Vass wrote:
I believe that would be because the Saudi royal family are Wahhabis themselves, have been since virtually the beginning of the Wahhabi movement in uh... the 1780s.
Your date is roughly correct, and yes, the Wahhabi originators were tightly linked to the House of Saud, and assisted each others' rise to power.
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From the little I've read, I understood Wahhabism to be a more conservative than Sunni Islam generally is, however nowhere near as extreme as Sh'ism is in its teachings.
This, however, is incorrect. Wahhabism is harsher than either Shia or Sunni Islam. The Taliban were Wahhabis, Osama bin Laden is a Wahhabi, the 9-11 hijackers were Wahhabis, and it is the Wahhabi mosques and madrassas that are the ones churning out more
jihadis across the globe.
Here for some background on the Wahhabi/al-Saud connection, and much information about the spread of Wahhabi teaching.
Here for an example of the kind of person designing the Wahhabi curriculum.
His credentials:
Al-Fawzan is member of the Senior Council of Clerics, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, a member of the Council of Religious Edicts and Research, the Imam of Prince Mitaeb Mosque in Riyadh, and a professor at Imam Mohamed Bin Saud Islamic University, the main Wahhabi center of learning in the country.His statement:
“Slavery is a part of Islam,” he says in the tape, adding: “Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long there is Islam.”Not much room for peaceful interpretation there.
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For what it's worth, my understanding of it was that Saudi Arabia had a Wahhabist majority, one of the 'fun' things autocrats can do is make sure everyone is of the right religion. Sadly I don't have any numbers to confirm this, but it's also entirely plausible that Wahhabism is just the religion of the aristocracy...
Vass
Hey, this history degree is actually useful for something...
Wahhabism is indeed the state religion, and its supremacy is
strictly enforced by the government. Saudi Arabia bans the importation of Christian crosses and images of the Buddha, and openly practicing any religion other than Islam is an offense with serious consequences.