Read Online The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From the Extremists by Khaled M. Abou el Fadl - Free Book Online Page A

caliphate as al-dawlah al-kufriyya (a heretical na- tion) and claimed that supporting or allying oneself with the Ottomans was as grievous a sin as supporting or allying one- self with Christians or Jews. 15
    ‘Abd al-Wahhab was wrong about the Ottoman Turks: they were nothing like the Mongols that ravished the Muslim world in the twelfth century, massacring hundreds of thou- sands of people and destroying an untold number of Muslim manuscripts. The Ottomans had established one of the

    strongest caliphates and had been long-time defenders of the Islamic faith. Even before the Ottoman caliphate, the Turks had become an important ethnicity in the pluralist ethnic mo- saic forming the Islamic Empire. It is true that in the late Ot- toman period, the Ottomans had adopted an extremely inefficient and corrupt system of taxation based on special concessions and patronage, and at times they were very re- pressive and exploitative. But in their writings, ‘Abd al-Wahhab and his followers do not protest these policies, and so their hostility to the Ottomans does not seem to have been moti- vated by a principled stand against Ottoman injustice. Rather, ‘Abd al-Wahhab was, in part, reacting to the old ethnocentric belief that only Arabs can represent the one true and authentic Islam. 16
    But the other factor that explains ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s ani- mosity toward the Ottomans was that he was responding to British efforts in the eighteenth century to destroy the Ot- toman caliphate by igniting the fires of local ethnicities, in- cluding that of Arab nationalism. 17 Interestingly, unlike other nonsecular Arab nationalists, ‘Abd al-Wahhab did not advo- cate the creation of an Arab caliphate instead of the Ottoman caliphate. But ‘Abd al-Wahhab was not interested in political theory or political practice as much as he was interested in pure Arab culture, which in ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s mind was indis- tinguishable from true Islam. ‘Abd al-Wahhab, however, did not realize or did not acknowledge that he was confusing the Arab culture—more precisely, the Bedouin culture of Arabia—and the universal precepts of Islam. Effectively, ‘Abd al-Wahhab was declaring the particulars of Bedouin culture to be the one and only true Islam and then universalizing these particulars by making them obligatory upon all Muslims.
    This all points to a fact that has been overlooked by many contemporary observers: Wahhabism in the eighteenth century

    was plagued by ideological inconsistencies that to this day have not been reconciled or resolved. 18 So, for instance, while condemning all cultural practices and insisting on strict sub- mission to Islam, in reality Wahhabism was thoroughly a con- struct of its own culture—that is, the Bedouin culture of the Najd region of Arabia (part of modern-day Saudi Arabia). 19 While insisting that there was only one true Islam, in reality Wahhabism universalized its own culture and declared it to be the one true Islam. While consistently condemning non-Muslim influences and rejecting any form of cooperation with the West, in reality Wahhabis were incited and supported by English colonialists to rebel against the Ottomans, which ef- fectively meant that Wahhabis sided with non-Muslim En- glishmen against their Muslim Ottoman enemies. Moreover, while condemning all forms of nationalism as an evil Western invention, in reality Wahhabism was a pro-Arab nationalistic movement that rejected Turkish dominance over Arabs under the guise of defending the one true Islam. Fundamentally, while the Wahhabis of the eighteenth century took the culture of the Bedouins of Najd and universalized it into the Islam, the Wahhabis of today take the culture of Saudi Arabia and uni- versalize it into the singularly true Islam.
    Wahhabism’s cultural dependency belies its claims to tex- tual literalism. The fact that Wahhabism gives expression to a specific and narrow cultural context and understanding is not consistent with its claim that