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Wahhabi
Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad
By Natana J. DeLong-Bas
EXCERPTS
FROM CHAPTER SIX AND THE CONCLUSION
CHAPTER
SIX - FROM REVIVAL AND REFORM TO GLOBAL JIHAD
Pages 278-279
Chapter
Six Conclusion
The
global jihad espoused by Osama bin Laden and other contemporary
extremists is clearly rooted in contemporary issues and
interpretations of Islam. It owes little to the Wahhabi
tradition, outside of the nineteenth-century incorporation of
the teachings of Ibn Taymiyya and the Ibn al-Qayyim
al-Jawhziyyah into the Wahhabi worldview as Wahhabism moved
beyond the confines of Najd and into the broader Muslim world.
The
differences between the worldviews of bin Laden and Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab are numerous. Bin Laden preaches jihad; Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab preached monotheism. Bin Laden preaches a global
jihad of cosmic importance that recognizes no compromise; Ibn
Abd al-Wahhab's jihad was narrow in geographic focus, of
localized importance, and had engagement in a treaty
relationship between the fighting parties as a goal. Bin
Laden preaches war against Christians and Jews; Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab called for treaty relationships with them. Bin
Laden's jihad proclaims an ideology of the necessity of war in
the face of unbelief; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab preached the benefits of
peaceful coexistence, social order, and business
relationships. Bin Laden calls for the killing of all
infidels and the destruction of their money and property; Ibn
Abd al-Wahhab restricted killing and the destruction of
property. Bin Laden calls for jihad as a broad universal
prescription for Muslims of every time and place; Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab confined jihad to specific and limited circumstances
and contexts. Bin Laden issues calls to violence and
fighting; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab sought to curtail violence and
fighting. Bin Laden provides an ideological worldview
based on jihad; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab provided legal justifications
for the mechanics of jihad. Bin Laden calls for jihad as
an individual duty; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab upheld jihad as a
collective duty. Bin Laden requires no justification for
jihad outside of the declaration of another as an infidel; Ibn
Abd al-Wahhab limited justifications for jihad and restricted
the use of the label infidel. Bin Laden's vision of jihad
clearly belongs to the category of contemporary fundamentalists;
Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's vision of jihad contains elements of both
classical and modernist interpretations of Islam.
Wahhabi
Islam is neither monolithic nor stagnant. Changes in
thought, topics addressed, and emphases on different themes have
clearly occurred over the past 250 years. The militant
Islam of Osama bin Laden does not have its origins in the
teachings of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and is not representative of
Wahhabi Islam as it is practiced in contemporary Saudi Arabia,
yet for the media it has come to define Wahabbi Islam in the
contemporary era. However, "unrepresentative"
bin Laden's global jihad of Islam in general and Wahhabi Islam
in particular, its prominence in headline news has taken Wahhabi
Islam across the spectrum from revival and reform to global
jihad.
EXCERPTS
FROM BOOK'S CONCLUSION (Pages 281-290)
Muhammad
Ibn Abd al-Wahhab clearly is an important figure in terms of
both his representation of broad trends in eighteenth-century
Islamic thought and his influence and impact on contemporary
Islamic thought and activism. The breadth of his
scholarship and the importance of the themes he emphasized --
theology and worldview, Islamic law, education, missionary work
(da'wah), jihad, and women and gender -- were relevant
not only for reforming and rejuvenating his own society, but
also for the revival and reinterpretation of Islam in the
twenty-first century as Muslims seek methodologies for the
rejuvenation of Islamic practice and the Islamization of
modernity. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's emphasis on the importance
of Islamic values and the intent behind words and actions, as
opposed to concern for ritual perfection, has opened the door
for reforms in Islamic law, the status of women and minorities,
and the peaceful spread of Islam and the Islamic mission in the
contemporary era.
As an
eighteenth-century activist, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab reflected some of
the most important intellectual trends of his time, notably a
new methodology of hadith criticism that was driven by
content rather than form. While he acknowledged the
importance of verifying that the chain of transmission (isnad)
was viable, he did not consider this issue of form to be as
substantial or important as the more complex task of reviewing
the content of the hadith in order to determine whether
its values and interpretations of issues, whether legal,
religious, social, economic or political, were in keeping with
the broader values taught by the Quran and other hadith
already accepted as being authentic. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab did
not invent this method of hadith criticism. Rather,
he like other contemporaries, such as Shah Wali Allah, learned
it from his teachers in Mecca and Medina. It was this
contact with the methodology of content-driven hadith
criticism that sparked his concern with directly returning to
the scriptural sources of Islam -- the Quran and hadith
-- for interpretation rather than relying on classical
jurisprudence.
[passage
omitted]
This is
not to say that Ibn Abd al-Wahhab rejected familiarity with
theological or juridical writings, however. Having
received a broad education in jurisprudence (fiqh) from
his father and having had contact with the judicial system in
which his father, grandfather and uncle held prominent
positions, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was familiar with a broad base of
classical jurisprudence. This familiarity is clear in the
numerous references to a variety of jurists in his
writings. By placing himself well within the context of
classical Islamic jurisprudence, he was able to declare subtly
his continuity with the Islamic intellectual tradition,
exonerating him from the charges of his critics that he was
engaged in innovation (bid'a).
[passage
omitted]
Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab believed in the importance of reinterpretation of
scripture in one's own time and place as a means of
demonstrating the ongoing relevance of God's revelation in the
daily personal and communal lives of Muslims. By stripping
taqlid of its authority and returning that authority to
God alone through His revelation, he sought to push Muslims into
their own personal encounters with God by direct reading and
interpretation of scripture.
At the
same time, he was mindful of the need to conceptualize
revelation -- both in terms of why it had occurred and what is
would have meant to the people hearing it -- in order to
interpret it accurately. By insisting on historical
contextualization, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab rejected literal
interpretations of scripture. He did not believe in simply
reading part of a verse of the Quran and making a broad
proclamation about its meaning without understanding the context
in which it had been revealed because he believed that such a
method would lead, and, indeed, had led, to errors in
interpretation.
[passage
omitted]
Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab's insistence on the recognition of a broad Quranic
worldview and its inherent values lent a consistency and logic
to his interpretations of scripture that would not have been
possible for a literalist. His emphasis on Quranic values,
rather than detailed prescriptions, has been adopted by many
contemporary Muslim scholars as a guideline for implementing
reforms.
[passage
omitted]
Most
prominently Ibn Abd al-Wahhab emphasized the legal principle of
public welfare or interest (maslahah) as a guiding factor
in the interpretation of Islamic law because this principle
established the right and responsibility of the Muslim
leadership to consider the welfare of the people as being of
greater importance than strict and literal adherence to
ritual. He was careful to emphasize that, while the
principle of maslahah is in some cases to be restricted
to cases of extreme necessity, such as delaying almsgiving (zakat)
during a period of severe drought because it would represent too
great of a hardship, at other times it can be used to restore
Quranic values to the actual practice of Islamic law, such as
the broad protection of women, the poor, and orphans from
exploitation. Behind his use of this principle lay a
broader theme in Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's writings, that of the
importance of intent.
In Ibn
Abd al-Wahhab's understanding of faith and law, intent is the
driving force that determines the permissibility of any
statement or action. He was not so much concerned with
ritual perfection as he was with the more critical matter of the
heart -- intent -- behind that perfection. Likewise, in
legal matters, he was more interested in the intent behind a
particular transaction or undertaking than he was in its form
because he recognized that there were cases that adhered to the
letter of the law in outward appearance yet had as their
ultimate goal the circumvention of the law.
Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab's rejection of literalism in favor of the recognition
of broad Quranic values is nowhere more apparent than in his
teachings about women and his construction of gender. His
vision of gender balance defies standard stereotypes of Wahhabis
as misogynists by placing women on a balanced footing with men.
Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab wrote extensively on the topics of marriage and
divorce and the woman's place within those transactions.
Rather than excluding her from the process as simply a party to
be bargained for and sold, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab emphasized the
right of the woman to participate throughout the process of
contracting and negotiating the marriage. Although he did
not permit women to carry out the administration drafting of the
marriage contract, he insisted that they be allowed to propose
prospective husbands, stipulate favorable conditions in the
marriage contract (such as limitations on polygyny and
situations that would result in divorce), receive her dower in
full as her own property to manage, and be paid maintenance for
the duration of the marriage. He further required the
woman's consent to the marriage in order for it to be recognized
as valid.
Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab's prescriptions for the woman's role and participation
in the process of contracting the marriage were based on
recognition of the girl/woman as a legal person with a vested
interested in the marriage. The only distinctions he made,
therefore, with respect to the issue of consent were between
virgins and deflowered women in the manner in which their
consent was to be indicated. He made no distinctions on
the basis of age, other than to indicate where classical
jurisprudence on this topic fell short with respect tot he minor
girl. His granting of even a minor girl the right to
consent in order for the marriage to be valid was a major and
important reform. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab further decried the
practice of child marriage and set limitations on ages and
maturity levels accordingly because he recognized the potential
for literalism to allow for legal circumvention of the intent
behind this prohibition.
Although
divorce via repudiation (talaq) has historically been the
prerogative of the man -- and, indeed, this practice has
continued into the present era in the Muslim world -- Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab sought to redress this violation of what he considered
to be the Quranic order of balanced rights in divorce by
emphasizing the woman's absolute right to demand a divorce via
compensation (khul'). Noting that the man has the
right to unconditional divorce by talaq, with no
requirement for justification, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab granted the
woman the reciprocal right by allowing her to cite vague
concerns that she would not be able to fulfill her marital
duties as the justification for khul' divorce.
Recognizing the abuse of power often exercised by men in such
cases, he required that the woman return the amount of her dower
in exchange for her freedom, comparing this type of divorce to a
business contract in which the return of the amount that was
paid in order to enter into the relationship symbolizes its
end. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab did not allow the man to deny his
wife her right to divorce either by refusing her request or by
setting the amount at such an excessive rate that she should not
possibly pay. By placing checks on the man's power to deny
the women her right to divorce, he made divorce by the woman a
real possibility rather than a theoretical right with no means
of being enforced.
Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab's writings make clear his broad respect for and
protection of women. Recognizing a woman's vulnerability,
Ibn Abd al-Wahhab not only sought to grant her power in matters
directly related to her family status -- marriage, divorce,
childbearing, and inheritance -- but also in the most personal
of matters, sexual relations. On the one hand, he assured
women that they, as well as men, were entitled to sexual
relations and satisfaction in their marital lives. He
underlined the importance of respecting a women with whom one is
engaged in sexual relations by protecting her right to privacy
in the marriage bed, as well as making even the most intimate
matter of sexual intercourse a matter for negotiation between
husband and wife rather than a position in which the man was all
powerful. Further, he insisted that husbands treat their
wives respectfully and with dignity and forbade husbands to beat
their wives.
Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab also sought to protect women from male sexual
aggression by condemning the practices of rape and sexual
relations with female slaves and servants. This, again,
marked a major departure from classical interpretations of
permissible sexual relations, which included concubinage as a
legally recognized and approved activity. Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab, however, noted the broad Quranic value of sexual
relations occurring legally only within the state of marriage so
that all other activities are illicit (zina'). By
emphasizing the appropriate place of sex only within marriage,
he not only denounced the practices of fornication and adultery
but squarely placed the responsibility for both on both
genders. In cases in which a woman was a willing partner
to sexual relations outside of marriage, he taught that both the
man and the woman should be punished if they either confessed to
the acct or there were viable witnesses to the action itself.
However, he also recognized that there were cases in which a
woman might not be a willing participant. In such cases,
he laid the blame entirely on the man in question. It is
significant that Ibn Abd al-Wahhab not only recognized rape as a
type of sexual relations, but he also declared it to be a
punishable act for the man involved. He did not prescribe
punishment for the woman or charge her with having engaged in zina'.
Similarly,
Ibn Abd al-Wahhab did not hold women responsible for men's
failure to control their sexual desires. He never equated
women with chaos (fitnah) or accused them of inciting
male desires. Rather, he held men responsible for
controlling themselves, much as he held women responsible for
controlling themselves. It was for this reason that,
although he believed that both men and women should dress
modestly, he did not require women to wear the full abaya,
including a veil to cover the face. Instead, he taught
that women could expose their hands, feet, and faces in
public. He further granted couples contemplating marriage
the right to meet and view each other more extensively in a more
relaxed setting because he believed that this would spare the
couple the unpleasant surprise of finding themselves
incompatible after agreeing to the marriage contract. His
permission granted to unrelated men and women to meet for
business and medical purposes and to engage in commercial
partnerships also served to create and protect women's access to
public space.
Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab believed that women have important roles to play in
both the private and public spheres and sought to guarantee
their access to both by enforcing their rights. He
particularly guaranteed their right to education so as to be
able to fulfill their religious responsibilities -- a task that
could not be completed without knowledge of both correct beliefs
and practices.
Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab's worldview focused heavily on the theme of
education. He believed that acquiring and sharing
religious knowledge with others was the most important
responsibility of Muslims, both male and female. He held
both men and women responsible for correct belief and practice,
the heart of which was a solid foundation of knowledge. He
encouraged all of his followers to study the Quran and hadith
directly for guidance in their personal lives, as well as in
their interactions with God and others.
Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab taught that knowledge was also necessary for public
order. He charged people to become educated so that they
will be able to select appropriate leaders and verify that they
are worthy of their jobs. He described those fit for
leadership as being, first and foremost, knowledgeable about the
sources of scripture so that their actions as public figures
will be in accordance with the precepts of Islamic belief and
law. He charged his followers with the responsibility of
recognizing and being able to distinguish between truth and
falsehood on the basis of their own knowledge so that they will
know for themselves whether a leader is fit to lead.
Because
of the importance he placed on knowledge, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab
emphasized not only the personal pursuit of education but also
the responsibility of Muslims to engage in debate with others
about their beliefs in order to educate them. His concern
for the need to educate was based on his recognition of the
command to spread Islam. That he chose to do so by
educational means -- dialogue, discussion, and debate -- rather
than more militant methods, such as conversions of the sword, is
particularly noteworthy in the light of standard stereotypes of
Wahhabis as militant, violent and destructive.
[passage
omitted]
Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab's insistence on peaceful calling to Islam reflected
his broad worldview, in which the ultimate dual goal of every
action undertaken by the Muslim should be personal belief in and
adherence to monotheism while calling others to the same.
He believed that this could be achieved most effectively through
education, so that even jihad included as its main goal the
winning of adherents or at least placing them in a protective,
cooperative relationship with Muslims through the establishment
of a protective treaty (dhimmi) relationship. Thus,
his vision of the world was not one in which Muslims could only
coexist peacefully with other Muslims but rather one in which
Muslims were expected to co-exist and even cooperate peacefully
with others, even though their religious beliefs and practices
might differ.
[passage
omitted]
Like
the modernists, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's vision of jihad was purely
defensive in nature. He legitimated jihad only in cases in
which Muslims had experienced an actual aggression. He did
not glorify martyrdom because he believed that the only intent a
person should have in carrying out jihad was defense of God and
God's community, not the desire for personal rewards or glory,
whether on earth or in the Afterlife. Further Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab did not permit the use of jihad in aggressive
activities directed against others. By limiting jihad to
cases that were strictly defensive in nature, he precluded the
possibility of using it as a means of consolidating political
power or forcibly spreading Wahhabi rule on a religious basis.
Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab's teachings on jihad stand in marked contrast to
contemporary fundamentalists, most notably Osama bin
Laden. Although it is often posited that bin Laden's
ideology of global jihad has its origins in Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's
writings because both are Wahhabis, the reality is that bin
Laden's ideology owes far more to the writings of the medieval
scholar Ibn Taymiyya and his contemporary interpreter, Sayyid
Qutb, than it does to the writings of Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab.
Bin
Laden, like Ibn Taymiyyah and Sayyid Qutb before him, envisages
the world as divided into two absolute and mutually exclusive
spheres -- the land of Islam (dar al Islam) and the land
of the unbeliever (dar al-kufr') -- a division that
results in a necessarily hostile relationship. For bin
Laden, jihad is intended to be the modus operandi of Muslims,
not a restricted method of self-defense. Because bin Laden
espouses a vision of a world in which good and evil are engaged
in cosmic conflict, he believes that jihad must take on
offensive, as well as defensive, capabilities and should be a
permanent state of being for Muslims. According to this
vision, martyrdom should not be feared but actively
pursued. The enemy is not to be called passively to Islam
but must be actively, physically engaged. Anyone who
resists the message of Islam or Muslim domination is to be
fought and killed.
There
is a serious disconnect between the writings of Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab and bin Laden, a fact that is attributable not only to
the different contexts in which they have lived and written but
also to their approaches to scripture. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab
searched for intents and values. Bin Laden's readings are
more literal in their approach. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's quest
was for a broad social order in which Muslims could live
peacefully and respectfully with both Muslims and
non-Muslims. Bin Laden's vision leaves no space for
non-Muslims or those who claim to be Muslims but do not act the
part. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's writings have inspired a variety
of contemporary reforms, from a context- and value-oriented
reading of the Quran to legislation expanding women's rights and
access to public space. Bin Laden's social vision is
limited to jihad, suggesting a future of violence and
destruction rather than peaceful construction.
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From
Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad
by Natana DeLong-Bas, copyright 2004 by Oxford University Press,
Inc. and used by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.
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