WE CAN MAKE HIM WHOEVER WE WANT HIM TO BE:

The real Wahhab: A new book argues that the founder of Wahhabi Islam was really a tolerant, peace-loving reformer. Some scholars are crying foul. (John Kearner, August 8, 2004, Boston Globe)

SINCE 9/11, THERE HAS been no shortage of calls for an "Islamic reformation" to counter religious extremism in Muslim societies and lift them out of economic and political stagnation. Reform boosters often target Saudi Arabia's state-sponsored creed, known as Wahhabi Islam, claiming that Wahhabism's alleged repression of women, its rigid, literalist readings of the Koran, and its belligerence towards other Muslims and non-Muslims have impeded development and fostered the rise of groups like Al Qaeda.

But according to the author of a new book published by Oxford University Press, Islam already has its Martin Luther -- none other than Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabi Islam.

In "Wahhabi Islam: From Revival to Global Jihad" -- billed by its publisher as the first book-length study of the 18th-century Muslim reformer -- Natana DeLong-Bas argues that the vilification of Wahhabism and its founder gets it all wrong. "The militant Islam of Osama bin Laden does not have its origins in the teachings of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and is not representative of Wahhabi Islam. . .," she writes.

In fact, DeLong-Bas argues, Abd al-Wahhab's writings display "an absence of the xenophobia, militantism, misogyny, extremism, and literalism typically associated with Wahhabism." She describes Abd al-Wahhab's embrace of reason alongside divine revelation, and writes of his commitment to "placing women on a balanced footing with men." Far from being a how-to manual for violent jihad, DeLong-Bas concludes, Abd al-Wahhab's writings provide "a vision that offers hope for the future."

DeLong-Bas's critics aren't letting such startling statements pass unchallenged. "I'm sad this piece of scholarly trash was published by Oxford," says Khaled Abou El Fadl, professor of law at UCLA who writes frequently on Islamic jurisprudence. "This doesn't qualify as scholarship -- it falls within the general phenomenon of Saudi apologetics.""DeLong-Bas never challenges the propriety of Abd al-Wahhab's claim to absolute authority -- the authority to declare the believer and the unbeliever (authority God reserves to himself in the Koran) and to impose the most severe sanctions on those he disagrees with," says Michael Sells, author of "Approaching the Qu'ran" and professor of religion at Haverford College. And novelist Michael J. Ybarra, reviewing DeLong-Bas's book in The Wall Street Journal, points out that "where on earth this [tolerant] form of Wahhabi Islam ever existed she doesn't say."

It'd be helpful if this conversation were occurring in the Orient not the Occident. What al-Wahhab originally taught is unimportant--the vital task is to Reform Wahhabism and make it compatible with liberal democracy. In fact, insisting that he was intolerant will only make this more difficult, so should be avoided.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 9, 2004 9:27 AM