- The Saudi expansion in Arabia was not as Islamically pure as the scholars may have believed, however, for in fact the emergent Saudi state enjoyed the financial and military support of the British Empire. The Wahhābī scholars can only have looked with disapproval on the matter of British financial assistance, if they were even aware of it. Several years before the arrangement with the British was made official, Ibn Siḥmān denied in a book the accusation that the Saudi ruler had received support from the British, dismissing the charge as unfounded. Addressing his Iraqi opponent, he writes:
- Indeed, we have not inclined toward them [i.e., the British] or appealed to them for support in any of the things that you have claimed. Nor, indeed, have we taken them as allies. Surely you know that no flag of theirs is to be found in our lands, and that we have not appointed consulates or adopted their laws [qawānīnahum] in our territories, putting them before the law of God and His Messenger. We dissociate before God from them and from you.
- It was after the publication of Kashf al-shubhatayn that Ḥusayn ibn Ḥasan Āl al-Shaykh entered the picture more clearly. In response to Ibn Siḥmān’s book, Ḥusayn composed a brief poem defending Ibn Shabīb, depicted as a venerable scholar, and ridiculing Ibn Siḥmān, described as a mere poet who ought to abstain from discussions of Islamic law.30 He also wrote to Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Āl al-Shaykh (d. 1367/1948),31 a brother of ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, who was taking a larger role in the Wahhābī religious establishment at this time. In his letter, Ḥusayn contends that there are two acceptable positions concerning the Jahmiyya: (1) that they are unbelievers and (2) that they are not unbelievers. While he claims that his own view is that the Jahmiyya are unbelievers, he disagrees that those who believe otherwise ought to be subjected to takfīr.
- Conclusion
- At the beginning of the third Saudi state, the Wahhābī scholars’ approach to their doctrine was entirely unreformed. They still regarded neighboring areas as lands of polytheists whose inhabitants were to be excommunicated and shown hatred and enmity. One member of the Āl al-Shaykh was pilloried for suggesting otherwise. The appearance of the Ikhwān gave the scholars hope that the state being created by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz would be a polity in the mold of the first Saudi state, but the excesses of the Ikhwān made them an imperfect ally at best and one that the scholars would ultimately turn on and condemn. Meanwhile, the scholars watched as the Saudi ruler grew close to a prominent Islamic modernist in Egypt, Rashīd Riḍā, who condemned some of their views as beyond the pale even as he printed their works. The Saudi ruler was also allowing Christian oilmen into the country over the scholars’ stern objections and holding Islamic conferences attended by all kinds of Muslims. As the scholars were slowly but surely learning, the third Saudi state was to be much more a conventional nation-state than a militant Wahhābī one. The question for the scholars was whether to tolerate all of this or to agitate against the king’s rule. The decision was nearly unanimous in accepting the new status quo, even though doing so would require them to modify their approach to the Wahhābī doctrine.
- Over the past decades, the scholars had come to appreciate the value of political stability, having experienced first the Saudi civil war, then the Rashīdī interregnum, and finally the Ikhwān revolt. In opposing the Ikhwān, they repeatedly stressed the importance of obedience to the ruler, and now they would uphold that ideal themselves, even if the ruler’s vision did not match theirs. In Ṣafar 1349/July 1930, Sulaymān ibn Siḥmān died in Riyadh, and with him something of the spirit of militant Wahhābism died as well. While Ibn Siḥmān never seems to have openly criticized the new political order being built by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, he was also the scholar most out of step with it. He was a man from another era. There was no member of the Wahhābī scholarly class who placed greater emphasis on the duty of showing hatred and enmity to polytheists, whom he saw as the majority of the Islamic world, and now that emphasis was to be discouraged. Though Ibn Siḥmān spent decades trying to prevent the normalization of relations with “all and sundry,” his work was now being undercut by the ruler in Riyadh, who wanted the Wahhābīs to get along with their non-Wahhābī counterparts and see themselves as part of the larger Islamic world. Despite his efforts, the Wahhābism of the future was going to look a lot more like the versions promoted by Ibn ʿAmr, Ḥusayn ibn Ḥasan Āl al-Shaykh, and Rashīd Riḍā than the version championed by Ibn Siḥmān and his scholarly allies.
