Puritans of the Desert

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 412, 21 July 1928, Page 24

Puritans of the Desert

Ibn Saud and His Stern Wahabi Followers

■ E have had threats of. a Weekly Herald,” and alarming stories have warrion Wahabis under Ibn Saud, massing together for an attack on Iraq and Transjordinia—a situation acutely involving our own country. Ibn Saud, the rebel leader, is 4$ years of age. During the Great War he joined the British cause, and two years ago. when he was proclaimed King of the Hedjaz and Sultan of Nejd, he received from Britain a subsidy of £500,000. He has 24 wives and 13 surviving sons. The Wahabis are a remarkable people—a Spartan race of Arabs inhabiting a region, prosperous and ever-growing, in the Arabian desert. They differ from the other tribes in that are not nomadic. When they were founded in the eighteenth century they were shown the folly of vagabondage; they gave up the wandering habits of their fore fathers and settled down to expand

their community and extend their ramifications. Their capital to-day is Riyadh, 1,000 miles from Amman, the hub of Transjordania. Fundamentally the Wahabis are Mohammedan, although certain tenets of that faith are not upheld or practised by them —their thirst for modern culture and development having caused them to throw over several of the Mohammedan principles. The tribe was formed by Mohammed Ibn Abdul Wahab, a religious pioneer and prophet, who lived from 1691 until 1765. His words spread like wild fire across the desert spaces, and his enthusiastic followers became known as “ Wahabis.”

From their earliest days this strict sect has been a power in their land—a religious tribe seeking reform and

culture under a Puritan code and fervent faith which have become a pow- J erful fanaticism. They have been regarded as the Eastern prototype of our Puritan or Protestant reformers, and on account of their love of fighting, their contempt of death, their sworn war against all infidels, they have been compared with the earlier Crusader warriors or Cromwell's fanatical "Iron sides.” Abdul Wahab at the very outset, condemned the religious pilgrimages —so much a part of the Moslem faith —and prohibited his followers from wasting time in their treks to Mecca. He included in his reforms, which are faithfully adhered to, the prohibition of wearing jewels and ornate clothing, the custom of tobacco smoking, and other luxuries. He forbade the practice of lengthy and costly pious exercises, and stopped the devotional ceremonies at the tombs of saints. The veneration of the Prophet Mohammed he declared to be tantamount to idola try. His passion was cleanliness, simplicity, and earnestness in all things. He sought reform and education and enlightenment in every sphere of human activity. The kings and leaders that have followed him have kept his fan atical torch ever flaming. In ISO 3, when the Wahabi leader captured Mecca during a “holy war,” he built an immense bonfire in the courtyard of the mosque and burned all the silks, jewels, ornaments, trinI kets and pipes and tobacco that could j be collected from the inhabitants. ! To-day Ibn Saud is being urged for- | ward by the success of past con I quests.

Shortly after the Great War this descendant of Mohammed waged war with Hussein, Shereef of Mecca and King of Hedjaz. Ibn Saud was the conqueror, and he added to his title of Sultan of Nejd the greater glory of the King of the Hedjaz. But in his rumoured war on Iraq, the bellicose Ibn Saud is up against an entirely different matter —tffie circumstances are as different as they are pregnant with disaster. Iraq is not there for the mere “lifting”; it is not a floating territory simply waiting until it is subjected by the Wahabis and embraced in their fanatical tentacles. It does not mean that because Feisul, King of Irag, is the son of the conquered Hussein Ibn Saud may contemplate reducing another member of the hated family to subjection. There is a world of difference. Iraq is British mandated territory.