Word: wahhab
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Millions of Saudis, of course, still adhere to the strict religious and social conservatism that dates to the 18th century pact made between Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a puritanical preacher, and the founder of the Saud dynasty Mohammed ibn Saud. And many conservatives resent the social changes the King is pushing. "Those around King Abdullah use his peaceful positions to impose secular values," says conservative cleric Mohsen al-Awajy. "But Saudi society is a special, tribal society, and neither King Abdullah or anyone else can impose his own interpretation of Islam. They can do nothing without Islam. There...
...opposition appears no more willing to allow an already fraught situation to deteriorate any further. Wiam Wahhab, a senior opposition figure, told TIME that opposition supporters were prepared to take to the streets if the March 14 block attempts a unilateral move on the presidency, but doubted such an outcome. "I don't think they will dare try this, unless the Americans have a benefit from it in which case we will have another problem," he said...
...version of Islam that Wahhab conceived in the 1740s is now the state religion of Saudi Arabia. These days, many would interpret that premonitory dream in a darker light. Is Wahhabism somehow synonymous with terrorism, dictating war on the West as part of its doctrinal underpinnings? Or have terrorists distorted Wahhabism to give a false legitimacy to their militancy? In his book on Islam in Saudi Arabia, Stephen Schwartz suggests that where Wahhabism is the official creed, there must be a terrorist state. Many religious historians and sociologists, however, see a more subtle picture: a faith founded on rigid...
...Wahhab was born in a small central Arabian town in 1703 as the Ottoman Empire, which had dominated Islam's majority Sunni branch for centuries, was in its long, final decline. His seminal text, The Book of Unity, attempted to recover what he saw as the original, pristine state of Islam by pruning out "innovations" that had polluted its essential monotheism. Wahhab's list of corruptions was sweeping; it included Shi'ism, the faith's minority strain, and Sufism, its mystical tradition. He discarded most of the interpretations of Islam's four great legal schools in favor of an exceedingly...
...creed had no place for free will or human rights, let alone separation of mosque and state. Wahhab partook of a historically typical hostility toward Christians and Jews. But he was less focused on infidels than he was inward-looking and obsessed with orthodoxy: he wrote that jihad should be postponed until the Islamic house was in order. He was more combative regarding his brethren. Although Muslims are forbidden to wage holy war against one another, Khaled Abou El Fadl, an expert in Islamic law at Yale University, says Wahhabis "argued that Muslims guilty of [unorthodoxy] could and should...