WAHHABISM IS A CONSERVATIVE WING OF SUNNI ISLAM THAT'S HEADQUARTERED IN SAUDI ARABIA

WAHHABISM IS BEING USED AGAINST OTHER MUSLIMS AND CHRISTIANS ALIKE TO SUBJUGATE
WOMEN AND CRUSH DISSENT 


   In 2014, Saudi liberal activist Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1,000 lashes, 10 years in prison, and a heavy fine for insulting Islam. In fact, his crime was to establish an online discussion forum where people were free to speak about religion and criticize religious scholars. 
   He had been charged with "apostasy" in 2012, because of his writings and for hosting discussion on his Saudi Arabian Liberals website, and was sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes but on appeal a heavier sentence was imposed. 
   Mr. Radawi appealed the verdict, but it was complicated by the fact that his lawyer and brother-in-law, Waleed Abulkhair, was himself in jail. He was detained without explanation in 2014 when on trial for damaging the image of the kingdom and breaking his allegiance to the king. Under Saudi Arabia's harsh Sharia code, almost any critical word or deed makes a person liable to severe punishment. 

   Lashings and beheadings generally get little publicity except where a foreigner is involved. The local media is muzzled and foreign press for the most part excluded. This contrasts with the blanket coverage of the kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram, the Al-Qa'ida type movement in northern Nigeria. 
   Heavy coverage was also given to the introduction by the Sultan of Brunei, of a new, supposedly more Islamic, penal code. Hassan al Bolkiah said said in May 2014 : "Tomorrow will see the enforcement of Sharia law phase one." Later phases were to include flogging, amputation of limbs and death by stoning. 
   No such legal innovations were necessary in Sudan, where, in May of 2014, Marim Yahia Ibrahim Ishag was sentenced in Khartoum to be hanged for apostasy after first receiving 100 lashes. Born a Muslim but raised a Christian, she was given three days by a judge "to return to Islam" or be executed. The 100 lashes were apparently because she was married to a Christian and was eight months pregnant with their child. 
   Of these four events the one that has received least international attention is the sentence imposed on Mr. Badawi. This is a pity, because it is the spreading influence of Wahhabism, the fundamentalist, exclusive and intolerant Islamic creed of Saudi Arabia, that is a common feature in the deepening sectarianism, regressive legislation and mistreatment of women in the Islamic world. 
   The "Wahhabization" of mainstream Sunni Islam is one of the most dangerous developments of our era. Ali Allawi, the historian and authority on sectarianism, says that in country after country, Sunni communities "have adopted tenets of Wahhabism that were not initially part of their canon." Other Islamic believers such as the Shia are denounced as apostates or heretics who are no longer Muslims. 
   A crucial feature in the rise of Wallabism is the financial and political might of Saudi Arabia. Dr. Allawi says that if, for example, a pious Muslim wants to found a seminary in Bangladesh, there are not many places he can obtain $40,000 other than from Saudi Arabia. But if the same person wants to oppose Wahhabism, then he will have "to fight with limited resources." The result is deepening sectarianism as Shia are targeted as non-Muslims, and non-Muslims of all descriptions are forced to flee, so that countries such as Iraq and Syria are being emptied of Christians who have lived in them for almost 2,000 years. 
   Dr. Allawi says it is naive to imagine that small Shia minorities in countries such as Malaysia and Egypt were not frowned upon in the past by the majority Sunni, but it is only recently that they have been ostracized and persecuted. He says that many Shia now live with a sense of impending doom "like Jews in Germany in 1935. " As with European anti-Semitic propaganda down the ages, Shia are demonized for supposedly carrying out abominable practices such as ritual incest : in a village near Cairo in 2013, four Shia men were murdered by a mob while carrying out their usual religious ceremonies in a private house. 
   "The Wahhabi try to ignore the entire corpus of Islamic teaching over the last 1,400 years," says Dr. Allawi.  The ideology of al-Qa'ida type movements in Iraq and Syria are not the same as Wahhabism, but their beliefs are SIMILAR though carried to a greater extreme. There are bizarre debates about whether it is forbidden to clap or whether women should wear  bras. As with Boko Haram in Nigeria, militants in Iraq and Syria see no religious prohibition in enslaving women as spoils of war. 
   There are signs that the Saudi rulers may now be coming to regret giving quite so much support to the jihadists trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. In 2014, they invited the Iranian foreign minister to visit the kingdom. But it was too late : having had their government denounce Mr. Assad as the root of all evil in Syria. Saudi jihadists would have seen it as a betrayal and the height of hypocrisy should the state have threatened them with prison terms when they returned home. 
   The Saudi rulers are not the only hypocrites involved. Western governments express horror at what happens in Nigeria or Iraq but are diplomatically mute when it comes to Saudi Arabia. Sharia law is disregarded as an exotic and traditional, if unpleasant, part of local culture which should not interfere in the business of securing lucrative arms contracts ---- some $87 billion-worth impending for the U.S. alone. 
   Of course, there are other reasons for the spread of Wahhabism and its tenets. It gives absolute governments a capacity to secure and legitimize their power by treating their critics as irreligious. Religious justification for lashing is limited, but its opponents can be portrayed as attacking Islam. Fomenting sectarianism between Sunni and Shia diverts attention from the failings of authoritarian rule. 
   A creed such as Wahhabism is useful to many movements because its exclusivity justifies any brutal action against an opponent. In Chechnya, semi-criminalized bands of fighters against the Russians, known as Wahhabies, used their fundamentalist religious beliefs to excuse banditry and kidnapping. 
   The ever-increasing impact of Wahhabism over Sunni Islam is a disaster, the effects of which are felt from the villages of northern Nigeria to the courts of Khartoum and the Sultanate of Brunei. It has everywhere produced persecution of minorities, subjugation of women, and the crushing of dissent. 
   In a prophetic description of this trend, an Afghan editor denounced jihadi leaders in Kabul in 2003 as "holy fascists misusing Islam as an instrument to take over power." Unsurprisingly, he was accused of insulting Islam and forced to flee abroad.