Posted on 07/19/2004 9:17:48 PM PDT by quidnunc
In the 18th century, Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and an army of 600 troops showed up at a tomb in the Arabian Desert, where one of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad was buried under an elaborate dome. On his deathbed the prophet had cursed Jews and Christians for turning the graves of their apostles into places of worship. Yet over the 11 centuries since Muhammad founded Islam, Muslims had come to do just that, making the tombs of the religion's early disciples into pilgrimage sites.
So while the troops kept horrified onlookers at bay, al-Wahhab (whose name means "the bestower") and his followers ripped the dome down. The Wahhabis eventually went on to destroy shrines and minarets throughout Islamdom. They even attempted to raze the dome over the prophet's own tomb in Medina.
Sometimes called the Luther of Islam, Wahhab created a religious movement that insisted on a return to the first principles of the Quran and the Hadith, the sayings of the prophet. Wahhab preached tawhid, or absolute monotheism, and railed against shirk, the act of associating anything with God, for example by venerating saints. He warred against fellow Muslims, whom he denounced as apostates. He wanted to tear down, sometimes literally, centuries of accretions to Islam, to rid the religion of its accumulated legal traditions, mysticism and (in his eyes) blasphemous practices.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Wahhabisnm is Islam's Reformation.
No, it isn't
From this article, all we learn is that we don't KNOW what Wahhab wrote. Evidentally this is NOT a commentary on his works, but a superficial gloss.
I've been waiting for someone to notice this.
Sowing dissent. Good.
Interesting article, plus no sign-up needed.
I've argued that before.
But if she wants us to believe that he was this idealist, she has to give us more than her bald evaluation.
Al-Wahhab, his feces
Wahabbism is more like a cross between the Amish and Scientology.
"His insistence on adherence to Quranic values," she writes, "like the maximum preservation of human life even in the midst of jihad as holy war,
It is hard to reconcile these two items.
Actually I believe it was a refom movement.
Wahhab may have meant it that way..........and Khomeini may have meant to reform also..........I don't think either is "Islam's Reformation"
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