It began in the 19th century as a reform movement in Najd in central Arabia. By the late 20th century, Wahhabism had degenerated into a police theocracy and the near co-ruler of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The great founder of the Kingdom, Abdel-Aziz Al-Saud, with an eye on legitimating his family's authority over a Kingdom of five parts, reached an agreement with the descendants of Abdel-Wahhab, the reformist founder of Wahhabism. The Saudis would rule the new state, and the Wahhabi sheikhs would oversee religious affairs. The Saudi family kept its bargain, including funding Wahhabism. The Wahhabis kept on interpreting Islam narrowly and their authority expansively. What began as an Islamic reform movement praised by the then sheikh of Al-Azhar, Mohamed Abdu, ended up becoming a monstrous creature at which Al-Azhar itself feels the jitters. When 9/11 happened, the majority of the criminal attackers of America were Saudi nationals, leading to intense concern abroad about the dangers of Wahhabism. Several books reflected this global unease, including an important book by scholar Natana Delong-Bas entitled Wahhabism Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (2004). Like others, this book raises a central question: “How can contemporary extremists like Osama Bin Laden (a Saudi national) use Ibn Abd Al-Wahab's ideology to justify global jihad?” The founder of Wahhabism in his writings never made jihad an individual burden. He stressed the legal justifications of the one who is to carry out jihad, under what circumstances, and for what purposes. The departure of his successors from that narrow and restrictive interpretation of jihad (self-policing and the right to national self-defence within national borders) created an atmosphere and circumstances contributing to world-wide Islamophobia. Wahhabism did not create the Islamic State (IS) group. But it availed it of an incubator in which its poisonous ideology grew, threatening Islam and Saudi Arabia itself. Of course, it is ridiculous for the US Congress to adopt legislation enabling the families of the victims of 9/11 to sue the government of Saudi Arabia for reparations. This is a legal monstrosity. There is no way an attorney of any of these families could produce probative proof that officials of the Kingdom conspired with the criminals of 9/11 to strike the US. I was tempted to offer my services as a defence attorney myself to deflate such outrageous claims. But I curbed my enthusiasm. This issue of official Saudi culpability is expected to go nowhere. But it does not mitigate the burden by which Wahhabism is dragging Islam and the ruling family of Saudi Arabia into unpredictable directions. That is because Wahhabism is caricaturing the faith of 1.7 billion Muslims, causing people like Republican Party presidential elections candidate Donald Trump to call for a ban on the entry of Muslims to America, stimulating the rise of the European right against immigrants, and causing all Muslims in the diaspora to remain on the defensive. A case in point regarding the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam is the case against the Saudi preacher Ahmed Al-Ghamdi that was exposed in a lengthy article in the New York Times on 11 July. It was authored by journalist Ben Hubbard, a staff reporter (and a Christian) writing from Jeddah under the title of “Secrets of the Kingdom: Into the Heart of Wahhabism.” I shall track his main findings, in order to offer a rebuttal based on Islamic Law to the responses which that fair-minded journalist uncovered for a global audience. From the contrast between what Hubbard was told and the rules of Islamic jurisprudence which I teach as a law professor in New York City, the reader might perceive the gulf between the Sharia and the Wahhabi interpretation of Sharia. As we embark on this comparison, let us note that Islamic Law derives from the Quran, the authenticated traditions of the Prophet Mohamed in word and conduct, and ijtihad (the application of common sense by Islamic experts to issues where there is no text). In addition, Islamic Law is modifiable or supplemented by legislation, or man-made law. The lack of understanding of this mix has led 38 states from the 50 American states to ban in their state courts the mere mention of Sharia. This legal error stems directly from Wahhabi practices or advocacy through supported madrasas (schools) and other institutions throughout the world. Further damage inflicted by Wahhabis had led the US to ban the import of copies of the Quran into the US. This was a retaliation measure against the Saudi ban on the import of Bibles into the Kingdom. Wahhabism has also led to the banning of the construction of minarets in Switzerland and protests by American communities against the construction of mosques. It has caused police informants in America to infiltrate mosques to monitor sermons, and the institution by American congressman Peter King of congressional hearings on Muslim cooperation with the FBI and other law-enforcement agents. Thus, Wahhabism is a main source for the world fear of Islam. It has created a mythical linkage between Islam as a faith and jihadism as global terror.
THE AL-GHAMDI CASE: Ahmed Qassim Al-Ghamdi has worked most of his adult life for the Saudi Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, a Wahhabi religious police organisation. Now he is in self-imposed retirement, fearing the threat of torture for daring to question the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. A top member of the Saudi religious establishment, sheikh Saleh Al-Luhaidan, has addressed the Al-Ghamdi matter. As if instructing the state on how to handle Al-Ghamdi's progressive views, he issued this threat: “There is no doubt this man is bad. It is necessary for the state to assign someone to summon and torture him.” This is a Khomeini-style call for violence against a Muslim scholar, Al-Ghamdi, who through his resort to the traditions of the Prophet Mohamed is perceived as an apostate. Backing up this threat for daring to stand up to a distorted Wahhabism, another Saudi religious leader described Al-Ghamdi as “troubled and confused.” “He is not really a sheikh,” he said, though he has a doctorate in Sharia. But there is a host of indicators that it is the religious Wahhabi establishment, the state within the state, which is the most troubled and confused. First, there is the non-admission of the existence of “Wahhabism.” For them, this term is called “true Islam,” a form of takfirism (apostasy) in reverse. It is as if the rest of the Muslim world, which does not follow Wahhabi practices, is on the wrong path. Flowing from this draconian non-recognition of any other religious practices are consequences including the suppression of Shiism in Saudi Arabia, the adoption of the non-Islamic term of “infidel” as descriptive of the entire non-Muslim sphere of humanity, and un-Islamic attempts to proselytise world-wide. Second, there is the forbidding of the mixing of men and women unless they are related by marriage or blood. The Arabic term for gender mixing in Wahhabism is ikhtilat. The wall between men and women is thus built in the workplace, in schools, in restaurants and in nearly every sphere of human activity beyond the walled homes of family life. This form of gender-based apartheid has led, among other things, to the denial of women's rights – a full black cover from head to toe, except for slits for seeing, a prohibition on car driving, and no travel without a husband's permission. This is not all. There are also the arranged or enforced marriages, including for girls not yet of age. There is a ban on wearing make-up, unless unseen in public. There is unequal pay. There is non-access to the courts except through male representation. In spite of this regime of anti-female darkness, the Wahhabis bold-facedly dispute the obvious and deny that Saudi women are deprived of basic human rights. Third, there are restrictions on commercial activities. These include the enforced closure of shops during the times of prayers and the regulation of women's clothing in shops. There are the awful textbooks for grade school children, instructing them from their tender years that Christmas and Thanksgiving are forbidden, that celebrations of birthdays are to be avoided, and that music, dance and such arts are haram, meaning religiously forbidden. Jihad, they claim, is the calling of every Muslim, and Islam, if not observed in the Wahhabi manner, will unravel, leading to the destruction of society. All of these and more are close-minded interpretations of Islamic Law as derived from the Quran and the Sunna. They are the selective and desert-bound deductions of the descendants of the family of Abdel-Wahab. Turning now to the criminal justice system in Wahhabi-land, requiring a direct nexus to the Quran, the prophet's traditions, and ijtihad, we now stand on booby-trapped ground. A booby trap is an explosive device designed to be triggered when an unsuspecting victim touches or disturbs a seemingly harmless object. So it is with the cases of public beheadings, cutting off of limbs, public floggings and stoning for suspected adultery in the kingdom. These are all forms of corporal punishment said to be prescribed as Hudud Allah (God's limitations, meaning criminal sanctions decreed in the Quran). This is a whole construction that suffers from the exclusion of modifiers provided by secular legislation, a rich history of Sharia premised upon being pro the defendant, and the practice of the Enlightened Caliphs (the first four successors of the Prophet Mohamed). Number Two of the latter, namely the caliph Omar, refused to accept the admission of a malfeasant who had committed theft. The Quran itself makes proving adultery impossible as it calls for four witnesses actually perceiving the act of penetration. Then there is the all-inclusive Islamic adage of “pardon,” or forgiveness by an authority, and even by the blood relatives of a murder victim. The deep dungeon in which Wahhabism has descended is its denial of the great label attached to Sharia since the inception of Islam. That label is that “Sharia is fit for every time and every place.” How? Due to its adaptability to changing circumstances. Evolution is the heart of survival. When Amr Ibn Al-As invaded Egypt in the 7th century CE during the reign of the caliph Omar, he was armed with Omar's instructions not to interfere with the Christian Orthodox practices of the Coptic population, to safeguard their churches and property, and not to force Islam upon them. That is true Islam, not that as defined by the Wahhabis, whose “charitable contributions” have funded jihadism and whose restrictive ways of life have contributed to Islamophobia world-wide. Countering the heavy damage perpetrated by Wahhabism as a cult, the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation, and Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) group as criminal gangs whose crimes were seen in Nice on 14 July, the call has come from Egypt for “a religious revolution.” Al-Azhar in Cairo was put in charge. And before Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi assumed Egypt's presidency, the secular Constitution of 2014 was vocal on these issues. Article 2 of that constitution, which supplanted the Islamist Constitution of 2012 from the dark era of former president Mohamed Morsi, stipulated that “Sharia is the principal source of legislation.” This is a call for a “broad construction” because it does not provide for Sharia to be the only source of legislation, and it provides for the common sense construction that legislation cannot nullify general principles of the Quran. This is bolstered by Article 3 of the constitution whose language tracks that of Article 2. Article 3 states that “the principles of legislation for Egyptian Christians and Jews regarding their personal status (ie family law, inheritance and the like) and their choice of spiritual leaders derive from their own religious practices,” which is a constitutional recognition of the sanctity of Judaism and Christianity. You do not see the face of Wahhabism in such provisions in the constitution of Egypt, which is home to one third of all Arabs.
RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION: Such Egyptian constitutional pillars are the foundations on which rest the religious revolution spearheaded by the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed Al-Tayeb, a graduate of the Sorbonne. Its ideology runs counter to jihadism and counter to Wahhabism. In Abuja, Nigeria, in March 2016 Al-Tayeb declared that “we believe that all revealed religions are from God” and that ignoring this faith in all faiths has produced “the poisonous fruit of hate for Islam among the adherents of other religions.” “Islam, in the language of the Quran, is a term which does not refer to a particular faith. It is the name common to a collective faith which has been advocated by all the prophets,” he said. The Quran states “We gave him [Jesus] the Scripture in which was guidance and light, and confirming what was before it of the Torah, and a guidance and an admonition for the pious” (chapter V, verse 46). Later in March, Al-Tayeb stood before the Bundestag in Berlin to press on with the ideology of “the religious revolution.” He declared that “it is not true what is said about Islam as a religion of combat. The term ‘sword' is not mentioned even once in the Quran.” Jihad includes “every effort designed to serve the needs of the community,” he said, adding that Muslims living in Europe “should become a part of the European fabric.” Women in Islamic Law are “full partners with men in rights and obligations... Islam is not the cause for the marginalisation of women. Her marginalisation is the result of adhering to decrepit customs having nothing to do with Islam,” he added. In May, on the eve of Ramadan, a holy month made bloody by jihadism in Muslim countries like Turkey, Bangladesh and Iraq, Al-Tayeb declared in Paris that “it is wrong for some who pretend to speak in the name of Islam or Muslims to distance themselves from the Europeans.” Then he advocated “positive integration,” whereby Muslims in Europe should espouse their new societies. Here he cited the Charter of Medina issued by the Prophet Mohamed. Calling it “the first constitution known to mankind,” it advocates equality before the law in rights and obligations for all citizens regardless of diversity of faith or ethnicity, he said. Where is Wahhabism in these universal principles of Islam advocated by the Rector of Al-Azhar, which was established more than 1,000 years ago? Nowhere when the religious police in Saudi Arabia knock on the doors of the homes of citizens to check upon their daily life; nowhere in the plethora of religious fatwas (religious opinions) calling for the death of Mickey Mouse; nowhere in the Wahhabi opposition to the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia because women are allowed to study with men on the same campus; nowhere when a fatwa is issued by a cleric declaring false eyelashes for women to be sinful; nowhere when another fatwa is issued against “all you can eat buffets;” and nowhere when the “Council of Grand Islamic Scholars” in Saudi Arabia is allowed to issue anti-social decrees making the exit of citizens to countries abroad a respite from a suffocating atmosphere of enforced and retrograde conformity. In all of this, one has to distinguish between Saudi Arabia as a state and Saudi Arabia as Wahhabi land. But Wahhabism, as a near cult, is a crushing burden, not only on Islam, but also on the Kingdom itself. For how can Saudi Arabia, with its unlimited potential for growth and prosperity, catch up with a world, including America, which is now exploring the planet Jupiter? Al-Ghamdi is now in the centre of a whirlwind for daring to discover the simple truth about Muslim society during the time of the Prophet of Islam: namely that ikhtilat (mixing men with women) was common. Women sat at the Prophet's councils and even disagreed with him at times. Here is some advice for Wahhabism, whose excesses are now being partially curtailed by the state. If the form of woman's body causes you to be excited, don't get a fatwa. Get a psychiatrist. You need help. The false assumption of the appearance of virtue is also a sin in Islam. But you can travel to Cairo, where belly-dancing is an integral part of public entertainment, gyrating on the same soil where Shajarat Al-Durr (The Tree of Pearls), a beautiful woman who ruled over Egypt in the 13th century CE, once lived. The Seventh Crusade ended with diplomatic dealings with her as a Muslim queen. In their own peculiar ways, the Wahhabis have tribalised Islam. Thus it is out of the question for them to understand “the new normal,” meaning, in this context, what journalist David Brooks in the New York Times of 15 July eloquently posited. He said that “morality is not based on loyalty to people close to you. It is based on a universal equality for all humans everywhere.” This is the core of Islam. Its primary source, the Quran, begins most of its verses by addressing itself to “the people” (al-nas), meaning all the people and all of humanity not only the segment which calls itself “Muslim.” It explains what sheikh Mohamed Abdu, the great Islamic reformer of the 19th and 20th centuries, told Egyptian reporters upon his return to Alexandria from Paris. Asked how he had found the West, his iconic answer was that “in the West, I found Islam. But here in the East, I find only Muslims.” For France, now the target of three major terrorist attacks within the last 18 months, counting the massacre in Nice on Bastille Day, has long been the incubator of Islamic reform. Its liberties gave it the oxygen which it sorely lacks in its birthplace.
The writer is a professor of law at New York University in the US.
