Dr Natana DeLong-Bas superbly states in chapter six of her book Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad:
"The global jihad espoused by Osama bin Laden and other contemporary extremists is clearly rooted in contemporary issues and interpretations of Islam. It owes little to the Wahhabi tradition, outside of the nineteenth-century incorporation of the teachings of Ibn Taymiyya and the Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jauziyyah into the Wahhabi worldview as Wahhabism moved beyond the confines of Najd and into the broader Muslim world.
The differences between the worldviews of Bin Laden and Ibn Abd al-Wahhab are numerous. Bin Laden preaches jihad; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab preached monotheism.
Bin Laden preaches a global jihad of cosmic importance that recognizes no compromise; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's jihad was narrow in geographic focus, of localized importance, and had engagement in a treaty relationship between the fighting parties as a goal.
Bin Laden preaches war against Jews and Christians; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab called for treaty relationships with them.
Bin Laden's jihad proclaims an ideology of the necessity of war in the face of unbelief; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab preached the benefits of peaceful co-existence, social order, and business relationships.
Bin Laden calls for the killing of infidels and the destruction of their money and property; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab restricted killing and the destruction of property.
Bin Laden calls for jihad as a broad universal prescription for Muslims of every time and place; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab confined jihad to specific and limited circumstances and contexts.
Bin Laden issues calls to violence and fighting; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab sought to curtail violence and fighting.
Bin Laden provides an ideological worldview based on jihad; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab provided legal justifications for the mechanics of jihad.
Bin Laden calls for jihad as an individual duty; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab upheld jihad as a collective duty.
Bin Laden requires no justification for jihad outside the declaration of another as an infidel; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab limited justifications for jihad and restricted the use of the label infidel.
Bin Laden's vision of jihad clearly belongs to the category of contemporary fundamentalists; Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's vision of jihad contains elements of both classical and modernist interpretations of Islam.
Wahhabi Islam is neither monolithic nor stagnant. Changes in thought, topics addressed, and emphases on different themes have clearly occurred over the past 250 years.
The militant Islam of Osama bin Laden does not have its origins in the teachings of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and is not representative of Wahhabi Islam as it is practised in contemporary Saudi Arabia, yet for the media it has come to define Wahhabi Islam in the contemporary era.
However, "unrepresentative" bin Laden's global jihad of Islam in general and Wahhabi Islam in particular, its prominence in headline news has taken Wahhabi Islam across the spectrum from revival and reform to global jihad. [56]
[Extracted from Does Saudi Arabia Preach Intolerance and Hatred in the UK and the US? by SalafiManhaj, http://www.salafimanhaj.com/pdf/SalafiManhaj_Saudi.pdf]
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Footnotes:
[56] Natana DeLong Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp.278-279
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