Wahhabi Islam : From Revival And Reform To Global Jihad

Until September 11, 2001 few Westerners had ever heard of “Wahhabism.” Now most of us recognize the word as describing an austere and puritanical type of Islam, mentioned frequently in connection with Osama bin Laden and Saudi Arabia and often named as the inspiration behind the 9/11 terror attacks. The word “Wahhabi” stems from the name of the founder of this system of thought, Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1702-1791), companion and religious adviser to Muhammad Ibn Saud, founder of the House of Saud. In this book Natana DeLong-Bas offers an in-depth study of the written works of al-Wahhab and demonstrates how it has been distorted into the extremist ideology now propagated by Osama bin Laden and his followers. Through a close reading of al-Wahhab’s texts she demonstrates that many aspects of 20th- and 21st- century Wahhabi extremism do not have their origins in his writings but were added to Wahhabi teachings in the 19th century. She debunks the common journalistic portrayal of Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab as an illiterate, rural bumpkin with no scholarly formation. Her revisionist reading of al-Wahhab’s thought will be controversial but impossible to ignore.