Chapter 80. Revival, Reform and Revolt: Wahhabism, Salafism, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Republic

From the eighteenth century onward, Islamic reform movements became political projects: a desert kingdom, a mass brotherhood, a clerical republic and a transnational jihad. The sources for this history differ in kind. Karen Armstrong writes a sympathetic scholarly survey. Kim Ghattas is a journalist, and Christopher Davidson an academic critic of Western policy. RAND and the 9/11 Commission write as government analysts. Amir Taheri, Glenn Beck and Jerome Corsi are hawkish or polemical writers. Osama bin Laden’s statements are primary evidence, and Mehran Keshe adds prophetic commentary. Each claim below is attributed to its source.

Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the Saudi pact

Armstrong describes Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-92) as “a typical reformer, in the tradition of Ibn Taymiyyah”. He sought “a fundamentalist return to the Quran and sunnah, and … a militant rejection of all later accretions, which included medieval fiqh mysticism and Falsafah”, and he “declared that [the Ottoman sultans] were apostates and worthy of death”. His “aggressive techniques would be used by some fundamentalists in the twentieth century” [Armstrong, Islam: A Short History, #53062, “The Arrival of the West”, p. 135]. Beck calls him “the father of the modern Salafist movement”: “In 1744, Wahhab and bin Saud took an oath to each other and began decades of conquest to unite Arabia and reinstall a righteous Caliphate” [Beck, It Is About Islam, #63847, ch. 4]. Ghattas calls the pact “a political and familial alliance” in which “Ibn Saud would handle politics and governing while Ibn Abdelwahhab would be in charge of religion and preaching”, and names Ibn Taymiyya, the “literalist, medieval theologian” of the Hanbali school, as the preacher’s inspiration [Ghattas, Black Wave, #72495, Part I].

The Saudi state, the Ikhwan and Western patrons

Davidson emphasises the role of Western patrons. By 1899 Britain was encouraging the Saudis “to use its protectorate of Kuwait as a launch pad”. Ibn Saud took Riyadh in 1902 with “his Wahhabi militia, the Ikhwan”, and the India Office favoured him because “the Ikhwan’s ferocity would help ward off other rival powers”. When unrest rose in southern Iraq “it was easily put down by British aircraft … The Saudi-Wahhabi killing spree that ensued” followed [Davidson, Shadow Wars, #66972]. Later, Faisal, “with his mother a direct descendant of Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab, … was a man after the CIA’s heart”. He founded the Islamic University of Medina (1961) as a counterweight to Nasser’s Al-Azhar [Davidson, #66972]. Armstrong notes that the 1932 kingdom “was based on the Wahhabi ideal” and had no constitution, and that the Muslim Brotherhood “condemned the Saudis’ use of Islamic punishments as inappropriate and archaic” [Armstrong, #53062, “What is a Modern Muslim State?”, pp. 161-162].

The Muslim Brotherhood, Mawdudi and Qutb

Armstrong presents Hasan al-Banna’s Society of Muslim Brothers as a mass welfare movement, of which “a small minority engaged in terrorism” [Armstrong, #53062, pp. 155-156]. Taheri quotes its founding formula, “We are all brothers in the service of Islam. We are, therefore, the Muslim Brotherhood”. He records that an Iranian militant “in 1936 … had frequented several Muslim Brotherhood mosques and attended a number of their secret meetings” in Cairo [Taheri, Holy Terror, #64433, ch. 4]. Beck claims that its ideology “gave rise to every major Islamic terrorist organization in the world” [Beck, #63847].

Armstrong argues that Mawdudi (1903-79) made jihad “the central tenet of Islam”, which she calls “an innovation”. Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), “the real founder of Islamic fundamentalism in the Sunni world”, applied jahiliyyah to Muslim societies themselves after witnessing torture in Nasser’s camps. “At al-Nasser’s personal insistence, he was executed in 1966” [Armstrong, #53062, “Fundamentalism”, pp. 168-170]. Ghattas adds that “while in prison Qutb had read a copy of Mawdudi’s book The Four Expressions“, and that Mawdudi “had inspired Qutb in Egypt and Khomeini in Iran” [Ghattas, #72495, Part II]. The 9/11 Commission states that “Bin Ladin also relies heavily on the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb” [National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, The 9/11 Commission Report, #377534, ch. 2]. Taheri records that Faraj, “the mastermind behind President Sadat’s assassination”, wrote Al-Faridhaat al-Ghayabah (The Occulted Duty) and “was hanged in the Bab al-Khalq Prison in central Cairo on 15 April 1982 together with two companions” [Taheri, #64433, ch. 13 notes].

1979: Tehran and Mecca

Khomeini, Armstrong writes, “had evolved a radically new interpretation of Shiism: in the absence of the Hidden Imam, only the mystically inspired jurist, who knew the sacred law, could validly govern the nation”. She adds that Rafsanjani later gave “a democratic interpretation of Velayat-i Faqih” [Armstrong, #53062, “Fundamentalism”]. Taheri is hostile. He describes the “Party of Allah” as “not a political organization in the classical style”. On Saudi Arabia he writes: “To the Americans, the importance of the Wahabbite kingdom lies in its seemingly inexhaustible oil reserves. To the Party of Allah, however, it is the presence of Islam’s two holiest shrines”. He quotes an Iranian militant: “Our Prophet killed with his own blessed hands. Our Imam Ali killed more than seven hundred on a single day” [Taheri, #64433, ch. 8].

In November 1979 Juhayman al-Utaybi and some 400 armed Saudis seized the Grand Mosque. The anonymous narrator of a memoir of Evola notes that they “were not foreign infidels … but Arab, Saudi men, zealots for their religion. Ikhwan, brothers, was the name they had given themselves” [Julius Evola: The Sufi of Rome, #65750]. Davidson calls them “a conservative Wahhabi sect” [Davidson, #66972]. Ghattas reconstructs the confusion. Khomeini blamed “criminal American imperialism”, while a report “added credence to theories of a Shia takeover by saying the rebels had described the Mahdi in line with Shia beliefs, as the Twelfth Imam”. The siege ended on 4 December 1979 [Ghattas, #72495, Part I]. Lawrence’s annotation links the siege to the Saudi “awakening” (Sahwa) of Salman al-Auda and Safar al-Hawali, “which mingled radical wahhabism with the ideas of … Sayyid Qutb” [bin Laden, Messages to the World, #73066, ed. note 19].

The forty-year rivalry

Ghattas argues that 1979 began a Saudi-Iranian contest that “unraveled the Middle East”. Under Zia ul-Haq it reached Pakistan. In 1987 Sunnis and Shias in the tribal areas killed one another and “almost two hundred people died”. She argues that Zia’s provocations gave Shia “clerics like Hussaini a powerful rallying tool” against Sunni rivals such as Ihsan Elahi Zaheer [Ghattas, #72495, Part II]. The 9/11 Commission agrees: “In the 1980s, awash in sudden oil wealth, Saudi Arabia competed with Shia Iran to promote its Sunni fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism” [National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, The 9/11 Commission Report, #377534]. Davidson cites a Clinton cable naming Saudi donors as funders of al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba. Lashkar-e-Taiba had set up a charity front in Riyadh “just three years before it carried out the 2008 Mumbai massacre” [Davidson, #66972]. Corsi, writing as an advocate, frames Iran apocalyptically. He describes Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi as “the chief living authority on the Mahdi”, based in Qom near “the Jamkaran well, from which Shiite believers expect the Twelfth Imam will reappear”, and concludes that Israel “can’t wait” [Corsi, Why Israel Can’t Wait, #87960].

From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State

Bin Laden’s 1996 “Declaration of Jihad against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Sanctuaries” lists his grievances: “Your blood has been spilt in Palestine and Iraq”. It vows to end “the injustice that has befallen our umma at the hands of the Judeo-Crusader alliance” [bin Laden, #73066, “Declaration of Jihad”]. RAND finds that al-Qaeda frames the world as a “stark and ultimately irreconcilable dichotomy” of belief and non-belief, and that “Saudis have played a prominent place in al-Qaeda, second only to the Egyptians” [Rabasa et al., Beyond al-Qaeda Part 1, #368002]. Jane’s dates the first use of the name AQAP by Saudi-based groups to 17 March 2004 [Jane’s Sentinel Country Risk Assessment: Yemen, #367632]. Beck argues that the violence is intrinsically “about Islam”. He traces a single line to al-Qaeda in Iraq, which “declared open season on Iraq’s Shia, whom they call rafidun“, and on to ISIS [Beck, #63847]. Armstrong disagrees: “It is not correct … to imagine that Islam has within it a militant, fanatic strain”. Fundamentalism, she argues, “exists in a symbiotic relationship with a coercive secularism” [Armstrong, #53062, pp. 164-167]. In America the Nation of Islam’s The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews shows Islam used as political identity; Chapter 81 treats it as primary evidence [Nation of Islam, #51694].

Keshe on the present war

In his 2026 workshops Keshe reads the Iran-Israel war as eschatology staged by clerics: “This is not a war of nations, it’s a war of religions”. He calls the flags in Tehran “a flag of Methi … Khamenei established the army for coming of Methi”, and adds that “Jews are doing the same” [Keshe, KSW 633, #378345]. “This war with Iran is done by religious leaders, paving the path for coming of their Methi, according to their script … But whose Methi is the real one?” he asks [Keshe, KSW 636, #378348]. He asserts: “The Iranian Sepah has flatten the Jews. Now they call it Tel Aviv … it’s flattened” [Keshe, KSW 633, #378345]. In KSW 634 (19 March 2026) he claims that the US “purposely bombed Iran Space Research Center”, which held a plasma centre “made specially for KF” technology, and vows: “I’ll punish America for this, beyond their imagination” [Keshe, KSW 634, #378346]. These are Keshe’s own statements; none of the other sources cited in this chapter reports these events.

Key points

• Armstrong calls Ibn Abd al-Wahhab an Ibn Taymiyya-style reformer who declared the Ottomans apostates. Beck dates his oath with Ibn Saud to 1744, and Ghattas calls it a political and familial alliance [#53062; #63847; #72495].
• Davidson reports British backing of the Ikhwan, a “Saudi-Wahhabi killing spree” under British air power, CIA favour for Faisal, and Saudi charities funding jihadists [#66972].
• The Brotherhood’s radical line runs from Mawdudi through Qutb (hanged 1966) to Faraj (hanged 15 April 1982) [#53062; #72495; #64433].
• 1979 brought Khomeini’s rule of the jurist and the Mecca siege by self-styled Ikhwan, which inspired the Sahwa [#72495; #73066; #65750].
• Ghattas and the 9/11 Commission both describe Saudi-Iranian competition to export doctrine, which turned sectarian in Pakistan [#72495; #377534].
• Bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration names the “Judeo-Crusader alliance”. RAND finds Saudis “second only to the Egyptians” in al-Qaeda [#73066; #368002].
• Beck and Corsi argue that the violence is intrinsic or apocalyptic. Armstrong argues that fundamentalism is a reaction to coercive secularism [#63847; #87960; #53062].
• Keshe calls the Iran-Israel war a clerical “war of religions” to bring each side’s Methi [#378345; #378348; #378346].