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EDITOR'S
NOTE
The Saudi-American Forum has
been pleased to present excerpts from the new book Wahhabi
Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad by Natana J.
DeLong-Bas. Today, we provide the final installment of this
series with extracts from Chapter 6 and the Conclusion.
In
addition to reading this installment, we hope you will join a
discussion of the book (in
the SUSRIS Discussion Forum) and view the earlier excerpts
from Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad.
Related Material
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.
Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to
Global Jihad
By Natana J. DeLong-Bas
Book Description
Before 9/11, few
Westerners had heard of Wahhabism. Today, it is a household word.
Frequently mentioned in association with Osama bin Laden,
Wahhabism is portrayed by the media and public officials as an
intolerant, puritanical, militant interpretation of Islam that
calls for the wholesale destruction of the West in a jihad of
global proportions. In the first study ever undertaken of the
writings of Wahhabism's founder, Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab
(1702-1791), Natana DeLong-Bas shatters these stereotypes and
misconceptions. |
