BEIRUT -- The dramatic arrival of Da'ish (ISIS) on the stage
of Iraq has shocked many in the West. Many have been perplexed -- and
horrified -- by its violence and its evident magnetism for Sunni youth.
But more than this, they find Saudi Arabia's ambivalence in the face of
this manifestation both troubling and inexplicable, wondering, "Don't
the Saudis understand that ISIS threatens them, too?"
It appears
-- even now -- that Saudi Arabia's ruling elite is divided. Some
applaud that ISIS is fighting Iranian Shiite "fire" with Sunni "fire";
that a new Sunni state is taking shape at the very heart of what they
regard as a historical Sunni patrimony; and they are drawn by Da'ish's
strict Salafist ideology.
Other Saudis are more fearful, and
recall the history of the revolt against Abd-al Aziz by the Wahhabist
Ikhwan (Disclaimer: this Ikhwan has nothing to do with the Muslim
Brotherhood Ikhwan -- please note, all further references hereafter are
to the Wahhabist Ikhwan, and not to the Muslim Brotherhood Ikhwan), but
which nearly imploded Wahhabism and the al-Saud in the late 1920s.
Many Saudis are deeply disturbed by the radical doctrines of Da'ish (ISIS) -- and are beginning to question some aspects of Saudi Arabia's direction and discourse.
THE SAUDI DUALITY
Saudi
Arabia's internal discord and tensions over ISIS can only be understood
by grasping the inherent (and persisting) duality that lies at the core
of the Kingdom's doctrinal makeup and its historical origins.
One
dominant strand to the Saudi identity pertains directly to Muhammad ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhab (the founder of Wahhabism), and the use to which his
radical, exclusionist puritanism was put by Ibn Saud. (The latter was
then no more than a minor leader -- amongst many -- of continually
sparring and raiding Bedouin tribes in the baking and desperately poor
deserts of the Nejd.)
The second strand to this perplexing
duality, relates precisely to King Abd-al Aziz's subsequent shift
towards statehood in the 1920s: his curbing of Ikhwani violence (in
order to have diplomatic standing as a nation-state with Britain and
America); his institutionalization of the original Wahhabist impulse --
and the subsequent seizing of the opportunely surging petrodollar spigot
in the 1970s, to channel the volatile Ikhwani current away from home
towards export -- by diffusing a cultural revolution, rather than
violent revolution throughout the Muslim world.
But this
"cultural revolution" was no docile reformism. It was a revolution based
on Abd al-Wahhab's Jacobin-like hatred for the putrescence and
deviationism that he perceived all about him -- hence his call to purge
Islam of all its heresies and idolatries.
MUSLIM IMPOSTORS
The American author and journalist, Steven Coll, has written
how this austere and censorious disciple of the 14th century scholar
Ibn Taymiyyah, Abd al-Wahhab, despised "the decorous, arty, tobacco
smoking, hashish imbibing, drum pounding Egyptian and Ottoman nobility
who travelled across Arabia to pray at Mecca."
In Abd al-Wahhab's
view, these were not Muslims; they were imposters masquerading as
Muslims. Nor, indeed, did he find the behavior of local Bedouin Arabs
much better. They aggravated Abd al-Wahhab by their honoring of saints,
by their erecting of tombstones, and their "superstition" (e.g. revering
graves or places that were deemed particularly imbued with the divine).
All this behavior, Abd al-Wahhab denounced as bida -- forbidden by God.
Like
Taymiyyah before him, Abd al-Wahhab believed that the period of the
Prophet Muhammad's stay in Medina was the ideal of Muslim society (the
"best of times"), to which all Muslims should aspire to emulate (this,
essentially, is Salafism).
Taymiyyah had declared war on
Shi'ism, Sufism and Greek philosophy. He spoke out, too against visiting
the grave of the prophet and the celebration of his birthday, declaring
that all such behavior represented mere imitation of the Christian
worship of Jesus as God (i.e. idolatry). Abd al-Wahhab assimilated all
this earlier teaching, stating that "any doubt or hesitation" on the
part of a believer in respect to his or her acknowledging this
particular interpretation of Islam should "deprive a man of immunity of his property and his life."
One of the main tenets of Abd al-Wahhab's doctrine has become the key idea of takfir.
Under the takfiri doctrine, Abd al-Wahhab and his followers could deem
fellow Muslims infidels should they engage in activities that in any way
could be said to encroach on the sovereignty of the absolute Authority
(that is, the King).
Abd al-Wahhab denounced all Muslims who honored the
dead, saints, or angels. He held that such sentiments detracted from
the complete subservience one must feel towards God, and only God.
Wahhabi Islam thus bans any prayer to saints and dead loved ones,
pilgrimages to tombs and special mosques, religious festivals
celebrating saints, the honoring of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad's
birthday, and even prohibits the use of gravestones when burying the
dead.
"Those who would not conform to this view should be killed, their wives and daughters violated, and their possessions confiscated, he wrote. "
Abd al-Wahhab demanded conformity -- a conformity that was to be demonstrated in physical and tangible ways. He argued that all Muslims must individually pledge their allegiance to a single Muslim leader (a Caliph, if there were one).
Those who would not conform to this view should be killed,
their wives and daughters violated, and their possessions confiscated,
he wrote. The list of apostates meriting death included the Shiite,
Sufis and other Muslim denominations, whom Abd al-Wahhab did not
consider to be Muslim at all.
There is nothing here that separates Wahhabism from ISIS. The rift would emerge only later: from the subsequent institutionalization of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab's doctrine of "One Ruler, One Authority, One Mosque" -- these three pillars being taken respectively to refer to the Saudi king, the absolute authority of official Wahhabism, and its control of "the word" (i.e. the mosque).
It is this rift -- the ISIS denial of these three pillars on which the whole of Sunni authority presently rests -- makes ISIS, which in all other respects conforms to Wahhabism, a deep threat to Saudi Arabia.
BRIEF HISTORY 1741- 1818
Abd al-Wahhab's advocacy of these ultra radical views inevitably led to his expulsion from his own town -- and in 1741, after some wanderings, he found refuge under the protection of Ibn Saud and his tribe. What Ibn Saud perceived in Abd al-Wahhab's novel teaching was the means to overturn Arab tradition and convention. It was a path to seizing power.
There is nothing here that separates Wahhabism from ISIS. The rift would emerge only later: from the subsequent institutionalization of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab's doctrine of "One Ruler, One Authority, One Mosque" -- these three pillars being taken respectively to refer to the Saudi king, the absolute authority of official Wahhabism, and its control of "the word" (i.e. the mosque).
It is this rift -- the ISIS denial of these three pillars on which the whole of Sunni authority presently rests -- makes ISIS, which in all other respects conforms to Wahhabism, a deep threat to Saudi Arabia.
BRIEF HISTORY 1741- 1818
Abd al-Wahhab's advocacy of these ultra radical views inevitably led to his expulsion from his own town -- and in 1741, after some wanderings, he found refuge under the protection of Ibn Saud and his tribe. What Ibn Saud perceived in Abd al-Wahhab's novel teaching was the means to overturn Arab tradition and convention. It was a path to seizing power.
"Their strategy -- like that of ISIS today -- was to bring the peoples whom they conquered into submission. They aimed to instill fear. "
Ibn Saud's clan, seizing on Abd al-Wahhab's doctrine, now could do what they always did, which was raiding neighboring villages and robbing them of their possessions. Only now they were doing it not within the ambit of Arab tradition, but rather under the banner of jihad. Ibn Saud and Abd al-Wahhab also reintroduced the idea of martyrdom in the name of jihad, as it granted those martyred immediate entry into paradise.
In the beginning, they conquered a few local communities and imposed their rule over them. (The conquered inhabitants were given a limited choice: conversion to Wahhabism or death.) By 1790, the Alliance controlled most of the Arabian Peninsula and repeatedly raided Medina, Syria and Iraq.
Their strategy -- like that of ISIS today -- was to bring the peoples whom they conquered into submission. They aimed to instill fear. In 1801, the Allies attacked the Holy City of Karbala in Iraq. They massacred thousands of Shiites, including women and children. Many Shiite shrines were destroyed, including the shrine of Imam Hussein, the murdered grandson of Prophet Muhammad.
A British official, Lieutenant Francis Warden, observing the situation at the time, wrote: "They pillaged the whole of it [Karbala], and plundered the Tomb of Hussein... slaying in the course of the day, with circumstances of peculiar cruelty, above five thousand of the inhabitants ..."
Osman Ibn Bishr Najdi, the historian of the first Saudi state, wrote that Ibn Saud committed a massacre in Karbala in 1801. He proudly documented that massacre saying, "we took Karbala and slaughtered and took its people (as slaves), then praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, and we do not apologize for that and say: 'And to the unbelievers: the same treatment.'"
In 1803, Abdul Aziz then entered the Holy City of Mecca, which surrendered under the impact of terror and panic (the same fate was to befall Medina, too). Abd al-Wahhab's followers demolished historical monuments and all the tombs and shrines in their midst. By the end, they had destroyed centuries of Islamic architecture near the Grand Mosque.
But in November of 1803, a Shiite assassin killed King Abdul Aziz (taking revenge for the massacre at Karbala). His son, Saud bin Abd al Aziz, succeeded him and continued the conquest of Arabia. Ottoman rulers, however, could no longer just sit back and watch as their empire was devoured piece by piece. In 1812, the Ottoman army, composed of Egyptians, pushed the Alliance out from Medina, Jeddah and Mecca. In 1814, Saud bin Abd al Aziz died of fever.
His unfortunate son Abdullah
bin Saud, however, was taken by the Ottomans to Istanbul, where he was
gruesomely executed (a visitor to Istanbul reported seeing him having
been humiliated in the streets of Istanbul for three days, then hanged
and beheaded, his severed head fired from a canon, and his heart cut out
and impaled on his body).
In 1815, Wahhabi forces were crushed by the Egyptians (acting on the Ottoman's behalf) in a decisive battle. In 1818, the Ottomans captured and destroyed the Wahhabi capital of Dariyah. The first Saudi state was no more. The few remaining Wahhabis withdrew into the desert to regroup, and there they remained, quiescent for most of the 19th century.
HISTORY RETURNS WITH ISIS
It is not hard to understand how the founding of the Islamic State by ISIS in contemporary Iraq might resonate amongst those who recall this history. Indeed, the ethos of 18th century Wahhabism did not just wither in Nejd, but it roared back into life when the Ottoman Empire collapsed amongst the chaos of World War I.
The Al Saud -- in this 20th century renaissance -- were led by the laconic and politically astute Abd-al Aziz, who, on uniting the fractious Bedouin tribes, launched the Saudi "Ikhwan" in the spirit of Abd-al Wahhab's and Ibn Saud's earlier fighting proselytisers.
The Ikhwan was a reincarnation of the early, fierce, semi-independent vanguard movement of committed armed Wahhabist "moralists" who almost had succeeded in seizing Arabia by the early 1800s.
In 1815, Wahhabi forces were crushed by the Egyptians (acting on the Ottoman's behalf) in a decisive battle. In 1818, the Ottomans captured and destroyed the Wahhabi capital of Dariyah. The first Saudi state was no more. The few remaining Wahhabis withdrew into the desert to regroup, and there they remained, quiescent for most of the 19th century.
HISTORY RETURNS WITH ISIS
It is not hard to understand how the founding of the Islamic State by ISIS in contemporary Iraq might resonate amongst those who recall this history. Indeed, the ethos of 18th century Wahhabism did not just wither in Nejd, but it roared back into life when the Ottoman Empire collapsed amongst the chaos of World War I.
The Al Saud -- in this 20th century renaissance -- were led by the laconic and politically astute Abd-al Aziz, who, on uniting the fractious Bedouin tribes, launched the Saudi "Ikhwan" in the spirit of Abd-al Wahhab's and Ibn Saud's earlier fighting proselytisers.
The Ikhwan was a reincarnation of the early, fierce, semi-independent vanguard movement of committed armed Wahhabist "moralists" who almost had succeeded in seizing Arabia by the early 1800s.
In the same manner
as earlier, the Ikhwan again succeeded in capturing Mecca, Medina and
Jeddah between 1914 and 1926. Abd-al Aziz, however, began to feel his
wider interests to be threatened by the revolutionary "Jacobinism"
exhibited by the Ikhwan. The Ikhwan revolted -- leading to a civil war
that lasted until the 1930s, when the King had them put down: he
machine-gunned them.
For this king, (Abd-al Aziz), the simple verities of previous decades were eroding. Oil was being discovered in the peninsular. Britain and America were courting Abd-al Aziz, but still were inclined to support Sharif Husain as the only legitimate ruler of Arabia. The Saudis needed to develop a more sophisticated diplomatic posture.
So Wahhabism was forcefully changed from a movement of revolutionary jihad and theological takfiri purification, to a movement of conservative social, political, theological, and religious da'wa (Islamic call) and to justifying the institution that upholds loyalty to the royal Saudi family and the King's absolute power.
OIL WEALTH SPREAD WAHHABISM
With the advent of the oil bonanza -- as the French scholar, Giles Kepel writes, Saudi goals were to "reach out and spread Wahhabism across the Muslim world ... to "Wahhabise" Islam, thereby reducing the "multitude of voices within the religion" to a "single creed" -- a movement which would transcend national divisions. Billions of dollars were -- and continue to be -- invested in this manifestation of soft power.
It was this heady mix of billion dollar soft power projection -- and the Saudi willingness to manage Sunni Islam both to further America's interests, as it concomitantly embedded Wahhabism educationally, socially and culturally throughout the lands of Islam -- that brought into being a western policy dependency on Saudi Arabia, a dependency that has endured since Abd-al Aziz's meeting with Roosevelt on a U.S. warship (returning the president from the Yalta Conference) until today.
Westerners looked at the Kingdom and their gaze was taken by the wealth; by the apparent modernization; by the professed leadership of the Islamic world. They chose to presume that the Kingdom was bending to the imperatives of modern life -- and that the management of Sunni Islam would bend the Kingdom, too, to modern life.
For this king, (Abd-al Aziz), the simple verities of previous decades were eroding. Oil was being discovered in the peninsular. Britain and America were courting Abd-al Aziz, but still were inclined to support Sharif Husain as the only legitimate ruler of Arabia. The Saudis needed to develop a more sophisticated diplomatic posture.
So Wahhabism was forcefully changed from a movement of revolutionary jihad and theological takfiri purification, to a movement of conservative social, political, theological, and religious da'wa (Islamic call) and to justifying the institution that upholds loyalty to the royal Saudi family and the King's absolute power.
OIL WEALTH SPREAD WAHHABISM
With the advent of the oil bonanza -- as the French scholar, Giles Kepel writes, Saudi goals were to "reach out and spread Wahhabism across the Muslim world ... to "Wahhabise" Islam, thereby reducing the "multitude of voices within the religion" to a "single creed" -- a movement which would transcend national divisions. Billions of dollars were -- and continue to be -- invested in this manifestation of soft power.
It was this heady mix of billion dollar soft power projection -- and the Saudi willingness to manage Sunni Islam both to further America's interests, as it concomitantly embedded Wahhabism educationally, socially and culturally throughout the lands of Islam -- that brought into being a western policy dependency on Saudi Arabia, a dependency that has endured since Abd-al Aziz's meeting with Roosevelt on a U.S. warship (returning the president from the Yalta Conference) until today.
Westerners looked at the Kingdom and their gaze was taken by the wealth; by the apparent modernization; by the professed leadership of the Islamic world. They chose to presume that the Kingdom was bending to the imperatives of modern life -- and that the management of Sunni Islam would bend the Kingdom, too, to modern life.
"On the one hand, ISIS is deeply Wahhabist. On the other hand, it is ultra radical in a different way. It could be seen essentially as a corrective movement to contemporary Wahhabism."
But the Saudi Ikhwan approach to Islam did not die in the
1930s. It retreated, but it maintained its hold over parts of the system
-- hence the duality that we observe today in the Saudi attitude
towards ISIS.
On the one hand, ISIS is deeply Wahhabist. On the
other hand, it is ultra radical in a different way. It could be seen
essentially as a corrective movement to contemporary Wahhabism.
ISIS
is a "post-Medina" movement: it looks to the actions of the first two
Caliphs, rather than the Prophet Muhammad himself, as a source of
emulation, and it forcefully denies the Saudis' claim of authority to
rule.
As the Saudi monarchy blossomed in the oil age into an ever
more inflated institution, the appeal of the Ikhwan message gained
ground (despite King Faisal's modernization campaign).
The "Ikhwan
approach" enjoyed -- and still enjoys -- the support of many prominent
men and women and sheikhs. In a sense, Osama bin Laden was precisely the
representative of a late flowering of this Ikhwani approach.
Today,
ISIS' undermining of the legitimacy of the King's legitimacy is not
seen to be problematic, but rather a return to the true origins of the
Saudi-Wahhab project.
In the collaborative management of the
region by the Saudis and the West in pursuit of the many western
projects (countering socialism, Ba'athism, Nasserism, Soviet and Iranian
influence), western politicians have highlighted their chosen reading
of Saudi Arabia (wealth, modernization and influence), but they chose to
ignore the Wahhabist impulse.
After all, the more radical
Islamist movements were perceived by Western intelligence services as
being more effective in toppling the USSR in Afghanistan -- and in
combatting out-of-favor Middle Eastern leaders and states.
Why
should we be surprised then, that from Prince Bandar's Saudi-Western
mandate to manage the insurgency in Syria against President Assad
should have emerged a neo-Ikhwan type of violent, fear-inducing vanguard
movement: ISIS? And why should we be surprised -- knowing a little
about Wahhabism -- that "moderate" insurgents in Syria would become
rarer than a mythical unicorn? Why should we have imagined that radical
Wahhabism would create moderates? Or why could we imagine that a
doctrine of "One leader, One authority, One mosque: submit to it, or be
killed" could ever ultimately lead to moderation or tolerance?
Or, perhaps, we never imagined.
This
article is Part I of Alastair Crooke's historical analysis of the roots
of ISIS and its impact on the future of the Middle East. Read Part II here.
