Wahhabism

Wahhabism refers to an austere 18th-century reform movement arising in the central Arabian oasis settlement of Najd. Through ties to the rising Saudi monarchy, Wahhabi adherents established their doctrine in Arabia and built networks of affiliated Muslims in Europe, the Americas, the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia, and elsewhere. Although Wahhabi stances are rejected by substantial numbers of the Muslim public, Wahhabism continues as a prominent strand of thought into the 21st century.

Muhammad b. Abd al-Wahhab (1703-92), the movement's figurehead, came from a clerical family and was educated in a mainstream school of Sunni Muslim thought; however, in his preaching, he favored more antagonistic positions over recognized doctrines. For instance, Abd al-Wahhab preached that the majority of Muslims globally had neglected primary religious duties and could therefore be treated as apostates, a policy referred to as takfir. Wahhabis are known for their policy of “enforcing the right and forbidding the wrong,” a religious duty resting with the individual Muslim in his or her public and personal relations.

In the first decades of the 19th century, the territory controlled by the Wahhabis intermittently extended to the Hijaz region that contained the primary pilgrimage sites for Muslims worldwide. Here, Wahhabi followers destroyed centuries old tombs and monuments dedicated to Muhammad (c.570-632) and prominent early Muslims. The spread of Wahhabi political control met with resistance from local elites as well as external pressure from the Ottomans; however, settlement by settlement, Wahhabi followers consolidated the territory of modern-day Saudi Arabia under the leadership of Abd al-Wahhab's political ally Abd Aziz b. Muhammad b. Suhud (1765-1803).

The Wahhabi-Saudi alliance remains influential, with portions of the Kingdom's resource wealth funding Wahhabi-leaning proselytizing efforts on a global scale. Wahhabism also bears a close relationship with Salafism, a trend of reformist thought originating in the late 19th century that stressed the duty of contemporary Muslims to return to select forms of conduct described in normative textual accounts attributed to the earliest generations of Muslims.

Although scholarship on Wahhabism is abundant, as of this writing no major published scholarly work is devoted to analyzing the role of women in contemporary Wahhabism. On the part of antiterrorism watch groups as well as self-labeled “progressives” and “moderates,” close attention continues to be paid to the deployment of Wahhabi doctrine in militant ideologies [Page 1535]and like aversions toward non-Sunni Muslims and non-Muslims in general. Transnational feminists are quick to highlight women's restricted participation in the public sphere, vis-à-vis men. Research on Wahhabi thought and the corresponding life worlds of female affiliates is complicated in that Wahhabi sympathizers do not commonly self-refer as “Wahhabi.”