<was led to believe the Wahhabi (double "hh") sect are the militant arm of the Wahabi religion, ...is this true? ...or is it just another misspelling on the part of the western media? (I wish to be accurate)>
To the best of my knowledge the two terms are synonymous with one another and it would not be incorrect to state that the Wahabi sect personified the militant aspect of Islamic thought.
Internal security officials estimate the Lebanese Wahhabi movement comprised of over 4000 men. The movement is gaining adherents in Egypt and prevails in Saudi Arabia. In Pakistan there is a school of thought, the Deobandi, who share ideological similarities with the Wahhabis. Wahabism, itself, goes by many names: Ikhwan, Wahhabi, Salifiyya, Mowahabin and now, famously the defunct Taliban. What they share in common is their fanatical stance and financial support by the highest levels of the Saudi Arabian government.
The Wahhabi movement began in 1740 on the Arabian Peninsula, where harsh and primitive conditions bred an unyielding and violent strain of Islam. When Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia and father of the current rulers, conquered the peninsula in the 1920s, he utilised the Wahhabis in order to drive out his Hashemite rivals, who now rule Jordan. This pact with the devil turned sour when the Wahhabis eventually turned on Abdul Aziz, for not adhering to their fundamentalist view of Islam, and in turn he killed or imprisoned most of their leadership. However Saudi Arabia follows a delicate balancing act where thNow, bin Laden has remade the Wahhabi movement in his own image. First and foremost, bin Laden would like to see New Wahhabism overthrow the Saudi government, which he denounces for corruption and for allowing U.S. soldiers to be based on Saudi soil following the Persian Gulf War.
Wahhabi sect is the Sunni puritan form of non-revisionist Islam, it is devoid of all positive influences that Islamic body politics had incorporated and picked with its interactions with richer bigger civilisations. The conquests of Persian 5000 year old dynasty, sub-continent, levant or North Africa, all these bastions of civilisations added a lot of knowledge, colour and tolerance to early Islamic societies that ‘Bedouins’ of Saudi peninsula earlier called as Hijaz and Najd never were exposed too .
I think we have a big division between moderate Islam and the harsh and primitive conditions that bred an unyielding and violent strain of Islam known as ‘Wahabism.’ I will like to invoke some lessons from history here and take you to quick ride of why Saudi peninsula remained so devoid of knowledge and freethinking.
The reason we still see more broad-mindedness within North African communities and recognition of pluralism albeit at a very low level is due to early interaction with various civilisations, this kind of education and exposure Saudis completely missed out. In Christian Europe Jews were often the only significant minority and as such the full wrath of the majority was focussed on them alone.
On the other hand, in Spain Jews were only one of several minorities with other minorities more likely to draw the rulers anger. Whereas in Europe, the Church's depiction of Jews as "Christ killers" obviously played a major role in how Jews were mistreated, this was not a factor under the Moslems. On the contrary, Jews were seen as recipients, albeit incomplete, of the truth about God. In fact there is evidence that Mohammad was strongly influenced in his formative period by Jews, probably Karaites, and had great hopes that Jews would be very receptive to his teachings. His subsequent rejection by Jewish tribes whom he sought to convert was a prime cause of his anger towards them.
From the 8th century, Muslim conquerors subdued half of the Iberian peninsula. "After Toledo, Tariq’s forces moved north, systematically attacking the principal settlements, killing many Goths as they went along. In many towns, the Jews opened the gates before the Moorish armies in a new state... [IN Seville] as in so many other towns... the Jews, resentful of their treatment under the Goths, flung open the main gaits of the city, welcoming their new overlords..." (1) (Wilfredo-Tomas Cornellas Y Suarez, "The Longest War," The Angelus, Sept., 1995). "On November 1, 1478, at the request of the Bishop of Osma, Pope Sixtus IV issued a bull authorizing Isabel and Fernando to set up an Inquisition in Spain, if they thought it necessary. The Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula was accomplished in a scant ten years. It took nearly eight centuries and 3,000 battles for the Catholic reconquest. By 1492, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon occupied the Spanish throne, and the reconquest was complete except for the Moorish stronghold of Granada.
Coexistence that is sorely missed in present day Saudi peninsula was the foundation on which the Moslem state of Granada remained so stable even after fall of every other region in Spain. The example of that cohabitation was that Jews were so prominent, both in population and government, that it was called Garnatat al Yahud (Granada of the Jews). In 11th century, Samuel ben Joseph Halevi ibn Nagrela was named Grand Vizier to King Badis and commander in chief of the armies, both in blatant disregard of the Covenant of Omar. On his death in 1056 his son Joseph succeeded him in that position. However on Dec 30 1066 angry Moslems caused Joseph to be murdered on his way to Shabbat services following which a Moslem riot occurred and 1500 Granadian Jews were killed.
Though Jews continued pre-eminent in financial and cultural circles this demonstrated the insecurity of that prominence. Like French Jews using French, Italian Jews using Italian, Jews in Moslem Spain used Arabic as the spoken vernacular and often wrote it with Hebrew letters. Maimonides, Ibn Gabirol, ibn Ezra, etc. all wrote in Arabic. As Arabic grammar was developed, it prompted a revival of spoken Hebrew and the development of its grammar and there followed a flow of delightful Hebrew poetry.
The early of ‘House of Wisdom’ in Cordova and Baghdad owed their existence to Persian scientists undoubtedly or people from North Africa.
The stories of ‘One thousand Arabian nights’ originate from Abbasids courts of Baghdad the Mamoon-ur- Rashid and tolerance in society initiated by the Umayyad Caliph Abdu Rehman in Cordova is a fact although very rarely uttered. The non-believers would be encouraged to convert to Islam, they were to be made "uncomfortable" in a variety of ways, known as the Covenant of Omar ("till they pay the tribute readily, offered on the back of their hands, in a state of humiliation" sura 9:29)). These included special additional taxes (jiziya poll tax and haradj produce tax), the wearing of distinctive yellow clothes and prohibition of riding horses or wearing swords, etc.
Now this ‘Enforcement of the covenant of Omar’ varied greatly depending on time, place or both. The Islamic societies far and flung from Saudi peninsula as a general rule never really practiced the rule. The further the location from Arabia the less stringently were the restrictions enforced. Moslem Spain in the west and Turkey and the Ottoman empire in the east were the most lax in this respect. This did varied depending on the time period. When the fanatical and religious Almohad dynasty came into power in the 12th century in Spain, the restrictions were enforced to the fullest and it was not a happy time for Jews.
Jews and Christians were tolerated and allowed to exist under Islamic rule and indeed to be protected by the rulers. As Ahl al dhimmis (protected people) they were allowed full autonomy in their internal affairs and could engage in most occupations - both of which did not exist for Jews in Christian Europe. Their synagogues, churches and personal property were protected and they could travel freely through Moslem lands except for Arabia itself.
The tolerance may have been a necessity when the Moslems conquered Spain, they found themselves to be in the minority. The tolerance shown by the Moslem rulers towards both Christians and Jews was largely due to the fact that they needed their help to govern the country. The Jews, a fellow Semitic people with a similar language to Arabic, and a long-standing love for education rose rapidly to positions of importance in Moslem Spain. The Christians, largely illiterate - a character in Don Quichote when asked if he could read exclaims, "Of course not, I am a good Christian sir!" - fared less well.
The people escaping from ‘inquisition’ instituted by Pope Sixtus IV against those who might well rise to greet invading, slaughtering Turks as liberators: the false converses, it was against these papal edicts that the fleeing Jews and Christians found sanctuary in the courts of later Umayyad caliphs of Granada. Edgar Allen Poe writes: "Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of the vapor of heating iron. A suffocating odor pervaded the prison. A deeper glow settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies. A richer tint of crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors. Oh, most unrelenting! Oh, most demoniac of men! ‘Death,’ I said, ‘any death but that of the pit.’" Poe’s "The Pit and the Pendulum"
The present day extreme strain of Islam has to be studied in this context. Lack of pluralism and lack of tolerance in a society are very much a part of historical lessons; these cannot be organically grown within a society that has closed itself from foreign influences like the Hijazi and Nejadis did under Ottomans and since Advent of Abdul Wahhab. The present day struggle that is going on is due to the fact that ‘old’ ideas are being challenged, the huge newly found wealth of oil brought a lot of material affluence but no reawakening or renaissance, the Islamic world in peninsula did not have its share of Martin Luther's. Renaissance essentially comes from the French word "Renaistre," meaning "to be born again." The Renaissance was a revival or rebirth of cultural awareness and learning among art, law, language, literature, philosophy, science, and mathematics. This period took place between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Renaissance in Italy flourished in the 15th century and spread throughout most of Europe in the 16th century. Italian poet by the name of Francesco Petrarch, who lived from 1304 to 1374, was the first to use the term "dark ages" to describe that period. He convinced his influential friends that the way to bring the dark ages to an end was to revive the ideals preserved in the poetry, philosophy, and art of the ancient world.
Petrarch and his followers called themselves humanists because they defended and glorified the value of man's life on earth. The Church, at the time, taught that life was important mainly because the way it was lived had an effect on the soul's fate after death. The humanists believed that mankind had unlimited potential which each individual should strive to achieve. The Renaissance came into being through the humanists and their ideas.
This element was completley missed in Saudi society. They did not have their humanists, new wealth brought more power to the Muttawas. Without intellectual inquiry and in closed society the new found affluence is now associated with dream of a 'bigger affluence' in the next world, the pleasures of this world look to be too menial and paltry and hence the unquenchable desire to kill one own self and forfeit present for higher levels in the next world. The only way out of this quandary is to discover the 'true knowledge' and the only way that stray Wahabi youth will understand to live and let others live is ‘exposing him to how the early Muslim societies survived for 800 years in foreign lands, they did not burn 'synagogues and churches' neither did they kill the Jews and Christians they co- habited, they protected them and their intellectuals, today we need to create conducive helpful environment in the world to permit open global interaction.
The Renaissance of Italy was rich from the banking profits of families like the Medici's and from expanded trade. It was the age of flourishing artisans and skilled craftsmen. The rich and powerful became patrons of the talented and brilliant, giving artists and thinkers the freedom to create and speculate-and, in their spare time, to immortalize their patrons. As wealth flowed into the coffers of the great Italian cities, art prospered and optimism reigned about man's potential to understand the universe and his place in it. Behind all the achievements of the Renaissance lies the belief that man has the capacity to improve himself, to grow and to learn.
The riches of oil and 'House of Saud' were more wasted in casino's around the world and luxury. Families like the Medici's in saudi society ended up creating bin Ladens unfortunately. The present clash of ideologies can only be avoided through this open dialogue and cross culture interaction. My little effort and research has been futile but I keep trying sometime to an extent that it looks superfluous. |
