Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab ibn Sulayman al-Tamimi was an Arabian Islamic scholar, theologian, preacher, activist, religious leader, and reformer from Najd in central Arabia, considered as the eponymous founder of the Wahhabi movement. His prominent students included his sons Ḥusayn, Abdullāh, ʿAlī, and Ibrāhīm, his grandson ʿAbdur-Raḥman ibn Ḥasan, his son-in-law ʿAbdul-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd, Ḥamād ibn Nāṣir ibn Muʿammar, and Ḥusayn āl-Ghannām.
Wahhabism is a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist movement originating in Najd, Arabia. Founded eponymously by Arabian scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, Wahhabism is followed primarily in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Ijtihad is an Islamic legal term referring to independent reasoning by an expert in Islamic law, or the thorough exertion of a jurist's mental faculty in finding a solution to a legal question. It is contrasted with taqlid. According to classical Sunni theory, ijtihad requires expertise in the Arabic language, theology, revealed texts, and principles of jurisprudence, and is not employed where authentic and authoritative texts are considered unambiguous with regard to the question, or where there is an existing scholarly consensus (ijma). Ijtihad is considered to be a religious duty for those qualified to perform it. An Islamic scholar who is qualified to perform ijtihad is called as a "mujtahid".
Islamic fundamentalism has been defined as a puritanical, revivalist, and reform movement of Muslims who aim to return to the founding scriptures of Islam. The term has been used interchangeably with similar terms such as Islamism, Islamic revivalism, Salafism, Wahhabism, Islamic activism, but also criticized as pejorative, a term used by outsiders who instead ought to be using Islamic activism, Islamic revivalism, or one of the other terms given above.
The Hanbali school is one of the four major traditional Sunni schools (madhahib) of Islamic jurisprudence. It is named after the Arab scholar Ahmad ibn Hanbal, and was institutionalized by his students. The Hanbali madhhab is the smallest of four major Sunni schools, the others being the Hanafi, Maliki and Shafi`i.
The Salafi movement or Salafism is a revival movement within Sunni Islam. The movement was formed as a socio-religious resistance to European imperialism during the late 19th century and has remained influential in the Islamic World for over a century. The name "Salafiyya" refers to advocacy of a return to the traditions of the "pious predecessors", the first three generations of Muslims, who are believed to exemplify the pure form of Islam. In practice, Salafis maintain that Muslims ought to rely on the Qur'an, the Sunnah and the 'Ijma (consensus) of the salaf, giving these writings precedence over later religious interpretations. The Salafi movement aimed to achieve a renewal of Muslim life and had a major influence on many Muslim thinkers and movements across the Islamic world.
Qutbism is an Islamist ideology which was developed by Sayyid Qutb, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood who was executed by the Egyptian government in 1966. It has been described as advancing the extremist, jihadist ideology of propagating "offensive jihad" – waging jihad in conquest – "armed jihad in the advance of Islam", and simply "Islamic-based terrorism".
Salafi Islam is the state religion of Saudi Arabia. The connection between Islam and modern-day Saudi Arabia is uniquely strong. The kingdom is called the "home of Islam"; the kingdom is also the birthplace of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, with all territories of Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Peninsula being united and ruled by him. It is the location of the cities of Mecca and Medina, where Muhammad, the messenger of the Islamic faith, lived and died. The kingdom attracts millions of Muslim Hajj pilgrims annually, and thousands of clerics and students who come from across the Muslim world to study. The official title of the King of Saudi Arabia is "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques"—the two being Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and Al-Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina—which are considered the holiest in Islam.
Islamic schools and branches have different understandings of Islam. There are many different sects or denominations, schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and schools of Islamic theology, or ʿaqīdah (creed). Within Islamic groups themselves there may be differences, such as different orders (tariqa) within Sufism, and within Sunnī Islam different schools of theology and jurisprudence. Groups in Islam may be numerous, or relatively small in size. Differences between the groups may not be well known to Muslims outside of scholarly circles, or may have induced enough passion to have resulted in political and religious violence. There are informal movements driven by ideas as well as organized groups with a governing body. Some of the Islamic sects and groups regard certain others as deviant or accuse them of not being truly Muslim. Some Islamic sects and groups date back to the early history of Islam between the 7th and 9th centuries CE, whereas others have arisen much more recently or even in the 20th century. Still others were influential in their time but are not longer in existence. Muslims who do not belong to, do not self-identify with, or cannot be readily classified under one of the identifiable Islamic schools and branches are known as non-denominational Muslims.
Muhammad Rashid Riḍā commonly known as Rashid Riḍā, was a prominent Sunni Islamic scholar, reformer, theologian, and revivalist. As a Salafi scholar who called for the revival of hadith studies and a theoretician of an Islamic state, Riḍā condemned the rising currents of secularism and nationalism across the Islamic world following the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate, and called for a global Islamic Renaissance program to re-establish an Islamic caliphate.
Muhammad Abu Zahra, (1974-1898) was an Egyptian public intellectual and an influential Hanafi jurist. He occupied a number of positions; he was a lecturer of Islamic law at Al-Azhar University and a professor at Cairo University. He was also a member of the Islamic Research Academy. His works include Abu Hanifa, Malik and al-Shafi'i.
Islamic extremism, Islamist extremism, or radical Islam, is used in reference to extremist beliefs and behaviors which are associated with the Islamic religion. These are controversial terms with varying definitions, ranging from academic understandings to the idea that all ideologies other than Islam have failed and are inferior to Islam. These terms can also be used in reference to other sects of Islam that do not share such beliefs. Political definitions of Islamic extremism include the one which is used by the government of the United Kingdom, which understands Islamic extremism as any form of Islam that opposes "democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs". In 2019, the U.S. Institute for Peace released an important report on extremism in fragile states that developed recommendations focused on adopting a shared understanding, operationalize a prevention framework, and rallying the international community.
Qatar is a Muslim-majority country with Islam as the state religion. Salafi version of Islam is the state sponsored brand of Sunni Islam in the country, making Qatar one of the two Salafi states in the Muslim world, along with Saudi Arabia.
Islamic modernism is a movement that has been described as "the first Muslim ideological response to the Western cultural challenge," attempting to reconcile the Islamic faith with modern values such as democracy, civil rights, rationality, equality, and progress. It featured a "critical reexamination of the classical conceptions and methods of jurisprudence", and a new approach to Islamic theology and Quranic exegesis (Tafsir). A contemporary definition describes it as an "effort to re-read Islam's fundamental sources—the Qur'an and the Sunna, —by placing them in their historical context, and then reinterpreting them, non-literally, in the light of the modern context."
Hamid Algar is a British-American Professor Emeritus of Persian studies at the Faculty of Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He writes on Persian and Arabic literature and contemporary history of Iran, Turkey, the Balkans and Afghanistan. He served on the UC Berkeley faculty for 45 years. Algar remains an active scholar and his research has concentrated on the Islamic history of the Perso-Turkish world, with particular emphasis on Iranian Shi'ism during the past two centuries and the Naqshbandi Sufi order. Algar is a Shia Muslim.
Sayyid Muḥammad Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān al-Qannawjī was an Islamic scholar and leader of India's Muslim community in the 19th century, often considered to be the most important Muslim scholar of the Bhopal State. He is largely credited alongside Syed Nazeer Husain with founding the revivalist Ahl-i Hadith movement, which became the dominant strain of Sunni Islam throughout the immediate region. Siddiq Hasan Khan was also a prominent scholarly authority of the Arab Salafiyya movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Petro-Islam is a neologism used to refer to the international propagation of the extremist and fundamentalist interpretations of Sunni Islam derived from the doctrines of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a Sunni Muslim preacher, scholar, reformer and theologian from Uyaynah in the Najd region of the Arabian Peninsula, eponym of the Islamic revivalist movement known as Wahhabism. This movement has been favored by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
Natana J. DeLong-Bas is an American academic, scholar of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, and author of a number of academic publications on Islam on the subjects of Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism, Islamic thought and history, Islam and politics, and contemporary jihadism.
Anti-Sunnism is hatred of, prejudice against, discrimination against, persecution of, and violence against Sunni Muslims.
Starting in the mid-1970s and 1980s, the international propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism within Sunni Islam favored by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies has achieved what the French political scientist Gilles Kepel defined as a "preeminent position of strength in the global expression of Islam." Until the 1990s Saudi break-up with Muslim Brotherhood, interpretations included not only Salafiyya Islam of Saudi Arabia, but also Islamist/revivalist Islam, and a "hybrid" of the two interpretations.
