Ibn Abdul Wahhab and the Reformation of Islam

One of the problems with the push for reformed Islam is that it has been reformed before.

In the 18th century, Ibn Abdul Wahhab, a prominent cleric in the Najd region of the Arabian Peninsula, was faced with a moral dilemma. Around him Arabians were praying to deceased Muslims and, increasingly, Islam was being taken away from its historical roots due to western influence and in the name of modernity.

So Ibn Abdul Wahhab put forward the idea that anything additional to the Qur'an and the Sunnah - the holy book of Islam and the traditions of the Prophet Mohammed - adds unneeded context to the pure, original form of Islam as heralded by the first generation of Muslims. This belief, though unpopular at the time, heralded the dawn of a reformed Sunni Islam today known as Salafiya or, by a more derogatory name, Wahhabism.

This led to the Wahhab-Saud pact of the 18th century, a deal which was struck between the house of Al-Saud and Ibn Abdul Wahhab, that the Al-Saud family would protect the ideology of Ibn Abdul Wahhab and in exchange the Al-Saud family would be allowed to rule over a Salafi-Islamic state. That deal resurfaced last century: between the Al-Saud ruling family in Saudi Arabia and the Al-Sheikh family, the descendants and heirs of Ibn Abdul Wahhab.

Although the first Saudi state was crushed by the Ottomans, it resurfaced in the 20th century as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - with the help of the British, as Salafiya was still too unpopular for the majority of the Arabian Peninsula. With the potent combination of Arabian oil and the seizure of the Grand Mosque in 1979, Salafiya has been enormously influential in the push for defining Sunni Islam in the modern world. This was condoned by Britain in order to control the Muslim world. And, for a time, it worked.

Today, most Sunni Muslims are at least partially influenced by the Salafi mindset. Those who are not, such as Sufis or the secular Muslims of Syria, are deemed as Kufr (heretics who must be killed) by the larger Sunni population and, for some, seculars and Sufis are considered worse heretics than the Shi'ites.

The need for reformation in Islam is seen by many as obvious.  Even those of the Sufi and secular Muslim mindset would still be willing to genocide Israel to protect Islam - and this is worth noting. However, Islam has been reformed before, and this resulted in the rise and exporting of Salafiya in the Muslim world.

While this did benefit Britain - Salafiya forces Muslims to be purified before attacking non-Muslims - it has now reached the stage where hundreds of thousands of Sunni Muslims are united behind the Salafi doctrine, and so it can no longer be used as a tool by the west for controlling the Muslim world. With the emergence of Al-Qaeda and ISIS, this is obvious to many.

However, if Ibn Abdul Wahhab reformed Islam before, pulled away centuries of Islamic tradition to reveal how the first generation of Muslims behaved, it is clear that there is something at Islam's core that may be considered problematic.

Therefore, reforming Islam to create a more modern religion may actually cause more division and more bloodshed. A modern Islam will be deemed by hundreds of thousands of Muslims as Satanic and, though a popular notion in the west, may just lead to more bloodshed and more harm for Muslims across the globe.

To truly reform Islam would cross boundaries uncrossable for the majority of Muslims. It would involve denouncing actions attributed to the most pious of Muslims, rejecting the Hadeeth and changing the structure of the Qur'an so completely it would be unrecognizable. Sunni Islam may sooner be destroyed completely than reform into an acceptable, modern version that many so desperately want.