It is sometimes implied that the Saudi effort to spread Wahhabism has the effect of spreading terrorism and anti-Americanism. That outcome would be difficult to demonstrate. . . . Further, it is not at all clear that puritanism or Wahhabism, while it may produce negative attitudes toward consumerism and libertinism, predispose people to commit terrorism, as some pundits have alleged. Most suicide bombings in the past thirty years have not been carried out by Wahhabis or persons influenced by them, but rather by individuals fighting what they see as the foreign military occupation of their country. . . . Connecting a religious tradition to terrorism would require more evidence than a few instances of guilt by association.37
Cole clearly understands his role as an intellectual is to help dispel myths and misinformation promoted by Western “terrorism experts,” “right-wing pundits,” and “American hawks,” who he believes are racist, ignorant, and eager to wage war. Cole writes:
As I’ve glared at the self-appointed “terrorism experts” who have paraded across my television screen since 2001, I’ve become more and more alarmed at the dangerous falsehoods many of them purvey. Most of them have no knowledge of the languages or cultures of the Middle East, or any history of residence there. The message of the right-wing pundits and pastors and politicians is that Muslims form a menace to the West unless they are subdued and dominated. In that sense, the military occupation of Iraq that began in 2003 exemplifies the mind-set of American hawks.38
Cole is dismissive of many of the ignorant and deliberately misleading claims made by Western commentators about Wahhabism, including the commonly asserted claim that it “predisposes people to commit terrorism.”39 As evidence, Cole highlights the fact that the majority of suicide bombings in the last thirty years have been motivated by anti-imperial and anticolonial ideas rather than by Wahhabi religious ideology. Referring to incidents like the pro-Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel, Cole’s claims rely on the assumption that conflicts like those between Israeli and Palestinian forces are anticolonial and anti-imperialist in nature rather than acts of terrorism. This view is diametrically opposed to those offered by Gonzalez-Perez and Gold and helps highlight the relation between one’s political prejudices particularly with regards to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and representations of Wahhabism. Since Cole sees the Palestinian as primarily anticolonial and anti-imperial in nature and not religiously inspired, he is not inclined to search for a religious rationale for the violence, meaning he does not consider the possibility that Wahhabism is responsible for inspiring and motivating Palestinian violence.
Cole’s role as an intellectual aligns more with conceptualizations offered by authors like Chomsky, who maintains that an intellectual’s role is to speak truth to power rather than promoting particular class and group interests.40 While Cole’s representation absolves Wahhabism of any blame, it would not be categorized as a positive portrait. These are hard to come by when trawling bookshelves in public libraries, universities, and colleges in the Western world. Natana DeLong-Bas’s book, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad, is certainly the exception to the rule and I will take a closer look at this shortly. Positive portraits are a little easier to find when searching academic journals online. However, the obvious problem is these representations do not have the ability to reach the same number of people given that the negative portraits have the backing of many of the leading Western publishers. Nonetheless, Muhammad Al-Atawneh’s article, “Wahhabi Self-Examination Post-9/11: Rethinking the ‘Other’, ‘Otherness’ and Tolerance,” is certainly worth considering given the stark contrast between his views and the more mainstream and popular views published in popular books and US newspapers.41
Muhammad Al-Atawneh is a Muslim intellectual whose article about Wahhabism appears to be in response to the common charge that Saudi Arabia is responsible for promoting this radical version of Islam. Writing in 2011, Al-Atawneh claims Saudi Arabia and the Wahhabi religious establishment after the 9/11 terrorist attacks made the necessary policy changes ensuring that Wahhabism does not in any way promote violence, intolerance, or extremism among Saudi Arabians. He wants to challenge the notion that Saudi Arabia is in any way complicit in Islamic terrorism, referring to a number of policy initiatives and government actions as evidence of the kingdom’s commitment to tolerance, harmony, and an embracing of the Other.
Unlike Gold, Lewis, and Gonzalez-Perez, Al-Atawneh challenges the idea that Wahhabism is radical per se. He wants us to distinguish between its radical and conventional interpretations. Al-Atawneh fervently rejects the idea that the Saudi Kingdom is engaged in the kind of politics typically associated with the political realist tradition where the international political arena is conceptualized as a battleground of competing interests, where the state does everything in its power to secure its own interests.42 Instead he sees the Saudi Kingdom as dedicated to a version of politics geared at helping end injustices and wrongs. This approach resonates with recent conceptualizations of the political provided by authors like Critchley and Crick.43 Instead of blaming the Saudi and Wahhabi establishments for inspiring the radical interpretation of Wahhabism that is responsible for some recent Islamic terrorism, Al-Atawneh puts the blame on rogue elements. He writes that most “of the post-9/11 criticism appears to be lodged against extremist groups, described by Saudi officials as those who have ‘gone astray’ (firqa dalla).”44
On first appearances, one could easily understand Al-Atawneh as an apologist for the Saudi state. Indeed, though we need to approach such claims with a certain ironic detachment, Al-Atawneh is exactly the kind of intellectual that authors like Chomsky are extremely critical of. According to Chomskian logic, Al-Atawneh should instead be “seek[ing] the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.”45 If we were to imagine the representations of Wahhabism as existing on a spectrum, Al-Atawneh and Gold’s representations would certainly feature at opposite ends. Unfortunately for Al-Atawneh and supporters of the Saudi state, Al-Atawneh’s article appears in an online scholarly journal, while Gold’s book appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.
The question of truth claims is again on display in work by Natana DeLong-Bas.46 Her work is the closest thing we can see as a defense of Wahhabism sitting on bookshelves at libraries, bookstores, and places of higher education throughout the Western world. She offers a spirited defense of the faith, claiming Wahhabism actually promotes peace, encourages tolerance, and advocates women’s rights. Wahhabism is not, according to DeLong-Bas, in any way responsible for inspiring modern Islamic terrorism. She writes:
Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s emphasis on the importance of Islamic values and the intent behind words and actions, as opposed to concern for ritual perfection, has opened the door for reforms in Islamic law, the status of women and minorities, and the peaceful spread of Islam and the Islamic mission in the contemporary era.47
Her account is one of the most prominent—and widely criticized—representations of Wahhabism in the post-9/11 period.48 Her critics have among other things accused her of being an apologist for extremist Islam. Well-known Saudi and Wahhabism critic Stephen Schwartz, whose articles appear in a variety of right-wing and neoconservative publications, has claimed that DeLong-Bas has “reached a depth of mendacity about radical Islam it is hard to imagine her exceeding.”49 She has also drawn the ire of pro-Israeli writers like Caroline Glick who wrote:
DeLong-Bas told the newspaper [London pan-Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat] that she does “not find any evidence that would make me agree that Osama bin Laden was behind the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. All we heard from him was praise and acclaim for those who carried out the operation.”
This was not the first time the Brandeis faculty member acted as an apologist for jihadists. Indeed she seems to be making a career out of it. According to a FrontPageMag.com expose of her career, in 2004 she published Wahhabi Islam: From Revival to Global Jihad, a work partially funded by Saudi Arabia