The Wahabi movement was a strictly puritan reformation. Its aim was the reform of abuses, the abolition of superstitious practices, and a return to primitive Islam. All later accretions--the writings and interpretations of the mediæval theologians, ceremonial or mystical innovations, saint worship, in fact every sort of change, were condemned. The austere monotheism of Mohammed was preached in all its uncompromising simplicity, and the Koran, literally interpreted, was taken as the sole guide for human action. This doctrinal simplification was accompanied by a most rigid code of morals. The prayers, fastings, and other practices enjoined by Mohammed were scrupulously observed. The most austere manner of living was enforced. Silken clothing, rich food, wine, opium, tobacco, coffee, and all other indulgences were sternly proscribed. Even religious architecture was practically tabooed, the Wahabis pulling down the Prophet's tomb at Medina and demolishing the minarets of mosques as godless innovations. The Wahabis were thus, despite their moral earnestness, excessively narrow-minded, and it was very fortunate for Islam that they soon lost their political power and were compelled thenceforth to confine their efforts to moral teaching.
Many critics of Islam point to the Wahabi movement as a proof that Islam is essentially retrograde and innately incapable of evolutionary development. These criticisms, however, appear to be unwarranted. The initial stage of every religious reformation is an uncritical return to the primitive cult. To the religious reformer the only way of salvation is a denial of all subsequent innovations, regardless of their character. Our own Protestant Reformation began in just this way, and Humanists like Erasmus, repelled and disgusted by Protestantism's puritanical narrowness, could see no good in the movement, declaring that it menaced all true culture and merely replaced an infallible Pope by an infallible Bible.
As a matter of fact, the puritan beginnings of the Mohammedan Revival presently broadened along more constructive lines, some of these becoming tinged with undoubted liberalism. The Moslem reformers of the early nineteenth century had not dug very deeply into their religious past before they discovered--Motazelism. We have already reviewed the great struggle which had raged between reason and dogma in Islam's early days, in which dogma had triumphed so completely that the very memory of Motazelism had faded away. Now, however, those memories were revived, and the liberal-minded reformers were delighted to find such striking confirmation of their ideas, both in the writings of the Motazelite doctors and in the sacred texts themselves. The principle that reason and not blind prescription was to be the test opened the door to the possibility of all those reforms which they had most at heart. For example, the reformers found that in the traditional writings Mohammed was reported to have said: "I am no more than a man; when I order you anything respecting religion, receive it; when I order you about the affairs of the world, then I am nothing more than man." And, again, as though foreseeing the day when sweeping changes would be necessary. "Ye are in an age in which, if ye abandon one-tenth of that which is ordered, ye will be ruined. After this, a time will come when he who shall observe one-tenth of what is now ordered will be redeemed."[9]