Wahhābism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement | Book Talk with Cole Bunzel

The controversial Islamic movement founded by ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb that arose in the central Arabia in mid-18th century forever changed both the region’s political landscape and the history of Islamic thought. While teaching most professed Muslims to be polytheists for tomb and saint veneration, he also preached the "true Muslims" to show hatred and enmity toward these polytheists and fight them in jihād. Drawing on a wealth of primary source materials, including rare manuscripts gathered from across the globe, Bunzel tells this story until its taming and coopting by the modern Saudi state in the 1920s. Tracing its doctrinal origins to Ibn Taymiyya, Bunzel shows how its legacy endures in the ideologies of al-Qāʿida and the Islamic State.

Cole Bunzel is a historian of the contemporary Middle East, specializing in the history of Arabian Peninsula, Islamic theology and law, and modern Islamic radicalism. He is the author of Wahhābism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement (Princeton, 2023), and has written widely on Saudi Arabia and militant Islamist groups, including al-Qaida and the Islamic State. He received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University and has been a fellow at Yale Law School's Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization. Since 2019, he has been a Hoover Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. He edits the website jihadica.com.