{"id":90352,"date":"2017-04-17T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T11:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=90352"},"modified":"2017-04-17T12:45:36","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T11:45:36","slug":"you-cant-understand-isis-if-you-dont-know-the-history-of-wahhabism-in-saudi-arabia-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/04\/you-cant-understand-isis-if-you-dont-know-the-history-of-wahhabism-in-saudi-arabia-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"You Can\u2019t Understand ISIS If You Don\u2019t Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is Part I of Alastair Crooke\u2019s historical analysis of the roots of ISIS and its impact on the future of the Middle East. Read Part II here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Getty<\/p><\/div>\n

BEIRUT \u2014 The dramatic arrival of Da\u2019ish (ISIS) on the stage of Iraq has shocked many in the West. Many have been perplexed \u2014 and horrified \u2014 by its violence and its evident magnetism for Sunni youth. But more than this, they find Saudi Arabia\u2019s ambivalence in the face of this manifestation both troubling and inexplicable, wondering, \u201cDon\u2019t the Saudis understand that ISIS threatens them, too?\u201d<\/p>\n

It appears \u2014 even now \u2014 that Saudi Arabia\u2019s ruling elite is divided. Some applaud that ISIS is fighting Iranian Shiite \u201cfire\u201d with Sunni \u201cfire\u201d; that a new Sunni state is taking shape at the very heart of what they regard as a historical Sunni patrimony; and they are drawn by Da\u2019ish\u2019s strict Salafist ideology.<\/p>\n

Other Saudis are more fearful, and recall the history of the revolt against Abd-al Aziz by the Wahhabist Ikhwan (Disclaimer: this Ikhwan has nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood Ikhwan \u2014 please note, all further references hereafter are to the Wahhabist Ikhwan, and not to the Muslim Brotherhood Ikhwan), but which nearly imploded Wahhabism and the al-Saud in the late 1920s.<\/p>\n

Many Saudis are deeply disturbed by the radical doctrines of Da\u2019ish (ISIS) \u2014 and are beginning to question<\/a> some aspects of Saudi Arabia\u2019s direction and discourse.<\/p>\n

THE SAUDI DUALITY<\/strong><\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia\u2019s internal discord and tensions over ISIS can only be understood by grasping the inherent (and persisting) duality that lies at the core of the Kingdom\u2019s doctrinal makeup and its historical origins.<\/p>\n

One dominant strand to the Saudi identity pertains directly to Muhammad ibn \u02bfAbd al-Wahhab (the founder of Wahhabism), and the use to which his radical, exclusionist puritanism was put by Ibn Saud. (The latter was then no more than a minor leader \u2014 amongst many \u2014 of continually sparring and raiding Bedouin tribes in the baking and desperately poor deserts of the Nejd.)<\/p>\n

The second strand to this perplexing duality, relates precisely to King Abd-al Aziz\u2019s subsequent shift towards statehood in the 1920s: his curbing of Ikhwani violence (in order to have diplomatic standing as a nation-state with Britain and America); his institutionalization of the original Wahhabist impulse \u2014 and the subsequent seizing of the opportunely surging petrodollar spigot in the 1970s, to channel the volatile Ikhwani current away from home towards export \u2014 by diffusing a cultural revolution, rather than violent revolution throughout the Muslim world.<\/p>\n

But this \u201ccultural revolution\u201d was no docile reformism. It was a revolution based on Abd al-Wahhab\u2019s Jacobin-like hatred for the putrescence and deviationism that he perceived all about him \u2014 hence his call to purge Islam of all its heresies and idolatries.<\/p>\n

MUSLIM IMPOSTORS<\/strong><\/p>\n

The American author and journalist, Steven Coll, has written<\/a> how this austere and censorious disciple of the 14th century scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, Abd al-Wahhab, despised \u201cthe decorous, arty, tobacco smoking, hashish imbibing, drum pounding Egyptian and Ottoman nobility who travelled across Arabia to pray at Mecca.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Abd al-Wahhab\u2019s view, these were not Muslims; they were imposters masquerading as Muslims. Nor, indeed, did he find the behavior of local Bedouin Arabs much better. They aggravated Abd al-Wahhab by their honoring of saints, by their erecting of tombstones, and their \u201csuperstition\u201d (e.g. revering graves or places that were deemed particularly imbued with the divine).<\/p>\n

All this behavior, Abd al-Wahhab denounced as bida<\/em> \u2014 forbidden by God.<\/p>\n

Like Taymiyyah before him, Abd al-Wahhab believed that the period of the Prophet Muhammad\u2019s stay in Medina was the ideal of Muslim society (the \u201cbest of times\u201d), to which all Muslims should aspire to emulate (this, essentially, is Salafism).<\/p>\n

Taymiyyah had declared war on Shi\u2019ism, Sufism and Greek philosophy. He spoke out, too against visiting the grave of the prophet and the celebration of his birthday, declaring that all such behavior represented mere imitation of the Christian worship of Jesus as God (i.e. idolatry). Abd al-Wahhab assimilated all this earlier teaching, stating that \u201cany doubt or hesitation\u201d on the part of a believer in respect to his or her acknowledging this particular interpretation of Islam should \u201cdeprive a man of immunity of his property and his life.\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n

One of the main tenets of Abd al-Wahhab\u2019s doctrine has become the key idea of takfir.<\/em> Under the takfiri doctrine, Abd al-Wahhab and his followers could deem fellow Muslims infidels should they engage in activities that in any way could be said to encroach on the sovereignty of the absolute Authority (that is, the King). Abd al-Wahhab denounced all Muslims who honored the dead, saints, or angels. He held that such sentiments detracted from the complete subservience one must feel towards God, and only God. Wahhabi Islam thus bans any prayer to saints and dead loved ones, pilgrimages to tombs and special mosques, religious festivals celebrating saints, the honoring of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad\u2019s birthday, and even prohibits the use of gravestones when burying the dead.<\/p>\n

Those who would not conform to this view should be killed, their wives and daughters violated, and their possessions confiscated, he wrote. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Abd al-Wahhab demanded conformity \u2014 a conformity that was to be demonstrated in physical and tangible ways. He argued that all Muslims must individually pledge their allegiance to a single Muslim leader (a Caliph, if there were one). Those who would not conform to this view should be killed<\/a>, their wives and daughters violated, and their possessions confiscated, he wrote. The list of apostates meriting death included the Shiite, Sufis and other Muslim denominations, whom Abd al-Wahhab did not consider to be Muslim at all.<\/p>\n

There is nothing here that separates Wahhabism from ISIS. The rift would emerge only later: from the subsequent institutionalization of Muhammad ibn \u02bfAbd al-Wahhab\u2019s doctrine of \u201cOne Ruler, One Authority, One Mosque\u201d \u2014 these three pillars being taken respectively to refer to the Saudi king, the absolute authority of official Wahhabism, and its control of \u201cthe word\u201d (i.e. the mosque).<\/p>\n

It is this rift \u2014 the ISIS denial of these three pillars on which the whole of Sunni authority presently rests \u2014 makes ISIS, which in all other respects conforms to Wahhabism, a deep threat to Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

BRIEF HISTORY 1741- 1818<\/strong><\/p>\n

Abd al-Wahhab\u2019s advocacy of these ultra radical views inevitably led to his expulsion from his own town \u2014 and in 1741, after some wanderings, he found refuge under the protection of Ibn Saud and his tribe. What Ibn Saud perceived in Abd al-Wahhab\u2019s novel teaching was the means to overturn Arab tradition and convention. It was a path to seizing power.<\/p>\n

Their strategy \u2014 like that of ISIS today \u2014 was to bring the peoples whom they conquered into submission. They aimed to instill fear. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ibn Saud\u2019s clan, seizing on Abd al-Wahhab\u2019s doctrine, now could do what they always did, which was raiding neighboring villages and robbing them of their possessions. Only now they were doing it not within the ambit of Arab tradition, but rather under the banner of jihad<\/em>. Ibn Saud and Abd al-Wahhab also reintroduced the idea of martyrdom in the name of jihad, as it granted those martyred immediate entry into paradise.<\/p>\n

In the beginning, they conquered a few local communities and imposed their rule over them. (The conquered inhabitants were given a limited choice: conversion to Wahhabism or death.) By 1790, the Alliance controlled most of the Arabian Peninsula and repeatedly raided Medina, Syria and Iraq.<\/p>\n

Their strategy \u2014 like that of ISIS today \u2014 was to bring the peoples whom they conquered into submission. They aimed to instill fear. In 1801, the Allies attacked the Holy City of Karbala in Iraq. They massacred thousands of Shiites, including women and children. Many Shiite shrines were destroyed, including the shrine of Imam Hussein, the murdered grandson of Prophet Muhammad.<\/p>\n

A British official, Lieutenant Francis Warden, observing the situation at the time, wrote: \u201cThey pillaged the whole of it [Karbala], and plundered the Tomb of Hussein… slaying in the course of the day, with circumstances of peculiar cruelty, above five thousand of the inhabitants …\u201d<\/p>\n

Osman Ibn Bishr Najdi, the historian of the first Saudi state, wrote that Ibn Saud committed a massacre in Karbala in 1801. He proudly documented that massacre saying, \u201cwe took Karbala and slaughtered and took its people (as slaves), then praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, and we do not apologize for that and say: \u2018And to the unbelievers: the same treatment.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1803, Abdul Aziz then entered the Holy City of Mecca, which surrendered under the impact of terror and panic (the same fate was to befall Medina, too). Abd al-Wahhab\u2019s followers demolished historical monuments and all the tombs and shrines in their midst. By the end, they had destroyed centuries of Islamic architecture near the Grand Mosque.<\/p>\n

But in November of 1803, a Shiite assassin killed King Abdul Aziz (taking revenge for the massacre at Karbala). His son, Saud bin Abd al Aziz, succeeded him and continued the conquest of Arabia. Ottoman rulers, however, could no longer just sit back and watch as their empire was devoured piece by piece. In 1812, the Ottoman army, composed of Egyptians, pushed the Alliance out from Medina, Jeddah and Mecca. In 1814, Saud bin Abd al Aziz died of fever. His unfortunate son Abdullah bin Saud, however, was taken by the Ottomans to Istanbul, where he was gruesomely executed (a visitor to Istanbul reported seeing him having been humiliated in the streets of Istanbul for three days, then hanged and beheaded, his severed head fired from a canon, and his heart cut out and impaled on his body).<\/p>\n

In 1815, Wahhabi forces were crushed by the Egyptians (acting on the Ottoman\u2019s behalf) in a decisive battle. In 1818, the Ottomans captured and destroyed the Wahhabi capital of Dariyah. The first Saudi state was no more. The few remaining Wahhabis withdrew into the desert to regroup, and there they remained, quiescent for most of the 19th century.<\/p>\n

HISTORY RETURNS WITH ISIS<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is not hard to understand how the founding of the Islamic State by ISIS in contemporary Iraq might resonate amongst those who recall this history. Indeed, the ethos of 18th century Wahhabism did not just wither in Nejd, but it roared back into life when the Ottoman Empire collapsed amongst the chaos of World War I.<\/p>\n

The Al Saud \u2014 in this 20th century renaissance \u2014 were led by the laconic and politically astute Abd-al Aziz, who, on uniting the fractious Bedouin tribes, launched the Saudi \u201cIkhwan\u201d in the spirit of Abd-al Wahhab\u2019s and Ibn Saud\u2019s earlier fighting proselytisers.<\/p>\n

The Ikhwan was a reincarnation of the early, fierce, semi-independent vanguard movement of committed armed Wahhabist \u201cmoralists\u201d who almost had succeeded in seizing Arabia by the early 1800s. In the same manner as earlier, the Ikhwan again succeeded in capturing Mecca, Medina and Jeddah between 1914 and 1926. Abd-al Aziz, however, began to feel his wider interests to be threatened by the revolutionary \u201cJacobinism\u201d exhibited by the Ikhwan. The Ikhwan revolted \u2014 leading to a civil war that lasted until the 1930s, when the King had them put down: he machine-gunned them.<\/p>\n

For this king, (Abd-al Aziz), the simple verities of previous decades were eroding. Oil was being discovered in the peninsular. Britain and America were courting Abd-al Aziz, but still were inclined to support Sharif Husain as the only legitimate ruler of Arabia. The Saudis needed to develop a more sophisticated diplomatic posture.<\/p>\n

So Wahhabism was forcefully changed from a movement of revolutionary jihad <\/a>and theological takfiri purification, to a movement of conservative social, political, theological, and religious da\u2019wa (Islamic call) and to justifying the institution that upholds loyalty to the royal Saudi family and the King\u2019s absolute power.<\/p>\n

OIL WEALTH SPREAD WAHHABISM<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the advent of the oil bonanza \u2014 as the French scholar, Giles Kepel writes<\/a>, Saudi goals were to \u201creach out and spread Wahhabism across the Muslim world … to \u201cWahhabise\u201d Islam, thereby reducing the \u201cmultitude of voices within the religion\u201d to a \u201csingle creed\u201d \u2014 a movement which would transcend national divisions. Billions of dollars were \u2014 and continue to be \u2014 invested in this manifestation of soft power.<\/p>\n

It was this heady mix of billion dollar soft power projection \u2014 and the Saudi willingness to manage Sunni Islam both to further America\u2019s interests, as it concomitantly embedded Wahhabism educationally, socially and culturally throughout the lands of Islam \u2014 that brought into being a western policy dependency on Saudi Arabia, a dependency that has endured since Abd-al Aziz\u2019s meeting with Roosevelt on a U.S. warship (returning the president from the Yalta Conference) until today.<\/p>\n

Westerners looked at the Kingdom and their gaze was taken by the wealth; by the apparent modernization; by the professed leadership of the Islamic world. They chose to presume that the Kingdom was bending to the imperatives of modern life \u2014 and that the management of Sunni Islam would bend the Kingdom, too, to modern life.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, ISIS is deeply Wahhabist. On the other hand, it is ultra radical in a different way. It could be seen essentially as a corrective movement to contemporary Wahhabism. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But the Saudi Ikhwan approach to Islam did not die in the 1930s. It retreated, but it maintained its hold over parts of the system \u2014 hence the duality that we observe today in the Saudi attitude towards ISIS.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, ISIS is deeply Wahhabist. On the other hand, it is ultra radical in a different way. It could be seen essentially as a corrective movement to contemporary Wahhabism.<\/p>\n

ISIS is a \u201cpost-Medina\u201d movement: it looks to the actions of the first two Caliphs, rather than the Prophet Muhammad himself, as a source of emulation, and it forcefully denies the Saudis\u2019 claim of authority to rule.<\/p>\n

As the Saudi monarchy blossomed in the oil age into an ever more inflated institution, the appeal of the Ikhwan message gained ground (despite King Faisal\u2019s modernization campaign). The \u201cIkhwan approach\u201d enjoyed \u2014 and still enjoys \u2014 the support of many prominent men and women and sheikhs. In a sense, Osama bin Laden was precisely the representative of a late flowering of this Ikhwani approach.<\/p>\n

Today, ISIS\u2019 undermining of the legitimacy of the King\u2019s legitimacy is not seen to be problematic, but rather a return to the true origins of the Saudi-Wahhab project.<\/p>\n

In the collaborative management of the region by the Saudis and the West in pursuit of the many western projects (countering socialism, Ba\u2019athism, Nasserism, Soviet and Iranian influence), western politicians have highlighted their chosen reading of Saudi Arabia (wealth, modernization and influence), but they chose to ignore the Wahhabist impulse.<\/p>\n

After all, the more radical Islamist movements were perceived by Western intelligence services as being more effective in toppling the USSR in Afghanistan \u2014 and in combatting out-of-favor Middle Eastern leaders and states.<\/p>\n

Why should we be surprised then, that from Prince Bandar\u2019s Saudi-Western mandate to manage the insurgency in Syria against President Assad should have emerged a neo-Ikhwan type of violent, fear-inducing vanguard movement: ISIS? And why should we be surprised \u2014 knowing a little about Wahhabism \u2014 that \u201cmoderate\u201d insurgents in Syria would become rarer than a mythical unicorn? Why should we have imagined that radical Wahhabism would create moderates? Or why could we imagine that a doctrine of \u201cOne leader, One authority, One mosque: submit to it, or be killed\u201d could ever ultimately lead to moderation or tolerance?<\/p>\n

Or, perhaps, we never imagined.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Alastair Crooke, a former top British MI-6 agent in the Middle East, is author of<\/em> Resistance: The Essence of Islamic Revolution. This article is Part I of Alastair Crooke\u2019s historical analysis of the roots of ISIS and its impact on the future of the Middle East. Read Part II here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 huffingtonpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those who would not conform to this view should be killed, their wives and daughters violated, and their possessions confiscated, he wrote. On the one hand, ISIS is deeply Wahhabist. On the other hand, it is ultra radical in a different way. It could be seen essentially as a corrective movement to contemporary Wahhabism. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east-north-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}