‘wahhabi’ influences, salafi responses: shaikh mahmud shukri and the iraqi salafi movement, ...

8/13/2019 WAHHABI INFLUENCES, SALAFI RESPONSES: SHAIKH MAHMUD SHUKRI AND THE IRAQI SALAFI MOVEMENT, 1745

1/22

Journal of Islamic Studies 14:2 (2003) pp. 127148

Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies 2003

WAHHABI INFLUENCES, SALAFI

RESPONSES: SHAIKH MAHMUD SHUKRIAND THE IRAQI SALAFI MOVEMENT,

174519301

HALA FATTAHRoyal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, Amman, Jordan

From the mid-eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, very similarsocial, economic, and cultural currents influenced Iraq, Arabia, and theGulf. In trade, regional linkages were the norm: merchants from inlandNajd travelled as far as India to sell their horses; commercial housesfrom Aleppo set up shop in Basra as well as Bombay; and Kuwaitistook to the sea to ship their wares across the Indian Ocean. Mercantilelinks between the desert and the town drew together ports and

caravansaries, date plantations and horse farms. In fact, regionalinfluences can be traced even today in the architecture of mosques andfamily houses in the Hijaz, Najd, and eastern Arabia.2 But of course,trade was not the only leitmotif of the region: cultural linkages werealso important.

Generally speaking, however, the cultural developments affectingeighteenth- to early twentieth-century Iraq, Arabia, and the Gulf haverarely been examined from a regional perspective. While there are

1 This paper was first presented at the Second Mediterranean Social andPolitical Research Meeting, Florence, 215 Mar. 2001, under the sponsorship ofthe Mediterranean Programme, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies,European University Institute. I wish to thank the Robert Schuman Centre formaking my presentation possible. I also wish to thank the chairpersons andpanelists of my panel for their valuable suggestions. My gratitude and thanks goto M. Edouard Metenier, who is rapidly becoming the foremost scholar of theAl-Alusi family in Europe, for his tireless support and trenchant critique. Last butnot least, I am grateful to the Journals two anonymous referees for their

penetrating comments. All omissions, mistakes, and lapses are mine alone.2 G. R. D. King, Islamic Architectural Traditions of Arabia and the Gulf, inUniversity Lectures in Islamic Studies, vol. 1 (London: Al-Tajir World of IslamTrust, 1997), 85107.

atInternationalIslamicUniversityMalaysia(IIUM)onJanuary2,2014

http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/

Downloadedfrom
http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/


2/22

instances of transnational movements affecting great changesuch asthe rapid expansion of Sufi brotherhoods in the eighteenth- andnineteenth-century Islamic world, or pan-Islamic reform movementsin the Ottoman Empire and beyondfor the most part movements of

religious reform or spiritual regeneration have been confined to theirplaces of origin, and studied in situ. Perhaps because they are believedto have affected specific political dynasties or attached themselves onlyto certain cities, movements for the intellectual regeneration of theArab East have been treated as urban phenomena, the by-product ofliterate, orderly societies. After all, a certain school of thought believesthat Islam in all its aspects was the life and soul of the city. And yet,revolts from the periphery calling for the renewal of Islamic law andsociety have had resounding successes throughout the long span of

Arab/Islamic history. More to the point, networks of scholars andpreachers far from the established centres of urban power have beenable to connect their places of origin to the wider world beyond, andcreate ripples of intellectual solidarity among neighbouring districtsand states.

The Wahhabi (or, more correctly muwaAadd;) movement is a case inpoint. In general, it has been the recipient of a limited and narrowinvestigation by scholars primarily interested in charting the rags-to-riches story of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Even though the Wahhabi-

Saudi experiment in state-building has enlisted its fair share ofsympathetic histories, some written by ex-colonial officers or oil-company executives, this most transformative of movements has notbeen seen as a regional phenomenon. Again, most historians of SaudiArabia prefer to see it as a prologue, if indeed a necessary one, to themaking of modern-day Saudi Arabia.

And yet the transregional impulses governing the birth and laterdevelopment of Wahhabism were instrumental in, on the one hand,reinvigorating an early Islamic tradition (salafiIslam) that was beginning

to attract a regional audience once more in late eighteenth-century Iraq,Arabia, and the Gulf and, on the other, reviving the feisty debatesbetween Sufism and orthodoxy that had seemingly been reconciledearly on in the Islamic era. The principle of an absolute and unwaveringmonotheism in the face of doctrinal laxity exposed the theological and,more significantly, the political distance between Sufi-influencedgovernment officials and the more literalist 6ulam:8; the convictionthat even orthodox Muslims could be considered unbelievers in thecontext of the true faith may have legitimized the notion that violencewas a necessary tool in the pursuit of Islamic re-education; and thenotion that a religiously inspired preacher could be the inspiration for,and founder of an enduring state: these three were all important

128 h a l a f a t t a h



Downloadedfrom


3/22

assumptions of the Wahhabi movement, and they radically affected thepolitical, cultural, and even economic climates of the time. At the sametime, Wahhabism did not completely alienate its regional audience. Weknow, for instance, that in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,

a small number of important shaykhs in Iraq endured the ostracism oftheir fellow 6ulam:8 to proclaim their adherence to the Wahhabi credo,even though they were eventually to suffer for their independence ofmind.3 This ambivalent responsehostility on the one hand, sympathyon the otheris best captured in the expansion of the first Saudi state. Inan effort to understand the important unities as well as disjunctures thataccompanied the rise and development of the Wahhabi da6wa(call), thefollowing article will chart the movements impact on the world outsideof the Arabian peninsula, especially as this related to Iraq, and discuss

the continuities that tied this subregion together, from 1745 to the1930s.

UNITIES AND DISUNITIES BETWEENTHE WAHHABI MOVEMENT

AND THE SUNNI ESTABLISHMENT INPRE-MODERN IRAQ AND ARABIA

Before we enter into the history of the Wahhabi movements expansionacross Arabia and into neighbouring Iraq and the Gulf, it is important tonote that the ideology that the movement gave rise to has not been seenin an entirely unfavourable light. Among present-day Saudi historians, infact, the movement has been viewed as a dramatic watershed, aculmination of three centuries in which the growth of agriculture, thedevelopment of towns, and the spread of literacy ushered in invigoratingand powerful currents that led to the creation of a state with strong

economic, social, political, and ideological roots in Najd. In fact, aleading Saudi scholar of Wahhabi Islam, Uwaidah Al-Juhany, portraysthe movement in a heroic cast. He points out how it developed: in thefifteenth century, the instability caused by chronic clan violence andtribal migration, as well as the economically unproductive conditionsthat had militated against the rise of a stable state and society, gave wayto the beginning of resettlement and urban development. Large tribesbegan to come together and to found towns. As sedentarization

3

Abu Thana Mahmud Shihab al-Din Al-Alusi, Ghar:8ib al-ightir:b wa-nuzhat al-alb:b fi al-dhih:b wa-al-iq:ma wa-al-iyy:b(The Book of the Marvelsof Expatriation and the Promenade of Essence in the Departure, Residence, andReturn) (Baghdad: Shahbander Press, 1909), 16.

wa hh ab i i nf lu en ce s, s al af i r es po ns es 129



Downloadedfrom


4/22

increased, population grew and there was a growth in religious learning.New social, political, and religious circumstances appeared, spurringnew expectations. Al-Juhany sums it up in this manner:

The genius of Ibn Abdul-Wahhab perceived the religious, social and political

problems of his society and the critical conditions through which the Najdipeople were passing. Thus he dedicated his life and enthusiastic energy tobringing about a comprehensive solution to the various problems of Najdisociety through the establishment of a strong central government that wouldenforce the Shar;6a and impose peace and order in the land. Ibn Abdul-Wahhabwas prepared for the great task by his own education and training, and wasassisted by the particular religious and political conditions of Najd in his time.4

And yet, when all is said and done, the rush to reform in the Saudi

state was not always welcomed. In fact, the mixed responses producedby the spread of the Wahhabi movement are a significant marker of theintellectual debates of the period. We may well ask why the movementgenerated such strong passions. In its essence, the hesitant reaction to themuwaAadd; challenge sprang from different interpretations of coreIslamic values, tajd;d (renewal) and iBl:A (reform).5 The consensusamong historians of Islam is that both concepts are fundamentalcomponents of Islams worldview, rooted in the Qur8:n and Sunna ofthe Prophet . . . [and both] concepts involve a call for the return to the

fundamentals of Islam [the Qur8:n and Sunna] . . .

6

Combining a tradition of moral leadership with a far-reaching agendafor collective spiritual renewal, generations of activist Muslim scholarsand preachers have emerged from within their own societies callingfor a return to the basic principles of the faith as exemplified by thepristine ideals of the early Muslim community. This Qur8anic mandate7

of renewal and reform enjoins revivalists not only to apply the essentialconvictions and tenets of Islam but also to reinterpret them in the light ofthe principle of ijtih:d. According to John Esposito, The purpose of

reinterpretation (ijtihad) was not to accommodate new ideas but to getback to or reappropriate the unique and essentially complete vision ofIslam as preserved in its revealed sources . . .Islamic revivalism is not somuch an attempt to re-establish the early Islamic community in a literal

4 Uwaidah M. Al-Juhany, Najd before the Salafi Reform Movement: Social,Political and Religious Conditions during the Three Centuries Preceding the Riseof the Saudi State (Ithaca Press in association with the King Abdul-AzizFoundation for Research and Archives: Reading and Riyadh, 2002), 156.

5

John L. Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1988), 11418.

6 Ibid. 115.7 Ibid.




Downloadedfrom


5/22

sense as to reapply the Qur8:n and Sunna rigorously to existingconditions.8

The Eanbal; school was particularly emphatic in its espousal of thisphilosophy. Following Ibn Taymiyya, the fourteenth-century scholar of

tawA;d (unitarianism), certain currents of reformist circles began tomake their appearance in the region in the eighteenth century. Reformistssuch as the salafiyya were, for the most part, Sunni orthodox shaykhsand scholar-preachers who advocated the way of the salaf al-B:liA, thepious Muslims of the early Islamic period. The salafis believed that onlyby going back to the origin of the religion as it was revealed to theProphet would a more just and righteous society appear. Of all the Salafimovements that gripped the region in that period, the Wahhabis were themost radical of the Shar;6a-centred revivalist movements. Buttressed by

the military power of the Saud family, Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab (d. 1792) proclaimed ajih:dagainst all unbelievers (kuff:r) andpolytheists (mushrik


6/22

Wahhabism was not, of course, the only Islamic-revival movementthat based itself on the salafi way. It must be noted that there hadlong been a salafi tradition in Iraq.11 Many of the Iraqi shaykhswho explained the way of the Prophet were salafis. A half-century

before the Wahhabi revival in 1745, ij:zas (certificates of scholarlyachievement awarded to 6ulam:8by their professors) are in existence toshow that salafi teachers in Iraq such as shaykh Nasir ibn Sultan al-

Juburi, the teacher at the Qadiri mosque was advising his students not tostray from the straight and the narrow. In 1742, Shaykh Muhammad ibnAbdul-Wahhab sent a letter to the 6ulam:8of Basra asking them to acceptthe Wahhabi call. He was answered by shaykhs rejecting his summons tojoin the Wahhabi da6wa. Undeterred, Shaykh Muhammad next sentletters to the Mamluk Pasha Suleiman the Great (r. 17801802). These

letters were answered on behalf of the Pasha by Shaykh Abdullah al-Rawi, whose actions in turn initiated a correspondence with the Imamsgrandson, Shaykh Suleiman ibn Abdullah ibn al-shaykh Muhammad ibnAbdul-Wahhab. This correspondence, also a critique of Wahhabiprinciples, was finally published a century later in Cairo under the titleAl-tawdh;A 6an tawA;d al-khil:q fi jaw:b ahl-al-6Ir:q.12

But while this rebuttal of Wahhabi teachings may have been a majorityopinion in Iraq, it was not a unanimous one. Evidence suggests that,under Wahhabi prompting and with the assistance of important tribally

based shaykhs such as Abdullah Beg al-Shawi, head of the loyalist Ubaidtribe, the Wahhabida6wawas spread in Iraq. In the 1740s, the Mamlukgovernment, fearful of its influence, demanded that Iraqi6ulam:8counterthe spread of this innovation. Some did, while others, we are led tobelieve, continued to give credence to the Wahhabi call in secret.13 But itwas the fateful alliance between thesalafiShaykh Ali al-Suwaidi and theMamluk Pasha Suleiman the Little (r. 180710) that really roiled thewaters. Under al-Suwaidis influence, the Pasha ordered that from thenon, religious officials were to be paid a fixed and fair salary (instead of

the charity doled out under previous regimes), and only Shar;8a taxeswere to be levied on the populace.14 Of course, in all this the differencebetween thesalafiyyaand the Wahhabiyya may not have been very clearexcept to initiates. In fact, it seems fairly obvious that political

11 The following discussion is taken from Abbas al-Azzawi,Dhikr: ab;than:8al-al


7/22

considerations had a hand in muddying the waters. In other words, thewhole notion of a Wahhabi threat was exaggerated to such an extent bypro-Mamluk historians that the theological differences between bothcurrents of thought, never very large in the best of times, were overstated

to make a political case.Nonetheless, in the insecure climate of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-

century Arabia, Iraq and the Gulf, Wahhabism became a force tobe reckoned with, especially when the Imam Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab followed up his first epistles to the region by labelling otherMuslims kuff:r (unbelievers) and even mushrik


8/22

observers of the Wahhabi movement took pains to discount it. Thehistorian J. L. Burckhardt, for instance, commented in his bookNotes onthe Bedouins and Wahabys that the argument was patently false andpossibly the result of Ottoman propaganda.18 Despite the views of

sensible observers, accusations have continued down the centuries. Thereshould be recognition of the very real struggles taking place in eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century Iraq, Arabia, and the Gulf. The efforts bysome contemporary historians to produce oversimplified versions of thenature of these disputes gloss over an important intellectual andtheological debate.

Clearly, these literary and historiographical confrontations must beviewed in their proper context in order to be understood at all. It is anundoubted fact that political, economic, and religious motives were at

play in the disputes between the Wahhabis and their enemies. From thevery inception of the first Saudi state, the monopoly of trade routes intothe peninsula figured very prominently in Saudi economic strategy. TheWahhabi-Saudi attacks on peninsular society were focused not only onthe submission of the ignorant (al-jahala) to the unitarian credo but onthe very real state function of revenue collection. For instance, theSaudi am;rs (commanders) established a new policy (for peninsularsociety, at least) whereby the tribal khuwwa or tolls on the roads ofNajd were stopped, and travellers, pilgrims, and merchants were forced

to pass by a narrow corridor controlled by Saudi allies, at the end ofwhich they would pay one toll at Dar8iyya, the Saudi capital.19 At sea,the Saudi campaigns ended in the defeat and submission of, at varioustimes, the shaykhs of eastern Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Yemen, and thepirate coast. The attempted monopoly of the land and sea traffic in theregion resulted in the wide disruption of regional networks of trade,forcing the rerouting of commercial channels and the creation ofdifferent markets.

As a result of the Saudi-Wahhabi wars in Iraq and the Gulf, trade

routes shifted, as did political alignments: Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwaitowe their existence in no small part to the disturbed conditions prevalentin the period. Then, too, the impact of the Wahhabi movement on Iraq,Arabia, and the Gulf redrew the parameters of the region in a politicalsense. Saudi attacks against, and eventual control of, the Hijaz in 1805showed up the fictive suzerainty of the Ottoman Sultan in the Holy

18

J. L. Burckhardt.Notes on the Beduins and Wahabys Collected during HisTravels in the East by John Lewis Burckhardt (London: Coburn & Bentley,1930), 113.

19 Anon., Kit:b lam6 al-shih:b . . . 52.




Downloadedfrom


9/22

Places, and Saudi military incursions threatened the fragility of theMamluk Pashalik of Baghdad and Basra. Saudi attacks even had aninfluence on the political alliances of the tribal principalities in southernIraq and the northern Gulf, whose paramount shaykhs (those especially

of the Muntafiq district in south-central Iraq) either supported the IraqiMamluks military campaigns by leading tribal armies against the Saudiim:raor, conversely, rallied to the Saudi cause when opportune. Perhapsthe best illustration of the contentious debate surrounding the Wahhabimovement is the sack of Karbala in 1801 which gave rise to divergenttraditions and myths in the region.

EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY

CONTINUITIES

In the early twentieth century, the on-again, off-again entanglements ofthe tribal Houses of peninsular Arabia, Iraq, and the Gulf with local aswell as external powers were to lead to further conflict but also tocooperation. Whether it was Abdul-Aziz ibn Sauds relations with theOttomans, the British encroachment on the northern Gulf, and theRasheed Amirs struggles with the Saudis on the one hand, or other tribalcontenders to the Im:ra of Ha8il, Sharif Hussein ibn Alis unceasing

claims on wider sovereignty in the Hijaz, or Shaikh Mubarak of Kuwaitsplots against the Ottoman governor of Basra on the other, the stage wasset for a change in the regional politics of the time. But in a very realsense, it was yet again the reinvigorated Wahhabi challenge that hadsome of the most profound implications for the development of thebudding dynasties and fragile nation-states of the area. Particularly in thetransitional period falling between the collapse of Ottoman authorityand the end of the British mandate of Iraq, Wahhabism was once againfaced with a renewed salafi movement that attacked Wahhabi excesses

while claiming for itself a more purist outlook. What is notable,however, is that, unlike the eighteenth century (when historians ofMamluk Iraq and Wahhabi Arabia excoriated one another over afrontierless region), in the early twentieth century the Wahhabi-salafistruggle emanated from within two embryonic nations that had yet tobecome durable states.

Created out of wartime exigencies, the Hashemite monarchy of Iraqspent its early years fighting the tribal impulses within its borders andthose without (of which more later). Considered inimical to stateformation, the tribes had to be curbed, settled, and controlled; the Britishidea was that they would remain an important, if reactionary, bulwark ofthe state, entirely dependent on tribal law but unintegrated in civil




Downloadedfrom


10/22

authority.20 British-influenced Iraq also restructured its civil-administra-tion, educational, and judicial regimes and gave further impetus to allproperty-owning males, both urbaneffendiyyaand rural shaykhs, to runfor parliament. The ex-Sharifian officers who had risen in the Ottoman

ranks, and seceded from the army at the beginning of World War I to jointhe forces of Amir Faisal ibn al-Husayn (first in the Hijaz and then inSyria), became the backbone of the new nation-state. The morepoliticized Sh;6a joined with the Sunn; minority in power to refashionmore representative political institutions.21 Tribal revolts remained athreat long after the bloody end of the 1920 uprising; and even while theuprising ushered in a more autonomous Iraqi regime, political, econ-omic, religious, and ethnic grievances continued to make themselves felt,whether in Parliament or the press. It was a transitory age in which the

crumbling institutions of Ottoman power were sometimes reappro-priated by the British colonial authority, while at other times (as withBritish support for a reconstituted tribal hierarchy) propped upaltogether to suit different purposes. Most important of all, even thoughideas of liberty, equality, pluralism, and democracy became the commoncurrency of the new administration, Iraqis of all classes, ethnicities, sects,and religions continued to mobilize for the end of British domination andthe emergence of an independent state.

Culturally, these divergent trends and voices made for a mixed

landscape. This was particularly so for the religious and sectariangroups in Baghdad. For example, the 1920s and 1930s witnessed theemergence of literary clubs and festivals that attempted to drawtogether Iraqis of all backgrounds in similar undertakings. The Fridaymeetings at Father Anastase Marie al-Karmalis house is one example;it grouped Sunn;s, Sh;6a, Christians, and Jews in a weekly seminaron all aspects of Arab culture, with the exception of politics andreligion.22 Moreover, secular schools were gaining ground. Forexample, the Jewish minority, long a preponderant influence both

physically and economically in Baghdad, continued to send its sons anddaughters to Alliance Israelite schools which taught a French-inspiredcurriculum. Meanwhile, in the early years of the monarchy, Sh;6;education in Karbala and Najaf underwent changes, becoming moreopen to new influences at the same time as it became more disciplined

20 Charles Tripp,A History of Iraq(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2000), 37, 52.

21 Ibid. 40, 65.22

Yusif Izzaldin, Al-yaqCa al-fikriyya fi al-6Ir:q (The IntellectualAwakening in Iraq) in Majallat al-majma6 al-ilm;, vol. 32, pts. 3, 4 (1981),308. See also Abdul-Razzaq al-Hilali,Dir:s:t wa-tar:jim6Ir:qiyya(Iraqi Studiesand Biographies) (Baghdad and Beirut: Nahda Press, 1972), 10425.




Downloadedfrom


11/22

in format,23 and non-denominational schools, developing out of therushdiyya Ottoman tradition, became more widespread.24

At the same time as these new influences were being felt, oldertraditions were still eliciting support among the population. Among

these, the two most powerful religious, literary, and political strains wererepresented by the Sufi movements, and the salafiyya trend. The Sufibrotherhoods, especially the Qadiriyya, but eventually the Naqshban-diyya and the upstart Rifa8iyya as well, were an influential presence inthe provinces of Iraq. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuriesthere were, broadly speaking, two kinds of mystic organizations: theconservative or orthodox brotherhoods that claimed spiritual descentfrom the pious ancestors and early jurists of Islam, insisting that theydiffered from the more literalist 6ulam:8 only because of their belief in

both exoteric and esoteric meanings of the Qur8:n and Sunna. Therewere also the baser 3ar;qas, accused by their opponents of pervertingthe meaning of Islam by focusing on arcane practices, while disregardingthe Qur8:n or Shar;6a altogether. Generally speaking, the appeal ofSufism was universal and, to its followers, indispensable: Sufi mastersbrought solace and comfort to their audience and reinterpreted theQur8:n and the Sunna in a more direct and personal way, frequentlyattracting the initiate with ecstatic poetry that moved him to tears.25

But there was another more rigorous Islamic tradition battling for the

high ground. The upsurge in salafiawareness in Iraq can be traced to along line of neo-Eanbal; shaykhs, many of whom had travelled in theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the Hijaz, Egypt, and India, andhad sat at the feet of reformist shaykhs. Although the salafi movementhad long been in existence in Iraq, it remained a quietist current ofthought that never really developed national currency. Unlike Syria andEgypt, where the movement eventually gained enough momentum toinspire celebrated reformist thinkers such as shaykhs Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad 6Abduh, and Rashid Rida to formulate an anti-

Colonialist rhetoric of region-wide proportions, in Baghdad the salafimovement remained a deeply intellectual and introspective current ofthought that chiefly centred around Shaykh Mahmud Shukri al-Alusi. Itsmain oppositional stance concerned the pronounced Ottoman bias forthe expansion of Sufi brotherhoods, often at the behest of Sultan Abdul-

23 Nur al-Din Shahrudi,Tar;kh al-Aaraka al-6ilmiyya f;karbal:8(The Historyof the Movement for Knowledge in Karbala), (Beirut: Dar al-Ulum, 1990), 170

200.24 Izzildin, Al-yaqCa . . . , 2935.25 Elizabeth Sirriyeh, Sufis and Anti-Sufis: The Defence, Rethinking and

Rejection of Sufism in the Modern World (London: Curzon, 1999), 111.




Downloadedfrom


12/22

Hamid II. This situation angered many salafi thinkers, eventuallypersuading them to rally against the Ottoman state. Sufi ideas,considered dangerously heretical and un-Islamic, were anathema to thesalafis; the fact that these same ideas were promoted by an empire that

was supposed to be safeguarding the principles of the Islamic Shar;6amade the Ottomans deeply suspect among Sunn; orthodoxy.

THE ANTI-WAHHABI AND ANTI-SUFIPROCLIVITIES OF SHAYKH

MAHMUD SHUKRI AL-ALUSI

On 29 March 1905, the British Resident in Baghdad reported that the

following influential members of the Arab community in Baghdad werearrested last evening and sent out of Baghdad to Mosul.26 They wereShaykh Mahmud Shukri al-Alusi, a teacher at the Haidarkhana College,who was said to hold very advanced views both in political andreligious matters;27 his cousin Thabit Effendi al-Alusi, who had heldthe post of head of the Baghdad municipality for the previous twoyears; Abdul-Razzaq Effendi, a teacher at the A6zamiyya College; andHajj Ahmad al-Assafi, a wealthy coffee merchant from Najd. Accordingto the British report, the Wali of Baghdad, Abdul-Wahhab Pasha,

showed them the order for their arrest, had his men handcuff them, andsent the men out of town in the dead of night. And the British consulcontinued:

They are evidently political suspects and it may be that they are concerned withthe Arabian movement which is said to be in progress in Mesopotamia, Syriaand Palestine . . . Another reason for deporting the two Aloosi Zadahs andAbdul-Razzak Effendi is that they have written a book in praise of the Wahhabireligion. This book was sent to Egypt to be printed and the cost of printing wasfinanced by Hajj Ahmad al-Assafi . . . Yet another reason given for this

deportation is that they have been corresponding with Ibn Saud and the shaikhof Kuwait and the police, on paying a surprise visit to their houses, discoveredsome incriminating documents . . .28

A local historian corroborates the story, stating that Mahmud Shukrial-Alusi and his cousin were accused by the Ottoman authorities ofconspiring to spread the Wahhabi madhhab (school of thought) and

26

FO 195/2188, Newmarch to the Government of India, Baghdad, 29 Mar.1905.

27 Ibid.28 Ibid.




Downloadedfrom


13/22

were therefore banished to Mosul.29 Upon the active intercession of thenotables of Mosul, who converged en masse on the Telegraph office tocable their disapproval of the Portes action to Istanbul, al-Alusi and hiscompanions were allowed to return to Baghdad. Nonetheless, while the

incident was quickly shelved at the insistence of the new Wali of the city,the claim that al-Alusi was a covert Wahhabi sympathizer persisted, tothe point where he was publicly labelled the shaykh of the Wahhabis ofBaghdad by some observers. To this continuous barrage, al-Alusi issupposed to have interjected that he was the follower of only oneMuhammad, Muhammad ibn 6Abdullah (in other words, the Prophet)and that, quite to the contrary, he possessed such little esteem for thefollowers of the Wahhabi da6wathat he would not even accept them asstudents.30

Who was Shaykh Mahmud Shukri al-Alusi, and why was he stung bythe label of Wahhabi? Born in 1856, Shaykh Mahmud Shukri was thescion of an important Baghdadi family of6ulam:8, and considered one ofthe paragons of his age. At the relatively young age of 30, he had becomethe chief professor at the Mirjaniyya, one of the most prestigiousreligious colleges in Baghdad, having earlier been professor at yetanother famous mosque-madrasa, the Hayderkhana. From an early age,he devoted himself to the writing of weighty tomes on everything frompre-Islamic poetry to the pedigree of horses. Eventually he wrote some

fifty books on Qur8:nic commentary, jurisprudence, biography, lexico-graphy, rhetoric, dogma, philosophy, history, geography, and the Arabiclanguage.31 From 1886 till 1890, he wrote articles in the Arabic sectionof Al-Zawra8, the first newspaper published in Ottoman Baghdad,established by none other than the Wali Midhat Pasha in 1869. In 1887,the Eighth orientalist Congress in Sweden awarded him a prize for hishistory of the Arabs of the j:hiliyya. While still a professor at theMirjaniyya, his renown reached France, where he came to the attentionof the Orientalist Louis Massignon, who became one of his students

when he visited Baghdad. According to Peres, al-Alusi was one of themost vigorous representatives of modern Islam, striving by means of thewritten and spoken word and by his example to combat bid6a, and hemay be regarded as one of the leaders of the Salafiyya movement.32

29 Ali Dharif Al-A6zami.MukhtaBar tar;kh baghd:d al-qad;m wa-l-Aad;th awbaghd:d fi arba6at :l:f sana (A Short History of Old and New Baghdador Baghdad in Four Thousand Years) (Baghdad: Furat Press, 1926), 2467.

30

Conversation with the late Shaykh Muhammad Bahjat al-Athari, Baghdad,11 Nov. 1981.

31 H. Peres, Al-Alusi, in EI2, 425.32 Ibid. 425.




Downloadedfrom


14/22

Al-Alusis cousin, Muhammad Thabit al-Din Effendi, came fromsimilarly illustrious origins. The son of the famous mufassir (exegete),Shaykh Nu6man Khair al-Din al-Alusi, he was born in 1858, two yearsafter Shaykh Mahmud Shukri. Like his cousin, who wrote a book on the

species, he was also a connoisseur of horses and an expert in pedigreesand geneology.33 Having decided at the age of 25 that he needed aposition with more stability than that of a scholar-preacher, ShaykhMuhammad Thabit successfully became Qadi of Najaf, Karbala,Suleymaniyya (Iraqi Kurdistan), and finally of al-Ahsa (eastern Arabia).While in government employ, he also visited Istanbul four times andperformed the Aajj once. Having had his fill of government service, hedecided to retire to Baghdad but his attempts at farming wereunsuccessful, as he fell in debt and was unable to make a living. In

these straits, he was called upon to take up yet another governmentalposition, this time in the Baghdad municipality, which he fulfilled fortwo years. It was at this time that he was implicated in the plot to furtherWahhabi designs in Greater Baghdad, and was exiled along with hiscousin, Shaykh Mahmud Shukri and others to Mosul. Although hereturned from exile to Baghdad to take up agriculture once more, only tofail abysmally a second time, the government was yet again to offer himsuccour in the form of a judgeship of Suleymaniyya. He died adisappointed man in 1911.

As for the other two men who accompanied the Alusis into exile, thereis evidence that a branch of the Assafi family from Najd resided inBaghdad and that they were merchants of high repute; however, I havenot been able to discover whether Al-Haj Ahmad belonged to theBaghdadi branch of the family. Still, the incident of the Alusi groupsbanishment to Mosul because of their purported Wahhabi leanings mustbe seen in the political and ideological spirit of the times. ElizabethSirriyeh has observed that a similar situation obtained in Syria; in 1908,no less an Islamic reformist than Rashid Rida was attacked as a Wahhabi

because he cautioned in a public lecture against the intercession ofsaints.34 In this case, the epithet had been hurled at Rida in a deliberateand wilful attempt to discredit the Damascene salafis, who were rangedagainst the conservative forces of the city in a political struggle formastery of Damascuss future. Although some writers are convinced thatal-Alusi was indeed a Wahhabi, if indeed a covert one,35 al-Alusis own

33 Kadhim al-Dujayli, obituary in Lughat al-arab, Dec. 1911, 12930.34 Sirriyeh, Sufis . . . 1034.35

Abdul-Halim Al-Ruhaymi, Tar;kh al-Aaraka al-isl:miyya f; al-6Ir:q: Al-judhur al-fikriyya wa-l-w:qi6 al-tar;kh;, 19001924 (The History of theIslamic Movement in Iraq: Intellectual Roots and Historical Reality, 19001924), (Beirut: Al-Dar Al-Alamiyya, 1985), 11533.




Downloadedfrom


15/22

writings are rather impressive evidence of his anti-Wahhabi stance.36 Itmay be that his sympathetic history of Najd and his thorough familiaritywith Wahhabi dogma were seen as proof of his attachment to theWahhabi cause, but as the preceding discussion of Damascus shows, the

line between the Wahhabi and salafi position sometimes confused eventhose who had the highest stake in knowing the difference.

A wider explanation of the incident must also take into account theperspicuous comment of al-Alusis student, Shaykh Muhammad Bahjatal-Athari who believed that Shaykh Mahmud al-Alusi was sent awayfrom Baghdad upon the insistence of Shaykh Ibrahim al-Rawi, the headof the newly-invigorated Rifa6i 3ar;qa in Baghdad.37 To understandthe context of al-Atharis remark, a brief description of fin de siecleBaghdad is imperative. Shaikh Mahmud Shukri al-Alusi lived for sixty-

nine years, most of them under the banner of the Ottoman Empire. Andyet it was an Empire in crisis. According to his biographer, al-Athari,throughout his life al-Alusi exhibited an ambivalent attitude towards thedawla. Al-Athari expressed it in this manner:

On the one hand, the Ottoman Empire had for five centuries been the refuge ofMuslims, and the protector of Islam, as well as being a strong defender against theWest that wanted to take over and make Islam subject to its foreign domination. Ifthe Caliphate were to cease, then so would the existence of political Islam, causinga void in the Islamic world that would be filled by other abominations (mas:yir

munkara), or so he imagined. As for his hatred of the Ottomans, it had to do withthe corruption that permeated the everyday life of the dawlain its last days. . .Insuch circumstances, even the wisest and most rational of men becomes indecisiveover what path he should follow. . . I am certain that had it been up to al-Alusi, hewould have chosen to stay with the Ottoman Caliphate, provided he could reformit, especially with regard to the Arab umma, which had fallen in the tentacles ofWestern colonialism and which could only be freed from it by a miracle. . . 38

Al-Alusi was born in the same period that the Ottoman state wasundergoing a fitful process of reform, which extended to the furthestreaches of the Empire. Like other subjects of the Ottoman Sultan, his lifewas often buffeted by the struggle between the forces of decentralization(represented by a provincial elite of landholders, merchants, militia

36 See Mahmud Shukri al-Alusi, Kit:b gh:y:t al-am:n; f; al-radd 6al:al-nabh:n; (The Book of the Extremities of Hopes in the Reply to Al-Nabhani), ed. and privately pub. by Shaykh Muhammad Bahjat al-Athari(Baghdad, n.d.). The book will be reviewed in more detail later in this article.

37 Conversation with the late Shaykh Muhammad Bahjat al-Athari, Baghdad,

23 Dec. 1981.38 Muhammad Bahjat al-Athari, MaAm


16/22

leaders and religious officials in Baghdad) and the forces of centraliza-tion (exemplified by a foreign elite of provincial governors and Imperialtroops). On the whole, the latter usually won out, not because publicsupport was forthcoming but because patronage in the form of positions

or entitlements enabled the provincial government in Baghdad, Mosul,or Basra to bring the majority of nobles or religious officials within thegovernments ambit. In this sense, al-Alusi was different from the rest: arenowned ascetic and recluse who in his late years rarely venturedoutside of his home to meet much with anyone, be they Arabpersonalities, Ottoman Pashas or British officials, he continued writingboth to bear witness to the history that was passing him by, as well as tovent his anger at the too-rapid changes that were taking place withinIraqi society. As always, his chief concern was the diminution of the

Muslim intellectuals position in Iraq due to a series of events over whichhe had little control.

One of these centred around Sultan Abdul-Hamid IIs pan-Islamicpolicy (siy:sat al-j:mi6a al-Isl:miyya). In the 1890s, a two-prongedstrategy was promoted to reattract Muslims into the Ottoman fold undera strengthened Caliphate headed by Sultan Abdul-Hamid himself. ThisIslamic strategy was based, first, on reinculcating Muslim ethics intolapsed Sunn; communities throughout the Empire and second, onpopularizing that ethical commitment so that it reached a larger

audience.39 Initially, Abdul-Hamids pan-Islamic policy did shore upSunn; salafi principles: by enlisting the energies of select Sunn; Shaykhssent out from Istanbul, a limited Sunn;revival did take place in Iraq. Inaddition to the sending out of Islamic missionaries to distant provinces,Imperial grades and decorations were assigned to Sunn;professors of lawso as to reward them for preaching the true Islam, and some of themwere also awarded promotions. But another by-product of Hamidianpolicy, and perhaps one of the paramount developments in al-Alusistime, was the revival of Sufi brotherhoodsnetworks of Muslim mystics

who, in Atharis not-too-charitable terminology, demanded the worldthrough faith.40

As a reformer, Alusi was at odds with Sufism, especially that practisedby the Rifa8iyya brotherhood, which had been reintroduced in Baghdad

39 A large literature exists on this development. For a selection, see MustafaNur al-Din al-Wa8iz,Al-raw@al-azhar f;tar:jim al-sayyid ja6far(The LuminousGarden in the Biography of Al-Sayyid Ja8far)(Mosul: Ittihad Press, 1948), 20711; Selim Deringil, Legitimacy Structures in the Ottoman State, IJMES 23

(1991); Yitzhak Nakash,The Sh;6a of Iraq(Princeton: Princeton University Press,1994), 2548; and Gokhan Cetinsaya, The Ottoman Administration of Iraq,18901908, Ph.D. diss., University of Manchester, 1994.

40 Al-Athari, Mahmud. shukri al-alusi . . . 8.




Downloadedfrom


17/22

under the patronage of the influential Rifa8;shaykh and powerful adviserto Sultan Abdul-Hamid II, Abu-al-Huda al-Sayyadi. Despite al-Sayyadisattempts to portray his3ar;qain a more positive light (by claiming that itwas as sober and as temperate as the more influential Qadiriyya and

Naqshbandiyya), the Rifa8iyya was looked down upon by the moreconservative 6ulam:8 for its ecstatic practices, its fire-eaters and rowdyfollowers.41 It is thought that Abu-al-Huda tried to win over al-Alusito his network of 6ulam:8 clients, and the two men did carry on acorrespondence for some time, but Alusi eventually ceased communica-tion with al-Sayyadi because of differences over Sufi abuses.

Equally important to al-Alusis world view was the collapsingauthority of late Ottoman Baghdads 6ulam:8 theocracy. As a professorof law and jurisprudence, a noted author of books on Islamic theology

and history, and a stern disciplinarian greatly respected by students, hewas appalled by the clear decline in Islamic education as well as theforms of ritual and worship in the city of his birth. Among al-Alusiscomplaints, the most forceful related to Jami8al-Mirjan, whose teachingposition (that ofmudarris) had almost become a family monopoly. TheMirjaniyya had been built in 1356 by one Mirjan ibn Abdullah ibnAbdul-Rahman al-Sultani Chagatai, a Central Asian warlord who hadfounded the mosque-madrasa in Baghdad with the stipulation that themanywaqfs or Muslim endowments set up for the institution be used for

the teaching ofEanaf; and Sh:fi6; jurisprudence. According to al-Alusi:Many of these waqfs fell in disrepair, and cannot be seen anymore andmany were forcibly taken over (wa-imtadat illayhum: yad al-ghaBaba) . . . For instance, d:r al-shif:8 (a famous hospital) was takenover by a Jew and now it has become famous as qahwat al-maBbagha(acoffee shop) and many of the shops and warehouses which formerlysupported the madrasa al-mirj:niyya are now in private hands. Somehave even become churches!42

Al-Alusi goes on to say that there was a very wide square in front of

the Nu6mani mosque, which was one of the waqfs attached to themosque, but some evil-doers forcibly expropriated it (ghaBab


18/22

this way, Islamic waqfs are lost, and become churches or shops(Aaw:n;t), as the waqfsof the Mirjaniyya were, some of which becamechurches, shops and even cabarets and dance-halls in which prostitutesand runaways dance in front of Muslims (within sight of them and

within hearing). . .

44

Obviously, the changes affecting al-Alusis life were many. Whetherthese consisted of the Portes patronage of Sufi brotherhoods, whichoffended Alusis salafi sympathies, or the calumnies heaped on him byignorant parties referring to him as the shaykh of the Wahhabis, or eventhe daily injustices done to the state of Islamic learning, which wasreducing the once-proud class of 6ulam:8 to abject penury, all thesemisfortunes plagued Alusis later life and eventually harried him intohouse exile, from which he was to reappear only briefly. Despite this,

Alusi continued to sit on Baghdads provincial administrative council, soit may be surmised that his earlier abstention from official posts stemmedfrom religious differences, not from any political disaffection withOttoman rule per se. And when war broke out and the Ottoman Empiresided with Germany, he remained a loyalist, defending Ottoman interestsuntil the last. In a gesture striking for its ambivalence, he even acceptedto serve the Ottoman cause by going on a diplomatic (though ultimatelyfailed) mission to Riyadh to persuade Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud to enter thewar on the side of the Ottomans.45

THE SALAFIYYA, WAHHABISM, ANDPOPULAR SUFISM IN AL-ALUSIS WORK

All of these issues came together in al-Alusis book, Kit:b gh:y:t al-am:n;f;al-radd6al:al-Nabh:n;. The work should be viewed as Alusismain rebuttal to the years of defamation he had endured at the hands of

late Ottoman-era walis, Sufi shaykhs, and Wahhabi critics. Briefly,in Rajab of 1907, al-Alusi received a book called Shaw:hid al-Aaqq fi al-istigh:tha bi-sayyid al-khalq, written by a Palestinian shaykh and Sufi bythe name of Yusuf al-Nabhani. According to al-Alusi, the core of thebook consisted of nothing less than a great slander (buhtan 6aC;man)and a renunciation of the straight (or Godly) path.46 Always accordingto Alusi, this was because the authors thesis rested on the outrightrejection of monotheism as well as the inclusion of a vast array of

44

Ibid.45 L/P & S/20/c.199. Personalities: Baghdad and Kadhimain (GovernmentPress, 1920).

46 Al-Alusi, Kit:b . . . i. 3.




Downloadedfrom


19/22

falsehoods and calumnies which could appeal only to those of unsoundmind. Accordingly, he began his refutation of al-Nabhanis work by firstof all pouring scorn on the literary output of the new-fangled printingpresses in Baghdad and elsewhere. Claiming that they published

anything they could lay their hands on, thus adding to the vastignorance of the uninitiated, he proceeded to demolish the background,philosophy, character, and learning of al-Nabhani, all in the spirit ofpublic service.

In a systematic purge of the authors literary pretensions, Alusireproves al-Nabhani for joining those salaried people in high positionswho joined innovative Sufi orders and shocked their own governmentand country by distancing themselves from salafi beliefs.47 Attributingal-Nabhanis motive to greed and envy for position, he makes a parallel

between fertile, cultivable land and drought-ridden land. Alusi assertsthat the hearts of al-Nabhani and his ilk were similarly parched and thatthey were nothing but people ofbid6a (religious innovation) and error,who worshipped polytheists or idolators, made appeal to them throughthe slaughter of live animals and swore oaths on these saintsheads.48 This went on, even though the Prophet had made theprinciple of monotheism the bedrock of his prophetic mission, for thatprinciple is what constitutes all of religion (wa-h:dhidhi al-mas8alahiyya al-d;n kulluh:).49 Indeed, it was the point of distinction between

the true Muslim and the k:fir. In the same context, Alusi pours scorn onSufi miracles such as playing with snakes and scorpions, using handweapons against themselves and walking on fire, which he termsSatanically-inspired and quite contrary to the Shar;6a. Contemptuouslyhe asserts that the Sufis viewed their religion as nothing more than playand entertainment. And in a stinging rebuke, he exclaims: Woe towhosoever rewrites the Book with his own hand!50

However, although monotheism was the foundation of Islam, Alusiwas not willing to countenance coercion or even illiberalism in its

pursuit. And here he was pointedly in disagreement with the Wahhabis.Alusi believed that perhaps the most outrageous snare or deceptionresorted to by these false Muslims (of which Nabhani was only one ofmany) was the practice of takf;r. According to Alusi, this was done todistort the beliefs of the common people, and to distance them from thetrue Muslims. He then states point-blank that the Wahhabis werenotorious for employingtakf;rin this manner. However, he continues, it

47

Ibid. 5.48 Ibid. 89.49 Ibid. 9.50 Ibid. 13.




Downloadedfrom


20/22

was well known that the Muslim is anyone who follows Islam. Anybody,Alusi asserts, who follows the faith is a Muslim, even if he commits anerror in following this faith.51 Thus in contrast to Wahhabi teachings, hedid not believe that the only true Muslim was the one who uphheld the

strict implementation of the whole of the Shar;6a, [in which] . . .

truetawA;d(monotheism) must be in the heart, tongue and deed52. He waswilling to be more liberal in his approach, and give his co-religionists thebenefit of the doubt.

This even applied to certain Sufi brotherhoods, for Alusi certainly didnot consider them all alike. For him, there was a big difference betweenthe orthodox Sufi masters such as Shaykh Abdul-Qadir al-Gaylani, whobelieved wholeheartedly in tawA;d, and the baser Sufis who blas-phemed Islam by associating others with God,53 just as there was an

almost deliberate ignorance of what visits to shrines implied. A visit to atomb was not necessarily a contravention of the Shar;6a, so long as thevisit was meant to remind the living of the hereafter, and to implore Godfor divine guidance for the dead. The sin of polytheism occurred onlywhen the visitor prayed to the dead to intercede with God for the living.Moreover, rejecting the claim that Sufi p;rs or masters could ever trulyintercede with God for themselves as well as their followers, Alusi wasadamant that no Sufi shaykh could ever have knowledge of thetranscendental world; that was solely an attribute of God.54

As a concluding salvo, Alusi closes by saying that al-Nabhani wrotehis slanderous work solely to appeal to the ignorant; he accuses him ofpadding his book with lies and falsehoods to make it appear longer, andtherefore weightier. Addressing the author directly, he remonstrates withhim over the blatant misrepresentation of Ibn Taymiyya as a Wahhabi,saying that the Shaykh al-Islam was nothing if not an upright Muslim,and needed no further defence.55 Authors such as al-Nabhani, on theother hand, were in dire need of moral re-education and direction in thetrue faith.

CONCLUSION

On 6 November 1927, an Ikhw:nraid against the Iraqi frontier town ofBusaiya signalled the start of a three-year offensive against Iraq by one of

51 Ibid. 15.52

Sirriyeh, Wahhabis . . .

125.53 Al-Alusi, Kit:b . . . ii. 56.54 Ibid. 31.55 Ibid. 65.




Downloadedfrom


21/22

Ibn Sauds erstwhile allies, the Mutayri Shaykh Faisal ibn Dawish (orDuwaish). The Ikhw:n, a fiercely puritanical group of tribesmen whohad been induced to settle in hujar or agricultural settlements by IbnSaud, were instrumental in the victory over the Hashemite forces in

Makka and Madina. For a variety of reasons (most of them having to dowith dynastic ambitions), some of the Ikhw:n shaykhs began a long,drawn-out rebellion against Ibn Saud, then the Sultan of Najd. Eventhough the Ikhw:n raids into Iraq and Kuwait had more to do withchallenging Saudi rule than invading neighbouring districts, they causedconsternation (and quite a lot of carnage) in Iraq and Kuwait.56 Partly asa result of these raids, the British began negotiating Iraq and Kuwaitsborders with Ibn Saud, eventually leading to the further strengthening ofthe latter.

We can speculate, perhaps, that had Al-Alusi been alive at the time (hedied in 1924), the irony of a Wahhabi revivalist movement invading anow-officially pluralistic, secular Iraq would not have been lost on him.For he had witnessed other similar and equally bloody attacks in hislifetime, most notably in the Wahhabi raids on southern Iraqi tribes in1921, which eventually resulted in the organization in Iraq of a hugeanti-Wahhabi conference in 1922 called by, among others, the mostimportant mujtahids (Sh;6; religious leaders) in the country.57 AlthoughAl-Alusi chose not to attend that particular conference, he could not

have been immune to its appeal. After all, the Ikhw:nraids into Iraq rantrue to form in an important way. Couched in the rhetoric of the past,they resorted to historic precedent by calling for a renewed faith in salafiprinciples, meaning by that, of course, the Wahhabi version. Labellingtheir enemies kuff:r, they overran frontier settlements in Iraq andKuwait, putting many people to death. Once again, this ideologicalcampaign created cultural and ideological ferment in its wake. Twenty-two years earlier, Shaykh Mahmud Shukri al-Alusi had been shaken tohis very being by the label (or, according to him, libel) of Wahhabi, even

though his reformist principles, belief in traditional Islamic education,and disdain of Sufi abuses would have qualified him as a fellow-traveller in an earlier epoch. At that time, it had been consideredsufficient by him and his students to refute the tag of Wahhabi by notinghow ideologically dissimilar his interpretation of salafi principles was

56 Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia (London: Saqi Press, 1998),275. See also Paul J. Magnarella, Arabias Ikhwan Movement: A Theoretical

Interpretation, in Robert Olson (ed.), Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies: AFestchrift in Honor of Professor Wadie Jwaideh(Brattleboro, Vt.: Amana Books,1987), 1835.

57 Al-Ruhaymi, Tar;kh, 24451.




Downloadedfrom


22/22

from the latter. Two decades on, however, intellectual differences weredownplayed because larger issues of national sovereignty, territorialintegrity, and the relations of small nations with great powers tookprecedence.

Even though the Ikhw:n campaigns were now viewed through theprism of international relations by most of the British administration andlocal politicians in Iraq, there was yet another reality that went largelyunrecognized by all but those most personally affected by the raidsoutcome. This was that religious ideology hardly figured at all in the newBritish-influenced philosophy of modern state formation. Alusi musthave reached the same conclusion at about the same time as theIkhw:nbegan their archaic campaign to reclaim idolatrous districts by thesword: a classical Islamic formation was the complete antithesis of a

modern nation-states ideology, as reflected in the uphill struggle ofIslamic schools to maintain their once-hegemonic position in Iraqisociety. One of the supreme ironies of this development was thatal-Alusi, a fervent anti-Wahhabi, had to wage a lonely battle to maintain(he could not quite restore) the principles of kutt:b education inBaghdad even as a contemporary movement based on a fundamentalistagenda was staking out the parameters of national ideology next door inthe Arabian Peninsula.

It is this similarity in form, but difference in substance, that has

been of concern to us in this article. From its very inception, the Wahhabimovement was able to rally Muslims everywhere because of its call toreturn to the path of the Prophet and the Companions. Many Muslimsadhered to theda6wabecause the message had resonated throughout theages, and they were familiar with the broad principles embedded in itscore. But the Wahhabi credo also encountered stiff resistance in theregion because its followers were seen to have perverted the originalmessage of the early Muslims (al-salaf al-B:liA). In their singling out ofother Muslims as unbelievers (kuff:r), their forcible application of

Qur8:nic punishments (Aud

‘wahhabi’ influences, salafi responses: shaikh mahmud shukri and the iraqi salafi movement, ...

Documents