The Wahhabis - The Fanatical Reformists of Modern Islam.

3. The Wahhabis - The Fanatical Reformists of Modern Islam.

During the middle of the eighteenth-century a resurgence of Kharijite thinking surfaced in the Arabian Peninsula. Known as the Wahhabi movement after its founder Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, it swept over the lands of Arabia, laying waste shrines, tombs, minarets and other edifices considered incompatible with orthodox Islam as taught by Ibn Taymiya and, before him, the arch-conservative Ahmad ibn Hanbal. In 1806 the Wahhabis conquered Mecca and soon terrorised the Muslim peoples as the Kharijites had done more than a thousand years earlier. There were few limits to their extremism.


Not content with demolishing the mausoleums and the cupolas erected on the tombs, they replaced the silken veils covering the Ka'ba with common stuffs. At Medina they plundered the accumulated treasures of the tomb of Muhammad; but the local ulema had to send them fatwas justifying this audacity and alleging the use of the treasure in the interest of the Medinese population. For several years they plundered the Mekkan pilgrims and finally caused the cessation of the pilgrimage. (Lammens, Islam: Beliefs and Institutions, p.184).
Although they were subdued in due course by the Turks the Wahhabis exercised a fearful influence over the Muslim world around Arabia until the end of the nineteenth-century and the effects of this influence are felt to this day in the ultra-strict formalism of Saudi-Arabian Islam. (The ruling house of Saud, descended from the great Arabian ruler Ibn Saud, is Wahhabite in doctrine and origin).

During their heyday the Wahbabis emulated the Kharijites in declaring everything inconsistent with their ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam as heretical. Even the sheikhs of Mecca were forced to sign fatwas (religious decrees) admitting that they had lived as infidels prior to the Wahhabi "reforms".


The exaggerated, fanatical attitude to the sunna, even in quite trivial matters, is matched by a similar fanaticism towards bid'a. Modern Wabhabism follows the pattern of earlier times in striving to brand as bid'a not only anything contrary to the spirit of the sunna but also everything that cannot be proved to be in it. (Goldziber, Muslim Studies, Vol.2, p.34).

Their major tenets, as opposed to traditional Islam, are their rejection of ijma (consensus), believing that the Qur'an and Hadith are the sole sources of theology and doctrine (the Kharijites held similar views about the Qur'an - the Hadith had not yet been formulated in their time); that no prayer can be offered to any prophet or saint (thus the tomb of Muhammad in Medina is screened off to this day to prevent Muslims from praying to him - a practice Muhammad would undoubtedly have endorsed); that Muhammad will only obtain permission to intercede for the Muslims on the Last Day (the Sunnis believe he has this power already); that the mawlud (birthday) celebrations of Muhammad, the lesser festivals and all ceremonies around the tombs of the saints are abominable heresies (bid'ah - "heresy"); and that rosaries are also an innovation and should not be used to count the names of Allah.

The Wahhabis were hardly a sect in Islam but rather a puritanical reformist-movement, determined to rid the faith of quasi-Islamic practices and innovations introduced over the centuries and not sanctioned by Muhammad. The excessive zeal of the movement, however, and its opposition to mainstream Islam eventually ensured that its wings would be clipped. Nevertheless its influence is felt throughout the Muslim world in many forms so this day.