1703–1792 CE · Religious reformer; founder of the movement known as Wahhabism

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab

In 1744, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab entered a pact with the local ruler Muhammad ibn Saud in Diriyah: political and military backing for the ruler's territorial expansion in exchange for state enforcement of his doctrinal program of rejecting perceived polytheism and heresy. The alliance's later evolution into the modern Saudi state took a further two centuries of shifting fortunes to complete.

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Research Paper
Islam or Muslim Culture? Measuring the Distance Between Revelation and Practice
A historical-critical essay testing whether practices commonly defended as Islamic -- from denying women their Qur'anic inheritance shares to state corruption and the political shaping of orthodoxy -- rest on the Qur'an itself, or on later interpretation, historical tradition, absorbed local custom, and political authority defended in revelation's name.

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab

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Islam or Muslim Culture? Measuring the Distance Between Revelation and Practice