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Saudi Arabia
Wahhabi Theology
The political and cultural environment of contemporary Saudi
Arabia has been influenced by a religious movement that began
in central Arabia in the mid-eighteenth century. This movement,
commonly known as the Wahhabi movement, grew out of the scholarship
and preaching of Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, a scholar of Islamic
jurisprudence who had studied in Mesopotamia and the Hijaz before
returning to his native Najd to preach his message of Islamic
reform.
Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab was concerned with the way the people
of Najd engaged in practices he considered polytheistic, such
as praying to saints; making pilgrimages to tombs and special
mosques; venerating trees, caves, and stones; and using votive
and sacrificial offerings. He was also concerned by what he viewed
as a laxity in adhering to Islamic law and in performing religious
devotions, such as indifference to the plight of widows and orphans,
adultery, lack of attention to obligatory prayers, and failure
to allocate shares of inheritance fairly to women.
When Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab began to preach against these
breaches of Islamic laws, he characterized customary practices
as jahiliya, the same term used to describe the ignorance
of Arabians before the Prophet. Initially, his preaching encountered
opposition, but he eventually came under the protection of a local
chieftain named Muhammad ibn Saud, with whom he formed an alliance.
The endurance of the Wahhabi movement's influence may be attributed
to the close association between the founder of the movement and
the politically powerful Al Saud in southern Najd (see The Saud
Family and Wahhabi Islam, 1500-1818 , ch. 1).
This association between the Al Saud and the Al ash Shaykh, as
Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab and his descendants came to be known,
effectively converted political loyalty into a religious obligation.
According to Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab's teachings, a Muslim
must present a bayah, or oath of allegiance, to a Muslim
ruler during his lifetime to ensure his redemption after death.
The ruler, conversely, is owed unquestioned allegiance from his
people so long as he leads the community according to the laws
of God. The whole purpose of the Muslim community is to become
the living embodiment of God's laws, and it is the responsibility
of the legitimate ruler to ensure that people know God's laws
and live in conformity to them.
Muhammad ibn Saud turned his capital, Ad Diriyah, into a center
for the study of religion under the guidance of Muhammad ibn Abd
al Wahhab and sent missionaries to teach the reformed religion
throughout the peninsula, the gulf, and into Syria and Mesopotamia.
Together they began a jihad against the backsliding Muslims of
the peninsula. Under the banner of religion and preaching the
unity of God and obedience to the just Muslim ruler, the Al Saud
by 1803 had expanded their dominion across the peninsula from
Mecca to Bahrain, installing teachers, schools, and the apparatus
of state power. So successful was the alliance between the Al
ash Shaykh and the Al Saud that even after the Ottoman sultan
had crushed Wahhabi political authority and had destroyed the
Wahhabi capital of Ad Diriyah in 1818, the reformed religion remained
firmly planted in the settled districts of southern Najd and of
Jabal Shammar in the north. It would become the unifying ideology
in the peninsula when the Al Saud rose to power again in the next
century.
Central to Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab's message was the essential
oneness of God (tawhid). The movement is therefore known
by its adherents as ad dawa lil tawhid (the call to unity),
and those who follow the call are known as ahl at tawhid
(the people of unity) or muwahhidun (unitarians). The
word Wahhabi was originally used derogatorily by opponents,
but has today become commonplace and is even used by some Najdi
scholars of the movement.
Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab's emphasis on the oneness of God was
asserted in contradistinction to shirk, or polytheism,
defined as the act of associating any person or object with powers
that should be attributed only to God. He condemned specific acts
that he viewed as leading to shirk, such as votive offerings,
praying at saints' tombs and at graves, and any prayer ritual
in which the suppliant appeals to a third party for intercession
with God. Particularly objectionable were certain religious festivals,
including celebrations of the Prophet's birthday, Shia mourning
ceremonies, and Sufi mysticism. Consequently, the Wahhabis forbid
grave markers or tombs in burial sites and the building of any
shrines that could become a locus of shirk.
The extensive condemnation of shirk is seen in the movement's
iconoclasm, which persisted into the twentieth century, most notably
with the conquest of At Taif in the Hijaz. A century earlier,
in l802, Wahhabi fighters raided and damaged one of the most sacred
Shia shrines, the tomb of Husayn, the son of Imam Ali and grandson
of the Prophet, at Karbala in Iraq. In 1804 the Wahhabis destroyed
tombs in the cemetery of the holy men in Medina, which was a locus
for votive offerings and prayers to the saints.
Following the legal school of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Wahhabi ulama
accept the authority only of the Quran and sunna. The Wahhabi
ulama reject reinterpretation of Quran and sunna in regard to
issues clearly settled by the early jurists. By rejecting the
validity of reinterpretation, Wahhabi doctrine is at odds with
the Muslim reformation movement of the late nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. This movement seeks to reinterpret parts of the Quran
and sunna to conform with standards set by the West, most notably
standards relating to gender relations, family law, and participatory
democracy. However, ample scope for reinterpretation remains for
Wahhabi jurists in areas not decided by the early jurists. King
Fahd ibn Abd al Aziz Al Saud has repeatedly called for scholars
to engage in ijtihad to deal with new situations confronting
the modernizing kingdom.
The Wahhabi movement in Najd was unique in two respects: first,
the ulama of Najd interpreted the Quran and sunna very literally
and often with a view toward reinforcing parochial Najdi practices;
second, the political and religious leadership exercised its collective
political will to enforce conformity in behavior. Muhammad ibn
Abd al Wahhab asserted that there were three objectives for Islamic
government and society; these objectives have been reaffirmed
over the succeeding two centuries in missionary literature, sermons,
fatwa (see Glossary) rulings, and in Wahhabi explications
of religious doctrine. According to Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab
the objectives were "to believe in Allah, enjoin good behavior,
and forbid wrongdoing."
Under Al Saud rule, governments, especially during the Wahhabi
revival in the 1920s, have shown their capacity and readiness
to enforce compliance with Islamic laws and interpretations of
Islamic values on themselves and others. The literal interpretations
of what constitutes right behavior according to the Quran and
hadith have given the Wahhabis the sobriquet of "Muslim Calvinists."
To the Wahhabis, for example, performance of prayer that is punctual,
ritually correct, and communally performed not only is urged but
publicly required of men. Consumption of wine is forbidden to
the believer because wine is literally forbidden in the Quran.
Under the Wahhabis, however, the ban extended to all intoxicating
drinks and other stimulants, including tobacco. Modest dress is
prescribed for both men and women in accordance with the Quran,
but the Wahhabis specify the type of clothing that should be worn,
especially by women, and forbid the wearing of silk and gold,
although the latter ban has been enforced only sporadically. Music
and dancing have also been forbidden by the Wahhabis at times,
as have loud laughter and demonstrative weeping, particularly
at funerals.
The Wahhabi emphasis on conformity makes of external appearance
and behavior a visible expression of inward faith. Therefore,
whether one conforms in dress, in prayer, or in a host of other
activities becomes a public statement of whether one is a true
Muslim. Because adherence to the true faith is demonstrable in
tangible ways, the Muslim community can visibly judge the quality
of a person's faith by observing that person's actions. In this
sense, public opinion becomes a regulator of individual behavior.
Therefore, within the Wahhabi community, which is striving to
be the collective embodiment of God's laws, it is the responsibility
of each Muslim to look after the behavior of his neighbor and
to admonish him if he goes astray.
To ensure that the community of the faithful will "enjoin what
is right and forbid what is wrong," morals enforcers known as
mutawwiin (literally, "those who volunteer or obey")
have been integral to the Wahhabi movement since its inception.
Mutawwiin have served as missionaries, as enforcers of
public morals, and as "public ministers of the religion" who preach
in the Friday mosque. Pursuing their duties in Jiddah in 1806,
the mutawwiin were observed to be "constables for the
punctuality of prayers . . . with an enormous staff in their hand,
[who] were ordered to shout, to scold and to drag people by the
shoulders to force them to take part in public prayers, five times
a day." In addition to enforcing male attendance at public prayer,
the mutawwiin also have been responsible for supervising
the closing of shops at prayer time, for looking out for infractions
of public morality such as playing music, smoking, drinking alcohol,
having hair that is too long (men) or uncovered (women), and dressing
immodestly.
In the first quarter of the century, promoting Wahhabism was
an asset to Abd al Aziz in forging cohesion among the tribal peoples
and districts of the peninsula. By reviving the notion of a community
of believers, united by their submission to God, Wahhabism helped
to forge a sense of common identity that was to supersede parochial
loyalties. By abolishing the tribute paid by inferior tribes to
militarily superior tribes, Abd al Aziz undercut traditional hierarchies
of power and made devotion to Islam and to himself as the rightly
guided Islamic ruler the glue that would hold his kingdom together.
In the early 1990s, unity in Islam of the Muslim umma
(community) under Al Saud leadership was the basis for the legitimacy
of the Saudi state.
The promotion of Islam as embracing every aspect of life accounted
in large measure for the success of Wahhabi ideology in inspiring
the zealotry of the Ikhwan movement. Beginning in 1912, agricultural
communities called hujra (collective pl.) were settled
by beduin who came to believe that in settling on the land they
were fulfilling the prerequisite for leading Muslim lives; they
were making a hijra, "the journey from the land of unbelief
to the land of belief." It is still unclear whether the Ikhwan
settlements were initiated by Abd al Aziz or whether he co-opted
the movement once it had begun, but the settlements became military
cantonments in the service of Abd al Aziz's consolidation of power.
Although the Ikhwan had very limited success in agriculture, they
could rely on a variety of subsidies derived from raids under
the aegis of Abd al Aziz and provisions disbursed directly from
his storehouses in Riyadh.
As newly converted Wahhabi Muslims, the Ikhwan were fanatical
in imposing their zealotry for correct behavior on others. They
enforced rigid separation of the sexes in their villages, for
example, and strict attention to prayers, and used violence in
attempting to impose Wahhabi restrictions on others. Their fanaticism
forged them into a formidable fighting force, and with Ikhwan
assistance, Abd al Aziz extended the borders of his kingdom into
the Eastern Province, Hail, and the Hijaz. Ultimately, the fanaticism
of the Ikhwan undermined their usefulness, and they had to be
reckoned with; the Ikhwan Rebellion (1928-30) marked their eclipse
(see The Ikhwan Movement , ch. 5).
In the 1990s, Saudi leadership did not emphasize its identity
as inheritor of the Wahhabi legacy as such, nor did the descendants
of Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, the Al ash Shaykh, continue to
hold the highest posts in the religious bureaucracy. Wahhabi influence
in Saudi Arabia, however, remained tangible in the physical conformity
in dress, in public deportment, and in public prayer. Most significantly,
the Wahhabi legacy was manifest in the social ethos that presumed
government responsibility for the collective moral ordering of
society, from the behavior of individuals, to institutions, to
businesses, to the government itself.
Data as of December 1992
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