Roots of Islamic extremism
Such factors have contributed to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. It's not a new phenomenon. As with other religions, fundamentalists come and go. This has been the case with Islam as it has been with nominal Christianity.
In the 18th century, Ibn Abdul Wahhab (1703-1792) was born in what is now Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. His followers, who form a Sunni sect, are known as Wahhabis. They are the most extreme of all the branches of Islam—violent, intolerant and fanatical. Their rise to prominence in Arabia was not the result of the European Crusades, but rather the decadence of the Ottoman Sultans. Ibn Abdul Wahhab established a state in the Arabian Peninsula that was modeled after the Ummah of the seventh century, an Islamic community that would live by the sharia, Islamic law.
Wahhabism is still the dominant religion of Saudi Arabia, and it has many followers in the Persian Gulf states. It is from this area that the terrorists came who staged the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. It has been said that not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Wahhabis. Although this is an overstatement, it is true that most of the mosques in Western countries are financed by the Saudis, with the imams teaching their adherents the Wahhabi interpretation of the Koran. As early as 1801 the followers of Wahhab were killing all who opposed them—they fell upon the Shiite city of Karbala that year and killed 2,000 innocent civilians.
Fundamentalism, however, was not confined to Arabia. Later in the same century the British fought a man claiming to be the mahdi in Sudan, another fundamentalist who wanted to unite all Arabs in a holy war against the infidels invading from the West. The British defeated him and continued to dominate the area until after World War II.
And here's an experience of a Shia Moslem who grew up in Saudi Arabia.
If you go to school in Saudi Arabia, what do you learn about people who are not followers of Wahhabi, of the prophet?
The religious curriculum in Saudi Arabia teaches you that people are basically two sides: Salafis [Wahhabis], who are the winners, the chosen ones, who will go to heaven, and the rest. The rest are Muslims and Christians and Jews and others.
They are either kafirs, who are deniers of God, or mushrak, putting gods next to God, or enervators, that's the lightest one. The enervators of religion who are they call the Sunni Muslims who ... for instance, celebrate Prophet Mohammed's birthday, and do some stuff that is not accepted by Salafis.
This is really disturbing: so even Moslems who don't follow Wahhabis/Salafis fundamentalism are branded kafirs (heretics).So the question is how did the Wahhabis gain so much power to spread their influence everywhere? In Indonesia, for instance, the Sharia facists are nothing but minority within the Moslem population, but their organizations and movements seemed to be well-funded and well-organized. And that's not mentioning that their impact is way beyond their number.
And here's my second question: how come any Moslems can be even remotely interested to Wahhabi fundamentalism and their Sharia? I remember reading somewhere about Iraqi tribe leaders were driving off the Talibans from their villages, because the Talibans were oppressing the local Moslem villagers with their strict Sharia law. IIRC many people in Pakistan and Afghanistan don't like Islamic fundamentalism either. In Indonesia, the Nahdatul Ulama (the biggest Islamic Scholar organization in this country) has been in constant disagreement with the extremists.
Then again, how did such extremist movement manage to gain such power and influence?
:thumbsup
