Chapter Three I describe some of the key theories influencing how I go about deconstructing and making sense of liberal and neoconservative intellectuals’ representations of Wahhabism. I describe the dialectical imagination I have adopted, what fuzzy categories are and how they work, and how I make use of Max Weber’s ideal type. I also describe the critical discourse analysis approach I have adopted and the epistemological assumptions it carries with it.
In Chapter Four I begin the interpretative and analytic process and deal with how liberal intellectuals have gone about representing Wahhabism. In Chapter Five I describe what generative metaphors and themata are and how they work, and then make sense of the different representations of Wahhabism. In Chapter Six I continue the interpretative, analytical, and sense-making process by looking at the different ways neoconservative intellectuals have gone about representing Wahhabism. In the Conclusion I explicate and clarify the wider significance of the book, particularly in the context of the sociology of intellectuals and the policy- and decision-making processes.
Wahhabism as a Contested Category
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
—T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Wahhabism is both conventionally and popularly understood to be an extremely conservative, fundamentalist, or radical version of Islam. Historians agree that it has its origins in Saudi Arabia in the eighteenth century and that its founder was Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Abd al-Wahhab is said to have developed a version of Islam he insisted was a rigorous and conservative interpretation of the Qur’an. The general consensus is that Wahhabism played a decisive role in creating the Saudi state in 1932, where Wahhabism is credited as having a substantial following today.1 Beyond this, Wahhabism is a hotly contested category and this contest begins with those who are said to be followers of this version of Islam. Those who are labeled followers of Wahhabism tend to reject this term, instead referring to themselves as Muslims or Salafists. The contest continues when dealing with the relation between Wahhabism and modern Islamic terrorism, particularly with regards to the apparent influence it is said to have on well-known terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.
At this stage I want to present some of the major ways scholars influenced by a variety of political and religious beliefs, aims, and goals have represented Wahhabism. I will continue to expand on this contest throughout the book, particularly when I take a closer look at how intellectuals from the liberal and neoconservative traditions have represented Wahhabism. Now I want to demonstrate that there is little consensus among those writers and researchers dealing with Wahhabism with what might be thought to be the kind of scholarly regard for careful, nuanced inquiry found in academic centers devoted to the study of religions, contemporary political science, or international relations. While some would see this as the basis for resolving the controversies and issues this survey highlights, by appealing to some empirical or theoretical benchmarks of objectivity or accuracy, I continue to hold that this is impossible given that Wahhabism is an observer-dependent phenomenon with no objective reality. The following analyses provide for a great starting point for why we need to pay more attention to the issues of how and why intellectuals represent a phenomenon like Wahhabism in different ways.
I have taken exemplars of some of the ways scholars have dealt with Wahhabism. These representations appear in books in libraries and online and in academic journals, and are often regurgitated or referred to by writers, bloggers, and government officials around the world. These representations are also influencing students, other scholars, and researchers. My analysis begins with a group of scholars emphasizing the negative and dangerous aspects of Wahhabism, which is certainly the dominant representation, and then turns to those offering softer and less threatening portraits. In both cases there are important issues involved in translating Wahhabism that I explore in greater detail toward the end of the chapter. While these issues of translation are important for those seeking to make sense of the contest to define Wahhabism, they also have a much wider application.
Intellectuals, Imagined Geographies, and Imagined Communities: Wahhabism as a Threat
Benedict Anderson’s famous account of the role played by intellectuals in constructing Imagined communities and Edward Said’s Imagined geographies are pertinent ideas when considering how intellectuals like Dore Gold, Bernard Lewis, and David Commins represent Wahhabism.2 Each, albeit in different ways, draws on an historical account of a relationship between spaces and people to arrive at distinctly negative portraits of Wahhabism. Ron Eyerman’s claims that intellectuals are often projecting their own “needs and fantasies” and their “deep-seated needs and interests” are certainly relevant here.3
Anderson makes the point that all “communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact . . . are imagined.”4 Imagined communities are not unreal by virtue of being imagined, but instead constitute a network of socially consequential relationships with the same degree of reality as members of communities enjoying face-to-face relations. We may not see everyone that is a part of our Imagined community; however, our ability to communicate helps us to know they exist. Intellectuals play key roles in this communication process. Anderson points to the crucial role print media plays in creating these communities, highlighting the first European nation-states as quintessential examples. Said’s ideas about Imagined geographies are similar to Anderson’s.
Said uses this term when referring to perceived spaces created by intellectuals through the use of particular images, texts, and discourses.5 His ideas are based on his analysis of the ways in which those in the West have created Imagined geographies of the Orient. He claims that Western culture’s modern understanding of the Orient is based on a selective imagination conjured up through intellectual representations, including academic Oriental studies and travel writings. Said claims that intellectuals’ representations have feminized the Orient by portraying it as open and virgin space with no concept of organized rule or government. The intellectual’s ability to create these Imagined geographies serves as a powerful tool that can be used to control and subordinate the Other. The Other is a term I use throughout the book and it refers to that which is alien and divergent from that which is given, such as a norm, identity, or the self. Its binary is the Same. The constitutive Other often denotes a different, incomprehensible self outside of one’s own. It is a concept that is key to Said’s work on Orientalism.
Dore Gold’s popular representation of Wahhabism is a good example of an intellectual creating an Imagined community. His representation is worth considering given his book, Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism, appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.6 Published soon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it is unsurprising that his book was so popular given the widespread anger and the need of many to find answers or assign blame for the rise in Islamic terrorism and its focus on Western targets. It should also be noted that the US-born Gold is a prominent intellectual that has served as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, as an advisor to Israeli Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, and is president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He also testified as an expert before the US Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, claiming Saudi Arabia provides ideological and financial support for Islamic terrorist groups and organizations.7
Gold is one of the authors whose representations I first read when researching the Israeli–Palestinian conflict following my discussions with my Palestinian friend in Stockholm. His views and his book are widely cited. He is one of those authors who uses representations of Wahhabism,
