Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb

Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ( Arabic محمد بن عبد الوهاب, DMG Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb , born 1702/3 in al-ʿUyaina in the Najd ; died July 20, 1792 ) was an Islamic scholar of Hanbali teaching who founded a religious doctrine that is strictly based on the Koran and Sunna and is geared towards the realization of the Tawheed ("monotheism", "one-god belief"). Today, this doctrine is gaining increasing influence on the entire Islamic world , especially starting from the Arabian Peninsula . The term Wahhabism goes back to his name .

The teachings of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb form the basis for the totalitarian fundamentalist interpretation of Islam as the state religion in Saudi Arabia . Numerous jihadist organizations such as the Islamic State also trace their ideological foundations back to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb.

The State Mosque of Qatar is dedicated to Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab

Life

Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was born the son of a judge in the oasis of al-ʿUyaina in the Najd . He came from a respected family of Hanbali legal scholars. According to the chroniclers, at the age of ten he had learned the Koran by heart and was a prayer leader ( imam ). At the age of eleven he made his first pilgrimage to Mecca , which was followed by a two-month stay in Medina . After his return he studied hadith , Koran exegesis , Fiqh and Islamic dogmatics ( uṣūl ad-dīn ). At an unknown time, he began to preach in his home region, with the principle of tawheed, the unconditional one-god belief, at the center of his sermon.

The radicalism of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's sermons, who called for an abandonment of all non-Islamic practices, was perceived by the local tribal chiefs as a threat to their authority, and they urged him to leave the region and go on pilgrimage again . Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb gave in to her insistence and, after completing the pilgrimage, settled in Medina , where he attended the lessons of two prominent hadith scholars. One of them was ʿAbdallāh ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Sayf from the Najd, the other the Indian Muhammad Hayyā al-Sindī. They were both admirers of the Hanbali scholar Ibn Taimīya and used his writings in their teaching.

From Medina Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb went to Basra , where he heard hadeeth and fiqh from the scholar Muhammad al-Madschmūʿī and preached his doctrine of tawheed, whereby he opposed the worship of stones and trees, the disregard of the rules of the Koran as well as debauchery among the population. He also condemned intoxicating drinks, tobacco , dance , music and all kinds of luxury. His admonitions soon made himself unpopular and was banished from the city. Wahhabi sources point out that his stay in Basra was decisive for al-Wahhāb's further development. Through his contact with Shiites, he would have developed his teachings here - above all his radical monotheism ( tauḥīd ) and the rivalry against "unauthorized renewals" ( bidʿa ).

After stops in az-Zubair and al-Ahsa , he returned to the Najd, but this time went to Huraimilāʾ, where his father lived. Here Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb wrote his most important work, the "Book of One-God Faith" ( Kitāb at-Tawhīd ). This book quickly spread by copying inside and outside the Najd. However, since his father disapproved of his teaching, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb refrained from preaching publicly until his death in 1740. After that, however, he gave up this reluctance. After he had succeeded in rallying some supporters, opponents attempted an assassination attempt on him, which caused him to leave.

He then moved back to his birthplace al-ʿUyaina, which has since been ruled by a new emir from the House of Muʿammar. He gave Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb his daughter to wife and made a deal with him: He promised him support for his religious teaching, but demanded that he endeavor to extend his rule to the entire Arabian peninsula. After Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's consent, the emir symbolically had a sacred tree felled on his territory, a holy tomb destroyed and an adulteress stoned to death. But the emir finally had to expel Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb under pressure from the powerful Banū Chālid of al-Hasa .

Muhammad now settled in Diriyya , where he received the support of the Emir Muhammad ibn Saud . In 1744 the two made a pact that included a mutual oath of allegiance ( baiʿa ). This pact, which was similar to the previous alliance with the Muʿammar emir and aimed at the establishment of a state, provided that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb should take care of religious affairs as imam , while Ibn Saʿūd should take care of military and political affairs should be responsible. Ibn Saʿūd subsequently supported the spread of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's teaching among the Bedouins of Arabia , with the military submission of the Najd and the conversion of the tribes to the teaching of the Wahhabis going hand in hand. The rule of the Āl Saʿūd was religiously legitimized through the connection of faith and power.

Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb was related to the ruler by marriage to a daughter of Muhammad ibn Saʿūd. However, the relationship was not always completely free of tension. After the death of Muhammad ibn Saʿūd in 1765 and the rise of his son Abd al-Aziz ibn Muhammad to power, tensions increased because the new ruler showed little interest in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's religious teachings. After conquering Riyadh in 1773, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb withdrew from the position of Imam and devoted himself entirely to study, teaching and worship.

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhāb died on July 20, 1792 and was buried in an unmarked grave. He left four sons, all of whom were religious scholars. His descendants from the Al-Sheikh family hold important religious offices in Saudi Arabia to the present day (e.g. Sheikh Abd al-Aziz bin Abdullah Al-Sheikh ).

Teaching

Tawheed understanding

Fundamental to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb's teaching was his special understanding of the Tawheed , the confession of the oneness of God. Like all Sunni dogmatists before him, he regarded the tawheed as the most important human duty and a prerequisite for becoming a Muslim. Unlike the Sunni scholars of his time, however, he believed that simply speaking the Shahāda was not enough to fulfill this duty of tawheed. He justified this with a distinction between two types of tawheed : tawheed ar-rubūbīya ("confession of the unity of the Lord") and tauhīd al-ulūhīya ("confession of the unity of God"). The Tawheed al-rubūbīya is by its definition that God is an exclusively passive commitment to the unity of God, namely the confession alone the almighty creator and ruler, the Lord of the world. The tauhīd al-ulūhīya, on the other hand, is an active confession which the believer puts into practice through his own action alone, through the service of God alone. According to his teaching, only the fulfillment of the tawheed al-ulūhīya makes a person a Muslim and distinguishes him from the unbeliever.

The tauhīd al-ulūhīya is destroyed by any form of shirk , "addition". Here, however, it was of great importance that he defined the shirk considerably more than the Sunni scholars of his time. For him, the shirk not only included the worship of stones and trees, but also the worship of saints ( Walī ) and the custom of visiting graves ( Ziyāra ), which were cultivated in Sunni and Shiite Islam in his time. Since the cult of the tomb was accompanied by supplications in which the believer called on the saint in his grave for help, with the request for mediation between God and himself ( tawassul ), with the offering of offerings ( naḏr ) for the saint, and with feelings such as fear According to his teaching, hope, devotion and trust, he clearly represented the facts of the shirk and thus also destroyed the tawheed al-ulūhīya .

The consequence of this teaching was that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and those who followed him believed the majority of Muslims to be unbelievers. From his point of view, knowing about the correct tawheed also required advocacy in word and deed and, associated with this, inevitably distancing himself from those who practiced shirk. Any social contact with these people, verbal or written recognition for them, made a person a kaafir (unbeliever) , even if no shirk appeared in their behavior . To meet the right Tawheed and remain Muslim, should people who live in an area of blasphemers dominated UN, leave this, go to the dominated proper Muslim territory and take up the struggle against the manifestations of Shirk.

Madhhab criticism

With his special understanding of tawheed, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb contradicted the tradition of the Sunni Madhāhib and the consensus of the scholars ( ijma ), because they regarded the tawheed with the Shahāda as having been settled. With the argument that the Madhāhib reached a judgment on the question of the Tawhīd which contradicts the teaching of the Koran and the Sunnah with regard to the religious behavior of Muslims, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb called for a solution from the tradition of the Madhāhib. The believer should not bow to the authority of the Madhāhib and the scholars , but should only act according to the prescriptions of the Koran and Sunna. He himself emphasized that he does not call for a specific madhhab, but only "to God who has no partakers" and "to the Sunnah of the Prophet, which he has made obligatory to the first and the last of his ummah ".

Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb saw himself confirmed in his critical attitude towards the schools of law and his sole focus on the Koran and Sunna by the example of earlier scholars who had adopted a similar attitude. These included Ahmad ibn Hanbal , Ibn Taimīya , Ibn Qaiyim al-Jschauzīya , Ibn Rajab , adh-Dhahabī and Ibn Kathir .

His refusal to submit to the Taqlīd of earlier Hanbali scholars brought Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb to accuse him of having practiced ijtihād without being entitled to do so. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb defended himself by saying that concepts such as fiqh , taqlīd and idschtihād did not play any role in the early Islamic community and that earlier scholars such as ash-Shāfidī had called on the believers themselves to check their teachings against the Koran and Sunna.

Political implications of his teaching

Beyond his criticism of the schools of law, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb also saw himself as the founder of a new true community of Muslims; his followers, the members of the jamāʿa ("community"), had, if they aligned their creed according to the prescriptions of the Koran and Sunna, also to renounce their loyalty to all political authorities if they acted un-Islamic. The model of the community he strived for was the early Islamic community around the prophet and his first successors.

opponent

Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, like Ibn Taimiyya, is exposed to criticism from the Sufis and Shiites, as well as from orthodox Sunnis who belong to the law schools (Hanafis etc.).

Sufis

He rejected the worship of graves and saints by the Sufis (Islamic mystics ) and the excessive worship of the prophets. In his view, this would be a violation of the Koran and would come close to unbelief ( kufr ), since God alone is worthy of worship. He rejected their doctrine of the unity of being ( wahdat al-wudschūd ) because it called into question the validity of the Shari'a (hence kufr ). After Mecca was conquered by his followers, the domed tombs ( qubbas ), which had previously been built by Sufis, were destroyed.

Shiites

Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb wrote an independent letter to refute the Twelve Shiites with the title Risāla fī r-radd ʿalā r-Rāfiḍa (Refutation of the Twelve Shiites ), which he referred to as Rāfidites in connection with old polemical traditions . In it he criticizes the Shiite veneration of saints, but also such legal practices as the Mut'a marriage and the marriage of women without a guardian, which is permitted by the Shiites. The text was edited and published by Muhammad al-Chalidi , an anti-Shiite scholar.

It is not clear from the sources when exactly Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb wrote Risāla fī r-radd ʿalā r-Rāfifa . However, it can be assumed that this happened shortly after his stay in Basra. It was there that he came into contact with Shiites for the first time and, according to Wahhabi sources, began developing his ideas.

Criticism of the Shiite Imamate theory

Among other things, his criticism is that the Shiite designation of ʿAlī as the rightful successor of Muḥammad is wrong. Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb fully recognizes the famous Ḥadīṯ , who according to Shiite opinion entitles ʿAlī to ruler: “Whose master I am, whose master is Alī” and whoever would assist ʿAlī, God would assist him. However, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb warns against overestimating this adīṯ, which could lead to a diminution of the importance of the Prophet. There is a risk that disproportionate worship of the Ahl al-Bait will spurn God and Muḥammad. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb quotes Sura 48 : 9, which deals with obedience to Muḥammad, and writes that whoever disregards God's book becomes an unbeliever. This person would lie to God and his prophet and make false statements.

According to Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the first caliph , Abū Bakr , whom the Shiites reject, would primarily be heralded by some Ḥadīṯe. In two of them, a woman visits Mugesammad with a question. However, he sends her away with a reprimand to come back later. The woman replies that it would be of no further use to him later - an allusion to the imminent death of Muḥammad. Meanwhile, he emphasizes that it will be very useful to him, since Abū Bakr will be his successor. In two other Ḥadīṯs, which according to the Ḥadīṯ work of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal about Ḥuḏayfa - one of the first Shiites - were narrated, it is also stated that Abū Bakr should be the rightful ruler after Muḥammad. One of the two Ḥadīṯe also names ʿUmar as the rightful caliph. To those who now deviate from this opinion and deny Abū Bakr as well as marUmar the title of caliph, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb replies with the Quranic verses 5:54 and 48:16. The first verse is about God making the unbelievers feel his power, and the second about calling the Bedouins to fight. One can understand this as a reference to the Ridda Wars, i.e. a call to fight against the Shiites who, according to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, have fallen away from Islam.

Last but not least, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb criticizes the “narrowing of the caliphate” to the twelve imams who, according to the Twelve Shiite view, represent the only legitimate rulers. According to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, this is a lie and a disdain for the four rightly guided caliphs and the tribe of the Quraiš . In addition, the Shiite caliphate theory would have no basis in the Qurʾān , in the Sunnah , in Iǧmāʿ (consensus), in Qiyās (conclusion by analogy) and not in ʿ Aql (rationality).

Taqīya

While there are some concerns about the principle of Taqīya on the part of the Sunnis , from the point of view of the Sīʿa it is a little contradicting concept. This can primarily be explained by their history, in which Shiites were mostly persecuted. Shiites refer to the prophets mentioned in the Koran , who at the beginning always kept their teaching secret in order to protect their lives.

Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb cites a part of Sura 49 : 13 in his “refutation” : “The most respected of you is the most godly”. In Arabic, 'the most godly of you' is rendered as atqākum . According to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the Shiites would have interpreted this in such a way that the person who practices the most taqīya and who fears the most people is the most respected. However, according to one adīṯ, this interpretation of the Koran is forbidden to people and anyone who does not adhere to it is an unbeliever. In addition, the Shiite disbelief is also evident in the fact that ʿAlī swore allegiance to the first three caliphs. In addition, approving the prophets' fear of people is a reduction in prophethood. The one who approves of this is also an unbeliever.

Philosophers

Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb rejected the Ilm al-Kalam in any form, as it represented a bidʿa for him . He considered the Mutakallimun unnecessary and flawed.

Works

• Al-uṣūl aṯ-ṯalāṯa (The Three Principles)
• Risāla fī r-radd ʿalā r-Rāfiḍa (Refutation of the Twelve Shiites)
• Sirat ar-Rasūl (biography of the prophet). Prepared by Martin Riexinger .
• Kitāb at-Tauḥīd [1]

literature

• Muḥammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb: Risāla fī r-radd ʿalā ar-Rāfiḍa . (on-line)
• Jörg-Dieter Brandes: … with saber and Koran, Saudi Arabia or the rise of the Saud royal family and the Wahabites. Thorbecke publishing house, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-7995-0094-4 .
• Natana J. DeLong-Bas: Wahhabi Islam. From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-516991-3 , pp. 17-93.
• Ignaz Goldziher : The principle of Taḳijja in Islam. In: Journal of the German Oriental Society. 59, 1906, pp. 213-226. (Digitized MENAdoc)
• Henri Laoust : Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Volume 3, pp. 677b-679a.
• Esther Peskes: Muḥammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb (1703-92). Investigations to reconstruct the early history of the Wahhābīya . Beirut / Stuttgart 1993.
• John O. Voll : Muḥammad Ḥayyā al-Sindī and Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab: an analysis of an intellectual group in Eighteenth-Century Medina. In: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 38, 1975, pp. 32-39.

Web links

• Literature by and about Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb in the catalog of the German National Library .
• Literature by and about Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb in the catalog of the German National Library .
• Literature by and about Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb in the WorldCat bibliographic database .

supporting documents

1. ^ NJ Delong-Bas: Wahhabi Islam. 2004, pp. 17-20.
2. ^ NJ Delong-Bas: Wahhabi Islam. 2004, pp. 20-21.
3. ^ NJ Delong-Bas: Wahhabi Islam. 2004, p. 22.
4. ^ ^{A b} David Commins: The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia . IB Tauris, London 2009, ISBN 1-84511-080-3 , pp. 11 f .
5. ^ NJ DeLong-Bas: Wahhabi Islam. 2004, p. 23.
6. ^ NJ DeLong-Bas: Wahhabi Islam. 2004, pp. 23-33.
7. ^ NJ DeLong-Bas: Wahhabi Islam. 2004, p. 34f.
8. ^ NJ DeLong-Bas: Wahhabi Islam. 2004, p. 39.
9. ^ Daniel Benjamin, Steven Simon: The Age of Sacred Terror
10. ^ NJ DeLong-Bas: Wahhabi Islam. 2004, p. 40.
11. ↑ E. Peskes: Muhammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb (1703-92). 1993, pp. 20-23.
12. ↑ E. Peskes: Muhammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb (1703-92). 1993, pp. 25-26.
13. ↑ E. Peskes: Muhammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb (1703-92). 1993, pp. 27-32.
14. ↑ E. Peskes: Muhammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb (1703-92). 1993, pp. 33-35.
15. ↑ Quoted from E. Peskes: Muḥammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb (1703-92). 1993, p. 38.
16. ↑ E. Peskes: Muhammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb (1703-92). 1993, p. 40.
17. ↑ E. Peskes: Muhammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb (1703-92). 1993, p. 43.
18. ↑ E. Peskes: Muhammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb (1703-92). 1993, p. 47.
19. ^ NJ DeLong-Bas: Wahhabi Islam. 2004, p. 90.
20. ↑ ^{a b c d} Muḥammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb: Risāla fī r-radd ʿalā ar-Rāfiḍa. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Muḥammad Māl Allāh al-Ḫālidī, pp. 6–9, on criticism of the Shiite caliphate theory, pp. 17f, on Taqīya see p. 13f , archived from the original on May 17, 2016 ; Retrieved December 3, 2015 (Arabic). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
21. ↑ Ignaz Goldziher: The principle of Taḳijja in Islam . In: Journal of the German Oriental Society . tape 59 , 1906, pp. 217 f .