manner of thinking than a full engagement with the teachings and examples of the Prophet as expressed in the richness of the Islamic tradition (not overlooking the historical high and low points of the tradition either).
Another view of religious history sees the founding of a religious tradition as a seed that contains many potentialities that may emerge only later. Such developments in Islam being the sophisticated discourses of Jurisprudence, Sufism, Philosophy, Theology, etc... all of which were unknown during the time of the Prophet but which developed from the inherent quality contained in the seed of Revelation. This later view being the perspective and orientation of the majority of the great thinkers who define the Islamic civilization.
The linear view of history espoused by 'Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and his prototypical patriarchs in the Hanbali school reflect more or less the `letter that kills the Spirit'.
The rise in Wahhabism is due not simply to the Saudi regimes financial support of thousands of institutions in the Muslim world, but also from the Muslim worlds own fall into a Dark Age. This Dark Age is constituted by their failure to live up to the potential enshrined in the Islamic religious tradition and by their defining themselves by the ever-cheapening standards of Western modernity/post-modernity.
I don't accept the argument that `Ibn Abd al-Wahhab can be blamed for this Dark Age however. It is the pharisaic developments in a culturally and economically oppressed third world which has empowered `Ibn Abd al-Wahhab to be the spokesperson for `modern Islam'. Delong-Bas' work is certainly a mouthpiece for this dreary `modern Islam', and the fact that Oxford has decided to publish it may further convince those interested in Islam that aside from the various luminaries of the Islamic tradition who taught otherwise, `Ibn Abd al-Wahhab represents the true teachings of Prophet Muhammad, a regretful conclusion indeed.