Wahhabism to ISIS: how Saudi Arabia exported the main source of global terrorism
Although IS is certainly an Islamic movement, it is neither typical nor mired in the distant past, because its roots are in Wahhabism, a form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia that developed only in the 18th century.
BY KAREN ARMSTRONG
As the so-called Islamic State demolishes nation states set up by the Europeans almost a century ago, ISs obscene savagery seems to epitomise the violence that many believe to be inherent in religion in general and Islam in particular. It also suggests that the neoconservative ideology that inspired the Iraq war was delusory, since it assumed that the liberal nation state was an inevitable outcome of modernity and that, once Saddams dictatorship had gone, Iraq could not fail to become a western-style democracy. Instead, IS, which was born in the Iraq war and is intent on restoring the premodern autocracy of the caliphate, seems to be reverting to barbarism. On 16 November, the militants released a video showing that they had beheaded a fifth western hostage, the American aid worker Peter Kassig, as well as several captured Syrian soldiers. Some will see the groups ferocious irredentism as proof of Islams chronic inability to embrace modern values.
Yet although IS is certainly an Islamic movement, it is neither typical nor mired in the distant past, because its roots are in Wahhabism, a form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia that developed only in the 18th century. In July 2013, the European Parliament identified Wahhabism as the main source of global terrorism, and yet the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, condemning IS in the strongest terms, has insisted that the ideas of extremism, radicalism and terrorism do not belong to Islam in any way. Other members of the Saudi ruling class, however, look more kindly on the movement, applauding its staunch opposition to Shiaism and for its Salafi piety, its adherence to the original practices of Islam. This inconsistency is a salutary reminder of the impossibility of making accurate generalisations about any religious tradition. In its short history, Wahhabism has developed at least two distinct forms, each of which has a wholly different take on violence.
During the 18th century, revivalist movements sprang up in many parts of the Islamic world as the Muslim imperial powers began to lose control of peripheral territories. In the west at this time, we were beginning to separate church from state, but this secular ideal was a radical innovation: as revolutionary as the commercial economy that Europe was concurrently devising. No other culture regarded religion as a purely private activity, separate from such worldly pursuits as politics, so for Muslims the political fragmentation of their society was also a religious problem. Because the Quran had given them a sacred mission to build a just economy in which everybody was treated with equity and respect the political well-being of the umma (community) was always a matter of sacred import. If the poor were oppressed, the vulnerable exploited or state institutions corrupt, Muslims were obliged to make every effort to put society back on track.
more
http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2014/11/wahhabism-isis-how-saudi-arabia-exported-main-source-global-terrorism
tblue37
(65,483 posts)learning a lot about different religions and about the history of religion(s).
She is rather academic in her orientation, though, so a novice might be overwhelmed by the amount of information in most of her books (though he'd prose is wonderfully readable, not pompous or pedantic).
For novices I recommend Huston Smith's (also wonderfully readable) introductory book The World's Religions.
Although I am an agnostic myself, the study of religion as anthropology, history, and comparative mythology and literature has always been something of a hobby. All of those subject areas, as well as psychology and neuroscience, are of interest to me, and I find religion to be fascinating as a manifestation of the complex interaction among them.
Myth is also foundational to the way I teach literature.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)I learned a lot from the article.
the cool thing about reading on line is one can select a word and get an instant definition, in this case "irredentism"
dogknob
(2,431 posts)... the HuffPo piece on Wahhabism I posted a few days ago...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016137161
... and the article about Sykes-Picot (post-WWI carve-up of the Ottoman Empire by the Allies) from the UK Independent.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016137610
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)I read it slowly since I looked up the various Arabic name meanings like Ibn and Aziz, etc.
Bottom line.....ISIS intolerance of any form of Islam but their own interpretation has a long history
and
is quite like the fundies passion here for their select Bible reading to justify their own foaming at the mouth "religious" fury.
Imagine that.