© 2003 by Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies
‘Wahhabi’ Influences, Salafi Responses: Shaikh Mahmud Shukri and The Iraqi Salafi Movement, 1745–19301
Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, Amman, Jordan
This article examines the regional (and, in particular, Iraqi) response to the Wahhabi da
wa (call) as first promulgated by Shaikh Muhammad Ibn Abdul-Wahhab in Najd in the middle of the eighteenth century. The first conclusion drawn from the primary sources of the period concerns the reaction of regional scholars and rulers to the message of the Najdi shaikh, and suggests that, for reasons having to do with the unusual way that the Wahhabis interpreted a central set of beliefs long associated by Muslims with the era of the Prophet and the Companions (and called after them, al-salafiyya), the movement may have promoted a mixed message. That is, while it attracted some adherents from among regional sheikhs and notables, it deterred many more. There was, however, no disagreement with the Wahhabis’ most steadfast principle: its pursuit of takfir, which was to create instant enemies for the cause.
The second conclusion, however, points to evidence that the Wahhabi movement elicited a deeper and more ambiguous response from its regional audience, and that it is precisely this constantly shifting zone of interaction and controversy between supporters and enemies of the movement that may be its most interesting legacy. These two features—intense debate over the Wahhabi interpretation of Salafi Islam, and the ambivalence it engendered among its wide regional audience—are particularly important in the life and work of the Iraqi shaikh Mahmud Shukri Al-Alusi (1856–1924). Al-Alusi was an important anti-Wahhabi Salafi in turn-of-the-century Iraq, whose teachings and philosophy still attracted controversy. Although he was virulently against the Wahhabis in some of his books, he was still associated with them by most observers in his time and ours, if only because he was steadfastly reformist, anti-Sufi, and pro-ijtihad.
* 1 This paper was first presented at the Second Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, Florence, 21–5 Mar. 2001, under the sponsorship of the Mediterranean Programme, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute. I wish to thank the Robert Schuman Centre for making my presentation possible. I also wish to thank the chairpersons and panelists of my panel for their valuable suggestions. My gratitude and thanks go to M. Edouard Metenier, who is rapidly becoming the foremost scholar of the Al-Alusi family in Europe, for his tireless support and trenchant critique. Last but not least, I am grateful to the Journal’s two anonymous referees for their penetrating comments. All omissions, mistakes, and lapses are mine alone.