Wahhabism

This is Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. He is Sunni Muslim and lives in the Arabian Peninsula in the 18th century. But what’s he doing? He is seeing to it that a sacred grave in his village is torn down. And what now?

He is seeing to it that trees thought to be sacred are cut down. And now? He is having a woman stoned for being unfaithful. She dies. Why is he doing this?

Well, he believes that it is wrong to worship anything other than God or live in what he considers to be an immoral way. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab is very strict. The other Sunni in his home village think he is going too far. He is too strict. So they throw him out of the village.

But in the neighbouring town Diriyah he gets a friend. It’s the town’s tribal leader Muhammad ibn Saud, who lets him do what he wants. But what does he want? Ibn Abd al-Wahhab wants everyone to live in the same way as the three generations of Muslims that came after Muhammad did. He thinks that the muslim clergy have become too weak and too influenced by Christianity.

So Ibn Abd al-Wahhab wants to forbid everything that he doesn’t believe existed during the time of the first muslims. Like worshipping of saints, veneration of tombs, earthly pleasures, and other modern customs. Ibn Saud has a dream. He wants to conquer larger areas than his little city. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and ibn Saud form an alliance.

Ibn Saud promises that he will spread ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s version of Islam to all the areas he conquers, and that nothing else will be tolerated. And Ibn Abd al-Wahhab promises that when he gets followers, they will support Ibn Saud in his claim to power in the conquered areas. He reckons that Christians and Jews worship false Gods - they are idolaters. But he also counts Shia Muslims and the Muslim Mystics – the Sufi – as idolaters. None of these groups are allowed to exercise their faiths within the area that ibn Saud conquers.

Time passes, both Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Ibn Saud die, but the alliance between Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s followers and the Saud family lives on. The son of Ibn Saud - Abdullah - expands the first Saudi Empire by conquering areas from the Ottoman Empire. Like Mecca - the Muslims’ pilgrimage city. The Ottoman ruler does not like this – Mecca is the most important place in all the empire – so he declares war on the Saudis. In 1813 Abdullah is captured and executed.

It’s the end of The First Saudi Empire. But the Saudi return to power, and eventually become the rulers of the state Saudi Arabia, that still today follows Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s strict version of Islam – wahhabism. The neighbouring state of Qatar follows the same strict teachings as Saudi Arabia, but the countries differ much in how Wahhabism is allowed to affect laws and customs. Among Sunni Muslims more branches and interpretations develop. One of them, Salafism emerges in the 19th century and is similar to Wahhabism.

Both movements want to return to what they identify as pure and original. Salafism and Wahhabism over time have merged so they are sometimes hard to distinguish. While the Wahhabis have their origin in Saudi Arabia the Salafi groups come from other countries. Though Wahhabism and Salafism are both branches of Sunni Islam, most Sunni muslims dissociate themselves from them. Most Sunni think that these groups encourage violence and are too ruthless toward those who believe differently.

Most Wahhabis and Salafists on their side think that traditional Sunni Muslims show too little religious engagement, put their trust in the wrong sources and maybe even could be counted as idolaters. That is why some Wahhabis try to recruit normal Sunni to their beliefs - they missionise. The state of Saudi Arabia supports some of these missionaries financially. For example by building mosques where the Wahhabi teachings can be spread also in other countries. Most known groups who perform terrorist crimes in the name of Islam have their origins in Salafism or Wahhabism, like Al- Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram and Al Shabab.