In reading the third and shortest chapter of Juan Cole’s Engaging the Muslim World, “The Wahhabi Myth: From Riyadh to Doha,” I was struck by something that wasn’t there. The point of this chapter is that Wahhabism does not cause terrorism, nor is Saudi Arabia the main exporter of anti-American violence in the region. He does say that Saudi Arabia has a deeply flawed human rights record and puritan domestic moral policy that the United States and its allies could address through diplomatic pressure, but detaches that from Wahhabism as well by describing the different conditions in Qatar. Given his emphasis on terminology in the last chapter, however, I’m surprised he didn’t go into the ways in which “Wahhabi” itself is usually used as a slur in intra-Muslim polemics, and is not used by Wahhabis themselves, who prefer to be called “Muwahidun,” which refers to God’s unity and is sometimes translated as “unitarians.” As for Wahhabi itself, I’m reminded of something one of my professors once said about “Fascism” – that today, it’s meaning has been largely reduced to, “this position is to my right, and I disagree with it.” Similarly, my understanding is that “Wahhabi” serves much the same function in Islamic theological debates, and has since it was coined centuries ago. This has two implications. One is that, when you read about “Wahhabis” somewhere causing problems, they may not be actual followers of the doctrines of Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhab – a lot depends on your source. Another is that it is used as a slur precisely because Saudi Arabia, far from being a society to which most Muslims aspire, is seen as a somewhat crazy, doctrinaire place by many.
Also in reading this chapter, I found I like “fundamentalist vigilante” more one its own terms than as something produced as a deliberate alternative to “Salafi Jihadi.” (I actually think Salafi, given the contemporary capture of that term by the theological conservatives, works well for the purposes for which “Wahhabi” is often employed.) In any case, Cole’s decoupling of the Wahhabism and militancy is similar to that argued for by David Commins in The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia, though he seems not to have read Commins’s work, which would have buttressed his mention that the forms of extremism causing international concern owe more to the Sahwa tradition of the Muslim Brotherhood than they do to Wahhabism per se. To all this, Cole adds another point that Saudi Arabia has actually been a close ally of the United States, and has even taken the lead in trying to lead the Arab world to peace with Israel. This is a necessary corrective to the view that the kingdom is somehow our mortal enemy, though an informed reader might wonder about the differences within both the Saudi royal family and the country’s religious establishment.
Cole also describes Qatar in this chapter, and spends several pages on al-Jazeera that serve to make their own points about that station which are similar to those Abu Aardvarkian readers of this blog are probably already familiar with. (Marc Lynch’s work is actually cited in the endnotes here.) If memory serves, Sharjah, one of the components of the UAE, is also Wahhabi. It’s not relevant to the point of this chapter, but as a scholar, it might be interesting to explore the relationship of those dynasties with the Wahhabi ulama, as well as that of the Rashidis of Ha’il during the 1800′s, in attempting to understand the differences among Wahhabi states.
The takeaways from this chapter are that Saudi Arabia is not a geopolitical enemy of the United States, and conservatism does not equal militancy. Both points are well argued.
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