Conflicted S4 E8: Ibn Abdul Wahhab's Militant Mission (Part 2)

Speakers: Thomas Small & Aimen Dean

Thomas: Hey, Aimen. I've got a Hadith for you. Here it goes:

“Oh, God, bestow your blessings on Syria. Oh, God, bestow your blessings on Yemen. The people said, ‘Oh, messenger of God, what about Najd?’ The prophet replied, ‘There in Najd will occur earthquakes, trials, tribulations, and from there will appear the horn of Satan.”

This is a very popular Hadith amongst those who do not like the legacy of Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, Aimen. What do you think about that Hadith? I know what you're going to say, “It's fake.”

Aimen: Yeah, of course, Thomas. It was fake. You know why? Because neither Syria nor Yemen were part of the Muslim community at that time. So, why the prophet was blessing of places that are Christian, at that time.

Thomas: Well, that's true. As I say, people who do not like the legacy of Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, the subject of today's episode, the second in our two-part series on Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab. People who don't like his legacy, they love quoting this Hadith.

And they say, “You see, it was all foretold a prophecy from the prophet that from Najd would come the horn of Satan and would spread his evil influence across the land.”

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In today's episode, we will be talking about earthquakes, trials, and tribulations, ones both caused and suffered by Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab. Let's finish our story about the great and notorious Muslim thinker.

Aimen, where did we leave off? Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab had been in his hometown of al-Uyaynah, where he had initially won the support of its ruler, Uthmān ibn Muʿammar until the overlord of the Najd, the Emir of Al-Ahsa told ibn Muʿammar, “Get rid of that guy.”

After some notorious events, the burning down and destruction of the tomb of the second caliph, Umar's brother in Najd, the chopping down of a sacred grove of trees and the stoning to death of an adulterous who may have been the ruler of Al-Ahsa's own relative.

So, there we left him Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, without that political protector that he thought he had found, seeking someone to rescue him from his distress. And who answered his call? Who, but the ruler of the tiny town of Dariyya, on the outskirts of another small town, slightly larger, Ar Riyad, Muhammad bin Saud.

I have a soft spot for Muhammad bin Saud. I don't know why. He was clearly a political visionary, or at least a very ambitious person.

Tell us, Aimen, you as a Saudi growing up there, what does the name Muhammad bin Saud the founder of the House of Saud, what does that name mean to you?

Aimen: Muhammad bin Saud, the founder of the first Saudi Kingdom, the founder of the Dynasty. And most importantly, without him, the mission of Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab would have been a very invisible footnote in history.

Thomas: Oh dear. Suddenly, I don't like Muhammad bin Saud.

Aimen: Are you sure you're travelling to Saudi Arabia soon, Thomas?

Thomas: Oh, no, no. Shoot. Don't tell them. Don't tell them. I love Saudi Arabia. I have such a soft spot for the kingdom. And I also love Scotland. But when I think about their Puritan reformers, I think poor people, really, honestly.

Aimen: Indeed. When I think of Muhammad bin Saud in his town of Dariyya, a town of 40 houses, can you believe it? At the time, there were only 40 houses. That's it.

But then in 1744 when Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab was expelled from Uyaynah, little did he know that his trip to Dariyya, that town of only 40 houses, and their Emir, Muhammad bin Saud in 1744, this journey would change the face of the Middle East forever.

Thomas: Absolutely.

Aimen: And would eventually lead to the restoration of Arabia into the centre of Islamic affairs after almost 14 centuries of absence.

Thomas: Absolutely. And it's true. Muhammad bin Saud, he must have been politically ambitious because Dariyya, despite being only 40 houses, was the second most powerful town in that part of the Najd, the part known as Al-ʿĀriḍ.

He probably would've relished the idea of unseating his great rival al-Uyaynah. So, when Uthmān ibn Muʿammar, the ruler of al-Uyaynah, expelled this “troublemaker” Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, Muhammad bin Saud thought, aha, here's my opportunity. I'll take him in, will provoke my rival in al-Uyaynah.

And it will perhaps help me to realise my ambition of becoming the chief of the Najd to unseat Uthmān ibn Muʿammar as chief of the Najd.

So, he agreed to lend Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab his support. And as you say, yes, in 1744, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab moved to Dariyya, and with him came several of his followers from al-Uyaynah.

They made what in their own minds was a Hijrah from al-Uyaynah to Dariyya. Because in the early stages now of ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s movement, his mission, he was really thinking of himself in terms of the Prophet Muhammad's own life. He thought that his life was mirroring Muhammad's life.

And this move from al-Uyaynah to Dariyya in his mind mirrored the prophet's Hijrah from Mecca to Medina back in the seventh century when the prophet finally received that political support he needed against his enemies all around in Arabia.

This is very much in Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab's mind. Wouldn't you agree, Aimen?

Aimen: Indeed. This Hijrah, this migration, of course, just like the Hijrah of the Prophet Muhammad, from Mecca to Medina, would shape history. The same thing happened here. And the fact that Muhammad bin Saud offered Muhammad al-Wahhab his support, it also meant that this would strengthen Dariyya so much in extremely short space of time.

Because within months, the houses of Dariyya swelled from 40 to 70 to 100 to 200. Why? Because of the migration of so many of people who were supportive of this new movement, of this new mission, who were sympathetic to the teachings of Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab. And this would inevitably lead to a clash with the other Emirates of Najd.

Thomas: That's true. It was going to provoke a reaction. But before we get to the reaction, let's remind the listener of Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s teaching. Bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab himself summarised his teaching in a … well, I don’t know, they call it a letter, an epistle, an essay, whatever, a bit later on.

And I think it's a good summary. It's in Bunzel’s book Wahhabism. Again, I recommend it. And this is it in Bunzel's own translation, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab wrote, “The Foundation of Islam and its principle are two commands. The first is the command to worship God alone, with no partner, to agitate for this, to show loyalty for the sake of it, and to pronounce Takfir on those who do not practise it.

The second command is to warn against associating other beings with God, to be harsh in this, to show enmity for the sake of it, and to pronounce Takfir on those who practise it.”

That emphasis on pronouncing Takfir is to some extent the theme of this episode. Takfir, calling someone a kafir, calling someone an unbeliever, and therefore laying them open to conquest, to forcibly submitting them to follow Islam.

This becomes the light motif of this half of Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s life, which was devoted to jihad.

Aimen: One of the things we learned is that Tawheed-

Thomas: Monotheism.

Aimen: Yeah.

Thomas: The Declaration of God's unity. Yeah.

Aimen: Exactly. Tawheed is … bil- Jinan, I believe in the heart and a statement with words-

Thomas: On the lips.

Aimen: Yeah. On the lips. And an action with your limbs. So, your heart, your tongue, your limbs must all coordinate in order to show and to act and to believe.

Thomas: And part of that action is pronouncing Takfir upon those who do not pronounce or do not act in accordance with monotheism. But more than that, in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab's mind, pronouncing Takfir upon those who refuse to pronounce Takfir on other people.

It's a cascading form of Takfir. Did you encounter this in the circles of Salafi Jihadists when you were with them? This Takfir, Takfir, and eventually you start pronouncing Takfir everywhere where you're left with yourself. There's just one none kafir, yourself.

Aimen: Goodness, I've seen it myself. This happened in Afghanistan. I remember that there was this person from Yemen who kept pronouncing Takfir against everyone and anything.

And to the point where basically says, “Look, I haven't yet pronounced Takfir on every kafir in this world, and until I pronounce Takfir against every kafir in this world, I am myself a kafir.”

So, he made Takfir against himself in the end, and it became reminiscent of schizophrenic paranoia. I mean, to be honest. And I think there was a relation to mental illness here.

But if you look at it from the point of view of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, he wanted to use Takfir as an instrument in order to herd the scholars of Najd into choosing a camp. Either you are on the side of those who want to enforce Tawheed, the unity of the divine, or you are on the part of those who want to spread shirk.

There can no longer be a peaceful coexistence between our side, which is the Tawheed and their side, which is the idolatry.

Thomas: Now, I'm going to be fair to Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab here. Now, this is the only time I'm going to be fair to him.

Aimen: Surprise, surprise.

Thomas: So, it has to be said that though his preaching was very provocative, and his preaching inclined always in the direction of calling for jihad against people who would've thought themselves as Muslims already, he never explicitly called for jihad against them until they called for jihad against him.

So, to be fair to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, initially jihad for his mission and his movement and his followers was in self-defence because the scholars of Najd and beyond, they called for jihad against his mission first.

So, a great scholar in Mecca, according to Bunzel's translation, said, “It is incumbent on those Muslim rulers who are capable of doing so to restrain him, to hinder him until he repents of this horrific act.”

Another scholar in Mecca said, “He should be imprisoned, beaten, treated with medication for insanity. He is a misled misleader who should be killed and publicly denounced. If my hands could reach him, I would kill him, myself.”

And a scholar in Medina said, “It is a duty incumbent upon all who are able without delay to wage jihad against this sinner, and to do whatever it takes to kill him and free all people from his gross error.”

That's pretty provocative language. So, to this day, those scholars called Wahhabi, those Salafis who follow the teachings of Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab say, “They started it. We didn't start it. They did.”

Aimen: Indeed. I mean, at the end of the day, if you look at the fact that when Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab was marching from Uyaynah to Dariyya, I don't think he had any ambitions to actually aid Ibn Saud to start a war of unification of Arabia. I don't think it came even close to his mind.

Because all he wanted is a place where his followers can congregate together and spread through preaching, the principles of Tawheed. However, war was waged against them because it was inevitable that there would be a clash.

Thomas: You're right, that the initial expansion of the Emirate of Dariyya under Muhammad bin Saud, after Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab came there, was through preaching. So, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, now free to preach openly did so, and several settlements in the vicinity of Dariyya turned toward him.

They accepted his preaching and accepted Islam, if you like, from him, and therefore came under the rulership of his protector Muhammad bin Saud.

But as you say, because Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s teaching was inherently polarising, you're either with Tawheed, as I understand it, or you're against it. It led to Najdi politics initially to be polarised.

And taking a step back from the religious side of things and thinking it just in terms of politics, this is very interesting, because the Najd had never been unified. It hadn't even been polarised. It had been totally fragmented. It was a fractured polity.

So, in a way, looking just through a secular lens of political science, a fractured, fragmented area went from multiplicity of rule to duality of rule. So, in a way, you needed the pressure of something like Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s preaching to create a duality within this fragmented universe.

And then out of that duality, the clash of two could emerge, one unity and a state could emerge for the first time in 700 years.

Don't you find that dynamic quite interesting. It took a genius, if you like, like Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab and his religious preaching to motivate the political state building project in the Najd that it had long lacked.

Aimen: Indeed, there is no question. And it is murdering again, the life of the prophet Muhammad. Prophet Muhammad was born into blood bath Arabia in the year 570.

And the reality is that Arabia as a landmass was never, ever, ever incorporated or unified as a political entity at all. It was fragmented into 400 tribes and a few fiefdoms and kingdoms here and there, but that's it.

By the time of his death, he had both polarised and then unified Arabia under the banner of the new religion, Islam.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab also caused the same to happen in Najd. However, it didn't take one Muhammad, it took two Muhammads to do it: Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, Ibn Saud.

Thomas: So, after the preaching began from Dariyya, after some of these settlements joined the movement and fell under the overlordship of Muhammad bin Saud, the first Emir in the Najd to oppose this movement was. And this is kind of ironic, given where history would end up going, the Emir of Riyadh.

Aimen: Daham bin Dawas.

Thomas: Yes, Daham bin Dawas, who’s actually funny. He was the most strenuous opponent to bin Saud, bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab and their movement. For 30 years war would rage between Riyadh and Dariyya, and they're right next to each other.

And it really does shed a light on the political nature of this process, because this is a rivalry between two Emirs who want to have overlordship in their region. And Daham bin Dawas fought really, really ruthlessly, remorselessly, endlessly to escape the ever-spreading power of bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab's mission.

So, he started it in a way by attacking one of the recently Wahhabized, if you like, towns, Manfuha. He attacked it in 1746. This elicited an immediate response from bin Saud and bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab fighting back against bin Dawas in the means of this fight back, which in their minds, they're now waging jihad in self-defence.

The mission spreads by the sword for the first time, and some nearby towns are forced to submit to bin Saud’s newly Wahhabized rule, including Huraymila, the town where bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab narrowly escaped an assassination attempt and was forced to flee from. And in that same year, al-Uyaynah.

Right away bin Saud, Muhammad bin Saud achieved his ambition of knocking his rival, Uthmān ibn Muʿammar, off his perch by conquering al-Uyaynah and forcing Uthmān ibn Muʿammar to submit to him and to Muhammad bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab.

Aimen: Indeed, although there was some reconciliation, as you know Abdulaziz bin Muhammad bin Saud married the daughter of Uthmān ibn Muʿammar.

Thomas: That’s right. Just like bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab himself had married Uthmān's aunt as a way of cementing a political alliance, the House of Saud and the House of Muʿammar, if you like. They cemented this new alliance through marriage.

And it raises the question of the unique partnership that Muhammad bin Saud and Muhammad bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab had. In the historical sources, when a town would submit to the mission, they would actually give the bay'ah to both men, both Muhammad bin Saud and Muhammad bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab.

So, there was an idea that the mission and the political polity that was spreading as a result of the mission was a duopoly, if you like, between political and a religious leader. The bay'ah was given to both of them, by which I mean the swearing of allegiance.

And traditionally in Islam, you give your bay'ah to the political power to the Emir. But at the beginning of the mission, at the beginning of the Najdi mission, the Wahhabi mission, the bay'ah was sworn to both men. And that is unique, and I think kind of revealing about the sense that this mission had of its religious, political destiny.

Aimen: To this day, this dynamic of having the political leadership on one side and the religious leadership on the other side, coexisting and working together for one mission still exists to this day among jihadi groups, whether it is Al-Qaeda or ISIS or any of the other, in even Hamas and the Taliban.

So, you will see that the overall command of the organisation is given to people who are competent in the fields of military and administration.

However, their religious command is given to those who are competent in the theological science. And this is where the two coexist sometime easily, sometime not so easily. And I think it's always tricky sometimes.

Thomas: In the runup to 9/11, in Al-Qaeda, there's something like a dynamic between Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab and Muhammad bin Saud, in the dynamic between Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and those Egyptians.

We talked about the tension within Al-Qaeda, between the Arabian and the Egyptian rulers, leadership. And I just sort of think there's a slight echo. Because Osama bin Laden, yes, he was a competent man of action. He performed to some extent in a military capacity in the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

But he was also a very persuasive and charismatic religious thinker and preacher. And so, he kind of had the leadership in a way which he shared with the Shura Council and the others who were more operationally inclined, more militarily inclined.

Is there some echo there, maybe, of what it would've been like inside the Wahhabi mission, the Najdi mission at the beginning as it began to expand?

Aimen: Well, of course, from the point of view of Muhammad ʿAbd al-Wahhab, the mission is about to purify Islam from the residue of idolatry, from the point of view of Ibn Saud, yes, he's doing that, but in the process, he is getting the divine reward of having to unify Najd for the first time in 700 years under his command.

So basically, he is getting the reward in the afterlife and in this life at the same time. He's getting a very good deal.

Thomas: Yeah, it is a win-win for him. It wasn't a win-win for poor Uthmān ibn Muʿammar, though he may have felt by submitting to Muhammad bin Saud in 1746 that he was going to save his skin.

But sadly, in 1750, Uthmān ibn Muʿammar was assassinated by a Wahhabi, by a follower of bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab. Now, the claim was that Uthmān ibn Muʿammar was planning a rebellion against the mission. It's possible.

According to the Western Scholars, there's no actual proof of this. And because Uthman had initially responded so favourably to bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab preaching, it strikes me as maybe unlikely. And that maybe this is just a question of politics.

If it's the case that Muhammad bin Saud was seeking to expand his authority over the Najd, Uthmān ibn Muʿammar was a problem, he would've stood in his way. He had been the foremost Emir of the area.

So, maybe that's why Uthmān ibn Muʿammar was assassinated in 1750. Nonetheless, he was assassinated.

And again, it's telling that after he was assassinated, the man who came to al-Uyanah to install a new political leader, there was not Muhammad bin Saud, it was Muhammad bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab. He came, he selected the leader, he put that leader in place.

Again, showing how the relationship between the religious and the political power at the beginning of the mission was a bit mixed.

Aimen: The line was very blurred, for sure.

Thomas: I wish I could say that the mission spread, unimpeded, unopposed. It's not the case. The very next year in 1751, Huraymila rebels. In the words of bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab, it apostatizes.

And this returns us to the fascinating character of Muhammad bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s brother Sulayman, because he was the chief jurist of Huraymila at the time.

And in the memory, Aimen, of Saudis today, of those who are Salafis in the tradition of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, what does his brother Sulayman bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab, what sort of memory does he have in that tradition?

Aimen: If Muhammad bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab was a symbol of the light, Sulayman is a symbol of darkness. If Muhammad ʿAbd al-Wahhab was a symbol of purity, Sulayman is a symbol of apostasy, of selfishness and of putting his own jealousy and self-ambition above that of the good of the community.

Thomas: In 1753, Sulayman writes a number of letters to al-Uyaynah explaining where his brother Muhammad had gone wrong, had gone astray inviting them to join Huraymila in the rebellion against Muhammad bin Saud and Dariyya.

But the reason we even have these letters is because the men delivering the letters were apprehended by Dariyya agents, and on Muhammad bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab orders these men were executed. 

So, we see there's already a fierce war going on between the brothers. And at this point, from a self-defensive form of jihad, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s movement becomes an offensive jihad.

He explicitly calls the people of Huraymila, idolaters, mushrikeen, and even apostates, murtadeen. This is a very strong language, and it suggests that in his own mind, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab is about to wage a Ridda War like the early generation of Muslims.

So, he's still in that mentality that he is fighting the same fight that the early Muslims fought, and now it's Huraymila that must be brought to heal.

Aimen: As far as ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab was concerned, Huraymila under his brother's kind of command, Sulayman, rebelled and became an apostate settlement, and therefore it needed to be brought back to heal and brought back into the fold of Islam as he saw it.

So, he went with a thousand of Dariyya men. By the way, when we say a thousand, at that time, it was a big number in Najd. So, they went to Huraymila. And of course, there was a big battle between the two sides.

The people of Huraymila lost a hundred of their warriors to only seven. The Dariyya people lost only seven. That shows what formidable warriors they were.

Thomas: Yeah, no doubt. Huraymilah was outnumbered, but still animated by the zeal for the mission. Bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab, bin Saud’s warriors must have been very ferocious, very formidable.

Aimen: Exactly. And that resulted at the end of Sulayman, fleeing all the way to Al Zulfi. Al Zulfi is somewhere between Najd and Kuwait at the moment.

Thomas: In the north, yeah.

Aimen: In the north, yeah. The war waged between the two brothers for a bit. But then they tracked him all the way to Al Zulfi. Sulayman was track to Al Zulfi, and there he was captured, brought back to Dariyya, placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

Thomas: Yeah. So, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab wasn't messing around. And I like the story of the war between the two brothers. It makes it very dramatic, very personal. It slightly reminds me of the story we told briefly a few episodes ago about the battle of the brothers, Amin and Ma’mun in the Abbasid period.

In this case Sulayman lost out. He was captured, he was placed under house arrest. He outlived his brother in the end, but he never emerged a free man again. That's what you got for opposing the mission of Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab. And that brings us to the end of the first half of this episode.

When we come back, we'll tell the story of the continuing expansion of the Emirate of Dariyya, which didn't proceed as smoothly as you might think, and ended up really clashing with the big, bad guy of the Middle East, the Ottomans. Stay tuned for that.

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We're back. We're racing on to the climax of our sweeping history of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab and his mission. When we left him, he had just tracked down his brother Sulayman and placed him under house arrest.

That effort actually took several decades during the period of time when the Emirate of Dariyya under the command of Muhammad bin Saud, and his descendants was spreading and meeting resistance initially amongst those towns in the Najd that they were incorporating into the mission.

So, in 1756, an area called Mehmal is conquered, and then different towns would apostatize. In the minds of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab towns would try to throw off Dariyya's rule, and therefore they would become apostates.

So, the Ridda Wars, the wars of apostasy were continuing, and in the midst of this, outside powers were going to get involved.

So, for example, in 1758, the greater power of Al Ahsa on the east, on the Persian Gulf Coast invaded, this helped to inspire the Emir of Riyadh, who was constantly fighting back and forth with Dariyya to continue his struggle.

This would go back and forth for decades. Thousands of lives would be lost in the course of these wars. But slowly, slowly, the Wahhabi mission, the Najdi mission, was spreading.

Aimen: Indeed, every time the Saudi — now we can call them the Saudi.

Thomas: Let's call them the Saudi. Yeah, exactly.

Aimen: Yeah. The Saudi forces would conquer a city or a settlement, the first thing that Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab would do is to assign one of his students, to be the scholar of the region in order to teach the people there the principles of Tawheed, the principles of the faith, and the creed as he saw fit.

Also, Dariyya in itself became the centre of learning, the new centre of learning for Najd. So, Najdi would be, scholars would be flocking into Dariyya in order to learn Islamic theology based on the purity of the faith as Muhammad bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab would have envisioned.

Thomas: In addition to inward migration of those who were attracted to bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab message, there was outward migration of those who were not attracted to it, and they left.

So, his campaign of purity was taking place. Najd was becoming a place purely in accordance with his mission.

Outsiders tried to do something about this. In 1764, there was a great invasion of the Najd from Najran, which is in the south of the current Saudi Arabia, sort of just above north of the mountains, separating Saudi Arabia from Yemen, Najran.

At that time, Najran was being led by an Ismaili Shia leader. And Najran has always been a little bit funny in Arabia, even at the time of the prophet, it was Christian, for example. So, Najran remained a little bit of had some outsider status.

At this time, it was Ismaili Shia. They invaded Najd and in a big battle south of Riyadh. The Saudis were decisively defeated. It was their first big experience of defeat. And this encouraged the leader in Al Ahsa in the East to invade, to take advantage of that moment of weakness to invade.

So, the leader of the Beni Khalled in Al Ahsa, who still considered themselves nominal overlords of Najd, they invaded. And during the course of their invasion, most of the Najdi towns that had joined the Saudi movement had joined the Wahhabi mission lent their support to Al Ahsa. So, it was a period of great setback for Dariyya.

Aimen: Muhammad bin Saud, in his great wisdom foresaw that by being the incubator of this new movement, Dariyya would be attacked no matter what. And therefore, he built walls around Dariyya. He made sure that Dariyya would become a fortress, a fortress that later in this episode, we'll explain, would withstand the test of time.

However, when the people of Najran, the Benu Yam, as we call them, when they defeated the Saudis in that battle south of Riyadh, and of course, the people of Al Ahsa and Beni Khalled decided to invade, they realised that as soon as they went to do to besiege it, that, oh, there is a wall. There is a wall that is very difficult to breach.

And therefore, what ensued after that was the siege of Dariyya and the siege eventually failed since these forces did not have the means or the know-how to breach the walls, and therefore, they retreated.

Thomas: They did retreat. It was the last great sort of event in Muhammad bin Saud’s life. He died the following year, and the leadership of the Emirate of Dariyya passed to his son Abdulaziz, who acquired the title of Imam.

So, the historical sources give him this title for the first time. Muhammad bin Saud is not known as Imam in the historical sources, but his son Abdulaziz is, and this is an indication of a development that's occurring within the movement.

We said that before the religious and political sides were existing in some kind of harmony, or maybe at times, who knows, behind the scenes a bit of tension. But with Abdulaziz's ascent to the throne, if you like, and especially with his son's later, ascent, a little while later, Saud, the political half of the relationship is asserting itself as preeminent.

They're calling themselves Imams. They are the leaders of the mission and Muhammad bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab and his followers, especially his sons and grandsons, the Al ash-Sheik, as they would be known, are supporting the House of Saud.

And this dynamic crystallises at this time, following Muhammad bin Saud’s death, where at the top is the House of Saud, and they're being supported by the House of the Sheikh. Is that about getting it right, Aimen, would you say?

Aimen: Indeed. I mean, there is no question that Abdulaziz bin Saud became the first one to be called Imam among the leaders of the Saudi dynasty.

And in fact, to this day, the Saudis believe that the founding day of their dynasty is 1727, not 1744 when the pact happened between Muhammad bin Saud and Muhammad bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab. No, they believe that the founding of their dynasty started when Muhammad bin Saud became the Emir of Dariyya in 1727.

Thomas: That is in itself a fascinating story. The recent reframing of Saudi history for grounding Muhammad bin Saud in giving Muhammad bin ʿAbd al-Wahhab, a supporting role is a fascinating story that says a lot about the way in which Saudi Arabia is going today. That's for another episode.

Back to Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab and his story. When Abdulaziz becomes a mirror of Dariyya and becomes the Imam of the movement, the movement begins to really spread. And this is because, I would say for two reasons.

First of all, accepting Wahhabism, accepting the movement meant that you had to provide troops to the ongoing jihad. So, the dynamism of the movement and the inspiration that it inspired amongst the warriors was such that it gave them zeal, it gave them power.

But also, Imam Abdulaziz’s son Saud, was a great warrior. There's no question. One of the great warriors of the 18th century, and it would be under his first military and then political and military leadership that the Emirate of Dariyya would expand to encompass most of the peninsula, which would of course be very provocative to the great powers of the age.

First, between 1767 and 1786, ‘87, the whole of the Najd is finally and fully conquered when all the way up to Al-Ahl in the north, falls under the rule of the House of Saud.

And during that final campaign to unite the Najd around Dariyya’s rule, Qassim in the north was also conquered. And you get a sense from reading the sources that the warriors in the mission, the warriors who were inspired by Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, they saw themselves almost I think like avenging angels.

They were going out there to purify, to act as God's avengers. Maybe they're the original Avengers.

Aimen: Avengers assemble.

Thomas: Exactly. The Avengers of Dariyya are assembling and purifying Arabia from shirk, from idolatry, even though these were all Muslims. It's a very strange, strange thing. We've lost sight a little bit now of Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab himself.

And I'd like to spend five minutes or so just chatting about him. At times, in his writings, he suggests that he was the recipient of, let's call it divine inspiration. I wouldn't want to say revelation, that would perhaps take it too far.

But there are moments where Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab thinks of himself as the recipient of divine inspiration.

And we've said that he felt very strongly that he was following not just in the footsteps of the prophet, all Muslims are meant to follow in the prophet's footsteps. But that his life was a mirror of the prophet's life, that he was in fact, recapitulating the same dynamic of converting the world to Islam that the prophet had done a thousand and more years before.

What do you think about this? Try to put us, if you can, Aimen, into Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab's own mind and describe his spirituality. What is his spirituality like? Because he clearly thinks that he's receiving some kind of guidance directly from God.

Aimen: Remember he believed himself to be, and still to this day many of the Salafi Najdi scholars believe this to be the case that he was the Mujaddid, the renewer.

Thomas: The renewer of the religion. Yeah.

Aimen: Indeed. There is a Hadith. It is disputed whether it is authentic or not, but there is a Hadith that every hundred years there is someone who God will guide and inspire to be their renewer of the faith.

Everyone believed Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, one of the Umayyad caliphs to be the first one. Ahmad bin Hanbal was believed to be the second one. And Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab was believed to be one of the later ones. Even Ibn Taymiyyah was believed to be a Mujaddid because in a sense, they all coincided with the turn of a new Islamic century.

And therefore, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab must have believed himself to be an inspired Mujaddid, an inspired renewer of the faith, because for him, he was always talking about the age of ignorance, the age of darkness, the fact that Najd and the rest of the Muslim world was plunged into the darkness of heresy.

And that the light of the pure faith is going to cast away all of these demons, and we will live again under a pure faith that is not polluted by all the heresies that has been imported from other religions and other sects.

Thomas: Now, this is a provocative question, Aimen. But when I'm thinking about the Dariyya mission at that time, and this rhetoric of purity and impurity, this rhetoric of Takfir against people who may think that they're Muslims but actually aren't because they don't understand Islam properly, they don't understand monotheism properly.

This invitation to people to come to Dariyya, to join the jihad there, it does remind me of ISIS. It's a provocative question, because I don't want to reduce the first Saudi state and the Emirate of Dariyya to ISIS. It's not true.

Because in fact, Dariyya witnessed a flowering of culture and learning at that time. The library in Dariyya became famed. Books were resourced from Yemen and elsewhere, and there's a lot more about the Emirate of Dariyya than just jihad.

But in some respects, the rhetoric, the self-identity of it reminds me of ISIS.

Aimen: It reminds you of ISIS because ISIS borrowed heavily from the legacy of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab. They borrowed, however, the political side of it, they didn't borrow the religious side of it, because if they were really following exactly the footsteps of the religion, they will understand that there are guidelines and safeguards against pronouncing Takfir so randomly like this.

The pronunciation of Takfir, as far as Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab was concerned, was against the population in general, but not against the individuals in particular.

ISIS took it to the extreme where they pronounced Takfir against the population and the individuals, and therefore, every single individual within the population is treated as a kafir.

While with Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, the Takfir wasn't designed in order to subjugate. The Takfir was designed in order to tell the people that you are in a way of error. You are outside the zone, please come back into the zone. While in ISIS case, you are outside the zone. I'm going to shoot you.

Thomas: That foreshadows in a way the next figure we're going to cover in this series of radical Muslim figures Sayyid Qutb. Because his influence on modern jihadism, and generally speaking, the Muslim brotherhood's influence is the other side.

Today we're talking about the Wahhabi dimension of radical Islam today. Next two episodes, we're going to talk about that Muslim brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb’s side. And that's really where ISIS's religious ideology comes from. I think you would agree.

As for Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab the last recorded political act of his life is in 1787. So, he's seen the unification of the Najd under the Emirate of Dariyya. He doesn't know it, but just around the corner that Emirate is going to expand to include most of the Arabian Peninsula.

The last thing he did was he ordered his followers to swear allegiance, to give the bay’ah to Saud bin Abdulaziz, meaning that he would become the Imam after his father Abdulaziz's death.

And in 1792, Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab died. It's funny, because we've been telling these stories of figures. I know. Ahmad bin Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyyah, they sort of died in tragic circumstances, both of them with a cloud over them of being — well, bin Hanbal had reconciled with the political authority, but he felt like he had compromised himself a bit. Ibn Taymiyyah died in prison.

But Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, his life was different. He died in glory in a way. At the moment of his death, the Emirate of Dariyya was strong, was going to get even stronger. This series is really about Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab. He's now dead.

But I think it's important because though he died, let's say in his glory, within 20 years, the Emirate of Dariyya was going to experience tremendous catastrophe that followed upon an expansion.

So, in 1793, Al Ahsa in the East was annexed after decades of raiding parties from the Wahabi warriors. So, Al Ahsa would be routinely raided and subject to certain despoliation by the Najdi warriors.

But it was only in 1793, finally, that it was incorporated into the Emirate. At that point, the Emirate spreads north, or tries to, and begins attacking Iraq. Most notoriously in 1802, when the Najdi warriors raided the Shia Holy City of Karbala, they cause a lot of destruction there.

This event of the Wahhabi, if you like, despoliation of Karbala redounds to this day in the memory of the Shia, the Imam Saud was utterly unrepentant.

And then in 1803, the next year, Saud becomes Imam which is going to lend even more sort of force to the movement.

But tell the story, Aimen, of how his father Imam Abdulaziz died. It's directly related to the raid in Karbala.

Aimen: Well, of course, he was assassinated by a Shia from Iraq, who came all the way to Dariyya in order to avenge the sacking of Karbala and the destruction of the shrine of has Husayn.

And therefore, from the point of view of the followers of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, this echoes the assassination of the second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb at the hand of a Persian, was avenging the conquest of the Persian Empire.

It's as if history is repeating itself again, and again, and again and again in the Middle East.

Thomas: And Imam Saud, he looked north at the Ottoman Empire especially, and he called them the room. He thought they were the Byzantines. He was back in the eighth century, the seventh and eighth centuries.

He was like Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab had felt, I am living again, the early Salaf, the sort of the experience of the early Salaf. We are going to take the Romans, we're going to conquer the Ottomans in the north.

When he becomes Imam, the conquest of the Hejaz and the west of the peninsula where the holy cities are, was already being carried out in earnest. Saud entered Mecca later that year, 1803, he began destroying tombs.

He couldn't hold the city though, and they set their sights instead on Medina in 1805, they conquered Medina, destroyed tombs there. These are sending profound shockwaves of concern across the Muslim world. These are holy places in the minds of most Muslims at the time that the Wahhabis, the Saudis are destroying.

And then in 1806 Imam Saud conquered Mecca for good. And incorporated Mecca into the first Saudi state, the Emirate of Dariyya.

Well, tell us Aimen, how the Sultan in Istanbul would've greeted that piece of news. Very, very provocative.

Aimen: He wasn't happy about it at all. Of course, the Sultan in Istanbul was also carrying the title caliph. And therefore, how could you be the caliph and the custodian of the two holy mosques if the two holy mosques are not under your control?

And especially from their point of view, of course, remember that the Ottomans were Sufi Bektashis, which makes them idolaters in the eyes of the Wahhabi. But nonetheless the Sultan send a stern letter to Muhammad Ali Pasha.

Thomas: Yes. Our friend, the khedive of Egypt.

Aimen: The khudaywī of Egypt.

Thomas: Muhammad Ali. We talked about him a lot last season. This is the modernising leader of Egypt. A nominally under the Sultan's control, but very much a renegade doing his own thing. But still, the Sultan said, “Look, dude, you've got to help me out.”

Aimen: Indeed. So, Muhammad Ali Pasha mastered two armies, one under his son Ibrahim Pasha, and one under his other son, Pasha. So, he sent them to the Hejaz to rest it back in the 1810s, they arrested back from the Wahhabis.

Of course, there were so many battles, the Battle of Wadi Al-Safra, the Battle … goodness, there's so many battles happening there. And then after that, they moved to Al-Qassim.

Thomas: In the meantime, Imam Saud dies. So, the Emirate of Dariyya loses its military genius. His son Abdullah takes over. Not much is known about Abdullah. I think he's probably less of a military genius.

Aimen: I think it wasn't about being a military genius, it's the fact that he was facing an overwhelming force. I mean, the Ottomans came with roughly 50 pieces of artillery. And of course, with the modern muskets and rifles.

Thomas: That's right. All of the Ottoman generals by this point under Muhammad Ali had been trained by French generals of seasoned in the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon himself had conquered Egypt and had begun that process of modernization, which we talked about in the last season. So, this is the force that the Wahhabis are now facing, a proper modernised military.

Aimen: Indeed, it was the battle between the old world and the new world. In 1818, Ibrahim Pasha and his army made it all the way with about 15,000 fighters to Dariyya. That's it. Now, they have been pushed all the way back to the beginning to where it all started.

But the walls of Dariyya withstood the artillery. Can you believe it? Dariyya withstood for six months.

However, with more Ottoman forces coming from Basrah, Imam Abdullah bin Saud saw the writing on the same walls that his great-grandfather built and decided to surrender.

Abdullah bin Saud surrendered, seeking good terms that the people of Dariyya would be allowed to leave unharmed to other settlements in Najd, including Riyadh.

And Ibrahim Pasha more or less honoured that, but as soon as they were out of Dariyya, Dariyya was raised to the ground, and the ruins of Dariyya to this day can be seen a testament to a small village of 40 houses that really conquered all of Arabia. The power of faith, the power of ideology, the power of one man's vision.

Thomas: Yes. Abdullah, the last Emir of the first Saudi state was taken to Istanbul and beheaded. And you would've thought that the story of Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab and his mission would end there. It seemed pretty dark.

But as we know, that wasn't to be. Eventually the torch of the mission would be taken up again by the House of Saud, especially its greatest leader of all, King Abdulaziz in the early 20th century where the modern state of Saudi Arabia was reconstituted, really in the model of that first state, but with much greater, in my view, much greater wisdom, worldly wisdom, and even I would say religious wisdom than the first Saudi state.

So, Aimen, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s legacy, it's mixed. But his predilection for pronouncing Takfir has left its mark, surely. It's left its mark on extremist movements today, on Salafi Jihadism today. I mean, in a way we can track that back to him.

Aimen: Indeed. I mean, in my opinion, while I revere the man, and I believe that the man more or less used the threat of Takfir and the threat of the pronunciation of Takfir, which is the excommunication against certain societies and settlements. He used it as a deterrence. He used it as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.

However, for me, why I'm uneasy about it is because while he might have had good intentions, in doing so, he might have been handing over grenades to toddlers like candy.

Because remember, Fatwa in Islam, Thomas, is a weapon with two edges, a two-edged sword. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab should have known that what whatever he's writing would stay on forever, and that future generations could misuse whatever he is writing.

And therefore, the ease through which you can pronounce Takfir against the community, someone else down the line could come and use, not only in general, but in particular an order not to just threaten to excommunicate, but to excommunicate and then proceed on to commit atrocities.

Thomas: For me, I started these two episodes saying that for me, Mohammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab is a bad guy, and that I find it hard to like him. And it's true. I don't like him.

It's actually quite personal, because as I read about him and read some of his writings, I realised that Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab hated me. Not just because I'm a Christian, really, in fact, he hated a lot of his fellow Muslims.

It's because he thought that the sort of spirituality that I practise every day of my life was idolatry. And for that reason, laid me open justly to murder.

I know in my heart that he was wrong about Tawheed. The oneness of God is not something that radically separates God from everything else. It is a oneness that he communicates to everything else. Granting us our unity as individual objects and uniting us all with each other.

And that there's a sort of cascading grace emanating from the divine that incorporates everything in its bounteous merciful bosom, and sometimes incorporates particularly holy figures and even places.

This is a Christian view. And every day I pray to saints, I and I go to church, and I participate in rituals in which material reality is saturated with divine, and yet God is one.

So, that's my beef with Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab. He hates me. He is telling me that my spirituality is false, but he's wrong about that. I promise you, Aimen.

Aimen: Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Anyway, however, look, I will give you my solemn promise that he hated his fellow Muslims more than he hated you.

Thomas: That's good. That makes me feel a lot better.

Aimen: I tell you why. Because basically, for him, you are Ahl al-Kitāb, you are a Kitabi, you are someone who follow the book. But he would be classifying fellow Muslims who were practising idolatry in his eyes as below Jews and Christians. You are not someone who's trying to defile Islam and the faith. You are a fellow Kitabi, ironically.

Thomas: Even so, my sympathy goes out to the Muslims at that time who he did consider to be apostates. And despite the theological differences I have with such Muslims, the underlying metaphysical kind of conception of the divine and its oneness, that that underlies the spirituality is the same. It's shared.

And to that extent, my heart goes out to all those Muslims who found themselves on the other side of Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab's fiery preaching.

Aimen: Indeed.

Thomas: Well, that is certainly a pregnant way to finish this telling of the life of Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab. His legacy is, we can say, divided. On the one hand, it resulted in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as it is today.

But on the other side, the legacy of Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab became mixed and mingled with other modern reformist movements within Islam, specifically that known as the Muslim Brotherhood.

And so, in our next episode, we're going to tell the story of a great Muslim thinker from the 20th century, who's the one who mixed a bit of Mohammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s teaching with a bit of Muslim brotherhood teaching to create that very potent, very powerful ideological mix known as Salafi Jihadism.

[Music Playing]

I'm talking about Sayyid Qutb. It's going to be another really great history lesson, but a great story. Stay tuned. See you next time.

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Harry Stott. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley and Tom Biddle.