Jafar Shaikh Idris
Two Modern Accusations
The Wahhabi Movement Today
Some modern critics of ‘Abd Al-Wahhab accuse him of being a literalist, yet others say that he failed to distinguish between what is properly Islamic and what is merely Arabian. To what extent is this true?
a. Literalism
This term is used in a pejorative way by opponents of the fundamentalists, whether they be Christians or Muslims, to condemn their method of interpreting Scripture. But the method that is being condemned as literalist is, in fact, the method that all of us use most of the time in interpreting any discourse. How do we usually interpret what other people say? By giving the words and expressions they use, the meanings that are usually intended by them in contexts that are similar to the context in which they used those words and expressions. We deviate from this normal procedure only when it becomes clear to us that the speaker or writer whose words we are trying to understand did not, for some reason, use those words in the usual way we use them. Thus, it is only after we have interpreted a speaker's discourse in the so-called literalist way that we judge whether what he said was right or wrong, good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate, etc. This method is thus not peculiar to so-called fundamentalists. As a matter of fact, it is not peculiar to them even in the interpretation of Scripture, because even those who reject a religion start by interpreting its language in this so-called literalist way, and only then come to the conclusion that it is not acceptable to them.
So-called liberal interpretation is thus no more than self-deception, because the liberal starts by interpreting the statements of Scripture in this normal way that he calls literalist, but when he finds the meaning of a statement unacceptable to him or to his contemporary culture, he reinterprets it so as to make it more in tune with the requirements of his personal prejudices or the prejudices of his contemporary culture. But such a person will only be deceiving himself, even if the motive is to make the religion more acceptable to his contemporaries, because the religion that they accept after this new interpretation is not the original religion that is called Islam, or Christianity or Judaism, but a distorted form of it. He will, in fact, be inviting people to a religion of his own making, which he dishonestly attributes to God, or Jesus or Muhammad. God warns His Prophet against such distortion: "O Messenger! Convey that which was sent down to you from your lord, otherwise you will not be conveying His Message" [5:67].
This normal method of interpreting texts, which is said to be literalist, should not be confused with another method that is also sometimes described as literal, and which is indeed an irrational method. This is when the interpreter isolates the speaker's or writer's words from their context, especially in idiomatic phrases, or when he pays no attention to the special uses of words or phrases by a certain speaker or a certain community. But fundamentalists are not usually accused of this kind of literalism, since their main aim is to understand what is really meant by the words which they take to be words of God or of one of His true prophets. As a matter of fact, it is so-called liberals who resort to this kind of irrational interpretation.
b. Arabism.
This accusation is sometimes leveled against fundamentalists by some non-Muslim scholars, but it is leveled most of the time by modernist Muslims. Whenever the latter find something in Islam which they deem to be unsuitable for modern times, they are prone to say that it is merely a facet of Arab culture that found its way into Islam through the Arab ‘ulama.
But the fact of the matter is that most of what these modernists dismiss as merely Arab culture was in fact a culture that the Arabs adopted after the advent of Islam, and because of it. It is a fact, though it might seem paradoxical, that nothing is more similar to contemporary secular culture than the purely Arab culture that was prevailing before the advent of Islam. It is that culture which Islam condemned as jahiliyyah (ignorance) and which it replaced with a culture based on true moral values. And it is this jahili culture which fundamentalists like ‘Abd Al-Wahhab fight against whenever they see it recurring.
In that jahili culture women used to mix freely with men, as they do now. They used to dress in the same way as women in the secular societies now dress, i.e., exposing many parts of their bodies; they would even sometimes go in the nude. It was only after the advent of Islam that it became the custom for Arab women to spend most of their time at home, to cover their bodies, and to keep away from men. But you will now find some who tells you that the hijab (women's Islamic dress, covering the head and the body) is an Arab custom, and not an Islamic requirement.
The Wahhabi Movement Today
Jafar Shaikh Idris
15618 Reads
Contents
The Islamic Fundamentalism of the Wahhabi Movement
Islamic Fundamentalism: Towards a Definition.
Characteristics of ‘Abd Al-Wahhab's Fundamentalism
Tawhid, or Islamic Monotheism
Two Modern Accusations
The Wahhabi Movement Today
Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said that after every hundred years, God sends people to the Muslim nation to revive the religion. Sheikh Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd Al-Wahhab is considered to be one such revivalist, the revivalist of his century, the twefth Islamic century. A revivalist, or renewer (mujaddid), is by definition not an innovator. He does not come with anything substantially new. His task is only to take people of his time back to the true religion and explicate it for them in a manner and in a language they can understand and appreciate. It is for this reason that many of those who accept Sheikh Ibn ‘Abd Al-Wahhab as an imam (leader) and a mujaddid (renewer) - and there are hundreds of them now in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Muslim World - are averse to being called Wahhabis, because this might give the impression that they are following some special teachings or doctrines which were of Ibn ‘Abd Al-Wahhab's making.
The so-called Wahhabi ‘ulama do not really follow any special teachings of Ibn ‘Abd Al-Wahhab, but only his call for going back to the fundamental sources of the Islamic religion. This is amply demonstrated in their attitude towards his writings. They read them, but not necessarily all of them; they do not confine themselves to them, but go to the original sources whence he got his teachings, and to the earlier great scholars who helped him shape his views and teachings; they do not confine themselves to the problems which he tackled, but deal with the problems of their times, each in his own manner and style. While having great deference for him, they do not hesitate to differ with him on some points. But this in itself is a good measure of the success of Ibn ‘Abd Al-Wahhab's movement.
Footnotes:
1 "In the 1830s and 1840s a great deal of excitement was generated in the United States by expectations of the Second Advent of Christ and an ensuing thousand years of of peace (the "millennium") Micropaedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1992.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Alan Bullock, et al., The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, second edition, 1990, London.
[4] Fath al-Bari, Vol. 1: 127.
[5] Unless otherwise indicated, the source of all quotes from the Sheikh's writings is volume 1 of the collection of his works, called, Mu‘alafat al-Shaykh Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd Al-Wahhab, Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh,
[6] p. 399.
[7] p. 200.
[8] p. 25.
[9] p. 189.
[10] A.J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted, George Allen and Unwin, 1955.
[11] Arberry, (with minor changes).
[12] op. cit., p. 25.
[13] loc. cit.
[14] It is for this reason that in Saudi Arabia the oath of allegiance is foumulated in a way that takes account of this important Islamic fact: ...I pledge allegiance to God, then to my king and my country, and to obey my superiors, except in matters of disobedience (to God).
[15] 5:44.
[16] p. 377f.
[17] 108:2.
[18] p. 35.
[19] Arberry and A. Y. Ali, The Holy Qur'an, English Translation of the Meanings and Commentary (with minor changes).
[20] p. 398f.
[21] p. 190.
[22] Arberry.
[23] Al-Shaykh Sulayman Ibn ‘Abd Allah Ibn Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd Al-Wahhab,Taysir al-‘Aziz al-Hamid fi Sharhi Kitabi al-Tawhid. Al-Maktab al-Islami, Beirut, 1988, pp. 636, 645ff.
source: islamic awakening
