Reordering Islamic orthodoxy: Muhammad ibn 'Abdul Wahhāb

Muslim World

Volumn 92, Issue 3-4, 2002, Pages 333-370

  Haj, Samira ^a  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 31544441876     PISSN: 00274909     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-1913.2002.tb03747.x     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Von Grunebaum says: "except for certain backward looking reform movements, such as Wahhabism, theology as such has been barren for a number of centuries . . ." Gustave Edmund Von Grunebaum, Modern Islām: The Search for Cultural Identity (Berkeley. University of California Press, 1966), 223
2. See also H. A. R. Gibb in Modern Trends in Islam (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1947) affirms the view that the movement is puritanical and violent for he describes the Wahhabis as having a "violently hostile attitude towards the other orthodox schools, crossed in fact if not in theory, the line separating orthodoxy from heresy," 35
3. Gibb, Modern Trends, 27
4. An exception to this scholarship is Talal Asad's "The Limits of Religious Criticism in the Middle East" in Genealogies of Religion (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press), 200-236
5. Henri Laoust argues that ibn Taymiyya's notion of grace is founded on the Platonic notion that evil is a contingent act, a mere accident, and not an essential part of God's creation and that it is through His Mercy and Grace that God protects his creation from evil. See Henri Laoust, Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques d'Ibn Taymiyya (Paris:), 514-20
6. and Les schismes dans l'Islam (Paris: Payot, 1965), 321-32
7. W. Montgomery Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1962): "Its clearest dependence on ibn Taymiyya is in its attack on the cult of saints and in its general insistence on a return to the purity of original Islām. For the most part it is concerned largely with externals, like much of Islamic religious thought. It shows no interest in the methodology of ibn Taymiyya . ..," 145
8. Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Her diesis is that while the conception of the activity of intellect and thought are strikingly different between the modern and the premodern, the idea of creativity itself remained essentially the same. Both express intricate reasoning and original discovery. She also challenges the distinction often drawn between "oral" and "literate" societies. Learning by hearing and reciting aloud, she argues, should not be confused with ignorance of reading and "illiteracy." The privileging of memory in certain cultures should be addressed independent of "orality" and "literacy" as these terms came to be defined in the social sciences of today. For it is misleading "to speak of literacy culture as a version of literacy at all, the reason is that this concept privileges the physical artifacts, the writing-support over the social and composition by an author and its reception by an audience," 11
9. The concept of an "Islamic tradition" is taken from Talal Asad, "The Idea of an Anthropology of Islām," Occasional Papers Series (Washington DC: Georgetown, University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, 1986a)
10. Alisdaire MacIntyr, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 222. The oppositional representations of "Traditional vs. Modern," as they relate to Islamic discourses, is also criticized by Talal Asad in "The Idea of an Anthropology of Islām." He critiques the dichotomy of tradition (religious and non-rational) and modernity (rational and secular) by arguing against interpretations of modern Islām as "traditional" or as: "reactions to the forces of modernity - that in contemporary conditions of crisis, tradition in the Muslim World is a weapon, a ruse, a defense against a threatening world, that it is an old cloak for new aspirations and borrowed styles of behavior." (15)
11. A very useful analysis of tajdīd and islāh is that of John O. Voll's "Renewal and Reform in Islamic History: Tajdid and Islah" in John Esposito, ed. Voices of Resurgent Islām (New York: Oxford University Press), 32-45
12. see also Fazluh Rahman, "Revival and Reform in Islām" in Cambridge History of Islām, eds. Holt, Lambton, and Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), v. 2: 632-42
13. Ahmad Dallai, "The Origins and Objectives of Islamic Revivalist Thought," in Journal of Oriental and American Studies, Feb. 1, 1995. According to Dallal's new research, reformist ideas did not originate in the eighteenth century as there were several important reformers in the seventeenth century, as well
14. A. Vasil'ev, The History of Saudi Arabia (London, Saqi Books, 1998)
15. See MacIntyre, After Virtue, ch. 14
16. Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1988), ch. 3, 4 & 6 and Asad, Genealogies of Religion, ch. 6
17. Al-Jlayned, dar' t'arudh al-'aql wal-naql (Cairo: Matābi' al-Ahrām al-Tijāriyya, 1985), 42-56
18. Fazluh Rahman, Islām (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1979), 132-34
19. See Marshall Hodgson, Venture of Islām (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1974), vol. 1, 241
20. Some view his work as "a synthesis or of conciliation" of the three approaches that dominated religious knowledge then: that of the speculative theology, which accentuated reason ('aql), the traditionalist, which highlighted Hadīth (naql) and Sufism with its stress on the will (irāda). His doctrine "provides authority, within the framework of Holy Writ and of tradition, for the widest possible scope in the personal interiorization of religion." The Encyclopedia of Islamica (Leiden: Leiden Brill, 1960), 954
21. Husayn ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh najd (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 1985), 211. The quote is from a letter written to 'Abdallah ibn Muhammd ibn 'Abd Al-latif, an alleged critic. For the letter begins: "We have received several letters from your camp that harshly disavow and criticize me, and since it has been told that you have participated in composing these letters, I feel obligated to respond to you since I also believe you are a good man . . . and have the reputation of standing against wrongdoing," 209. A brief note on Tārīkb nājd. This was originally composed of two volumes under the title of Rawdat al-afkār wal-afhām li-murtād bal al-imām wa-ti'dād gbazawāt dhawī al-islām, by Shaykh Hussain ibn Ghannam, who was a close companion and a follower and was commissioned by ibn 'Abdul Wahhāb to record the events of the period and collect his papers and correspondence. The original work as well as the edited and revised versions of it include a series, twenty-eight in all, of ibn 'Abdul Wahhāb's correspondence with both his supporters and critics. They shed an interesting light on the debate with his contemporaries and as such are a useful historical source
22. For a discussion of the difference between "freedom from" and "freedom to" in Western liberalism, see Isaiah Berlin's famous essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty" in Four Essays on Liberty (London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1969)
23. Ibn 'Abdul Wahhab, Kitāb al-tawhīd (Cairo: Dār al-Ma'ārif, 1974), 10
24. Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qur' ān al-'azīm (Beirut: Maktaba al-'asriyya, 1984), v. 3, 33-39. A caveat: I use ibn Kathīr's tafsīr because ibn 'Abdul Wahhāb mentioned ibn Kathīr's name on several occasions and not the names of other exegetes
25. T. J. Winter, tr., al-Ghazali on Disciplining the Soul (Cambridge: The Islamic Text Society, 1995), Introduction, xxv
26. L. Gardet, Encyclopedia of Islām, subheadings islām and imān
27. In response to the question of whether islām is the same as imān, ibn 'Abdul Wahhab says: "islām is the outer action, while imān is inner action (fal-islām al-'amal al-dhāhira, wal-imān al-'amal al-bātina) . . . imān is higher than islām, but the truth of the matter is that imān truly necessitates islām (al-imān yastalzim al-islām qata'an, wa'-amma al-islam fa-qad yastalzimuhu wa-qad la-yastalzimuhu" This is quoted from al-mas'ala (no. 15) in Ibn Ghannam, Tarikh najd, 446
28. Most Hanbalis, ibn 'Abdul Wahhāb included, base their analysis of faith with some variation on Ahmed ibn Hanbal's principal explanation that "faith is utterance (qawl), act ('amal) and right intention (niyya)" In the Musnad, ibn Hanbal also defines the difference between islām and imān as follows: "Islām is external, faith belongs to the heart." See Ahmed ibn Hanbal, al-Musnad ahl-al-Bayt, (Beirut: Muassar al-Kutub al-Thaqāfiyah, 1988)
29. Wilfred Cantwell Smith demonstrates in Faith and Belief (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974) that faith is not belief and that "the recent Western confusion between them is itself an aberration," 9, 35. The term "belief" as explained by W. C. Smith is not in reference to Christian belief, for he also would maintain that even in the context of Christianity, "faith" is the more appropriate term to employ rather than "belief."
30. See also his On Understanding Islām (Hague; New York: Mouton, 1981)
31. Smith, Faith and Belief, 44-5
32. W. C. Smith, Faith and Belief, 43
33. L. Gardet, Encyclopedia of Islām. Gardet and Laoust argue that iklhās, as a quality of inner excellence, is a notion that emerged out of the Sufi tradition and was later integrated into the dominant Sunni discourses by such prominent theologians as al-Ghazali and ibn Taymiyya. But in Sufism the notion of ikhlās, as a necessary stage in the soul's search for union with God, refers primarily to inner purity and not outer activity. This is what ibn 'Abdul Wahhāb was critical of, the favoring of inner faith over outer conduct. This separation between inner faith and outer action is what caused the deviation from the true path of religion. See his treatise, Usul al-imān (Cairo: al-Matba'ah al-Salafiyya wa Maktabatuhā, 196?), where he maintained that the absence of ikhlās is what differentiates a muslim from a kāfir
34. On Understanding Islām, 240-241. Implicit in this interpretation is the view that Islām is more pragmatic and practical and hence less "intellectual" than Christianity which tends to be doctrinal and theological. This interpretation, I suggest, is problematic since it assumes a duality that is inapplicable and inappropriate to [pre]modern times, Islamic or Christian. This criticism is best illuminated in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, Which Justice, What Rationality (Notre Dame: Indiana University Press, 1988)
35. and Mary Carrathures, The Book of Memory. The latter work describes how the process of writing and thinking, being fundamentally memorial and not documentary, involved the training of the whole body, body, soul, and mind. In this manner, the creative process differs from our modern comprehension of it as a mental exercise that involves the making of detached doctrinal statements. Carruthers describes how Thomas Aquinas' creativity involved deep concentration "often approaching a trance-like state in which he did not feel physical pain," and how thinking or "Cogitatio is not as our phrase 'reasoning out' (with its emphasis on logical connections) but as 'mulling over,' a process that depends heavily on free association and one's "feeling for" a matter, 6; 201
36. It is of importance to recognize that the separation of thought and feeling or "reason" and "faith" is currently questioned even the West. See William E. Connolly, Why I am not a Secularist? (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2000)
37. Ibn Kathīr, tafsīr, v. 3: 234
38. Lisān al-'Arab. Ibn 'Abdul Wahhāb discusses kufr al-nifāq in Kashf al-shubuhāt in Mu' alafāt al-Shaykh al-Imām Muhammad ibn 'Abdul Wahhāb (al-Riyad: Jām'iat al-Imam Muhammad ibn Saud al-Islamiyya, 1976), v. 1, 153-181
39. and Ibn Kathīr's tafsīr were consulted for the usage and meaning of these terms. W. C. Smith, Faith and Belief has also informed this analysis
40. Muhammad Asad, Message of the Qur'ān (London: The Message of the Qur'ān (Dār al-Andalus, London; Distributors, Brill, 1980), 354, 104
41. Ibn Kathīr, tafsīr, v. 13, 452. The term burhan 'aqli as employed by ibn Kathīr means to give a convincing reasoned proof but should not be confused with modern rationality based on the scientific method of reasoning. In the same way it is incorrect to correlate this form of burhān to instinct
42. See also Fazluh Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'ān (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1994, c. 1989), 73-7
43. Kitāb al-tawhīd, 28. Ibn Ghannām reports different tales that include: "a male date palm at the little town of al-Fida' was sought by women who had waited in vain to be wedded, they would embrace the trunk of the tree and cry out 'o male palm of the palms, I desire a husband before I become barren' (ya fahl al-fuhūl, urīdu zawjan qabla al-haul)." Ibn Ghannām, Tārīkh najd, 15
44. See also Kitāb al-tawhīd, in particular, the addendum attached to ch. 9, 57-8
45. also ibn Hasan, Abdul Rahmān, fath al-majīd ft-sharh kitāb al-tawhīd (Beirut, Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya, 1957)
46. I say "for the most part" because of abrogation, that is, when one Qur'anic verse repeals another. The same approach applies to Hadīth. In the latter, prophetic reports are probed and scrutinized on the basis of the authenticity of the transmitters and the modes of their transmission. This process of probing led in turn to the classification of these reports in accordance with their epistemic value. See Wael B. Hallaq, A History of Islamic legal theories: an Introduction to Sunni Usul al-fiqh (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
47. He also cites another by Ibn 'Abbās who reported that the Prophet-saas-condemned women visiting the graves, as well as the men, who set up mosque and lights over them. Kitāb al-tawhīd, 21, 103
48. Ibn 'Abdul Wahhāb recognizes that when Banī umayya incorporated 'Āisha's quarter into the mosque, it was not intended for the exaltation of the Prophet but merely to expand the space surrounding the mosque
49. Ibn 'Abdul Wahhāb refutes the claim on two accounts: first, it is founded on weak Hadīth (burhān da'if), and second, this claim has already been rejected bil-ijmā' (consensus) by the four theological schools
50. Abu al-Mā'ali Mahmūd Shukrī al-Alūsī, Ghāyat al-amanī fī al-radd 'ala al-Nabahanī (al-Iskandariyya: Dār Ihyā' al-Sunnah al-Nabawiyyah, 1971), 36
51. Wali Allah, hujjat allah al-bālighah (Cairo: Dar al-Turāth, 1978)
52. Sulaymàn ibn Abdul Wahhāb, al-Sāwa'īq al-ilāhiyya fī al-radd 'ala-al-Wahhabiya (Cairo: Matba'at al-Kamāl, 1923), 16, 8, 14
53. There are some among the muslims that reject shafa'a. The khawārij rejected it outright because they believed any sinner who entered hell was there to stay. In the case of the mu'tazilla, they rejected it on behalf of a grave sinner, in particular. On the subject of the various schools and their differences, see Muhammad Abu Zahra, Tarikh almadhahib al-islamiyah (al-Qahira: Dār al-fikr al-'Aabī, 1963)
54. Risalāt kasf al-shubuhāt, 165-66
55. Sulaymān ibn 'Abdul Wahhāb, al-Sawa'iq al-ilāhiya fil-radd 'ala al-Wahhābiya), includes an essay at the end by shaykh Muhammad Makhlūf entitled, Risālah fi hukm al-tousle bil-anbiya' wal-awliya, 225
56. Makhluf, risālah fi hukm al-tawassul in Dahlān, Ahmad ibn Zaynī, ed. al-Durar al-Suniyah fī al-rad 'ala al-Wahābnyah (Beirut: Dār al-Islām, 1993). Although Makhlūf was not a contemporary of ibn 'Abdul Wahhāb, he nonetheless articulates well the position of the opposition, 66