Tradition

Wahhabism

Overview

Wahhabism is a Salafi revivalist movement within Sunni Islam named after the 18th-century Hanbali scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. It was initially established in the central Arabian region of Najd and later spread to other parts of the Arabian Peninsula, and was the official policy of Saudi Arabia until 2022. Despite being founded on the principles of Sunni Islam, the Hanbalite scholars Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim in particular, Wahhabism may also refer to doctrinal differences distinct from other forms of Sunni Islam. Non-Wahhabi Sunnis also have compared Wahhabism to the belief of the Kharijites and loyalist monarchism. In 2013, a study commissioned by the European Parliament and authored by Claude Moniquet identified Wahhabism as the main source of global terrorism.

The Wahhabi movement staunchly denounced rituals related to the veneration of Muslim saints and pilgrimages to their tombs and shrines, which were widespread amongst the people of Najd. Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab and his followers were highly inspired by the Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328 CE/AH 661–728) who advocated a return to the purity of the first three generations (salaf) to rid Muslims of bid'a (innovation) and regarded his works as core scholarly references in theology. While being influenced by Hanbali school, the movement repudiated taqlid to legal authorities, including oft-cited scholars such as Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim (d. 1350 CE/AH 751).

Wahhabism has been characterized by historians as "puritanical", while its adherents describe it as an Islamic "reform movement" to restore "pure monotheistic worship". Socio-politically, the movement represented the first major Arab-led revolt against the Turkish, Persian and other foreign empires that had dominated the Islamic world since the Mongol invasions and the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate in the 13th century, and later served as a revolutionary impetus for 19th-century pan-Arab trends. In 1744, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab formed a pact with a local leader, Muhammad bin Saud, establishing a politico-religious alliance with the Saudi monarchy that lasted for more than 250 years. The Wahhabi movement gradually rose to prominence as an influential anti-colonial reform trend in the Islamic world that advocated the re-generation of the social and political prowess of Muslims. Its revolutionary themes inspired several Islamic revivalists, scholars, pan-Islamist ideologues and anti-colonial activists as far as West Africa.

For more than two centuries, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's teachings were championed as the official creed in the three Saudi States. As of 2017, changes to Saudi religious policy by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have led to widespread crackdowns on Islamists in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world. By 2021, the waning power of the religious clerics brought about by the social, economic, political changes, and the Saudi government's promotion of a nationalist narrative that emphasizes non-Islamic components, led to what has been described as the "post-Wahhabi era" of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia's annual commemoration of its founding day on 22 February since 2022, which marked the ascension of Muhammad ibn Saud in 1727 and de-emphasized his pact with Ibn Abd al-Wahhab in 1744, has led to the official "uncoupling" of the religious clergy by the Saudi state.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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What is called "virtue" is an offshoot of vanity: it is the habit of acting in a manner which others praise. The operation of material conditions may be illustrated by the statement (Myers's _Dawn of History_) that four of the greatest movements of conquest have been due to drought in Arabia, causing the nomads of that country to migrate into regions already inhabited. The last of these four movements was the rise…
Bertrand Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism
States what Wahhabism is.
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In our own times, there are four of these sects which are famous. In the first place, there is the sect of the Asharites, and these are the people who are commonly taken to be men of _Sunna_. Then there are Mutazilites, the sects of the Batinites, (Esoteric), and the sect of the Bombasts. Every one of these sects has its own peculiar beliefs about God, and has turned many an exoteric word of the law to…
Averroës, The Philosophy and Theology of Averroes
Close in meaning to Wahhabism; the term itself is not named.
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It lay some 200 miles off, through rocks and deserts; not without great difficulty, in such mood as we may fancy, he escaped thither, and found welcome. The whole East dates its era from this Flight, _Hegira_ as they name it: the Year 1 of this Hegira is 622 of our Era, the fifty-third of Mahomet's life. He was now becoming an old man; his friends sinking round him one by one: his path desolate, encompassed with…
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, and
Close in meaning to Wahhabism; the term itself is not named.
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Wahhabism

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