Essays on Wahhabism

Islam in Saudi Arabia

Introduction. In his book Islam in Saudi Arabia David Commins takes us through the journey of Islam as a religion in Saudi from the eighteenth century up to the twentieth century. Chapter three is titled Wahhabism and the modern state. Wahhabism rose when Wahhab and Ibn Saud signed a pact giving rise to the state of Saudi Arabia. Having been promised power and religious legitimacy by Wahhab, Ibn Saud then pledged to ensure that the teachings of Wahhabism were carried out in the entire Kingdom. In this chapter, we see how subsequent rulers handled crisis through initiating changes like ...

ISIS is a Salafi group within Sunni Islam, which originally operated in areas inhabited by Sunnis (Stanford, par.14). More precisely, the creators of the Islamic State were Sunni Muslims, who primarily adhered to Hanbali, the most distinguished among the four existing schools of Islamic law in Sunni Islam, known for its rigor and discipline. They have played on these fundamentalist sentiments, which allowed them to get support of the Sunni population. Not because ISIS banned the teaching of biology, physics, music, social sciences (in particular, those connected with democracy), not because the members of this group cut off the heads ...

Images and livestream video clips of American military vehicles getting blown up and dead Americans--both military and civilian--laying dead on the ground in the vicinity have saturated both the international and media. Such images underscore the barbarity and savagery that has become so widespread in the Middle East. Often, such images are disseminated via the news and mass media as well as the internet in order to galvanize new supporters against the United States by discursively framing the American military, coalition forces, and civilians abroad as not indefatigable. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIL) is an extremist ...

Brief history of Saudi Arabia

Historic area of the Arabian Peninsula, which now occupies the western Saudi Arabia, is usually called Hijaz and Najd. At the beginning of the VII century Muhammad’s prophetic mission began in Mecca, where the Meccan pagans denied it. After 13 years he moved to Medina (Yathrib), inhabited by Arabs and Jews. A peace treaty was signed with the latter. Gradually, Arabs all of the Arabian Peninsula became his followers.

Saudi Arabia map

In 632, Arab Caliphate with its capital in Medina was founded. It engulfed almost the entire Arabian Peninsula. As a result of voluntary annexations and conquests by the IX century ...

The complete failure of the Arab nations to form a national narrative for the purpose of unification and the establishment of contemporary egalitarian polities happens to be the primary cause behind the ongoing socio-political explosion in the Arab world in recent times. Unity is no longer the major goal and the construction of a society that is capable of mobilizing its resources to combat backwardness and enhance the financial condition of the state has taken a backseat. The elite class has instead tried to enforce a brand of unity via Islam and Arab nationalism that has alienated portions of the population not present ...

Introduction:

The islam religion is practically based on several schools of thought mostly surrounding the Sunni and Shia schools which bring about a pacifist approach as well as a warlike approach. There are a number of periods which are discussed in the book and which focus on the changes made in the Islamic movement over the years which certainly brought about a sea change in thinking and in various aspects of this religion. Most important was the Colonial Period where one could see a paradigm shift in the Islamic movement which partially responded to modernization and the influx of western imperialism. Then we had ...