Salafism 101 by the Christian Science Monitor: conflates Wahabism and Salafism overmuch, but still useful.
I wish I could find a link to The Rise and Fall of the Salafi Dawah that still worked…
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aziz
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thabet
“We either be allowed to drive or breastfeed foreigners…”
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/saudi-women-use-fatwa-in-driving-bid-1.643431-
aziz
Win.
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aziz
Umar Lee has rejected the salafi madhab entirely and is embracing sufism – but in doing so, he’s still staying Umar. He does nothing half-assed. I think he’s really an amazing person.
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Muse
I admire anyone who undergoes a spiritual struggle and chooses to share their experiences with others, because its such an act of vulnerability. This is what drew me to Eteraz’s blog (pouring out a little rooh afza for its demise), and its what just raised Umar’s estimation in my eyes. I have no doubt he’s probably getting flamed from many quarters, but knowing Umar, I doubt he cares. Its inspiring.
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AA
Does anyone why Eteraz has locked up his twitter account? I thought he dropped out or something, just noticed his account his locked.
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Tayat
This whole thing about ‘Umar’ personality seems so suspicious. As if he is playing with us.
One thing is for sure. The man can write, and has no difficulty to find words, despite from his background.-
plimfix
Personally, I think he’s one of the best writers — technically speaking — on the Net. Content wise, I lost interest long ago.
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Shams al-Nahar
I am not surprised.
We are all sufi in the embedded nanotech….it just needs to be switched on.
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achmed
I have to say I was not expecting this post from Umar at all.
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AA
The Yemenization of Theo
Do the Yemeni newspaper’s revelation make Padnos uneasy? “Slightly. Yes,” he says with a nervous chuckle on a recent phone interview from Paris. “But not totally. I want to have a civilized debate with these [Salafists]. I feel that what they’re doing is not correct, and it’s bad.”
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/worldview/100308/al-qaeda-yemen-islam-convert
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johnpi
After reading Umar’s ‘Rise and Fall of the Salafi Dawah‘ I came away with a poor impression of the ‘Troid’ group as one of the more problematical ones, but this lecture seems very responsible (assuming this is the same group, which it may not be).
It may be that 9/11 and everything that has happened after has caused very unbalanced, immoderate groups to address distortions of extremism that were coming to dominate in the 1990s.
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johnpi
Revolution Muslim’s ‘imam and spiritual advisor’ deported from Kenya.
That would be Abdullah al-Faisal who was deported from the UK in 2007 after serving a prison sentence for preaching racial hatred and calling for the killing of Jews, Christians and other Westerners. He entered Kenya Dec. 24th on a “preaching tour.”
“The contacts he was maintaining, according to our intelligence, are not the best, are not in our national interests. The contacts were … in some neighbouring countries.”
….Some Kenyan Muslim clerics demonstrated against Faisal’s arrest on Sunday and said he was going to preach on greater autonomy for Muslims.
“Of course, he did not come here to appease the Kenyan government or the police, but to do his job,” said Sheikh Yahya Mohamed Atie, a retired army captain and a member of Nairobi’s Jamia Mosque.
“He was calling Muslims to have more freedom. Of course, he is against democracy.”
Back in the 1990s, al-Faisal called for the assassination of former Philly Imam Abu Usamah Ath-Thahabi, who more recently was reported to be a liar, swindler and womanizer on Salafi Burnout’s blog.
The Kenyan authorities are said to be “so annoyed” with him that they won’t even grant him a transit visa back to Jamaica.
The NEFA Foundation, a US anti-terrorism think tank, published a new backgrounder on him in October in which it says al-Faisal is described by ‘Revolution Muslim’ as its imam and spiritual advisor.
Abdullah al-Faisal has a loyal following that is dedicated to promoting his ideology to others via the Internet and through in-person delivery of compact disc recordings. Additionally, al-Faisal regularly generates new material by giving public lectures, which are then recorded and distributed electronically and on CDs. Thus, the pervasiveness of his influence is spread quickly and broadly.
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johnpi
The flyer for the event being held at the East London Mosque on January 1st by Noor Pro Media, which will also be selling Anwar al Awlaki tapes there.
One of the contributors over at The Spittoon blog analyzes it. Anybody have a problem with this or care to rebut?
Grave Worship – Salafi-inspired Islamism has long accused both the Shi’a and Sufi of being “grave worshippers”.
The destruction of the tombs of Sufi shaykhs in Somalia by Islamist terrorists, the destruction of the tombs and shrines of the family of the Prophet in Medina and elsewhere by the Wahhabi in Saudi Arabia (together with repeated threats from such to destroy the tomb of the Prophet) remain an enormous loss not just to Muslim believers, but to the world.
New Age Islam – This is clearly targetting the new Sufi orders that have sprung up in the West, and more widely the emergence of Western Islam, with its criticism of Islamism and its support for liberal, progressive, reformatory interpretations of Islam – interpretations that stress the seperation of religion and state, secularism, tolerance and democratic norms.
Sihr – the traditional Arabic for witchcraft. For Salafi-inspired Sunni Islamism, sihr is not simply witchcraft, but any pre-Islamic or allegedly non-Islamic cultural practices that may be embedded in the various forms of Islam that have grown up over the centuries across the world. Equally, this is an assault on the dhikr of the Sufi and other non-Salafi groups. In contrast, the Islamists stress a monolithic and ultimately totalitarian brand of Islam that is completely intolerant of the rich plurality of traditions and practices that have historically marked Islam.
In all, the sinister flyer advertises the narrow-minded, ahistorical, authoritarian bigotry of the Salafi-inspired Islamism at the very heart of the “Islam” being promoted by ELM and its followers.-
aziz
The Spitoon is pretty harsh on Yasir Qadhi, who seems to be using Muslim Matters as his personal defense outlet. To be honest I havent been following this closely enough. If the accusations about Qadhi are true (as the Spittoon seems to pretty comprehensively document) then this is a black mark for MM and I am worried about this as an angle of taint by association for the blogsphere as a whole (MM has a couple of BCA’s under its belt, affter all).
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thabet
Alternatively, it shows the BCA isn’t some skewed progressive-liberal lovefest some think it is, and fairly open to views from all sides.
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bingregory
do you have a link to the discussion at MM? Big site, don’t know where to look.
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thabet
I don’t think Yasir Qazi has directly responded to The Spittoon.
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thabet
Hamza Tzortzis, with his chum Adam Deen, are mini-celebrities on the ‘Islamic lecture circuit’ in the UK. I tried listening to one of Tzortzis’ debates with someone from the NSS (I think). Dumber debating Evendumber was my conclusion. I also think (from a quick scan of the ‘net) that HT happens to be friendly with, or a member of, the other HT.
But I can’t bring myself to get excited about something cross-posted from Harry’s Place.
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johnpi
Separate information from its source…
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thabet
Fair point. I just find it hard to overlook a website, which was/is so riddled with anti-Muslim rantings esp in its comments, that one blogger asked me whether it was affiliated with the BNP in anyway! (And why one British blogger called it “Little Green Soccer Balls”; see the comments from dsquared.)
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johnpi
Yeah. I’m squeamish about Spittoon too. That’s why I posted the above and asked people to call bulls*** on it if there were issues. The open-source fact checkers have remained silent so it seems like a solid critique…
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bingregory
Nothing in that quoted analysis to rebut. All three topics are obvious code for sufism, grave-worship being the term they use to characterize tawassul and tabarruk as shirk. Although neo-salafi organizations like Al-Maghrib are much more discreet and civil than the old variety, and incorporate terms like tazkiya into their approach, which we applaud, Naqshbandis and other sufi orders have never been included in whatever big tent they are trying to pitch with their new “moderate” approach.
Obviously the speakers have not yet spoken so we don’t know what exactly they will say, but I think the analysis for the promotional poster is perfectly fair.
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abunoor
I wouldn’t use the term neo-Salafi to characterize AlMaghrib…..terms get confusing but this term has actually been used for sometime to characterize a group associated with Madhkali who although they share some theology with AlMaghrib (why they are all ‘Salafi’ to an extent) are actually the arch enemies of such and who spend more of their time criticizing AlMaghrib types than even Sufis, and these groups especially especially consider people like Shaykh Yasir Qadhi to be persona non grata because they have been willing to, without sacrificing or ignoring important theological differences, work together with Ash’aris and Sufis for the common interests of the ummah.
Yasir Qadhi signed the Pledge of Mutual Respect and Cooperation which was signed by many of the leading teachers and scholars in the west across ideological differences.
So the call is to be more civil and work together for good and to avoid pointless and almost always ad hominem debates among laymen. The point is not for anyone to abandon their theology, nor would I see why they would be expected to — are you saying that there should be a “big tent” where Shaykh Yasir has to say that whatever any Sufis wish to do is okay with him? Is that a big tent you are looking for?
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bingregory
Thanks for the clarification on terminology.
That’s a nice pledge and is basically all the tent I’m looking for. But the poster clearly violates several clauses of the pledge off the bat. Wouldn’t you agree? “Grave-worship” is a phrase with an extremely clear history in Islamic literature in English. It cannot mean other than shirk and it cannot refer to other than the practices of seeking intercession and barakah, which are well supported across the four madhhabs. You can disagree with the practices but describing them as a dark force, a worship of other than Allah, and an enemy within the religion? If that fits within the pledge, than what good is the pledge?
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
I think the flyer is questionable and not helpful, but I think it is a difficult issue. No specific names are mentioned on the flyer.
In keeping with the terms of the pledge, I don’t wish to get into a debate on the substantive underlying issues, (and besides there is no theology being discussed on TalkIslam) but I think it is tricky because one can certainly believe that there is activity going on in the ummah that can only be characterized as grave worship and shirk, which is a separate but related issue to the issue of tawassul about which there are well known disagreements. My point, being, I think there is much that goes on that even Sufi scholars would agree is incorrect and it is possible to target that without getting into the areas of disagreement.
Still, I don’t want to lose the main point. I can agree with you that the flyer is probably not appropriate or helpful, but for anyone who has not been to lectures by Shaykh Yasir Qadhi before (I can’t speak to the other speakers, who I have not heard) two things are definitely true:
1. He does take theology seriously and in an academic way is clear about what is actually shirk, what is actually bid’ah etc. and he does so in a way you might disagree with on specifics but is not the stereotypical ‘wahhabi’ namecalling.
2. He does take the ideas around the pledge seriously and without ignoring theological differences he has done a great deal in public and private to create better relationships between Muslims in working for the common good, despite the fact that he has been criticized unbelievably harshly from the “neo-Salafi” ranks for doing so and even faced questioning and skepticism from his own students.
Allaah knows best.
I think there are examples from all sides that would show that the ideas behind the pledge are a little harder to carry out in practice than to put down on paper, but I think for sure most of the signatories were sincere and there has been a positive change in recent times in terms of civility and cooperation at least here in the U.S. I can’t comment for sure, but the problems still seem to be a little more stark in the UK.
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abunoor
Sorry, meant to link to the pledge.
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johnpi
Abdulmutallab praised the 9/11 attacks as a teenager.
The bomber also praised the 9/11 terrorist attacks when he was a teenager, telling one schoolfriend they were “an act of war”. The unnamed friend said: “We were talking about 9/11. I was saying under no circumstances could it ever be OK to kill all those innocent people. He was much more equivocal.
“He called 9/11 an act of war – American troops were on Saudi soil and had humiliated Muslim countries so these actions might be necessary. That’s the only time I had an argument with him.”
US troops were invited into Saudi Arabia by the royal family. There is precedent for making military alliances with Western nations. No less an authority than Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (Mr. Wahhabism) and Ibn Saud entered into an offensive alliance with the English to help bring down the Ottoman empire, since it was unconscionable to them as ethnic supremacists that a Turk could be considered equal to an Arab, let alone govern Arabs. “Abd al-Wahhab was, in part reacting to the old ethnocentric belief tht only Arabs can represent the one true and authentic Islam.”
You can’t condemn one and not the other without being a hypocrite, but hypocrisy was never a problem for Wahhabis:
While consistently condemning non-Muslim influences and rejecting any form of cooperation with the West, in reality the Wahhabis were incited and supported by English colonialists to rebel against the Ottomans, which effectively meant that Wahhabis sided with non-Muslim Englishmen against their Muslim Ottoman enemies. Moreover, while condemning all forms of nationalism as an evil Western invention, in reality Wahhabism was a pro-Arab nationalistic movement that rejected Turkish dominance over Arabs under the guise of defending the one true Islam.
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johnpi
The Taliban movement in Afghanistan, when it controlled large parts of the north and west of that country in the 1990s, had a goal of “forced reIslamization” (Rashid’s phrase) toward the other ethnic peoples they gained control over in placed like Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif. The “correct” practice they sought to instill in local populations was – of course – Wahhabi-Salafism.
So can “forced reIslamization” work? the answer is ‘yes,’ and it’s been done before – in Saudi Arabia. But it comes with a price, and by looking at the Saudi-Wahhabi project we can estimate and make some projections.
Khalid Abou El Fadl writes about it in The Great Theft.
…the various Wahhabi rebellions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were very bloody, as the Wahhabis indiscriminately slaughtered Muslims especially those belonging to Sufi orders and the Shi’i sect. In 1802, for example, the Wahhabis executed a large number of Sunnis in Mecca and Medina, whom they considered for one reason or another heretical. The number of those executed or massacred by the Saudi-Wahhabi alliance has never been counted, but from historical accounts it is clear that it is in the tens of thousands if not more. In the course of the second conquest of the Arabian peninsula, for instance, acting under orders from Ibn Sa’ud, the Wahhabis carried out 40,000 public executions and 350,000 amputations.
So what would be the comparable figures for executions and amputations today in Afghanistan? I’m going to have to make a few assumptions here, but follow along.
The population of Afghanistan today is roughly equivalent to that of Saudi Arabia – around 28 million. The Saudi population was probably around 3 million in the 1800s. Assuming Afghanstan’s population has always been close to Saudi Arabia’s, we can set up simple equations:
40,000 is to 3 million as ? is to 28 million. And,
350,000 is to 3 million as ? is to 28 million.
Among today’s population in Afghanistan, if the Taliban executed an equivalent proportion of the population for heresy that number would be 373,333.
An equivalent proportion of amputations among the currently living Afghan population would be approximately 3.2 million.
El Fadl refers to these figures as only accounting for those slain in the “second conquest,” most likely the “heretical Sunnis.” So we should probably double these numbers (at least) to capture the slain and disfigured Sufi and Shia.
So there you have it: The price in lives would be over a half million, and the cost in amputations would be more than 6 million, following the historical Saudi model of ‘forced reIslamization.’
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bdr
Is it really accurate to label Taliban as ‘Salafi-Wahhabi’ [sic]? Isn’t Deobandi more correct?
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johnpi
I didn’t. The comparison I’m seeking is of the efforts and aspirations of the Taliban to accomplish a ‘forced reIslamization’ (who are certainly under the influence of Wahabbi thinking if not Wahabbi themselves) as compared to the historical model of it we have in Saudi Arabia.
But it would also be incorrect to leave the Deobandi assertion in place. Rather than summarize and condense, here are some primary sources and links (pardon the text dump).
For three decades, deep tectonic forces have been silently tearing Pakistan away from the Indian subcontinent and driving it towards the Arabian peninsula. This continental drift is not physical but cultural, driven by a belief that Pakistan must exchange its South Asian identity for an Arab-Muslim one. Grain by grain, the desert sands of Saudi Arabia are replacing the rich soil that had nurtured a magnificent Muslim culture in India for a thousand years. This culture produced Mughul architecture, the Taj Mahal, the poetry of Asadullah Khan Ghalib, and much more. Now a stern, unyielding version of Islam (Wahhabism) is replacing the kinder, gentler Islam of the Sufis and saints who had walked on this land for hundreds of years.
According to the Saudi analyst Nawaf Obaid, the key players in the ulema who pushed for Saudi support to the Taliban were Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bin Baz, the Grand Mufti and Chairman cf the council of the Senior ulema and Sheikh Mohammed Bin Juber, the Minister of Justice and a key member of the Council of the ulema. In return, the Taliban demonstrated their reverence for the Royal Family and the ulema and copied Wahabbi practices such as introducing religious police. In April 1997, Taliban leader Mullah Rabbani met with King Fahd in Riyadh and praised the Saudis effusively. ‘Since Saudi Arabia is the centre of the Muslim world we would like to have Saudi assistance. King Fahd expressed happiness at the good measures taken by the Takiban and over the imposition of Sharia in our country,’ Rabbani said.
Mountainous Nuristan – and adjoining Kunar province and the Mohmand and Bajaur tribal areas – provide a natural labyrinth, ideal for insurgents to establish safe heavens. The majority of Nuristan’s people adhere to the strict Salafi school of thought. As a result, Arab fighters, who are mostly Salafis, have always been drawn to the area. This happened during the jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s, when a virtually autonomous Salafi “kingdom” was established with aid from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. This was later eliminated by the Taliban.
The Saudis meanwhile suffered a major setback [in 1992] as their two principle neo-Wahabbi protégés, Gulbuddin Hikmetyar and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, split. Hikmetyar opposed the newly constituted Mujaheddin government in Kabul and joined up with the Hazaras to bombard the city. Sayyaf supported the Mujheddin government. This division was an extension of the much larger Saudi foreign policy debacle after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. For 20 years the Saudis had funded hundreds of neo-Wahabbi parties across the Muslim world to spread Wahabbism and gain influence within the Islamic movements in those countries.
But when Riyadh asked these Islamic groups for a payback and to lend support to Saudi Arabia and the USA led coalition against Iraq, the majority of them backed Saddam Hussein, including Hikmetyar and most Afghan groups. Years of Saudi effort and billions of dollars were wasted because Saudi Arabia had failed to evolve a national interest-based foreign policy. The Saudi predicament is having a westernized ruling elite whose legitimacy is based on conservative fundamentalism, while those not part of the elite are radically anti-Western. The elite has promoted radical Wahabbism, even as this undermined its own power at home and abroad.
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Conrad Barwa
According to Peter Marsden and some other observers who worked in Afghanistan at the time; the Taliban were uneven in how they applied their strictures; apparently they were a lot more flexible in places like Kandahar, Helmand and the south but were much harsher in the major urban areas outside this region, especially Kabul, which many of the younger Talib recruits were trained to regard as some sort of Sodom/Gomorrah. There seems to have been some realisation later on, by the leadership that many of the younger recruits got carried away in their zealousness. There was also quite a lot of uneveness in how rules were applied, as many Talib commanders and officials were rotated frequently from districts outside their core bases.
To what degree this actually made a difference on the ground I don’t know, but it is worth bearing in mind.
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johnpi
Pakistani magazine article: The Saudi-isation of Pakistan.
Soldiers, policemen, factory and hospital workers, mourners at funerals and ordinary people praying in mosques have all been reduced to globs of flesh and fragments of bones. But, perhaps paradoxically, in spite of the fact that the dead bodies and shattered lives are almost all Muslim ones, few Pakistanis speak out against these atrocities. Nor do they approve of the army operation against the cruel perpetrators of these acts because they believe that they are Islamic warriors fighting for Islam and against American occupation. Political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have no words of solace for those who have suffered at the hands of Islamic extremists. Their tears are reserved exclusively for the victims of Predator drones, even if they are those who committed grave crimes against their own people. Terrorism, by definition, is an act only the Americans can commit.
….Villages have changed drastically; this transformation has been driven, in part, by Pakistani workers returning from Arab countries. Many village mosques are now giant madrassas that propagate hard-line Salafi and Deobandi beliefs through oversized loudspeakers. They are bitterly opposed to Barelvis, Shias and other sects, who they do not regard as Muslims. The Punjabis, who were far more liberal towards women than the Pukhtuns, are now beginning to take a line resembling that of the Taliban. Hanafi law has begun to prevail over tradition and civil law, as is evident from the recent decisions of the Lahore High Court.
….Pakistan’s self-inflicted suffering comes from an education system that, like Saudi Arabia’s system, provides an ideological foundation for violence and future jihadists. It demands that Islam be understood as a complete code of life, and creates in the mind of a school-going child a sense of siege and embattlement by stressing that Islam is under threat everywhere.
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Len
John, given your positions, I’m a little surprised you didn’t excerpt this instead:
While social conservatism does not necessarily lead to violent extremism, it does shorten the distance. The socially conservative are more easily convinced that Muslims are being demonised by the rest of the world. The real problem, they say, is the plight of the Palestinians, the decadent and discriminatory West, the Jews, the Christians, the Hindus, the Kashmir issue, the Bush doctrine – the list runs on. They vehemently deny that those committing terrorist acts are Muslims, and if presented with incontrovertible evidence, say it is a mere reaction to oppression.
In any case, I’m not sure that propagation of Deobandi teachings is “Saudi-isation”…maybe only in the sense that it’s socially conservative. In terms of beliefs and practice, it’s somewhat different, and it seems to have a distinctly Pakistani tint on it.
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johnpi
True and true.
In retrospect, I would have excerpted exactly that part.
I’m actually not happy with the way I excerpted this at all. This was an article where perhaps less, and more concise excerpting would have been more…
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johnpi
The part about the predator drones and killing of Muslims by extremists was an insight to me when considered in the context of the questions around serving in the US military, which relates back to the still emotional Fort Hood shooting and it threw my judgment off…
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abunoor
Yeah, Deoband is a city in India, not KSA.
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johnpi
A Google search on the term “Deobandi Wahhabi” turned up 6,960 results. Apparently, the two have gotten married and now have a hypenate name, at least in Pakistan.
The Pakistani professor may know more about her country than we do…
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sa.c
Hoodbhoy is a him and he’s a physics professor btw. This “Saudi-ization” is a little more complex than he makes it out to be. I like Manan’s argument in that it is more “Sunnification post-Zia” than anything else (via Chapati Mystery). Deobandi’s are “native” to South Asia, even if they are quite orthodox in their practice. They also largely follow a Hanafi school of jurisprudence (which is rather the norm in most of South Asia – but not all), whereas (at least what I am told) Wahhabi’s consider themselves to be followers of Ibn Hanbal. Last I heard, there was no such marriage of the two, and those belonging to both groups would probably agree with that. In India and Pakistan, Deobandi’s keep their own ulema and theological colleges quite distinct from those of other groups (and I imagine they would exclude Wahhabis as well). Also, Deobandi’s and Barelwi’s have had serious tensions way before “Wahabbi’s” or “Salafi’s” entered the South Asian scene via returned guest workers. Communalism is an age old problem in the region. Hoodbhoy seems to be influenced by the idea that has been made popular by, among many others, William Dalrymple (he’s attempted to link the 1857 rebellions by Muslims and Hindu’s to these modern day Wahhabi groups, which is an oversimplification considering that most Indian Muslims back in the day were likely more influenced by Naqshbandi’s, Chishti’s, Qadiri’s).
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Len
I thought they all followed Hanafi jurisprudence and Maturidi aqidah…so in that sense, they’re not the same as Salafis at all.
My impression is that that Deobandis are THE premier source for Hanafi fiqh…I mean I haven’t looked too hard, but I don’t know of too many non-Deobandi scholars schooled in the Hanafi madhab. Maybe they just seem over-represented in the West.
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abunoor
John, cmon.
6,960 on Google, wow! Of course “progressive fascist” gets 7, 250. Maybe Jonah Goldberg knows more about his country than we do. Or maybe the fact that certain people use a term doesn’t actually mean the term cannot be critiqued.
To lump together all forms or religiously observant or even socially conservative practices together and give them a bogeyman name like “wahhabi” and imply that of course they must come from outside our country, appealing to some kind of xenophobic impulse that always wants to credit everything negative to being from “them”‘ and not truly from “us” is a problematic practice though it is used often on the left and the right, by religious and secular people.
Do you know anything about the theology, fiqh and history of Deoband, John?
I am not saying that Deobandi and Salafi ideas share nothing in common…I am just against simplistic name calling analysis. That’s all.
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johnpi
LOL. Touche. Jonah Goldberg.
But seriously, your critique is to the author of the piece, not me. And I know Wahhabi is considered offensive, even though is has come into such common usage.
But I don’t think you can refute the fact of the professor’s usage or all the usages of the term in hyphenate or compound form arising from Pakistani blogs and websites. i suspect that what were dealing with here is a usage that may be restricted to Sunni moderates, Shia and Sufi.
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abunoor
Actually John, I feel bad that my original comment was wrong to dismiss the whole argument and I am not saying there is nothing to the argument….but as I stated above I really do think that this use of Wahhabi as both a name calling device and as something which attempts always to take religious interpretations or practices one doesn’t like and make them “foreign” is problematic and should be challenged although it is common among those who consider themselves “moderates.” So, they may be describing a real phenomenon, and even a phenomenon that has negative aspects that should be challenged but it needs to be done in a more sophisticated way.
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johnpi
You’re completely within your rights to call it. The Wahhabi thing is a continual source of miscommunication. Some use it for sectarian reasons, some for ‘enemy formation’, some don’t know it’s not neutral and some use it to differentiate ‘good salafi’ from ‘bad salafi.’ And now you’ve described another use – for purposes of ‘othering,’ or making something foreign.
And I always appreciate your talent for rhetoric, debate and argument, important tools in your trade, no doubt.
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abunoor
I would recommend “Islamic Revivalism in British India: Deoband 1860-1900 by Barbara Daly Metcalf (Oxford India Paperbacks) and “The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change” by Muhammad Qasim Zaman (Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics).
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sa.c
Yes! exactly this! If I may add one more, Annemarie Schimmel also has a really good book titled “Islam in the Indian Subcontinent” which introduces the reader to the complex and varied terrain of Islamic thought and practice throughout the ages in South Asia. She also argues that the staunch orthodoxy of South Asian Islam has more to do with Islamic revivalists such as Ahmad Sirhindi (opposing Akbar’s syncretism) and Shah Waliullah – The latter having influenced the arab world more than the other way around.
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Omar
I attended a talk by Dr. Metcalf at college here (Dublin, Eire). She’s an intelligent and knowledgeable person.
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Dawood are discussing. 
achmed, 
Shams al-Nahar, and 3 others are discussing. 
abunoor, 
thabet, and 2 others are discussing. 
Conrad Barwa, 
johnpi, and 
bdr are discussing. 
Omar, 
Len, 
Dawood 8:25 am on May 15, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Archive.Org has a Word version of the series here which might be useful:
http://www.archive.org/details/TheRiseAndFallOfTheSalafiDawahInTheUnitedStates
svend 8:37 pm on May 22, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
To be fair, it’s really hard to discuss briefly without oversimplifying. I once wrote an encyclopedia entry on this topic. I broke it up into 4 categories: Wahhabi (basically Saudi’s brand), Salafi (a somewhat less doctrinaire brand of Wahhabism that embraces politics, often found within the Ikhwan and other Islamist groups), Jihadis (basically radicalized Wahhabis who have not only repudiated the traditional Wahhabi traditional aversion to political engagement, but taking up arms against and embraced takfir), and Modernists (more open-minded reformers like Muhammad Abdu, who’ve largely died out).