Hatred’s Kingdom

Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism by Dore Gold, Regnery Publishing, 2003. 

Wahhabism

Dore Gold describes the origin of Wahhabism. The founder of Wahhabi Islam, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, lived in the early 18th century in a village a little north of Riyadh on the Najd plateau. At that time, there was mutual respect between the four schools of Suni Islam (Shafii, Hanbali, Hanafi, Malaki). Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab changed that. He declared that his Hanbali school, had the right to attack Muslims belonging to the other three schools, because the other schools were polytheistic. An example of polytheism was a Muslim praying to the Prophet Muhammad as if he were God (analogous to the way Christians treat Jesus). Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab felt that Islam had been corrupted by foreign influences: Turkish, Persian, Shia, Christian, Western. He also disliked the bedouin pagan Arab practices of idol worship.

House of Saud

In 1744 Muhammad ibn Saud of Riyadh and Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab made a covenant to work together to conquer neighboring tribes and convert them to Wahhabism. 

Hashemites and the Hejaz

The Hashemites, who belong to the same tribe as the prophet Muhammad, have long occupied the western part of the Arabian peninsula, which is called the Hejaz. The Hejaz contains the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. During World War I, in order to obtain Hashemite support for the war against the Ottoman Turks, the British promised to make the Hashemite royal family kings of Jordan and Iraq. In 1924-25, the Wahhabis conquered the Hejaz and took Mecca and Medina from the Hashemites.

Creation of Jordan

The British rescued the Hashemite royal family. Even though the traditional land of the Hashemite rulers had extended northwards only to the city of Aqaba, in Jordan, the British gave the Hashemite royal family an area around the city of Amman.