Why wahhabism is wrong

A skirmish with Dagestani police led Basayev and Khattab to invade Dagestan that was fiercely resisted by the overwhelming majority of Dagestanis. Two weeks later on the day Basayev's forces were driven from Dagestan, the Dagestani People's Assembly outlawed Wahhabism. Ordinary Wahhabis were viewed as traitors and pariahs, and Wahhabi leaders were arrested or driven into hiding.

Impoverished residents of rural villages found in Wahhabism clarity and ideological simplicity. It was a refreshing contrast to, and cut through the cumbersome and often costly, pseudo-traditions of North Caucasian Islam. Wahhabism also spread through relatively prosperous villages that found in its Puritanism an organizational power for the preservation of their civic conventions and traditional morality against degenerative influences of the media, mass culture, individualism and liberalism.

Wahhabite rejection of political authority lent them an opportunity to free themselves from the bureaucratic constraints and political corruption of state officials. The negative political significance of the Wahhabis is greater than their numbers would suggest. The reasons for its initial appeal to many Dagestanis, and the reasons for its ultimate repudiation, suggest strategies for its management elsewhere in the Eurasian crescent.

The Wahhabite critique of traditional clergy not only increased mutual enmity, but also had a radicalizing effect upon the otherwise mild traditionalists. Dagestan's Wahhabites built their own mosques and Islamic schools. They operated a satellite uplink through which they communicated with one another, and with their supporters abroad.

Dagestani Wahhabism received considerable financial support from the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in the Islamic world several years prior to the war in Chechnya. Indeed, Dagestani authorities have accused Islamic fundamentalist groups in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia of launching a jihad in Dagestan.

Reform movements advocating major doctrinal changes are always likely to be threatening to those who resist any change of the existing status quo. In addition, over the years Wahhabism has acquired a political dimension that has been threatening to a broad spectrum of people. In order to understand what Wahhabism is and is not, therefore, one must look both at what it actually advocates as a religious reform movement and what political implications have evolved since its founding.

For example, he condemned intercessional prayers tawassul to Muslim saints and viewed pilgrimages to their tombs as heresy. He preached that the only valid intercession was to the one true God.

Its founder, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, was a religious reformer, not a political ideologue. Although its religious content has not changed since its inception, political implications of Wahhabism were present from the start.

For the Najdi tribesmen who engaged in tribal warfare as a way of life, Wahhabism gave traditional warfare a higher moral purpose and justification. Under him, Wahhabism became the vehicle for legitimizing the Al Saud regime. From that day to this, it has been the political ideology of the Saudi state.

It's named after its founder, theologian Mohamed ibn Abdul Wahhab, who was born in the 18th century in what is now Saudi Arabia. Wahhab advocated a return to a "purer" form of Islam, focusing on its origins and the absolute sovereignty of God. That means banning the cult of saints and forbidding tobacco, alcohol and shaving. Their mosques are plain and public prayer attendance is strictly enforced. Wahhabism is extensively practised in Saudi Arabia, but has since spread. The term Wahhabism is often seen as derogatory — followers were first called it by their opponents.

Many therefore prefer to call themselves salafis, in reference to the salaf — the first, second and third generation of people who lived at the time of the Prophet Muhammad.

Others just call themselves Muslims, although, as The Independent says, this implies that "Muslims who do not share their particular interpretation of Islam are not proper Muslims at all ". In , Muslims in Britain estimated that 8. Wahhabism ensured its modern-day survival largely through gaining the support of the Saudi royal family.

The movement has a longstanding alliance with the family dating back to and helping to found the first Saudi State, the BBC reports. In the family saw its tactical use as part of an anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan and encouraged young Muslim men to travel there to fight a jihad against the Russians. The Saudis began spending heavily on mosques, propaganda and teaching in order to spread the creed.

Despite the Saudis' approach to historical artifacts and sites, this area is an open-air museum today. Saudi emirs accepted the defeat and Ottoman rule as Riyadh district governors. However, with the help of the British forces during a power vacuum, they reclaimed Hejaz and all of Arabia in Soon after, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded and the namesake great-grandson of Abd al-Aziz who had rebelled years ago was declared king.

By becoming king, Abd al-Aziz avenged his grandfather who was hanged in Istanbul a century ago. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia won the support of the U. Wahhabism, which is known as the Salafi Movement, is the official sect of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Imams and Muslim judges belong to Wahhabism and they are guided by the views of Ibn Taymiyyah in their decisions.

Since Ibn Taymiyyah used to belong to the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam, people tend to think that the Saudi Kingdom also belongs to this sect. However, the four sects of Ahl us-Sunnah are not accepted in this country.

The government of Saudi Arabia has adopted a more moderate policy. Now, Wahhabism is spread through the press and education systems. The organization opens Islamic centers all over the world and sends religious people to these places in order to spread Wahhabism.

These types of organizations have been growing stronger every day and can now be found from the Balkans to the Caucasus, Africa to India. They especially target Muslim countries that do not have social or financial power.