Ignorance of the meaning of Extremism
Exaggerated zeal and Extremism, Ghuluww, is a phenomenon that has been rejected by all Islamic schools of thought, madhāhib. You will not find any school that has sanctioned it. The angry look that schools of thought have given the Extremism is because of repeated warnings of the Qur’an and specified in the words of the Prophet, peace be upon him and his descendents, both constantly reminding Muslims that deviations in religion are based on Extremism foundations. The history of Extremism goes back to the time when “deviation” was born in history. In other words, there is no deviation without having stemmed from some kind of Extremism. It is a definite historical point that Extremist inclinations have been at work in all sects that are outwardly Islamic but are in fact distanced from the reality of Islam.
Here, we do not intend to recount all Qur’anic statements and the sunnah vocabulary in regard to Extremism and its dangerous outcome, nor do we plan to talk about Ghulāt sects, their roots and the influence exerted on them by Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity, because these are unrelated to our discussion. We would rather reveal something that is closely connected with our aim, and has not been discussed elsewhere, that is, the position of the concept “Extremism” in the Wahhābiyyah culture and the definition of its concept.
Ever since the 18th century CE, when the Wahhābiyyah was established until today, various and weird definitions of “the Extremism”, ghuluww, incongruous with the Imāmiyyah’s and even with the Sunnīs’ views, have been in vogue. These are definitions that finally end in charging Islamic sects with Extremism.
I remember the time when I, as a prejudiced Wahhābī, was being trained, in Wahhābī training centers of Arabia. The definition that we were given concerning the concept “Extremism” was such that it did not spare most Sunnīs including the Ash‘arites, and the Maturidis, let alone the Imāmiyyah.
This method applied in training and propaganda had left abnormal influences on me and other students. For example, we considered these sects as tainted with Extremism, polytheism, disbelief and deviation. Therefore, we did not permit ourselves to read and study their ideas. We were pessimistic of their scholars and did not treasure holding dialogues with them.
The contemporary Sunnī scholar, “Yūsuf Qardāwī” depicts this pitiful event that has come from hatred and infected complexes of the Wahhābīs as follows: “No one other than the enemies of Islam will benefit when Islamic rites are misrepresented, religious symbols are destroyed and values are demolished. It is a pity that these acts have now been turned into wishes of certain Muslims. On my trip to Arabia last year, I came across a terrible and pitiful event: a series of books that had attacked and rebuked the scholars leveling accusations against them. Some of these books had been written by certain salafī supporters Wahhābī Fundamentalists, who had not spared any of the past and contemporary, living or dead, scholars [‘ulamā’] but had sharply charged them with accusations, slanders and vilifications”.[1]
Muhammad al-Ghazzālī, the leader of the contemporary Sunnīs, calls the Wahhābīs’ interpretation of religion “queer and unfamiliar”[2], and reckons it as the most dangerous enemy of Islam. He says, “The development of Islamisation is being threatened from various directions, the most dangerous of which is a kind of religious thought in extremist-fundamentalist attire that even the true Salafiyyah hate.”[3]
How prudent it would be if the Wahhābīs heeded these remarks and critically examined their own understanding and interpretation of the Extremism. Without self-criticism, one will not be able to examine one’s outlook and distinguish the truth from falsehood.
The important point to be made here is that there are two usages for the term “Extremism”: one in jurisprudence and the other in tradition, hadīth. It is an erroneous application of the meaning of “Extremism” to jurisprudence that pushes one into infidelity and unbelief. The implications we come across in the history of hadīth merely refer to some narrators, poles apart from what it means in jurisprudence.
Shahristānī, the Ash‘arī, says, “The Ghulāt are the people that went to extremes as regards their religious leaders [the imāms]; took them out of the limitations that are set for all created beings and installed them on the divine throne: sometimes likening them to God and sometimes likening God to them, excessive in one direction and belittling in the other. Their doubt has its sources in the notion of the infusion of the divine into man [hulūl] in metempsychosis and in the claims the Jews and Christians had made.”[4]
The kind of Extremism that leads to infidelity, according to the above text, has two fundamental bases:
a. Deifying man: raising man to the dignity of divinity.
b. Lowering God’s position to man’s.
The idea of the infusion of the divine into man denotes a lowering of God’s position, and the notion of man’s pre-eternity ends up in his being deified. These two serious notions can easily be understood if a bit of investigation is conducted on the Ghulāt sects.
On the other hand, the kind of Extremism discussed in the science of hadīth, when referring to certain narrators, pertains to the off-shoots [the furū‘] of Islam, not to the roots [the usūl]. The former is no cause for infidelty. It is the Wahhābī’s mingling of the two that has driven them into committing dangerous blunders. Such is the case with the contemporary Wahhābī writer, ‘Abd al-Rahmān ‘Abd Allāh Zar‘ī, who was unable to differentiate between the two in his book Rijāl al-Shī‘ah fī al-Mīzān.
When we study the books the Sunnīs have written on the science of the narrators of hadīth [‘ilm al-rijāl], we see that the Sunnī authors have used the term ghuluww [Extremism] to refer to many people who although disagree among themselves as to the superiority of the Companions, never take them as deities. Therefore, these narrators cannot be considered as infidels The Wahhābīs gradually drifted away from the current meaning of “Extremism” as the Sunnīs had recognized it, and extended the scope of its application so widely that the resulting fire began to burn the Sunnīs too. Taking Shī‘ahs and Sunnīs as supporters of the Extremism, the Wahhābīs directed torrents of accusations against the non-Wahhābī sects.
