massacring thousands of innocent and unarmed villagers in their campaign to purify the peninsula in the name of Islam. The king tried to control the Ikhwan, attempting to prevent their murderous raids from spilling over into neighboring countries. The Ikhwan already detested the king’s alliance with Britain and his extravagantly polygamous lifestyle, but they decisively turned against him because of his attempt to bridle jihad, which to them was limitless and obligatory, their duty to God.
Abdul Aziz had to get the permission of the religious establishment to rein in the murderous zealots. This was the defining political moment of modern Saudi Arabia. By awarding the king the sole power to declare jihad, the Wahhabi clerics reaffirmed their position as the arbiters of power in a highly religious society. The king finally defeated the Ikhwan’s camel-mounted corps with the help of motorcars, machine guns, and British bombers. But the tension between the royal family and religious fanatics was a part of the social dynamic of modern Saudi Arabia from the very beginning.
Most Saudis reject the name Wahhabi; they either call themselves muwahhidun —unitarians—since the essence of their belief is the oneness of God, or Salafists, which refers to their predecessors ( salaf ), the venerated companions of the Prophet. The founder of the movement, Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, was an eighteenth-century revivalist who believed that Muslims had drifted away from the true religion as it had been expressed during the Golden Age of the Prophet and his immediate successors. Among other theological innovations, Abdul Wahhab believed that God clothed Himself in a human form; he rejected the intercessory prayer of saints and expressions of reverence for the dead; and he demanded that Muslim men refuse to trim their beards. He banned holidays, even the Prophet’s birthday, and his followers destroyed many of the holy sites, which he considered idols. He attacked the arts as being frivolous and dangerous. He gave a warrant to his followers that they could kill or rape or plunder those who refused to follow his injunctions.
Other Muslims in Arabia at the time considered Abdul Wahhab a dangerous heretic. In 1744, driven out of the Najd, the central part of the peninsula, he sought protection from Mohammed bin Saud, the founder of the first Saudi state. Although the Ottomans soon crushed the Saudis, the partnership that was formed with Abdul Wahhab and bin Saud’s descendants persevered. The essence of their understanding was that there was no difference between religion and government. Abdul Wahhab’s extreme views would always be a part of the fabric of Saudi rule.
There was a second Saudi state in the nineteenth century, which quickly fell apart because of family infighting. When Abdul Aziz returned the Saudis to power in the twentieth century for a third time, the doctrines of Abdul Wahhab became the official state religion, and no other forms of Islamic worship were permitted. This was done in the name of the Prophet, who had decreed that there should be only one religion in Arabia. In the blinkered view of the Wahhabis, there was only one interpretation of Islam—Salafism—and that all other schools of Muslim thought were heretical.
Mohammed bin Laden’s career traced the same gradual then suddenly explosive growth as Saudi Arabia. When he arrived in 1931, the nascent Kingdom was in a state of perilous economic decline. The main source of revenue had been the annual stream of pilgrims coming for hajj in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, but the Great Depression had choked off the flow of pilgrims and devastated even the modest income derived from the export of dates. The country’s future promised to be, at best, as dreary and obscure as its past. At the king’s desperate invitation, an American geologist, Karl Twitchell, had arrived in April of that same year to probe for water and gold. He would find neither, but he did
Abdul Aziz had to get the permission of the religious establishment to rein in the murderous zealots. This was the defining political moment of modern Saudi Arabia. By awarding the king the sole power to declare jihad, the Wahhabi clerics reaffirmed their position as the arbiters of power in a highly religious society. The king finally defeated the Ikhwan’s camel-mounted corps with the help of motorcars, machine guns, and British bombers. But the tension between the royal family and religious fanatics was a part of the social dynamic of modern Saudi Arabia from the very beginning.
Most Saudis reject the name Wahhabi; they either call themselves muwahhidun —unitarians—since the essence of their belief is the oneness of God, or Salafists, which refers to their predecessors ( salaf ), the venerated companions of the Prophet. The founder of the movement, Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, was an eighteenth-century revivalist who believed that Muslims had drifted away from the true religion as it had been expressed during the Golden Age of the Prophet and his immediate successors. Among other theological innovations, Abdul Wahhab believed that God clothed Himself in a human form; he rejected the intercessory prayer of saints and expressions of reverence for the dead; and he demanded that Muslim men refuse to trim their beards. He banned holidays, even the Prophet’s birthday, and his followers destroyed many of the holy sites, which he considered idols. He attacked the arts as being frivolous and dangerous. He gave a warrant to his followers that they could kill or rape or plunder those who refused to follow his injunctions.
Other Muslims in Arabia at the time considered Abdul Wahhab a dangerous heretic. In 1744, driven out of the Najd, the central part of the peninsula, he sought protection from Mohammed bin Saud, the founder of the first Saudi state. Although the Ottomans soon crushed the Saudis, the partnership that was formed with Abdul Wahhab and bin Saud’s descendants persevered. The essence of their understanding was that there was no difference between religion and government. Abdul Wahhab’s extreme views would always be a part of the fabric of Saudi rule.
There was a second Saudi state in the nineteenth century, which quickly fell apart because of family infighting. When Abdul Aziz returned the Saudis to power in the twentieth century for a third time, the doctrines of Abdul Wahhab became the official state religion, and no other forms of Islamic worship were permitted. This was done in the name of the Prophet, who had decreed that there should be only one religion in Arabia. In the blinkered view of the Wahhabis, there was only one interpretation of Islam—Salafism—and that all other schools of Muslim thought were heretical.
Mohammed bin Laden’s career traced the same gradual then suddenly explosive growth as Saudi Arabia. When he arrived in 1931, the nascent Kingdom was in a state of perilous economic decline. The main source of revenue had been the annual stream of pilgrims coming for hajj in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, but the Great Depression had choked off the flow of pilgrims and devastated even the modest income derived from the export of dates. The country’s future promised to be, at best, as dreary and obscure as its past. At the king’s desperate invitation, an American geologist, Karl Twitchell, had arrived in April of that same year to probe for water and gold. He would find neither, but he did
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