Another important point to emphasize is how the Ottoman State perceived the Wahhabis from the religious aspect. Şeker indicates that the Ottoman authorities used the same weapon which was used by Wahhabis towards other Muslims. To explain, the Ottomans defined the Wahhabis as superstitious and blamed them for creating new bid‘at because they claimed to remove bid‘at from Islam. Therefore, the Ottomans categorized them as superstitious because of their beliefs like the Wahhabis considered the Ottomans.
Furthermore, the document dated on 28th of April 1803 also indicates that the Ottomans used the word ‘mülhid’(unbeliever) to define the Wahhabis266 like the Wahhabis labelled the Ottoman pilgrims as ‘müşrik’ (polytheist). Besides, the Ottoman government used the term of “Kharijites” to define Wahhabis since it saw itself as the main representative of Islam, so the attack of the Wahhabis meant for the Ottomans as a direct attack on Islam, since they regarded their Islamic practices as proper Islam.
Like Şeker, Commins and Güner also agree that by 1802, the Ottomans had been mounting a doctrinal campaign, sending official tracts refuting Wahhabi positions and likening them to the Kharijites of early Islamic times.”This is because the Wahhabis rejected all Sunni madhabs by ascribing them unbelief (takfir). In addition to this term, Güner indicates that additional terms like İbâdi, Rafizî, Hârici-i Suûd, Hâricî-i menhus, Hâricî-i Abdülvehhab were used in the Ottoman official correspondences to name the Wahhabis. As noted in previous parts of the thesis, both Wahhabis and the Kharijites shared similar understanding of the Qur’an. Yet, Güner puts forward that although there were parallelisms among them, this does not mean that Wahhabis were the continuation of the Kharijites. But, according to her, although religion was in the center of all these criticizing discourses and fights, the Ottomans saw the Wahhabi threat primarily as a security problem. The threat they posed towards the Ottoman authorities in the region influenced the discourse of the Ottoman State towards them. However, although the Wahhabi threat shaped the discourse of the Ottomans, it does not mean that political implications of the Wahhabi movement were more important than its religious implications for the Ottoman Empire. That is to say, even though the primary concern of the Sublime Porte was to provide security and order in Haramayn, it gave equal weight to understand their creeds, and to negate their religious doctrine. The decision of sending alim, Adem Efendi, as its emissary to the Wahhabis to understand their creeds, and to convince them about the principal contradiction of Wahhabism to Sunni Islam276 proves that Ottomans did not merely consider the Wahhabi movement as a political problem, but also a religious problem. Also, its seems that the efforts of the Sublime Porte to convince the Wahhabis to change their views continued until 1813.
The document dated on 3th of January 1813 shows that the Saudi leader not only sent some epistles and statements of Ulama beside his letters to the governor of Damascus, Suleiman Pasha, but also declared the true believers (Ahl al-tawhid) as unbelievers. These documents were translated and sent to Istanbul with their original copy. In the document, it is stated that although response letters were written in conformity with Sharia and logic to convince him, these letters were far from convincing him because he maintained his stubbornness. This is why, it is stated that there was no need to send response from Istanbul; the response of Suleiman Pasha was enough. This was notified by Istanbul and the center found it appropriate for Suleiman Pasha to send a response letter. Therefore, this situation also proves that the Ottomans considered the Wahhabis not only a political problem but also a serious religious problem, as well.
Apart from the official documentation, we know that the Ottoman chronicles also discussed Wahhabism in their accounts. Güner states that in the Ottoman historiography, the first Ottoman chronicle talking about the Wahhabis was the chronicle of İzzi Süleyman Efendi in 1752. According to her, almost all the Ottoman chronicles shared similar ideas about the Wahhabis. To illustrate, they saw the Wahhabi problem both as a religious and a security problem. Yet, they considered this security problem like other security problems which occurred in the other parts of the Empire.Also, the author states that chroniclers like İzzi Süleyman Efendi, Ahmet Cevdet Pasha, Eyüp Sabri Pasha mostly reflected the official discourse of the government which evaluated the Wahhabism as a superstitious
belief.
However, the late Ottoman author Hüseyin Kazım appears to be noteworthy since he indicated a separate attitude from the official discourse. Both Güner and Şeker show that unlike the abovementioned authors, he did not reprove the movement because he saw its discourse within the boundaries of ahl al-sunnah. In fact, he supported their aim about removing the bid‘a and turning back to the original Islam.28
Yet, Şeker points to the fact that Cevdet Pasha’s account is crucial in terms of analyzing the Wahhabis because those works compiled after Cevdet Pasha did little but repeating the stance and rhetoric of his account. According to Cevdet Pasha, the reasons of the spread of Wahhabism were based on blood relations (asabiyyah), and geographical condition of the region, Najd which was a closed region to outside world, and always witnessed the different belief systems throughout history. Also, he states other reasons which explain the spread of the Wahhabi movement. According to him, the Ottomans did not interfere with the movement on time since they did not evaluate the Wahhabis as a political threat, and likened them to Kadızadelis. Therefore, he asserts that, if the Ottomans intervened them in the beginning, they could have prevented Wahhabism to become a political threat to the Ottoman Empire in the first place. Şeker provides names such as Eyüp Sabri Pasha, Midhat Pasha and Ahmet Midhat Efendi as Cevdet Pasha’s contemporary colleagues who shared similar ideas with him. As the followers of Cevdet Pasha, he states names like Abdurrahman Şeref, Haydari-zade, Hüseyin Hüsni, Şehbenderzade Filibeli Ahmet Hilmi, Yusuf Akçura, İzmirli İsmail Hakkı, Said Nursi, Ömer Rıza and Zakir Kadiri.
Re: Islamophobia in the West
Originally Posted by Axalon
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