by John McHugo
IV
By the eighteenth century, it was obvious to any thoughtful observer that Ottoman Turkey was falling behind the European powers. It would not be until the 1850s that Turkey would be dubbed ‘the sick man of Europe’, but Europe was now relentlessly moving ahead in terms of industry and technology. It was also the place where the exciting new ideas of the Enlightenment were emerging. For the time being, these had little if any impact on the Ottoman elite. The Ottomans studied the new European methods and sometimes adopted them, but they seem to have been painfully slow in benefiting from some of the innovations.
Printing is the obvious example. The Jews and some of the Christian peoples of the Ottoman Empire such as the Greeks and Armenians had long since established printing presses for books in their own languages, although, as Ottoman specialist Caroline Finkel has put it, this was ‘not without problems’.21 It was late as 1727 that the first Arabic script printing press was established in the empire. Even then, only a few books with short print runs were produced. It would not be until the nineteenth century that printing really took off in Turkish (which was written in the Arabic script) and Arabic. One factor that slowed down the spread of printing was the respect felt for the art and skill of the copyists, and a perhaps praiseworthy concern that printing could lead to the loss of their livelihoods. It probably also indicated a feeling of awe and reverence for the written word in a society where literacy was rare and therefore prized.
As the empire weakened, it began to lose vast territories in Europe to Austria and Russia, while elsewhere its control over some of its provinces decayed. Strong local personalities such as Mamluk soldiers, provincial governors, tribal leaders, tax gatherers and other notables often saw an opportunity to increase their power at the expense of the centre. The empire frequently found itself forced into a policy of negotiation and compromise with powerful local figures, since it lacked the strength to enforce its will without their support.
Many of the rebellions that took place during the eighteenth century left no lasting impact, except to weaken the empire further. But one locally based movement, which appeared in the central Arabian region of Nejd in the middle of the century, would have consequences for the history of Islam and especially for relations between Sunnis and Shi‘is – consequences that are still very much with us today. This is the movement founded by Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, who lived during the period 1702–93 and whose life therefore almost spans the eighteenth century.
Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab set out to purify and reform Islam from the remote, desert region where he was born and grew up. In some ways, he has something in common with certain Protestant reformers in the Europe of the Reformation. There are, for instance, eerie parallels with Protestants in the ways in which he sought to go back to the original scriptures of his religion (the Qur’an and hadith, in his case) rather than interpret them by sifting through the hallowed commentaries of long-dead scholars. He also concentrated on the lives of the Prophet and his Companions, and preached that believers should live according to the example of the first Muslims. This often meant ignoring and rejecting the scholarship and deep theological thought of the centuries in between.22 He did not subscribe to the idea of a universal caliphate.
As a religious scholar, he seems to have been largely self-taught. He did not sit at the feet of any of the great scholars of his time or receive a certificate that confirmed the level of scholarship he had attained. This meant that, in the eyes of eminent Sunni scholars, he had no authority – and therefore no right – to teach. But he seems to have revelled in this. He taught that every man and woman should study the Qur’an for themselves. For him this meant that they would, virtually of necessity, come to the same conclusions from that study as he himself had done and therefore subscribe to his teachings. Those who acccepted his teaching were true Muslims; those who rejected it were apostates. Inevitably, opponents compared him and his followers to the Kharijis, who had declared that the Caliph Ali should be deposed because he had left the faith. Possibly in reaction to this charge, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab and his followers stressed their adherence to the Hanbali doctrinal law school, and their acceptance of the validity of the other three doctrinal law schools of Sunni Islam.
The mission he had taken on was to protect and purify Sunni Islam, especially against Sufism and Shi‘ism.23 He was as obsessed with fighting idolatry and destroying graven images as any Protestant during the Reformation. He also criticised religious scholars who gained property or money from their roles – as when they found ways to ease the consciences of Muslims who charged interest.24 Although he saw himself as uniting Muslims, his actions divided communities against themselves, and those divisions persist to this day. Yet any similarities between him and figures such as John Knox or Calvin are purely coincidental; although Europe was now breathing down the neck of the Ottoman Empire, and European navies even dominated the seas surrounding Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s native Arabia, there was absolutely no European influence on his life or thought.
Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab came from a family of Hanbali scholars at a time when Nejd was probably one of the few places in which this doctrinal law school was still influential.25 He saw the state of the Nejdi tribes as ‘ignorance’, jahiliyah, explicitly using the Muslim term used to portray the pagan Arabs before Islam.26 As a young man he certainly travelled to Mecca and Medina and also to Basra. He returned home by way of Hasa, the area on the east coast of Arabia that is now a province of Saudi Arabia and which was then thought of as part of Greater Bahrain. Twelver Shi‘is formed the majority of its population. It is doubtful that he went further afield.27 It is impossible to know for certain, but he may have been stirred into action in order to oppose the attempt by Iranian ruler Nadir Shah (r. 1736–1747) to bring Twelver Shi‘ism into the fold of Sunnism.28 Little is known for certain about his early studies, or even the precise years of his travels, but it is possible if not probable that his stay in Basra and travels through Hasa were in the 1730s at the time when Nadir Shah’s power was at its peak.
While in Basra, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab agitated against Shi‘is, Sufis and local practices he considered polytheistic. This was really the beginning of his career as a preacher. After his return to Nejd when he was probably in his mid-thirties, he never left the region again. He had been appalled by what he had observed which was, for him, the corruption of Islam by idolatry. What happened next was that, ‘his perspective on the wider world froze in time just as his doctrines cohered into a corpus that he never revised substantially’.29
Tawhid, the affirmation of the Divine Unity, what we might call an absolute monotheism, is the point of departure for Islam and for all Muslims. It was therefore Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s point of departure as well. In the West, the movement he founded is known as Wahhabism, but he and his followers called themselves the Muwahhidun, those who affirm tawhid, the unity of God. In his writings, he elaborated on two forms of tawhid: tawhid al-rububiyyah and tawhid al-uluhiyyah. We might translate the first concept, very freely, as ‘the affirmation of God’s lordship’ and the second as ‘the affirmation of God’s divinity’.
Affirmation of God’s lordship is the monotheism that Islam shares with Christianity and Judaism. It is the acceptance that God is the creator of all. Yet, for Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab it will not be enough to save believers from Hell. Although they accept that God is the creator, in his eyes they have not taken the next essential step and affirmed God’s divinity. This involves the acceptance that all intercessionary prayer or supplication to saints and all other figures apart from God is idolatry and unbelief, and leads to eternal damnation.
He saw Shi‘i commemorations of the deaths of the imams, all of whom were listed by Twelvers as martyrs, as idolatry. For him, the public expressions of grief at the fate of Hussein on the 10th of Muharram, which could involve breast beating, self-flagellation and other forms of self-harm, were forms of idol worship. They were an affront to all true Muslims that should be banned.
This applied a
lso to those Sunni Muslims who prayed to saints or other figures. Veneration of saintly figures, including annual festivals at their tombs, was deeply engrained in Muslim culture everywhere. Now Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s ‘affirmation of God’s divinity’ challenged the practice. The two main Muslim groups that offended were Shi‘is and Sufis, and both made pilgrimages to tombs. In the case of Shi‘is these were to the shrines of the Imams and other figures from the House of Ali, such as the shrine of Fatima, the sister of the Imam Ali al-Rida at Qumm. In the same way that he attacked Shi‘i pilgrimages, he also attacked the Sufi practice of ziyarat al-qubur, literally ‘visiting the graves’. Individuals might merely visit the tomb in order to be close to the dead saint and to ask for his intercession. This was bad enough but there were also festivals, the annual moulids or celebrations of the saint’s life, which Sufi brotherhoods organised. These were joyful occasions for music, dancing and feasting which he abhored.
His view was that all Muslims who made intercessionary prayers should be declared unbelievers, a declaration called takfir. They had left Islam and were infidels. Their marriages to Muslim women should be dissolved, their property impounded, and their lives forfeited. He seems to have been most hostile to those groups, such as some Sufi brotherhoods, who made intercessionary prayers but at the same time observed the Sunni version of the Sharia scupulously. What he loathed above all was any attempt at compromise – to bring within the fold any strain of Islam that conflicted with his core beliefs.30 It is also noteworthy that his greatest ire seems to have been reserved for religious scholars who disagreed with him.31
One objection that many other Muslims would make to his teaching – both then and now – was: by what authority could he pronounce takfir? It was the gravest of charges to bring against a fellow Muslim, and should only be alleged if there was clear proof against the individual concerned. His assertion that he could do so led to widespread condemnation, and even to counter pronouncements of takfir against him. He was denounced by many of his contemporary religious scholars. Yet he was adamant that he could declare not only individuals but entire groups or communities as guilty of kufr or ‘unbelief’. The only requirement before pronouncing this dread sentence was that the apostates must first have had clear proofs taken from the Qur’an and presented to them, even if they failed to understand them.32
A test case seems to have arisen over a woman who publicly confessed to adultery. Although he tried to persuade her to retract her confession, when she refused he sentenced her to death by stoning, even though some other scholars declared that he did not have the authority to pronounce such a momentous sentence. Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab won, both on that occasion and on many others. Religious devotion was not a private matter. The Muwahhidun also had to be seen to act publicly in the ways required by their faith; it was their duty to correct others who were neglecting their religious observance, or performing it badly. As he put it himself, ‘a person’s Islam is not sound even if he practises tawhid of God and deserts polytheism unless he is hostile to polytheists and declares to them his hostility and hatred’.33
He had an additional quarrel with Shi‘is that went to the root of the differences between them and Sunnis. Echoing medieval scholars such as Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Ibn Taymiyyah, he found the Shi‘i rejection of the first three caliphs and the many Companions of the Prophet who had supported them as absolutely unacceptable, since this rejection extended to the greater part of the hadith, which was for Sunnis the main source material after the Qur’an for discerning the Sharia. In his view, as in that of the earlier scholars, this demolished the foundations of true Islam. He also attacked Shi‘is for disdaining Sunnis, practising taqiyya to hide their true beliefs, and indulging in forbidden practices like temporary, mut‘ah, marriages. Worst of all, Shi‘is had also subverted the teaching of the Qur’an. To hesitate over admitting they were unbelievers was itself an act of unbelief.34 In fact, they were worse in their unbelief than Christians and Jews who at least frankly admitted that they were not Muslims. By contrast, the Shi‘is claimed to be inside the tent of the Muslims, and risked undermining it from within.35
His aim was to recreate the Islam of the Prophet’s Companions and the devout men and women of the next generation who had had intimate contact with those who had known the Prophet well. The Shi‘i belief that most of the Companions had betrayed Ali meant that Shi‘is considered them to be utterly unacceptable as witnesses to the true Sunna of the Prophet. Wahhabism and Shi‘ism were therefore totally incompatible.
Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s doctrine was unswerving and rigid. But if compromise on matters of faith and the Sharia was impossible in his eyes, he sometimes showed a very pragmatic willingness to compromise when this was politically wise. He aimed to establish what the his modern biographer Michael Crawford has called ‘the regime of godliness’. And he succeeded in marrying his status as the teacher of godliness with the political power of the small emirate of the al-Saud family at Dir‘iyah in Nejd. This led to the start of a partnership that endures to this day. The emirate expanded. As it did so, it implemented the regime of godliness but would also often make expedient compromises. This meant that it failed to enforce the regime of godliness entirely to the satisfaction of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab and the religious sheikhs of the Wahhabi movement after his death, when its leadership was taken over by members of his family.
Nevertheless, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab taught that Muslims must give unconditional obedience to a ruler, no matter how tyrannical he might be, provided he upheld tawhid and the Sharia, and rejected heretical innovations. It was only if the ruler failed to do this and did not govern in accordance with the Qur’an and Sharia that rebellion became legitimate – in fact, a duty. In such circumstances the justification for revolt was that the ruler had made himself an idol. By contrast, the ruler who upheld tawhid as envisaged by Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab was entitled to the loyalty of the community, even if he acted oppressively. Tawhid and the regime of godliness thus united ruler and people. Any question of social justice was essentially irrelevant. It was not a concept that occurs in Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s teaching. The religious sheikhs would ensure religious conformity, and the warriors who fought for the ruler would enforce it.36 In the late twentieth century, when Saudi Arabia acquired previously unimaginable wealth, it would use its resources to spread Wahhabism across the Muslim world.
The expansion of the Saudi emirate started with Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab proclaiming jihad against those who opposed his teachings, and the taking of other small settlements in Nejd. This culminated in the seizure in 1773–74 of Riyadh, the capital of the emirate’s main local adversary. While jihad was preached to extend the emirate, rebellions against its authority were treated as ‘tantamount to apostasy’.37 There were few, if any, Shi‘is in Nejd, but as the emirate grew into what is now called the First Saudi State it took over many areas to the east with a substantial Shi‘i population. In 1794, the Wahhabis began an educational campaign to eradicate Shi‘ism from the areas of eastern Arabia that they had now conquered, even though up to three quarters of the population there were Twelvers. This was to be achieved through preaching, but the Wahhabi efforts met with little lasting success.
A few years later, in April 1802, Wahhabi warriors swept down on Karbala. They sacked and plundered the town and shrine, destroyed Hussein’s tomb, and massacred 2,000 people.38 At the same time, they pressed on into the Hejaz, where the local protector of the holy cities was the Sharif Ghalib, a descendant of the Prophet through Ali and Hasan. Although he was a Sunni who acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Sultan, the Wahhabis considered him to be a crypto-Shi‘i. In 1806–07 they took control of both Mecca and Medina. They also closed the routes for Ottoman pilgrimage caravans. These snubs would temporarily be the undoing of the Wahhabis, as it forced the Ottomans to react. As the Ottomans lacked the military resources to regain the Holy Cities themselves, they turned to the governor of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha. An Egyptian army under the capable command of his son, Ibra
him Pasha, now began a professional and very thorough campaign to regain control. It advanced into Nejd and reached Dir‘iyah in September 1818, where the Saudis made their last stand. The Egyptians destroyed the town with an artillery bombardment. Ibrahim Pasha had the leading Wahhabi religious scholar, Sheikh Suleyman, executed after taunting him by forcing him to listen to music: something that the strict Wahhabi interpretation of the Sharia outlawed. It seemed at the time that the world had heard the last of the Saudis and of the movement established by Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, but that would not be so.
In the nineteenth century, the worlds of Islam and the West would come into contact in an unprecedented way. Thoughtful Muslim religious reformers like the Iranian Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh, whom we will meet in the next chapter, would reflect on how Muslims could benefit from European thought while devoutly practising their faith and preserving their identity. As they learned about the Reformation that had set out to cleanse European Christianity, they pondered whether Islam needed its own Reformation in order to restore the religion to the purity that the Prophet had originally intended. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani even said that Islam needed its own Martin Luther figure. Later on, some Western observers would take up the idea, and even sometimes make comparisons between Islam in the modern world and Christianity in the Europe of the Reformation. One of the many things they overlooked was that in the eighteenth century Islam had already had a figure who could be said to have been its great Protestant Reformer. Progress of his ideas would be slow at first, but would then increase exponentially in the later twentieth century when it became financed by Saudi wealth. We would all do well to remember that the Thirty Years’ War and the horrific religious persections that disfigured Christianity in Europe were part and parcel of the Reformation. Those who say Islam needs its own Reformation should be careful what they wish for.