shockerfan:
Question for you: Are there more denominations than just Sunni and Shiâite?
Not in Sunni Islam, but Shiâa Islam has subsequently fractured into dozens of sects since it split off from the main body of Muslims, just as Protestants did when they split with the RCC.
How do you define movement?
A movement in a religion to me is a conscious awareness and emphasis on the part of those involved on something in the faith, or a specific approach as a response to a heresy or something that violates orthodoxy. The key word there is âresponseâ. This contrasts with a sect, which truly does have different beliefs.
And Wahhabism is exactly a movement. It started in the 18th century as a response of some Muslims to various innovations, both practices and beliefs, that had been imported into the faith over the centuries, but which were without support from Scripture or Prophetic Tradition. The movement aimed to return the faithful back to the authentic sources of Islam, and to purge these innovations from practice.
Without a doubt, Wahhabismâs back-to-the-basics, fundamentalist approach successfully saved Muslim orthodoxy from being watered down into chaos and oblivion. Unfortunately, Wahhabismâs conservative push to the right, pulling the ummah back from its liberal innovationsâŚlike a train with no brakesâŚkept moving to the right even after its goals had been accomplished.
Today, Wahhabism is a movement way overdue for being ended, moving so far to the right that itâs ironically now jeopardizing, through a literalism that has become extreme in its rigidity, the orthodoxy it sought to restore. But nevertheless, it is still a movement, not a sect. It does not teach anything except pure, orthodox, Sunni Islam.
