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Wahhabism as a Contested Category

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language

And next year’s words await another voice.

—T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Wahhabism is both conventionally and popularly understood to be an extremely conservative, fundamentalist, or radical version of Islam. Historians agree that it has its origins in Saudi Arabia in the eighteenth century and that its founder was Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Abd al-Wahhab is said to have developed a version of Islam he insisted was a rigorous and conservative interpretation of the Qur’an. The general consensus is that Wahhabism played a decisive role in creating the Saudi state in 1932, where Wahhabism is credited as having a substantial following today.¹ Beyond this, Wahhabism is a hotly contested category and this contest begins with those who are said to be followers of this version of Islam. Those who are labeled followers of Wahhabism tend to reject this term, instead referring to themselves as Muslims or Salafists. The contest continues when dealing with the relation between Wahhabism and modern Islamic terrorism, particularly with regards to the apparent influence it is said to have on well-known terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.

At this stage I want to present some of the major ways scholars influenced by a variety of political and religious beliefs, aims, and goals have represented Wahhabism. I will continue to expand on this contest throughout the book, particularly when I take a closer look at how intellectuals from the liberal and neoconservative traditions have represented Wahhabism. Now I want to demonstrate that there is little consensus among those writers and researchers dealing with Wahhabism with what might be thought to be the kind of scholarly regard for careful, nuanced inquiry found in academic centers devoted to the study of religions, contemporary political science, or international relations. While some would see this as the basis for resolving the controversies and issues this survey highlights, by appealing to some empirical or theoretical benchmarks of objectivity or accuracy, I continue to hold that this is impossible given that Wahhabism is an observer-dependent phenomenon with no objective reality. The following analyses provide for a great starting point for why we need to pay more attention to the issues of how and why intellectuals represent a phenomenon like Wahhabism in different ways.

I have taken exemplars of some of the ways scholars have dealt with Wahhabism. These representations appear in books in libraries and online and in academic journals, and are often regurgitated or referred to by writers, bloggers, and government officials around the world. These representations are also influencing students, other scholars, and researchers. My analysis begins with a group of scholars emphasizing the negative and dangerous aspects of Wahhabism, which is certainly the dominant representation, and then turns to those offering softer and less threatening portraits. In both cases there are important issues involved in translating Wahhabism that I explore in greater detail toward the end of the chapter. While these issues of translation are important for those seeking to make sense of the contest to define Wahhabism, they also have a much wider application.

Intellectuals, Imagined Geographies, and Imagined Communities: Wahhabism as a Threat

Benedict Anderson’s famous account of the role played by intellectuals in constructing Imagined communities and Edward Said’s Imagined geographies are pertinent ideas when considering how intellectuals like Dore Gold, Bernard Lewis, and David Commins represent Wahhabism.² Each, albeit in different ways, draws on an historical account of a relationship between spaces and people to arrive at distinctly negative portraits of Wahhabism. Ron Eyerman’s claims that intellectuals are often projecting their own “needs and fantasies” and their “deep-seated needs and interests” are certainly relevant here.³

Anderson makes the point that all “communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact . . . are imagined.”⁴ Imagined communities are not unreal by virtue of being imagined, but instead constitute a network of socially consequential relationships with the same degree of reality as members of communities enjoying face-to-face relations. We may not see everyone that is a part of our Imagined community; however, our ability to communicate helps us to know they exist. Intellectuals play key roles in this communication process. Anderson points to the crucial role print media plays in creating these communities, highlighting the first European nation-states as quintessential examples. Said’s ideas about Imagined geographies are similar to Anderson’s.

Said uses this term when referring to perceived spaces created by intellectuals through the use of particular images, texts, and discourses.⁵ His ideas are based on his analysis of the ways in which those in the West have created Imagined geographies of the Orient. He claims that Western culture’s modern understanding of the Orient is based on a selective imagination conjured up through intellectual representations, including academic Oriental studies and travel writings. Said claims that intellectuals’ representations have feminized the Orient by portraying it as open and virgin space with no concept of organized rule or government. The intellectual’s ability to create these Imagined geographies serves as a powerful tool that can be used to control and subordinate the Other. The Other is a term I use throughout the book and it refers to that which is alien and divergent from that which is given, such as a norm, identity, or the self. Its binary is the Same. The constitutive Other often denotes a different, incomprehensible self outside of one’s own. It is a concept that is key to Said’s work on Orientalism.

Dore Gold’s popular representation of Wahhabism is a good example of an intellectual creating an Imagined community. His representation is worth considering given his book, Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism, appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.⁶ Published soon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it is unsurprising that his book was so popular given the widespread anger and the need of many to find answers or assign blame for the rise in Islamic terrorism and its focus on Western targets. It should also be noted that the US-born Gold is a prominent intellectual that has served as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, as an advisor to Israeli Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, and is president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He also testified as an expert before the US Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, claiming Saudi Arabia provides ideological and financial support for Islamic terrorist groups and organizations.⁷

Gold is one of the authors whose representations I first read when researching the Israeli–Palestinian conflict following my discussions with my Palestinian friend in Stockholm. His views and his book are widely cited. He is one of those authors who uses representations of Wahhabism, which he understands as responsible for inspiring and promoting Islamic terrorism, when writing about this conflict. Gold creates an Imagined community in which the West, particularly the United States and Israel, belong, and Palestinians and other supposed terrorist groups and organizations do not. Additionally, he creates an Imagined community of Jewish Israelis in the state of Israel (which he sees as encompassing what many others would deem Palestinian land), of which Palestinians are not a part. A firm supporter of Israel’s actions in the Occupied Territories, Gold uses representations of Wahhabism in an attempt to explain Palestinian aggression toward Israel.

Assuming the land in question belongs to Israel and rejecting Palestinian claims, Gold has a rationale for looking for alternative explanations for what he sees as a long history of pro-Palestinian terrorism directed against Israel. Dismissing claims that pro-Palestinian groups could be motivated by political and/or economic aims and goals, for example, wanting a functional economy and Palestinian statehood, Gold finds that religion, specifically radical Islam and more specifically Wahhabism, is to blame for inspiring and motivating anti-Israeli violence. Gold’s blaming of religion in general is evident in the following extract:

The United States and its allies can win the most spectacular military victories in Afghanistan; they can freeze terrorists’ bank accounts and cut off their supplies of weaponry; they can eliminate terrorist masterminds. But even taken together, such triumphs are not enough to remove the terrorist threat, for they do not get at the source of the problem. Terrorism, on the scale of the September 11 attacks, does not occur in a vacuum. People do not just decide spontaneously that they are going to hijack an aircraft, crash it into a building, and commit mass murder (and take their own lives) because of some political grievance or sense of economic deprivation. No, there is another critical component of terrorism that has generally been overlooked in the West: the ideological motivation to slaughter thousands of innocent people.⁸

Contrary to what Gold claims, history shows us that political grievances have certainly motivated many hijackings and other forms of violence. As a firm supporter of Israel, Gold does his best to convince readers that Palestinian violence is religiously motivated and that many pro-Palestinian groups are getting their inspiration from the radical Wahhabi ideology exported from Saudi Arabia.

David Commins, who is a prominent scholar and whose book, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia, appears on bookshelves around the world, also provides a representation of Wahhabism worth closely considering.⁹ A professor of history, Commins provides a good example of an intellectual using Wahhabism to create an Imagined geography. Throughout his book Commins represents Wahhabism as a religion for backward, uncivilized, and antimodern people. Commins claims Saudi Arabia, which is beholden to its Wahhabi religious beliefs, is struggling to resist (Western-led) forces of change, namely liberalization/democratization. Saudi students studying abroad in Western nations are returning home with Western ideas about government and society. However, the kingdom’s steadfast adherence to Wahhabism is preventing it from embracing these changes. Displaying the kind of Orientalism Said first pointed to, Commins shares the premise with many political liberals and neoliberals that Western-inspired economic and social globalization is a natural and progressive process that Saudi Arabia should embrace. Commins in part blames the kingdom’s Wahhabi religious beliefs for resisting these changes. Representations like these help inspire and motivate Western policy- and decision-makers, should they ever decide to invade Saudi Arabia ‘for its own good’ and in the name of progress.

Renowned British-American historian Bernard Lewis, who is well known for his associations with neoconservatives and is a former advisor to the George W. Bush administration, also constructs the Middle East as a backward and antimodern space in need of progress. Echoing the foreign policy initiatives of the recent Bush administration and adopting the role of an intellectual conceptualized by authors like Edward Shils, Lewis’s representation suggests that Western nations have the responsibility of bringing modernity to traditional societies. Lewis blames what he terms the Islamic revivalist/awakening movement, of which Wahhabism is a key part, for the Middle East’s failure to become more democratic and free. Again we see an ethnocentric intellectual creating an unflattering imagined space of the Middle East encouraging Western intervention.

Understanding Wahhabism through a Feminist Lens

Moving away from the prominent views of influential, older white Western men for just a moment, it also worth considering some alternative representations of Wahhabism appearing in scholarly articles. Margaret Gonzalez-Perez provides an interesting representation through the lens of the Western feminist intellectual tradition.¹⁰ Understanding that her role as an intellectual is to draw attention to the injustices and wrongs perpetrated against women, she writes about the experiences of female suicide bombers, specifically those used by al-Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas, all of which she categorizes as terrorist organizations. Gonzalez-Perez claims these terrorist organizations are using radical, violent, jihadist and un-Islamic interpretations of Islam to help persuade women to carry out suicide bombings. She blames Wahhabism, the writings of thirteenth-century Islamic theologian Ibn Taymiya, and key twentieth-century Islamic ideologues like Sayyid Qutb for providing these terrorist organizations with perverted interpretations of Islam.

Gonzalez-Perez’s representation is interesting because she assumes that Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and al-Qaeda are terrorist organizations of the same kind. Gonzalez-Perez’s categorization of Hamas as a terrorist organization in particular is very interesting. While Dore Gold and many other pro-Israeli scholars and neoconservative intellectuals would certainly agree with this assessment, there are those who would reject this categorization and instead understand Hamas as primarily a resistance and welfare organization. For example, Khaled Hroub in Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide makes the point that Hamas has been the victim of persistent and prevailing negative misconceptions, reducing it to a mere terrorist group.¹¹ The real Hamas, argues Hroub, is a Palestinian resistance movement and an educational and social welfare organization. Only a small part of the Hamas organization, namely its military wing Izzedin al-Qassam, is dedicated to violently resisting the Israeli occupation. It is also worth reading Zaki Chehab’s description of Hamas’s social welfare intiatives in his book Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of Militants, Martyrs and Spies.¹²

Gonzalez-Perez obviously has very different political views from supporters of the Palestinian resistance. If she did treat Hamas as part of the Palestinian resistance instead of categorizing it as a terrorist organization akin to al-Qaeda and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, then it is possible that she would not have drawn the same conclusions regarding the role played by Wahhabism in influencing these ‘terrorists.’ Rather than looking for a religious rationale, Gonzalez-Perez might otherwise be searching for political and economic reasons for Hamas’s use of female suicide bombers. The important point to be made here is that one’s political prejudices have implications for how one understands and represents Wahhabism.

It is also significant that Gonzalez-Perez’s representation relies on an assumption that particular interpretations of Islamic texts, like those she claims belong to the Wahhabi religious doctrine, are un-Islamic and that those interpreting these texts are not real Muslims. This is a premise popular among those providing negative portraits of Wahhabism. In reaching these conclusions, Gonzalez-Perez assumes there is an objective and truthful interpretation of Islam that does not promote violence and strictly prohibits suicide bombing. She writes:

The female suicide bombers of nominally Muslim groups like Hamas, the PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad], and Al Qaeda are no more Islamic than the Hindu Tamil women bombers of Sri Lanka or the communist female suicide bombers of the Kurdish Workers’ Party in Turkey. They are not Islamic martyrs nor any other manifestation of orthodox religious faith.¹³

To help bolster her case, Gonzalez-Perez provides an extensive list of authors she believes provide truthful and objective interpretations of Islam. She also adds her own interpretation of Islamic texts that she categorizes as objective and truthful. Gonzalez-Perez writes:

Within Islam, the rules of engagement and conduct of war have been established by over one thousand years of scholarly interpretation and precedent. According to the Qur’an and Islamic tradition, warfare is the domain of the state and can only be authorized by the executive of an established government [37: 124]. . . . Mainstream scholars are unequivocal, “The rules of Islam are clear. Individuals cannot declare war. A group or organization cannot declare war. War is declared by the state. War cannot be declared without a president or an army. . . . Otherwise, it is an act of terror” [22: 2].¹⁴

Gonzalez-Perez’s representation raises many of the key issues pertinent to this book, particularly whether there can ever be an objective interpretation of religious texts and social phenomena like Wahhabism, and the key role political prejudices plays in the sense-making process. The issues regarding the objective interpretation of texts is something I want to explore more in the next section when I examine the work of scholars making sense of Saudi school textbooks.

Saudi School Textbooks and the Problem of Translation

There is a group of Western scholars that includes Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Michaela Prokop whose representations of Wahhabism are based on their translations of Saudi Arabian school texts written in Arabic.¹⁵ They see these as having been influenced by Wahhabi religious ideology. Doumato and Prokop have studied these texts, searching for evidence of anti-Western sentiments and extremist ideas with the aim of establishing whether or not there is a relation between the kingdom’s school curriculum and modern Islamic terrorism. Saudi school texts have been the focus of much criticism. For example, in his witness testimony to the US Senate’s enquiry into terrorism financing (the same hearing in which Dore Gold testified), executive director of the Investigative Project, Steven Emerson, criticized passages he found in Saudi school texts that were distributed in the United States with “the full imprimatur of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”¹⁶ He stated:

I refer to the curricular used in grades 4 through 11, but let me just cite a quote from the 7th grade class Book 5. The book says, “‘What is learned from the Hadith?’ and teaches, ‘The curse of Allah be upon the Jews and the Christians.’” Grades 8 through 11 continue to emphasize the notion and piousness of the jihad, and in grade 11 it warns against taking the Jews and Christians as friends or protectors of Muslims.

I think this, unfortunately, helps develop a whole generational mind-set that leads to terrorism, noting that terrorism is really the culmination of indoctrination and recruitment. Much of that indoctrination is entirely legal, with terrorism being the violent, illegal expression ultimately and representing the culmination of the indoctrination and recruitment.¹⁷

Those at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) have long made it their mission to ‘reveal’ to the world the hate and violence promoted in Saudi textbooks. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, MEMRI has consistently published “special dispatches” claiming that Saudi textbooks are portraying Jews as animals and eternal enemies of Muslims.¹⁸ MEMRI claims Saudi textbooks are inciting violence towards Jews and are encouraging its readers to understand the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as a microcosm of an overarching war between Muslims and Jews.¹⁹ MEMRI TV has also documented the global spreading of these Wahhabi-infused textbooks, showing for example teachers using Saudi Education Ministry textbooks in remote villages in Africa.²⁰

Since 9/11 MEMRI has gained public prominence for its news and analysis of events in the Muslim world. It distributes its reports and translations to members of the US Congress, policymakers, journalists, and academics and its articles have been routinely cited in the US mainstream media, including the New York Times and Washington Post. MEMRI claims to be independent, nonpartisan, and not-for-profit. Critics have accused it of having a pro-Israeli bias, deliberately misleading readers, especially with regards to translations of Arabic texts, and highlighted its links to the neoconservative movement.²¹

Neither Doumato nor Prokop, whose representations of Wahhabism rely on translating Saudi textbooks, are Marxist intellectuals. However, their studies certainly parallel arguments made by prominent Marxist scholars like Louis Althusser and Antonio Gramsci that education is a key ideological apparatus able to be used to impose particular beliefs and values on a society.²² Doumato’s understanding of Wahhabism is primarily based on her interpretation and analysis of religious texts produced by the Saudi state and prescribed for Saudi students in grades 9 through 12. She finds that these texts have the ability to promote hostility against non-Muslims, encourage exclusivity among Muslims, and inspire violent jihad. Doumato writes:

Hostile messages there are, but the mood of these texts is less hostile than overwhelmingly defensive. . . . They claw with self-doubt, conjuring up enemies, real and perceived, who are not only at the gates but inside themselves. Looking at the texts alone, the message in the religion curriculum is that “we Muslims are under siege, and it is the duty of every single one of us to man the barricades.”²³ [emphasis added]

Like Doumato, Prokop’s representation of Wahhabism in part relies on her English translation of Arabic religious texts used in the Saudi education system, which she claims are “heavily influenced by the Wahhabi ideology.”²⁴ Prokop’s analysis is focused on school textbooks for secondary school grades 1 through 3. She posits that there could be a link between Wahhabism and violence. She also claims these texts occasionally promote intolerance and sometimes incite hatred. However, they are often coupled with contradictory messages about peace and tolerance between people of different faiths. Prokop writes:

The content of the official textbooks is heavily influenced by the Wahhabi ideology. Teaching about the ‘others’—other cultures, ideologies and religions, or adherents of other Muslim schools of jurisprudence or sects—reflects the Wahhabi view of a world divided into the believers and preservers of the true faith and the kuffar, the unbelievers. The teachings about other religions, particularly those pertaining to the ‘People of the Book’, Christians and Jews, are contradictory. While some passages denounce Christians and Jews clearly as unbelievers, people whom one should not greet with salutations of peace or take as friends, or against whom jihad should be waged, other passages stress the peaceful nature of Islam.²⁵

Both Doumato and Prokop rely on translations from Arabic texts. Before accepting their representations of Wahhabism on face value, it is important to note that the translation process is far from an exact science and that both authors are unable to achieve equivalence in their translations. Martin Müller points out that translation is too often treated as a process in which a translator assumes a neutral relay role producing an objective outcome.²⁶ This is an issue affecting many social science researchers subscribing to Enlightenment and religious ideas of truth when making sense of phenomena in the social world. As John Caputo points out, we no longer live in an age where one story can explain everything that happens in the social world.²⁷

Müller has these ideas about truth and objectivity in mind when he writes that “if we are to take seriously the problems of representation and speaking for/with others,” then “we are called on to problematize translation as a political act.”²⁸ Recognizing translation as a political act is integral to recognizing the antagonisms and struggles for meaning taking place in a foreign language. We must remember the observer-dependent roles intellectuals play when representing social phenomena like Wahhabism when we consider Müller’s claim that “increased attention to the political implications of translation also spells out the case for broaching the translating geographer as an active agent who molds the production of meaning.”²⁹

These concerns about translation have preoccupied many scholars, including Müller, H.P. Phillips, Pamela Shurmer-Smith, Gustavo Esteva, Madhu Suri Prakash, Bogusia Temple, and Alys Young, all of whom identify equivalence as a key issue.³⁰ Phillips notes that achieving equivalence in translation is an intractable problem given “almost any utterance in any language carries with it a set of assumptions, feelings, and values that the speaker may or may not be aware of” and that the transferring of meaning from one language into another can only ever be partial and never complete.³¹ Different languages structure the world in different ways and translations are never able to completely convey the richness of connotations. Müller points out that this is especially the case when translating “god words.”³²

There are a number of problems shadowing Doumato’s representation. First is the problem of establishing the basis for her claim to have an objective or literalist way of translating texts. This seems especially problematic when it comes to capturing the “mood” (as Doumato claims to do) of the texts.³³ Many scholars could analyze the same texts and provide very different interpretations, especially when it comes to capturing something so diffuse as mood. Second, we can neither assume that Saudi students will uncritically accept what is presented to them in the school texts nor can we be sure they will act on these hostile ideas. Each student is influenced by their own ways of making sense of the world into which they have been thrown. Indeed, Doumato acknowledges that students can receive conflicting information from a wide variety of sources: “In thinking about what students learn we also have to think about how or whether lessons taught in schools are reinforced outside of school, in the public media, in the mosque, or in the family.”³⁴

Like Althusser, Gramsci, and Doumato, Prokop recognizes school education is only one element of a society’s ideological apparatus that can be used to promote and impose a particular value and belief system. Prokop writes:

Formal education is only one element in shaping an individual’s perspective and religious inclinations. The perception of Saudi students is also shaped to an equal if not greater degree by informal teachings in mosques, in homes and through the new media. The mosque is particularly important for the older generation since adult illiteracy rates remain high. Additionally, the so-called ‘hidden curriculum’—contextual factors, such as teacher personality, prevailing classroom dynamics, social background or place of residence—also determine how the message is received and interpreted.³⁵

With so many qualifications it is hard to be convinced that Prokop’s analysis clearly demonstrates a link between the Saudi school curriculum and violence and terrorism. In this case, the truth claim rests on a premise that there are secure, technical, and methodical paths to be taken so as to arrive at the truth. We must also keep these considerations in mind when reading intellectuals providing less critical, softer, or positive portraits of Wahhabism. I will now turn my attention to focusing on some of these kinds of representations.

Wahhabism Is Not So Bad After All

There are many scholars who have made a case for a quite different representation of Wahhabism. Juan Cole is one such scholar, defending it against the common claim that it is responsible for inspiring modern Islamic terrorism.³⁶ Cole claims that a portrait of Wahhabism as an ideological source of Islamist terrorism has been used as part of the intellectual arsenal deployed by Western governments to help achieve their imperialistic aims and goals in the Middle East. Cole writes:

It is sometimes implied that the Saudi effort to spread Wahhabism has the effect of spreading terrorism and anti-Americanism. That outcome would be difficult to demonstrate. . . . Further, it is not at all clear that puritanism or Wahhabism, while it may produce negative attitudes toward consumerism and libertinism, predispose people to commit terrorism, as some pundits have alleged. Most suicide bombings in the past thirty years have not been carried out by Wahhabis or persons influenced by them, but rather by individuals fighting what they see as the foreign military occupation of their country. . . . Connecting a religious tradition to terrorism would require more evidence than a few instances of guilt by association.³⁷

Cole clearly understands his role as an intellectual is to help dispel myths and misinformation promoted by Western “terrorism experts,” “right-wing pundits,” and “American hawks,” who he believes are racist, ignorant, and eager to wage war. Cole writes:

As I’ve glared at the self-appointed “terrorism experts” who have paraded across my television screen since 2001, I’ve become more and more alarmed at the dangerous falsehoods many of them purvey. Most of them have no knowledge of the languages or cultures of the Middle East, or any history of residence there. The message of the right-wing pundits and pastors and politicians is that Muslims form a menace to the West unless they are subdued and dominated. In that sense, the military occupation of Iraq that began in 2003 exemplifies the mind-set of American hawks.³⁸

Cole is dismissive of many of the ignorant and deliberately misleading claims made by Western commentators about Wahhabism, including the commonly asserted claim that it “predisposes people to commit terrorism.”³⁹ As evidence, Cole highlights the fact that the majority of suicide bombings in the last thirty years have been motivated by anti-imperial and anticolonial ideas rather than by Wahhabi religious ideology. Referring to incidents like the pro-Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel, Cole’s claims rely on the assumption that conflicts like those between Israeli and Palestinian forces are anticolonial and anti-imperialist in nature rather than acts of terrorism. This view is diametrically opposed to those offered by Gonzalez-Perez and Gold and helps highlight the relation between one’s political prejudices particularly with regards to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and representations of Wahhabism. Since Cole sees the Palestinian as primarily anticolonial and anti-imperial in nature and not religiously inspired, he is not inclined to search for a religious rationale for the violence, meaning he does not consider the possibility that Wahhabism is responsible for inspiring and motivating Palestinian violence.

Cole’s role as an intellectual aligns more with conceptualizations offered by authors like Chomsky, who maintains that an intellectual’s role is to speak truth to power rather than promoting particular class and group interests.⁴⁰ While Cole’s representation absolves Wahhabism of any blame, it would not be categorized as a positive portrait. These are hard to come by when trawling bookshelves in public libraries, universities, and colleges in the Western world. Natana DeLong-Bas’s book, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad, is certainly the exception to the rule and I will take a closer look at this shortly. Positive portraits are a little easier to find when searching academic journals online. However, the obvious problem is these representations do not have the ability to reach the same number of people given that the negative portraits have the backing of many of the leading Western publishers. Nonetheless, Muhammad Al-Atawneh’s article, “Wahhabi Self-Examination Post-9/11: Rethinking the ‘Other’, ‘Otherness’ and Tolerance,” is certainly worth considering given the stark contrast between his views and the more mainstream and popular views published in popular books and US newspapers.⁴¹

Muhammad Al-Atawneh is a Muslim intellectual whose article about Wahhabism appears to be in response to the common charge that Saudi Arabia is responsible for promoting this radical version of Islam. Writing in 2011, Al-Atawneh claims Saudi Arabia and the Wahhabi religious establishment after the 9/11 terrorist attacks made the necessary policy changes ensuring that Wahhabism does not in any way promote violence, intolerance, or extremism among Saudi Arabians. He wants to challenge the notion that Saudi Arabia is in any way complicit in Islamic terrorism, referring to a number of policy initiatives and government actions as evidence of the kingdom’s commitment to tolerance, harmony, and an embracing of the Other.

Unlike Gold, Lewis, and Gonzalez-Perez, Al-Atawneh challenges the idea that Wahhabism is radical per se. He wants us to distinguish between its radical and conventional interpretations. Al-Atawneh fervently rejects the idea that the Saudi Kingdom is engaged in the kind of politics typically associated with the political realist tradition where the international political arena is conceptualized as a battleground of competing interests, where the state does everything in its power to secure its own interests.⁴² Instead he sees the Saudi Kingdom as dedicated to a version of politics geared at helping end injustices and wrongs. This approach resonates with recent conceptualizations of the political provided by authors like Critchley and Crick.⁴³ Instead of blaming the Saudi and Wahhabi establishments for inspiring the radical interpretation of Wahhabism that is responsible for some recent Islamic terrorism, Al-Atawneh puts the blame on rogue elements. He writes that most “of the post-9/11 criticism appears to be lodged against extremist groups, described by Saudi officials as those who have ‘gone astray’ (firqa dalla).”⁴⁴

On first appearances, one could easily understand Al-Atawneh as an apologist for the Saudi state. Indeed, though we need to approach such claims with a certain ironic detachment, Al-Atawneh is exactly the kind of intellectual that authors like Chomsky are extremely critical of. According to Chomskian logic, Al-Atawneh should instead be “seek[ing] the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.”⁴⁵ If we were to imagine the representations of Wahhabism as existing on a spectrum, Al-Atawneh and Gold’s representations would certainly feature at opposite ends. Unfortunately for Al-Atawneh and supporters of the Saudi state, Al-Atawneh’s article appears in an online scholarly journal, while Gold’s book appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.

The question of truth claims is again on display in work by Natana DeLong-Bas.⁴⁶ Her work is the closest thing we can see as a defense of Wahhabism sitting on bookshelves at libraries, bookstores, and places of higher education throughout the Western world. She offers a spirited defense of the faith, claiming Wahhabism actually promotes peace, encourages tolerance, and advocates women’s rights. Wahhabism is not, according to DeLong-Bas, in any way responsible for inspiring modern Islamic terrorism. She writes:

Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s emphasis on the importance of Islamic values and the intent behind words and actions, as opposed to concern for ritual perfection, has opened the door for reforms in Islamic law, the status of women and minorities, and the peaceful spread of Islam and the Islamic mission in the contemporary era.⁴⁷

Her account is one of the most prominent—and widely criticized—representations of Wahhabism in the post-9/11 period.⁴⁸ Her critics have among other things accused her of being an apologist for extremist Islam. Well-known Saudi and Wahhabism critic Stephen Schwartz, whose articles appear in a variety of right-wing and neoconservative publications, has claimed that DeLong-Bas has “reached a depth of mendacity about radical Islam it is hard to imagine her exceeding.”⁴⁹ She has also drawn the ire of pro-Israeli writers like Caroline Glick who wrote:

DeLong-Bas told the newspaper [London pan-Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat] that she does “not find any evidence that would make me agree that Osama bin Laden was behind the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. All we heard from him was praise and acclaim for those who carried out the operation.”

This was not the first time the Brandeis faculty member acted as an apologist for jihadists. Indeed she seems to be making a career out of it. According to a FrontPageMag.com expose of her career, in 2004 she published Wahhabi Islam: From Revival to Global Jihad, a work partially funded by Saudi Arabia that defends the extremist Wahabi strain of Islam that has formed the basis of the belief system of men like Osama Bin Laden and the September 11 hijackers.⁵⁰

DeLong-Bas is not a Muslim, suggesting she is not likely to be motivated or inspired by Islamic religious beliefs in the same way authors like Haneef James Oliver are.⁵¹ DeLong-Bas’s representation of Wahhabism is not first and foremost a defense of Saudi interests as authors like Glick and Schwartz would have you believe. Instead, it rests on a certain claim to truth. DeLong-Bas believes she offers a truthful interpretation of Wahhabi doctrine primarily based on the writings of its founder Abd al-Wahhab. Her claims to truth rest on what she believes to be an objective interpretation of sacred Wahhabi Islamic texts, involving comparing and contrasting these Wahhabi Islamic texts and the beliefs and doctrines of modern Islamic terrorists. This is not the only major issue with her representation. Her case also depends on an appeal to the legitimacy of her translation and interpretation of Wahhabi texts from the eighteenth century and on her capacity to compare these to what she understands to be the beliefs of the modern Wahhabi movement.

There is of course a major problem here: much of this exercise depends on an assumption that we are doing something meaningful when we compare and interpret the original texts of a new belief system with much later or contemporary expressions of that belief system. It is highly doubtful that the modern nature of what we understand to be Wahhabism can be established in this way, and we use the term ‘genetic fallacy’ to describe authors who make this kind of error in reasoning. To commit a genetic fallacy is to make conclusions about a movement based on its origins as opposed to considering the contemporary expression of ideas and beliefs and doing so on their own merits and in their current context. DeLong-Bas’s interpretation fails to fully appreciate the constantly evolving nature of the Wahhabi movement. She fails to understand that Wahhabism in the twenty-first century is not an exact replica of how it appeared during eighteenth-century Arabia. We live in a different time and in a vastly different political context.

Next I want to consider the contribution made by Haneef James Oliver in his book The Wahhabi Myth: Dispelling Prevalent Fallacies and the Fictitious Link with Bin Laden.⁵² I have included Oliver’s book because of its unique approach. Oliver seeks to defend his faith by providing what he believes is an objective understanding of sacred Islamic texts. Oliver is a self-proclaimed Salafi (he rejects the use of the term Wahhabism, labeling it a misnomer) inspired by what he believes to be God’s word and a desire to convince people that terrorists like Bin Laden are not Salafists or true Muslims. He makes his intentions very clear from the outset:

My objective in doing so is not to deceitfully defend anyone or anything unworthy of a defence, as Islaam commands that a Muslim speak a word of truth, even if it be against him or herself, or followers of the same faith. Rather, it is my objective to deal only with those issues which have been unjustly brought against Islaam and Salaiyyah (Salafism) in particular, as opposed to defending the actions of the contemporary “Islaamic” groups and movements, which have only aided those who wish to harm the Islaamic Nation.

. . . [I]t is my objective to give the reader another perspective on some of these issues which they might never have been exposed to before. I have made every effort to avoid producing another book which is filled with opinion while lacking in textual proofs. Instead I have tried to produce a book in which Muslims and non-Muslims alike will be able to reflect upon the directives of the Qur’aan and the narrations (ahaadeetha) of the Prophet Muhammad for themselves.⁵³ [emphasis added]

As we can see, Oliver believes his role is to “speak a word of truth” which he believes can be supported by “textual proofs.” There are a number of issues with these claims. One is that the legitimacy of his claims rests on our accepting that his interpretation of Salafism/Wahhabism provides the one big story about human history. Two, like some of the other scholarship I have dealt with earlier, Oliver’s representation of Wahhabism relies on his interpretation of Qur’anic texts originally written in Arabic and translated into English.⁵⁴ To briefly reiterate the important point I made earlier, it is impossible for an author to achieve equivalence and we can understand the translator’s role as a subjective act influenced by their prejudices. Oliver’s book is self-published and it is very easy to see why, as it lacks the intellectual rigor typically demanded by reputable publishing organizations.

Oliver’s work is indicative of an author who lacks nuance when seeking to understand the Wahhabi movement. I have, however, come across one study in which the author does treat the phenomenon of Wahhabism with the kind of scholarly regard we should expect of those working in higher education and policy organizations. Quintan Wiktorowicz seeks to make sense of what he also terms the Salafi movement, and like Oliver he prefers this term rather than ‘Wahhabi,’ which he also calls a misnomer.⁵⁵ Wiktorowicz claims we can distinguish between different groups within the wider Salafi tradition according to how they interpret Islamic religious texts. Pertinent is his example regarding the differences in reasoning on the use of weapons of mass destruction. Wiktorowicz writes that many jihadists today cite the Prophet Muhammad’s sanctioning the use of a catapult during war as providing religious justification for their own use of weapons of mass destruction:

In drawing analogies, jihadis argue that the catapult was the WMD of the Prophet’s lifetime and that his example legitimates the use of WMD today. This conclusion is not rooted in an objective reading of the religious sources: it is entirely dependent on whether one views the catapult as the historical equivalent of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Human reasoning thus plays a critical role.⁵⁶ [emphasis added]

Wiktorowicz makes a very important point that very few scholars representing Wahhabism acknowledge, that “human reasoning . . . plays a critical role” when it comes to making sense of things in the social world like religious texts and different events. Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hannah Arendt have both emphasized the crucial roles human reasoning and prejudice play in how we make sense of the world.⁵⁷ The works of Gadamer and Arendt remind us that translating is a not an exact science with an objective outcome, but is instead a subjective and political act. It is clear that Oliver’s translation of Arabic religious texts into English is influenced by, among other things, a desire to defend his understanding of the Islamic faith.

This contest to make sense of Wahhabism occurring between the different scholars I have drawn on in this chapter is a microcosm of a much wider debate occurring between intellectuals relying on very different analytical and theoretical frameworks and influenced by different interests, commitments, and what scholars like Gadamer have called prejudices.⁵⁸ My cursory review of some of the scholarly literature dedicated to making sense of Wahhabism helps highlight a number of important issues warranting and legitimating this research. My review helps show that a scholar’s interests and truth claims have major implications for how they make sense of and represent Wahhabism. I have shown how an intellectual’s desire to promote the interests of a particular group or intellectual tradition can result in very different representations of Wahhabism, ranging from Wahhabism as responsible for promoting and inspiring modern Islamic terrorism to Wahhabism as a religious belief system that promotes peace, harmony, and tolerance. In the next two chapters I want to take a closer look at some of the issues I have raised during this chapter, specifically the role and responsibilities of the intellectual, making sense of truth, and the crucial role prejudice plays in influencing how we make sense of the social world.