Wahhabis

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As Wahhabis nationals of be Wahhabitentums ( Arabic وهّابية Wahhābīya ) or followers of Wahhabism , a purist-traditionalist direction of modern Sunni Islam . The movement is based on the teachings of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb . The Wahhabis follow the Hanbali school of law and reject Sufism , Kalām and all forms of Shiite Islam. They also oppose the veneration of saints , pilgrimages to graves and the celebration of the prophet's birthday .

The followers of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab claim to be the only ones to represent Islamic teaching authentically. Beliefs that are incompatible with Wahhabism are declared by them as "un-Islamic". Most Wahhabis live in Saudi Arabia , where their teaching enjoys state funding and, for example, the Islamic World League aims to spread it around the world. In addition, followers of the Wahhabi doctrine also dominate in Qatar , they can also be found in India , Pakistan and West Africa . The term "Wahhabis" is only used by opponents of this group. As a rule, they do not refer to themselves as such, but as Salafis or simply as "Sunnis" ( ahl as-sunna ).

The Ahl-i Hadîth group, which is widespread in Asia, and the al-Qaida network are close to the Wahhabis. The Taliban's ideology is similar to Wahhabism, but the Taliban are adherents of the Hanafi school of law. In its territory, the Islamic State introduced a 16-point catalog based on Sharia and Wahhabism, which massively standardized and restricted public and private life.

One of the most famous acts of supporters of Wahhabism is the destruction of the graves and shrines in the Baqi cemetery in Medina in 1926. The picture shows the cemetery before its destruction and today.

Origin and teaching

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab lived in the 18th century and came from the oasis city of Uyaina in Najd ( Saudi Arabia ). He studied in Baghdad , among other places . In contrast to other Islamic groups, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab refused to further develop the statements of Islamic law, which are derived from the Koran and the tradition of the way of life of the Islamic prophet Mohammed ( Hadith ), and changed times and circumstances with the help of conclusions from analogy adapt. The literal translation of the Islamic sources as possible had priority for him over the question of the underlying intention ( niya ) of the legal clauses , which would have given scope for contemporary changes in the law. The teaching condemns "innovations" ( bid'a ) as inadmissible.

According to Wahhabi teaching, not only is everything prohibited that is forbidden according to the Koran or other traditions, but also every act or situation that could lead to such a forbidden act, which is a literal interpretation of the Koran and the Sunna , the traditions about the Life, the actions and statements of the Prophet Muhammad is substantiated.

The followers of the teachings of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab do not see themselves as one current among many, but as "the" Muslims who live out the original Islam. As Wahhabis - that is, a special group named after their "founder" - they are only referred to by their opponents. You yourself speak of yourself as a muwahhidun - as a confessor of tauhid , the belief in one God - or simply as Muslims. All beliefs that are incompatible with theirs are, for them, religious deviations and heresies.

The alliance with the Saʿūd family

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab began his missionary work in 1731. In 1740, in Huraimala near Riyadh , he proclaimed purist beliefs to “purify” Islam. He managed to win over the Emir of Diriyya , Muhammad ibn Saud , and his son Abd al-Aziz for his teachings. The aim of the Saudis was to forcibly bring about the unification of the tribes of Arabia on the basis of the Wahhabi faith under their suzerainty. The puritanism of the Wahhabi faith corresponded to the humble way of life of the Bedouins in the barren landscape of central Arabia, who helped spread its teachings.

In 1744 a treaty was concluded, with which Abd al-Wahhab shared the religious leadership and Ibn Saud the military leadership in the "holy war" of the Wahhabis. In Mecca, however, the Wahhabis were outlawed and therefore excluded from participating in the Hajj . In 1749, the Sherif Masʿūd ibn Saʿīd captured a group of pilgrims from the Najd, and some of them died in captivity. To request permission to take part in the pilgrimage, the Wahhabis sent delegations to Mecca several times, but mostly in vain. But by 1786 the Saudis were able to conquer the whole of Najd and thus establish the first empire of the Saud dynasty. At that time the Najd was only nominally under Ottoman rule, in fact the Ottomans did not exercise any rule in the Najd through their own functionaries. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab gained more and more popularity through the conquests of the Āl-Saud and proselytizing.

The first conquest of the Hejaz (1804/1806) and its effects

Towards the end of the 18th century, tribes from the highlands of Najd began to subjugate the Bedouin tribes and soon afterwards moved towards the outskirts of the Arabian Peninsula. After a campaign against Karbala , where they killed thousands of residents in 1802 and looted the Imam Husain shrine , they conquered the cities of Mecca and Medina, which were under the protection of the Ottoman Empire , by 1806 . There they destroyed the tombs of many of the great figures of early Islam. They raged particularly wildly in the Baqīʿ cemetery in Medina, where they razed the mausoleum of the Shiite imams Hasan , ʿAlī Zain al-ʿĀbidīn , Muhammad al-Bāqir and Jaʿfar as-Sādiq, built in the Seljuk period . Only the tomb of the prophet in the prophet's mosque was spared. Smoking was banned, the population was forcibly taught the Wahhabi doctrine, and worshipers who did not perform the prayer according to the Hanbali rite were reprimanded. Books with Sufi or philosophical content were destroyed, the use of prayer chains was forbidden, as was celebrations of the prophet's birthday. To symbolize the break with the past, the Kaaba was dressed in a red kiswa in 1806 . The Wahhabi conquest of Mecca and Medina sparked the Ottoman-Saudi War , which lasted until 1818.

At the same time, the Wahhabis began Daʿwa activities outside of the Arabian Peninsula. A great sympathizer of the Wahhabis was the Moroccan Sultan Sulaimān (r. 1792–1822), who had the Sufi orders and their rites branded as Bidʿa ("heretical innovation") in the Friday sermon of all mosques in his territory .

In the early 19th century, movements developed in various areas of the Islamic world that pursued the ideals of the Wahhābiyya. The earliest of these was the Padri movement among the Minangkabau in Sumatra . Some of their leaders had come into contact with Wahhabi ideas during their pilgrimage to Mecca. The Padris were particularly opposed to the system of local customs and rights known as adat , in which matrilinearity plays an important role. The puritanism of the movement was also expressed in actions against tobacco consumption and cockfighting .

In 1807 Muhammad Ali Pasha was commissioned by the Ottomans to liberate the holy places from the Wahhabis. In 1813 one of his sons was able to take Medina and Mecca. In 1818 his troops captured Dirʿiyya , the capital of the Āl Saʿūd , and destroyed it. The first Saudi state went under. At that time, Wahhabi thought had already spread far beyond the borders of Arabia. In Bengal, the Farā'idī movement arose around 1818, which places particular emphasis on the religious duties ( farāʾiḍ ) of Muslims. Its founder, Hādji Sharīʿatullāh, got to know the Islam of the Wahhabis during his pilgrimage and the subsequent stay in Mecca. When he returned from there, he preached to the peasants in Bengal the rejection of the Hindu rites and the sole authority of the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet. The Farā'idī movement covered all of Bengal and was continued by Sharīʿatullāh's son Dūdhū Miyān (d. 1860), who developed it into a revolutionary movement.

Also influenced by the Wahhabis was the north Indian movement of Saiyid Ahmad Barelwī (d. 1831), which referred to itself as Tarīqa-yi Muhammadiyya ("Muhammadan path"). Other opposing Muslim groups and the British colonial power also explicitly referred to them as "Wahhabis", which, however, was more of a battle term to disavow them. Because of the similarity of ideas, various other Indian-Islamic groups such as the Deobandis and the Ahl-i Hadîth were called Wahhabis in the 19th century .

The return of the Wahhabis (1901–1924) and the Salafīya

At the beginning of the 20th century, a descendant of the Āl Saʿūd, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Ibn Saʿūd , founded a new Saudi state in which the project of a Wahhabi-Saudi alliance established in the 18th century was continued. In order to ensure the stability of his young state, Ibn Saʿūd had to bring the great Bedouin tribes under his control. By making Bedouin tribes settled, he tried to channel their military energies into the service of the state. Those who settled in the new agricultural settlements (hiǧar) from 1911/1912 onwards were called Ichwān (literally "brothers in the spirit"). With the help of these Ichwān, who were converted by preachers to ardent followers of the Wahhābiyya, Ibn Saʿūd succeeded in the following years in recapturing large areas of the Arabian Peninsula - with ample support from England. In the subject areas, the Wahhabis proceeded in a similar way to their ancestors at the beginning of the 19th century. After the conquest of the eastern Arabian province of al-Hasā in 1913, for example, the Shiites there were rigidly suppressed and Shiite celebrations were banned.

In 1920, the Wahhabi Ikhwan sat in 'Asīr determines the end of 1924 they overran the Hejaz and prepared the Hashemite Kingdom of Hejaz an end. The Wahhabi occupation of Mecca and Medina caused horror among many Muslims, because the Wahhabis wreaked havoc there: in April 1926 they again tore down all domes and other grave structures in the area of ​​the Baqī Fried cemetery of Medina. But outrage also aroused that at the holy places all other prayer groups apart from the Hanbali prayer group were abolished. To ward off the influence of the Wahhābīya, the Ash dieari- oriented scholars in the Dutch East Indies united in January 1926 in a society called Nahdlatul Ulama ("Elevation of the Scholars"; NU for short). The association later developed into one of the largest Islamic organizations in the Dutch colony.

Due to the rigorous approach of the Wahhabis towards pilgrims during the pilgrimage of 1926, there were strong irritations also in relation to Egypt , on whose supply of food and economic goods the Hejaz was dependent. That is why the Saudi ruler organized a World Islamic Congress in Mecca in the summer of 1926 to promote acceptance of his rule over the Hejaz.

The Wahhabi Ichwān also had sympathizers in other countries. This included in particular Muhibb ad-Dīn al-Chatīb , a Hanbali publicist from Syria who had lived in Cairo since the early 1920s and set up a branch of his “Salafist printing works” (Maṭbaʿa Salafīya) in Mecca in 1926 . The term Salafīya has its origin in the late Ottoman Damascus. It was named after the “pious ancestors” (as-salaf aṣ-ṣāliḥ) from the first generations of Islam, whose example one wanted to emulate. The great role that Muhibb ad-Dīns Meccan printing house played in the dissemination of Wahhabi scriptures resulted in the meaning of the term "Salafīya" changing. It now became the self-designation of all those Muslims who sympathized with the Wahhabis. This also included Raschīd Ridā , the most famous disciple of Muhammad ʿAbduh .

Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia

ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Ibn Saʿūd assumed the title of king after the conquest of Mecca and called himself from then on King of the Hejaz and Nedjd. In 1932 he proclaimed the territories combined under his rule to be the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia . In Saudi Arabia, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's teaching has been state doctrine ever since. At the same time, the Saudi state promotes Wahhabi and other dogmatic Sunni organizations in all parts of the world. The following practices in public life are characteristic of the influence of the Wahhabis:

  • Prohibition of driving for women (abolished in 2018)
  • Prohibition for women to show up in public with strangers
  • Public sharia punishments such as executions and flogging
  • Prohibition of the free practice of religion
  • For a long time, music and television were absolutely forbidden.
  • Destruction of the Islamic cultural heritage in Saudi Arabia

Riyadh and Buraida are considered the strongholds of the Wahhabis in today's Saudi Arabia . The influence is particularly great in the southern old town quarters, which are dominated by immigrants from Pakistan . In contrast to Salafists , Wahhabis are loyal to the Saud royal family .

In addition to the regular police , the Mutawwiʿ Islamic Religious Police in Saudi Arabia has the task of mandating compliance with the Koranic rule and forbidding what is reprehensible in public. In addition, during the Friday prayer, the sermon is broadcast at a high volume, and the entire area around the mosque is covered with sound.

Among the most famous Wahhabi scholars in Saudi Arabia are Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz (1909–1999), Muhammad Ibn Uthaymin (1925–2001), Abd al-Aziz bin Abdullah Al-Sheikh (born 1943) and Shuraim Abdul Rahman ibn Abdul Aziz as-Sudais (born 1961).

Wahhabis in Qatar

The Emir of Qatar opened the state Imam Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab Mosque in Doha in 2011 and said on that occasion that the “Muslim nation” urgently needed renewal through Wahhabi teaching. In Qatar, as in Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi Islam is the state religion. Promoting Wahhabi endeavors is part of Qatar's regional influence-building strategy.

Spread to West Africa

In the mid-1940s, Wahhabi doctrine spread to West Africa , where it was used by certain bourgeois strata, particularly traders, as an "anti-clerical ideology" to break the power of the marabouts . During this time, Wahhabis became visible as a separate group in the networks of young Malian students and traders with contacts to the Middle East. In 1951, young Wahhabis founded a branch of the Society of Muslim Young Men in Bamako . Wahhabis also joined the Union Culturelle Musulmane (UCM) in droves when it held its first congress in Dakar in 1957 .

The Wahhabi doctrine gained a foothold in Ivory Coast early on . In 1950, Kabiné Diané from Guinea founded the first Wahhabi school in Bouaké with the Madrasa Sunniyya . Two years later it had 354 students. Based on the model of the Madrasa Sunniyya, a second Wahhabi school was founded in Adjamé in 1958 . The management of the Madrasa Sunniyya itself passed into the hands of Mory Moussa Camara from Mali in 1958, who renamed the school Dar al-Hadith. In 1962, the Wahhabi community in Abidjan received its own mosque for the first time.

As early as the 1950s, fights broke out in various cities on the Ivory Coast between the Wahhabis and the supporters of the marabouts, who had the support of the French colonial administration. The most significant of these conflicts occurred in 1951/1952 in Bouaké , where the Wahhabi community was relatively numerous. Other disputes occurred in Gagnoa (1956), Treichville (1958), and Man (1959 to 1962). New conflicts between Wahhabis and the representatives of traditional Islam arose in the 1970s when the Wahhabis in various cities, such as Danané and Korhogo , separated themselves from other Muslims while praying. In the late 1970s, various Wahhabi mosques were destroyed in clashes. With the Association des musulmans orthodoxes de Côte d'Ivoire (AMOCI), the first nationwide Wahhabi organization was created in the Ivory Coast in 1976. In 1994 it was renamed the Association des musulmans sunnites de Côte d'Ivoire (AMSCI - "Society of Sunni Muslims of the Ivory Coast").

See also

literature

  • Qeyamuddin Ahmad: The Wahhabi Movement in India . Manohar, New Delhi, 1966.
  • J.-L. Amselle: "Le Wahhabisme à Bamako (1945-1985)" in Canadian Journal of African Studies 19 (1985) 345-357.
  • Dirk Boberg: Egypt, Naǧd, and the Ḥiǧāz. A study of the religious-political relationship between Egypt and the Wahhabis, 1923–1936, based on pro and anti-Wahhabi pamphlets and press reports published in Cairo. Peter Lang, Bern a. a., 1991.
  • Natana J. DeLong-Bas: "Wahhābīya" in John L. Esposito (ed.): The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. 6 Vols. Oxford 2009. Vol. V, pp. 511b-514a.
  • Werner Ende: "Wahhābīya. 2. The 20th century" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. XI, pp. 45b-47a.
  • Mohammad Gharaibeh: On the doctrine of attributes of the Wahhabiya with special consideration of the writings of Ibn ʿUṯaimīn (1929–2001) . EB-Verl., Berlin, 2012, ISBN 978-3-86893-085-6 .
  • Richard Hartmann, Die Wahhābiten in: Zeitschrift der Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft , vol. 78 (1924), p. 176 ff. ( Online ) (for the time before the founding of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia)
  • Michael Heim: “The dead sheikh in the Saud house. The Fateful History of Wahhabism ”. In: [1] , only a summary available free of charge, Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik , Vol. 49, No. 10, 2004, ISSN  0006-4416 , pp. 1262-1269.
  • L. Kaba: The Wahhabiya. Islamic reform and politics in French West Africa . Evanston, Ill. 1974.
  • Marie Miran: "Le Wahhabisme à Abidjan: Dynamisme urbain d'un islam réformiste en Côte d'Ivoire contemporaine (1960-1996)" in Islam et Sociétés au Sud du Sahara 12 (1998) 5-74.
  • Esther Peskes: Muḥammad b. ʿAbdalwahhāb (1703–92) in conflict. Investigations on the reconstruction of the early history of the Wahhābiyya. Beirut 1993.
  • Esther Peskes: "Wahhābīya. 1st 18th and 19th centuries" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. XI, pp. 40a-45b.
  • Guido Steinberg: Religion and State in Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabi Scholars 1902–1953 . Ergon-Verl., Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-89913-266-1 (= communications on the social and cultural history of the Islamic world . Volume 10, also dissertation at the Free University of Berlin 2000).
  • R. Warms: Merchants, Muslims and Wahhabiyya: The Elaboration of Islamic Identity in Sikasso, Mali in Canadian Journal of African Studies 26 (1992) 485–507. * Keywords “Wahabi, Wahabiden, Wechabiden” in: “Neues Rheinisches Conversations Lexicon or Encyclopedic concise dictionary for the educated classes ”, Cologne 1836, pp. 99-103. limited preview in Google Book search

Web links

Wiktionary: Wahhabit  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Wahhabism  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

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  18. ↑ See Ahmad: The Wahhabi Movement in India . 1966, pp. 40-76.
  19. ↑ English documents on the strangulation of Persia. Verlag Der Neue Orient, Berlin 1917, p. 95
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  21. ↑ See Steinberg: Religion and State. 2002, pp. 484-500.
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  23. ↑ See Religion and State. 2002, pp. 544f.
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  25. ↑ See Martin Kramer: Islam Assembled: The Advent of the Muslim Congress. New York 1986. pp. 106-122.
  26. ^ Cf. Henri Lauzière: The Construction of Salafiyya: Reconsidering Salafism from the perspective of conceptual history . In: International Journal of Middle East Studies 42 (2010) 369–389.
  27. ↑ Saudi Arabia Bulldozes Over Its Heritage Carla Power, in: Time , November 14, 2014
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  29. ↑ Mohammad Gharaibeh: Wahhabis and Salafists . Article from December 18, 2013 in the portal dw.de , accessed on July 25, 2014
  30. ↑ Qatar embraces Wahhabism to strengthen regional influence , Middle East Online, December 18, 2011
  31. ↑ See Amselle: Le Wahhabisme à Bamako . 1985 and Warms: Merchants, Muslims and Wahhabiyya. 1992.
  32. ↑ See Louis Brenner: Constructing Muslim Identities in Mali . In: Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa . Hurst & Company, London, 1993. pp. 59-78. Here p. 61.
  33. ↑ a b c cf. Marie Miran: Islam, histoire et modernité en Côte d'Ivoire . Karthala, Paris, 2006. pp. 250f.
  34. ↑ Cf. Marie Miran: Islam, histoire et modernité en Côte d'Ivoire . Karthala, Paris, 2006. p. 254.
  35. ↑ a b Cf. Marie Miran: Islam, histoire et modernité en Côte d'Ivoire . Karthala, Paris, 2006. pp. 256f, 263.
  36. ↑ Cf. Marie Miran: Islam, histoire et modernité en Côte d'Ivoire . Karthala, Paris, 2006. pp. 260-263.