#because it wasn't wahhabism

[apenitentialprayer]

Would I be somewhat correct to say that, loosely, iirc, Sunni Islam is like Protestantism in its strict, “exclusive” monotheism (no saints, no extra devotions to Muhammad or asking others to pray for you, no holy sites for other individuals), and no hierarchy, whereas Shia is more like Catholicism - a hierarchy in the leadership of the divinely set 12 Imams, praying to saints, relics etc., going to holy pilgrimage sites and wells etc., also ritual mortification in memory of Husayn (like wearing cilices or hairshirts in Catholicism). I’ve encountered some Sunnis who also dismiss it all as crazy and not in the Qur’an, as “extra,” added on—similar to how Protestants say about us with praying to saints, sacramentals etc etc

Ah, I think that while the Sunni=Protestant / Shi'a=Catholic analogy can kind of work so long as it's understood not to be a one-to-one analogy and that it falls apart the second any nuance is applied to it, I still think it only applies to some of what you said and not to others.

Sunnism definitely does not have a hierarchy the same way that Shi'ism does, and Sunnis definitely don't believe that devotion to the 'Ahl al-Bayt (the family of Muhammad) is an essential duty in the way that Shi'is do, but there is significant overlap between most Sunnis and Shi'is in terms of the other things you mentioned.

Muslims of all kinds have a long history of relic- and saint-veneration, from (Sunni) Mehmed the Conqueror who supposedly had a tooth of Muhammad to Hazratbal, considered one of the holiest (pan-Muslim) shrines in India because it houses a hair from Muhammad's beard. There are also lots of stories about Muslim saints appearing to others in visions to initiate them into esoteric rites (Sufism, primarily a Sunni phenomenon), and many tombs of great scholars or mystics have had mosques built on top of them, often with their own traditional pilgrimage rites to go with them. Salim Chishti, for example, is a Sunni saint of the Chishtiyya order whose tomb is often visited by women seeking to become pregnant; they ask for his intercession by tying a little red ribbon around the fences of the shrine.

In the West, however, there are large strands of Islamic thought influenced by Muhammad al-Wahhab, himself deeply influenced by Ibn Taymiyyah; they both believed that much of what was then mainstream in Islam wasn't authentically Islamic, and so sought to combat religious innovation (bid'a in Arabic) by removing anything they believed could not be traced back to the Muslim community as it existed when Muhammad was still in living memory. While proponents of an Islam that does not have saints, does not engage in pilgrimages beside the Hajj and the Umrah, and does not have holidays besides Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha are vocal, they are not the only Sunnism in existence.

[kingtycoon13]

also me banging my pots and pans: the origins and spread of Islamic extremism, wahhabism and the extreme versions of Salafism are largely in part because of Western Imperialism!! Please read Khaled Abou El Fadl as an example, Wahhabism and similar ideologies spread because the Wahhabi's aligned themselves with the house of Saud which was aligned/directly supported by the West. Not coincidence, El Fadl talks about how Wahhabism likely would have never spread if it wasn't for this critical fact. And because Wahhabi ideology effectively made their opponents into apostates and also encouraged going beyond what Sharia traditionally dictated for punishment in this case that meant they could easily kill those who disagreed with them. This in combination with the West's devastating wars and imperialism in Muslim countries has led to the death of many traditional Muslim scholars and those who specialized in fiqh. Salafis and Wahhabi's also now have the money and resources that have allowed the spread of their translations (which implicitly support their ideology) and books to spread. The thing is as strange as it may seem Islamic extremism/terrorism is not just chaotic or hard to understand, the pieces are all there from recent history. And it goes even beyond this as well. These are not just random inherently violent and angry people, this is a complex narrative and weave of geopolitical events and reducing it even subtly to "Muslims violent" betrays the actual truths at play here.

[awed-frog]

Waiting for any media to mention the Sri Lankan Muslim community was targeted and infiltrated by Wahhabi Islam like -

On top of everything else, it’s genuinely offensive for them to just sit there and wax poetic about the civil war, and how SADLY, OH SO SADLY, Sri Lanka will never be free of its violent past *cue heartbreaking violin music*. I’ve seen a minumum of fifteen op-eds about this, and wtf? After that nutjob drove his lorry into people in France, nobody actually said��“You know what, Marseille’s sort of a shit city and people get murdered there every day, so” (which they maybe should have, btw, because if anyone in the media or government cared about anything happening outside Paris, we wouldn’t be in this mess rn). But somehow, whenever non-white people Do The Thing, all subtlety goes out the window and the conversation becomes Eh, it’s what they’re like.

Anyway: I don’t want to claim I know any profound truth, because we’ll have to wait for an investigation and I may be dead wrong about who’s behind these disgusting and cowardly attacks, anyway, but still - it’d be nice if people stopped pretending Islam is all the same and all equally valid. Wahhabi Islam (which, I’m sorry, is not valid in any way and is propagated by one of the worst regimes the world has ever seen) came to Sri Lanka in the 1970s, piggy-backing on the oil boom and new trade ties between Colombo and Riyadh. There were concerns pretty much immediately, because to Wahhabi Islam, local Sri Lankan Islam (Sufism) is basically worse than anything (Sufis. listen. to. music.), and predictably, the community started to splinter and fight. This included fatwas, murders, intimidation, arson - and even desecration of corpses. And next, the usual playbook we’ve seen in other Asian, African and European countries: the Saudi money raining like Murgo red gold on those communities - the charities, the cultural centres, the scholarships to study in the Middle East, the free mosques. Meanwhile, the UN mostly blabbered on about ‘freedom of religion’ and insisted local authorities should do more to accomodate Wahhabi Muslims - whether they were influenced by Saudi officials or genuinely thought they were doing something decent, it’s hard to know.

Truth is, Saudi Arabia is still the West’s darling because a) oil and b) they oppose Iran. That’s it. Everything else, from their appalling record on human rights to their heavy involvement in terror attacks all over the world, has been swept under the carpet. And now Israeli PM Netanyahu is getting all chummy with them, they will be even harder to oppose. So as a short do and don’t:

please be aware this is a problem

please support Saudi dissidents

please question your government’s friendship and deals with Riyadh 

please vote for candidates who take a stand

please learn to see Islam as a plural community

but also

please don’t drag the Jews into this one (I’ve seen the usual theories that Saudis are actually Jews out to destroy the world and come on)

[some sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x]