The Life, Teachings and Influence of Muhammad ... - IslamHouse.com

The Life, Teachings and Influence of Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhaab
Then Schwartz writes,
Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s doctrines explicitly downgrade the status of
Muhammad. Yet he claimed to live a life so close to the exemplary
Sirah of Muhammad that he could stand as a peer to the Prophet
himself. It seems clear that Ibn Abd al-Wahhab saw himself as an
equal of the Prophet, a view that is also thoroughly heretical in
Islam. Some critics assert that he even saw himself as surpassing
the Prophet. But, above all, for Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s radical
interpretation of Islam to gain followers, the Prophet’s personality,
and especially his dedication to compassion and mercy, had to be
amputated from the body of Muslim doctrine. 1
This is classic Schwartz perverse reasoning. The person who most
promoted the following of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah
be upon him) in every aspect was trying to downgrade the status of
Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). It was
Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhaab who wrote, “From here we
recognize the necessity above all necessities: the individual has to
know the Messenger and what he came with. There is no path to
success except upon his hands. Nor is there any way to distinguish the
good from the evil except through his means of distinguishing them.
The person’s necessity to know the Messenger is greatly above any
other need that is hypothesized and any other necessity that is
presented.” 2 Do these sound like the words of a man who is trying to
surpass the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) or a
man who is calling all to submit to the Prophet (peace and blessings of
Allah be upon him)?
The rest of the passage again is not worth commenting on.
However, it is curious to note that throughout his work, Schwartz is
claiming that the dangerous “Wahhabism” is sweeping the Muslim
world. Is this truly possible by removing all remnants of compassion
and mercy from the message of Islam?
In the next paragraph, Schwartz simply repeats some of the
false propaganda against ibn Abdul-Wahhaab that was discussed in
Chapter 5. He says that ibn Abdul-Wahhaab “preached abandonment
of the four traditions,” meaning the four schools of fiqh. He claims
that ibn Abdul-Wahhaab denounced all non-Wahhabis as non-
1 Schwartz, p. 70.
2 Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhaab, Muallifaat, vol. 6, p. 13.
300