"Do Not Let Hatred of a People Lead You to Transgress": A Quranic Refutation of Salafi-Wahhabi Extremism, The Construction of the Shiite Other, And the Imperial Logic of Firqat
By V.A. Mohamad Ashrof, New Age Islam
11 May 2026
The contemporary Muslim world finds itself beset by a paradox of devastating proportions. At the very moment when global imperialism, Zionist settler-colonialism, and racist ideologies demand unified resistance, a powerful theological-political current within Islam has directed its most intense energies not outward against these structural forces of oppression, but inward against its own community. Salafi-Wahhabi extremism — a movement that presents itself as the guardian of authentic Islam — has systematically constructed Shiism as a principal existential threat to the Muslim community (ummah), sustaining this narrative through a persistent and tendentious portrayal of Shii beliefs and practices and through a broader project of intra-Muslim fragmentation known as firqat. The consequences of this project are not merely theological but civilizational: a community divided against itself cannot address the genuine external pressures it faces, and a movement that manufactures internal enemies inadvertently serves those who profit from Muslim disunity.
This study undertakes a comprehensive Quranic refutation of this extremist project. It argues, on Quranic grounds, that the construction of Shiism as an enemy is fundamentally anti-Islamic in its methodology, its conclusions, and its consequences. It further demonstrates that the Quran not only permits but actively encourages the pursuit of alliances and shared ethical commitments with the People of the Book — traditionally understood to include Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and others — and that this inclusive ethical orientation must constitute a central Muslim agenda and strategy in the contemporary world. By contrast, the Quran identifies genuinely oppressive and exclusionary ideologies — racism, Zionism, and imperialism — as the legitimate objects of Muslim adversarial posture. Through analysis of Quranic hermeneutics, classical Sunni scholarship, hadith literature, and historical evidence including the destabilisation of the Ottoman Empire, this essay demonstrates that Salafi-Wahhabi sectarianism serves imperial interests, mirrors hegemonic logic, and betrays the pluralistic and justice-centred heart of the Quranic revelation.
The Quranic Mandate: Pluralism, Unity, and the Condemnation of Firqat
Any serious engagement with the question of sectarianism in Islam must begin with the Quran's own explicit statements on the subject, for the Quranic discourse is unambiguous: the fragmentation of the Muslim community into hostile sects constitutes a spiritual and communal catastrophe that the Prophet himself is divinely commanded to disavow.
The foundational verse in this regard appears in the Quran: "As for those who divide their religion and break up into sects, you have no part with them at all. Their affair is with God, and in the end, He will inform them of what they used to do" (Q.6:159). The grammar of this verse is instructive. The verb "farraqu" (to divide) carries the weight of deliberate, active fragmentation — these are not people who find themselves in different traditions through historical circumstance, but those who weaponize theological difference as a source of communal rupture. The Prophet's disassociation from such persons is not optional but divinely mandated, rendering the claim that any exclusionary sectarian project speaks for the prophetic tradition inherently self-contradictory. The Quran reinforces this injunction with equal directness: "Do not be of those who split up their religion and became sects, each party rejoicing in what it has" (Q.30:32). The phrase "each party rejoicing in what it has" diagnoses the psychological root of sectarianism — a narcissistic self-satisfaction that mistakes group identity for religious truth and the policing of boundaries for piety.
The Quran's condemnation of firqat is not an isolated sentiment but part of an architecturally coherent vision of community grounded in ethical monotheism rather than doctrinal uniformity. The Quran articulates this vision through one of its most celebrated injunctions: "And hold fast, all of you together, to the Rope of God, and be not divided among yourselves" (Q.3:103). The image of the "Rope of God" is theologically rich: it signifies the ethical and monotheistic core of the revelation — commitment to divine unity, justice, and prophetic guidance — as the bond that transcends and subsumes internal differences. The verse then contextualizes this command historically, reminding believers of their pre-Islamic condition of mutual enmity, from which divine grace rescued them and made them brothers. To revert to intra-communal antagonism is therefore not merely a political mistake but a theological regression — a return to the state of jahiliyyah (pre-Islamic ignorance) from which Islam claimed to liberate humanity.
What renders this condemnation of sectarianism particularly pointed in the present context is the Quran's framing of human diversity itself as a positive divine intention rather than a problem to be overcome. The Quran articulates what may be called the Quranic theology of pluralism: "O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of God is the most righteous of you" (Q.49:13). The purpose of human diversity — racial, ethnic, linguistic, and implicitly religious — is expressed in the active Arabic verb lita'arafu: "that you may know one another." Diversity is not a divine oversight or a test of tolerance to be merely endured; it is the very mechanism through which human knowledge, relationship, and mutual recognition are to be cultivated. The sole criterion of distinction in this Quranic anthropology is taqwa — righteousness or God-consciousness — a criterion that cuts across all communal boundaries and renders any hierarchy based on group identity theologically inadmissible.
The Quran carries this pluralistic vision further by explicitly situating religious diversity within the framework of divine will and providential purpose: "For each of you We have appointed a law and a way. If God had willed, He would have made you one community, but He wanted to test you in what He has given you. So race towards good deeds; to God shall you all return, and He will inform you of what you used to differ about" (Q.5:48). This verse performs several important theological moves simultaneously. First, it affirms that the existence of multiple religious communities and legal dispensations is not an accident of history but an expression of divine will. Second, it redirects the energy that might be spent on theological conquest toward virtuous competition in goodness. Third, it defers the ultimate adjudication of theological disagreements to divine judgment, explicitly removing that judgment from human authority. The Salafi-Wahhabi project, which appoints itself the arbiter of authentic Islam and condemns all who differ as deviant or apostate, arrogates to itself precisely the prerogative that the Quran reserves for God alone.
Classical Sunni scholarship understood these verses as establishing what might be termed a "presumption of Islam" — a default charitable interpretation of the faith of any person who affirms the foundational confession and prays toward Mecca. Early Muslim scholars treated sectarian labelling of fellow believers as a form of shirk (associating partners with God), insofar as it elevated human judgment over divine authority in determining who belongs to the community of the faithful. The Quran's instruction that "To Him is your return, and He will inform you of that in which you used to differ" (Q.5:48) is precisely a withdrawal of that adjudicative authority from human actors, rendering the self-appointed role of theological gatekeeper — which Salafi-Wahhabi extremism explicitly claims — a usurpation of divine prerogative.
Classical Sunni Scholarship Against Takfir: Al-Zahawi and Al-Ghazali
The Quranic condemnation of sectarianism finds robust doctrinal support in the mainstream Sunni scholarly tradition. Far from endorsing the Salafi-Wahhabi practice of takfir — the declaration of fellow Muslims as disbelievers — classical scholars from al-Ghazali (1058-1111) to the Ottoman-era scholar Shaykh Jamil al-Effendi al-Zahawi (1863-1936) set out precise and stringent conditions for its application that effectively rendered the Wahhabi deployment of the concept illegitimate.
Al-Ghazali, whose authority the Salafi-Wahhabi movement cannot easily dismiss, established that takfir is permissible only when three conditions are simultaneously met: first, that the person in question explicitly and clearly denies a dogma "known by necessity from the religion" (ma'lum min al-din bi al-darura) — that is, the core tenets of tawhid (divine unity), the prophethood of Muhammad, and belief in the Last Judgment; second, that this denial is conscious, deliberate, and not the product of ignorance, confusion, or interpretive error (ta'wil); and third, that the evidence for such denial is definitive and incontestable (qat'i), not merely probabilistic or contested. Al-Ghazali's framework establishes the "presumption of Islam" as the operative default: so long as a person outwardly adheres to the basic practices of Islam and does not explicitly deny its essential dogmas, the community must treat them as Muslim, regardless of heterodox secondary views. As later Sunni commentators emphasise, this presumption is intimately linked to the communal commitment to unity and to the rejection of takfir as a weapon in theological disputes.
Al-Zahawi's al-Fajr al-Sadiq (The True Dawn) represents perhaps the most sustained classical-era refutation of Wahhabism precisely on these Quranic and jurisprudential grounds. Writing from within the Sunni tradition, al-Zahawi identifies Wahhabism as a "false dawn" — a movement that presents itself as the revival of pure Islam but in fact revives the Kharijite heresy under a new label. His critique operates on several interconnected levels.
At the hermeneutical level, al-Zahawi charges that Wahhabis systematically misapply Quranic verses revealed about the pagan Arabs of Mecca to contemporary Muslims who affirm the shahada and the Quran but follow devotional customs such as invoking the Prophet's intercession or visiting graves. The Quran's condemnation of shirk, he argues, is directed at those who "actually worshipped idols and attributed offspring to God" and who "believed that intercession could operate independently of His will" — not at Muslims who seek the Prophet's intercession within the framework of tawhid. By collapsing this distinction, Wahhabism turns the Quran against the ummah it was sent to guide. This hermeneutical charge is significant: it demonstrates that Wahhabi theology does not simply misapply the Quran but actively subverts its plain contextual meaning, weaponizing the scripture against the very community it was revealed to protect.
At the jurisprudential level, al-Zahawi argues that Wahhabism violates the traditional Sunni principle that reserving takfir for cases of explicit, unambiguous denial of core dogmas is not a liberal concession but the methodology of the Salaf themselves. The Salafi movement claims to revive the practice of the pious early generations (al-salaf al-salih), yet, as al-Zahawi demonstrates, the actual Salaf were "extraordinarily cautious, limiting takfir to cases of explicit denial of prophethood, rejection of unequivocal Quranic texts, or open polytheistic worship." Wahhabism's innovation was to redefine shirk so broadly that everyday devotional practices — touching a grave, saying "O Prophet, help me" — became capital offences equivalent to Meccan idolatry. This, al-Zahawi contends, is not a return to the Salaf but a radical distortion of their doctrine. His conclusion is pointed: "true Salafism meant upholding unity, justice, and the sanctity of Muslim blood, not proliferating takfir against the ahl al-qiblah under the rhetoric of 'purity.'"
The parallel between Wahhabi takfir and the Kharijite heresy — which mainstream Sunni tradition has always condemned as one of the most dangerous deviations in Islamic history — runs throughout al-Zahawi's critique. The Khawarij, who declared both the Caliph Uthman and the Caliph Ali to be disbelievers and legitimized violence against them, are the paradigmatic example, in Sunni scholarship, of how a superficially pious commitment to Quranic literalism can degenerate into mass excommunication and bloodshed. Al-Zahawi's identification of Wahhabism with this pattern is not rhetorical excess but a substantive doctrinal argument: both movements apply Quranic verses about unbelievers to Muslims, both treat minor differences in belief or practice as grounds for excommunication, and both legitimate violence against the community of believers in the name of purification.
The scholarly consensus against casual takfir is captured in a ruling by the General Iftaa' Department of Jordan, which states that "Scholars of Ahlus-Sunnah Wal-Jama'ah have unanimously agreed that ruling a Muslim to be a disbeliever is prohibited since this renders his blood, wealth and honor violable" ("Ruling on Accusing Muslims of Disbelief"). This consensus not only delegitimizes the Salafi-Wahhabi practice but frames it as a threat to the foundational protections that Islamic law extends to every member of the community.
The Hadith Framework: Prophetic Warnings Against Takfir
The Quranic condemnation of sectarianism is powerfully reinforced by the hadith literature, which provides a set of prophetic warnings against takfir that directly and specifically contradict the Salafi-Wahhabi approach to fellow Muslims.
Perhaps the most cited prophetic warning in this context is: "If a man says to his brother, 'O unbeliever (Ya kafir!),' it will return to at least one of them: if the other is as he is described, then it is true; otherwise, it returns to the one who says it" (Bukhari 6104; Muslim 111). The logic of this hadith is theologically sophisticated: takfir is not merely a declarative speech act but a moral and spiritual wager. The person who declares another Muslim a disbeliever assumes full responsibility for the truth of that declaration; if they are wrong, the sin and its spiritual consequences rebound upon themselves. In the context of Wahhabi anti-Shia discourse — where Shii Muslims are routinely labelled "Rafidah" (Rejectors) or kuffar on the basis of devotional practices or theological positions — this hadith functions as a direct prophetic rebuke.
A related prophetic warning deepens this principle: "Never will a man accuse another man of fisq (depravity) or kufr (unbelief) except that it returns to him, if the other does not actually deserve it" (Bukhari 6045). This hadith extends the scope of the warning beyond formal takfir to the more casual polemical currency of accusation — the labelling of other Muslims as depraved or corrupt — that characterizes much of the Salafi-Wahhabi discourse on Shiism. Even below the threshold of formal excommunication, the prophetic tradition here establishes an ethic of extreme caution in characterizing the faith of fellow Muslims.
The hadith literature also preserves the Prophet's own model of restraint. Reports in the commentary tradition on takfir record the prophetic declaration: "I will not declare anyone from this nation to be an unbeliever" — a statement exemplifying the Prophet's own refusal to condemn believers even when he observed serious sin or hypocrisy among them. This prophetic model of forbearance is read by Sunni scholars as establishing the normative posture toward internal diversity: the preservation of the bond of brotherhood takes precedence over the policing of theological boundaries.
The Prophetic warnings against the Kharijite pattern are particularly relevant to the contemporary Salafi-Wahhabi phenomenon. The Prophet is reported to have said: "They will pass through Islam as an arrow passes through its prey, and they will not come back to it until the arrow returns... They will call the people of the truth kuffar and think they are in the right" (Bukhari 7564). This description — of a group that combines ostentatious piety with the excommunication of mainstream believers, and that believes itself to be uniquely in possession of the truth — maps onto the Salafi-Wahhabi trajectory with uncomfortable precision.
The hadith literature further affirms Muslim brotherhood as a categorical norm that admits no sectarian exception: "A Muslim is the brother of another Muslim; he does not wrong him, does not fail him, and does not despise him" (Muslim 2564). Read in conjunction with the Quranic verse "The believers are but brothers" (Q.49:10), this hadith frames Shii Muslims — who affirm the shahada, pray toward Mecca, fast during Ramadan, and perform the hajj — as brothers within the same community, entitled to protection rather than persecution. The prophetic tradition contains no basis for the Wahhabi exemption of Shii Muslims from this categorical brotherhood.
The Jordanian Iftaa' Department's condemnation of extremist groups as those who "spill blood and violate the sanctity of Muslims' life" and "follow the footsteps of the Khawarij" represents an authoritative contemporary expression of this classical consensus ("A Statement on: Calling for the Preservation of Brotherly Ties"). The explicit identification of anti-Shia violence with the Kharijite deviation places such practices outside the bounds of mainstream Sunni jurisprudence — not on the margins of permissibility, but in the category of heretical innovation.
Deconstructing the Construction of Shiism as Enemy
Against the backdrop of this Quranic and hadith-based framework of unity and restraint, the Salafi-Wahhabi construction of Shiism as a principal existential threat to Islam can be assessed for what it is: a politically motivated ideological project that lacks Quranic foundation and violates mainstream Sunni principles of jurisprudence and community.
The origins of this construction can be traced to Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792) himself, who declared the Shii to be disbelievers and described them as "even more dangerous than Christians and Jews because they claimed to be Muslims and thereby threatened to corrupt the true religion from within". (Bunzel, p.106, 312)
This foundational move — positioning internal theological difference as a more severe threat than external religious otherness — establishes a logic of inversion that is deeply revealing. In the Wahhabist calculus, a Christian who openly professes a different faith is less threatening than a Shii Muslim who affirms the same scripture and the same Prophet but interprets certain doctrines differently. The threat is not doctrinal error as such but the claim to belong — the appropriation of the Muslim name by those whom the movement wishes to exclude.
This logic of the "internal enemy" has a well-documented function in political ideology generally: it serves to justify authoritarian control, distract from external challenges, and consolidate group identity through the production of an impure other within. Applied to the Islamic context, the construction of Shiism as an existential threat accomplishes several ideological tasks simultaneously. It provides a domestic target that can be persistently vilified, sustaining a state of emergency that justifies exclusionary practices. It displaces attention from the structural injustices — imperialism, economic dispossession, Zionist colonialism — that the Quran explicitly identifies as objects of resistance. And it legitimizes a hierarchy of Islamic authenticity with the Salafi-Wahhabi movement at its apex, positioning all others as deviants in need of correction or elimination.
The specific practices through which Wahhabism brands Shii Muslims as apostates illustrate al-Zahawi's charge of hermeneutical distortion with concrete detail. The Wahhabis declared that the Shii belief in the infallibility of the Imams constitutes shirk, because it allegedly transfers divine attributes to created beings. They further accused Shii communities of "worshipping" or "deifying" Ali, Fatimah, and the Imams when they invoke them for intercession or visit their shrines. As al-Zahawi demonstrates, however, the Quranic definition of shirk is not coextensive with invocation of or devotion to revered figures; it requires the belief that those figures possess independent divine power operating outside God's will. The crucial distinction — between seeking God's mercy through the mediation of beloved figures and actually worshipping those figures as independent deities — is precisely the distinction that classical Sunni hermeneutics preserved and that Wahhabism collapses. By declaring Shii devotional practices shirk on the basis of outward form rather than inner theological content, Wahhabism applies Quranic verses about Meccan idolaters to people who have categorically different beliefs, thereby misusing the scripture it claims to defend.
The consequences of this construction have been concrete and catastrophic. Early Wahhabi-Saudi campaigns against Shii communities in eastern Arabia involved raids, shrine destruction, and the enslavement or killing of inhabitants. Wahhabis described Shii communities as existing in a state of jahiliyyah (pre-Islamic ignorance) until they submitted to Wahhabi doctrine — a framing that precisely mirrors the colonial logic of civilizational superiority, imposing a binary between the enlightened and the benighted that justifies coercive intervention. The normalization of takfir as a political tool has subsequently fed jihadist movements across the Muslim world, including Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and various Taliban-style organizations, all of which blend Wahhabi-inspired theology with the doctrine of excommunicating rulers and societies.
The Quranic Basis for Alliance with the People of the Book
Having established the anti-Quranic character of the Salafi-Wahhabi construction of Shiism as an enemy, it is necessary to examine the Quran's own framework for inter-religious relations — a framework that is strikingly more open and more ethically demanding than extremist readings allow.
The Quran's approach to the People of the Book — Jews, Christians, Sabians, and, by extension through the Sunna and classical jurisprudence, Zoroastrians and others — is characterized by a fundamental recognition of shared prophetic heritage and common ethical ground. The most comprehensive statement of this recognition appears in the Quranic verse:
Indeed, those who believe and those who are Jews, or Christians, or Sabians — those who believe in God and the Last Day and do righteous deeds — will have their reward with their Lord, and no fear shall come upon them, nor shall they grieve. (Q.2:62)
This verse performs a remarkable theological move: it locates salvific possibility not within the boundaries of any single religious community but in the conjunction of sincere belief in God, accountability to the Last Judgment, and righteous action. The explicit inclusion of non-Muslim communities within this framework is not an anomaly in the Quranic text but expressive of its consistent theology of prophetic continuity.
The Quran elaborates this framework through an invitation to common ground that has extraordinary implications for interfaith strategy:
Say: O People of the Book, come to a common word between us and you: that we will worship none but God, and that we will not associate anything with Him, and that none of us shall take others as lords besides God. (Q.3:64)
The concept of "kalimatin sawa'" — a common word, or equitable term — is the Quranic proposal for interfaith dialogue: not the demand that others surrender their distinctive traditions, but the invitation to identify and build upon the theological and ethical commitments that different traditions share. This approach, far from being a modern interfaith accommodation, is a Quranic strategy rooted in the understanding that shared ethical and spiritual commitments provide a more durable basis for community than enforced uniformity of doctrinal submission.
The Quran's recognition of diversity within the People of the Book is itself instructive. The Quran acknowledges that not all members of these communities are the same: "You will surely find the most bitter towards the believers to be the Jews and polytheists and the most gracious to be those who call themselves Christian" (Q.5:82). The significance of this verse lies not in its differential characterization of particular groups — which must be read in its specific historical context — but in its methodological implication: relationships with non-Muslim communities are to be assessed not on the basis of religious label alone but on the basis of actual conduct, disposition, and ethical orientation.
This behavioral principle is most clearly articulated in the Quranic verse: "God does not forbid you from those who do not fight you because of religion and do not expel you from your homes — from being righteous toward them and acting justly toward them. Indeed, God loves those who act justly" (Q.60:8). The word used here for "righteous toward them" is "tabarruhum" — derived from "birr," the term that denotes the highest form of dutiful care, the same word used for filial piety toward parents. The Quran thus instructs a quality of relationship with peaceful non-Muslim communities that is not merely tolerant or transactional but actively generous and just. Prophet Muhammad's own practice embodied this Quranic ethic: his Charter of Medina included Jews as an integral part of the community, granting them equal rights and mutual defence obligations.
The Quran's pluralistic theology finds perhaps its most architecturally significant expression in its treatment of the existence of multiple houses of worship. The Quran states: "And had it not been for God's repelling some people by means of others, monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques — wherein the name of God is much mentioned — would surely have been destroyed" (Q.22:40). The inclusion of monasteries, churches, and synagogues within the scope of divine protection is extraordinary: The Quran affirms that these diverse religious spaces, inhabited by communities that follow different paths, are part of a divinely ordered moral ecology that is worth protecting. This Quranic affirmation of religious diversity as a feature of the divinely ordered world provides the deepest theological grounding for the pursuit of shared ethical and spiritual commonalities as a central Muslim agenda.
The True Adversaries: Oppression, Racism, and Imperialism
The Quran's identification of the true adversaries of human flourishing is precise and consistent across multiple passages, and it differs fundamentally from the Salafi-Wahhabi construction. Where extremist ideology identifies religious and doctrinal deviance as the primary enemy, the Quran identifies oppression (zulm), arrogance (istikbar), and corruption (fasad) — categories that describe patterns of conduct and systems of power rather than religious identities.
The Quranic command "Be persistently standing firm for God, witnesses in justice, and do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just" (Q. 5:8) establishes justice (adl) as an obligation that transcends communal enmity. The active construction "and do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just" is particularly significant: it explicitly prohibits the transmutation of collective hostility — however justified in its origin — into an excuse for abandoning the standard of justice. This principal cuts directly against the Salafi-Wahhabi construction of Shiism as an enemy, insofar as that construction is deployed to justify the denial of Shii Muslims' rights, safety, and dignity.
The Quranic framework for identifying legitimate adversaries focuses on conduct rather than identity. Pharaoh — the paradigmatic Quranic figure of evil — is condemned not for his ethnic or religious identity but for his tyranny, his exploitation of the weak, and his arrogant claim to divine sovereignty: "Indeed, Pharaoh exalted himself in the land and made its people into factions, oppressing a sector among them, slaughtering their sons and keeping their females alive. Indeed, he was of the corrupters" (Q.28:4). The characteristics that make Pharaoh the Quran's archetype of oppressive power — the division of society into factions, the exploitation of vulnerability, the abuse of sovereign power — are precisely the characteristics of modern racism, colonialism, and Zionism.
The Quran’s declaration that "the most noble of you in the sight of God is the most righteous of you" (Q.49:13) constitutes a comprehensive Quranic refutation of racism. By establishing righteousness as the sole criterion of human distinction, the verse systematically dismantles any hierarchy based on race, ethnicity, or national origin. Zionism, as a project that privileges one ethno-national group in the establishment of a state at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population, stands in direct contradiction to this Quranic principle. Imperialism, in both its classical colonial and its contemporary neo-colonial manifestations, represents the modern form of what the Quran calls istid'af — the exploitation and subjugation of the weak by the powerful.
The imperial powers have historically "blazed out" sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shias to create chaos and misery, facilitating the exploitation of resources — a pattern that makes sectarianism not merely a distraction from the real enemy but actively instrumental to the enemy's interests. When Salafi-Wahhabi discourse frames Shiism as the greatest threat to Islam while declining to mount comparable opposition to Zionist settler-colonialism or imperialist military intervention in Muslim lands, it has implicitly adopted a hierarchy of adversaries that serves hegemonic rather than Islamic interests.
The Quran's command to "Help one another to righteousness and piety; do not help one another to sin and enmity" (Q.5:2) establishes the basis for a different kind of coalition politics: one built not on communal identity but on shared commitment to moral principle. This framework permits and indeed demands alliances across religious boundaries against injustice, while prohibiting the reinforcement of oppressive arrangements regardless of the religious credentials of those who benefit from them.
Historical Evidence: Sectarianism as an Imperial Tool
The argument that Salafi-Wahhabi sectarianism serves imperial interests is not merely theoretical; it finds substantial confirmation in the historical record. The experience of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provides the most instructive and well-documented example of how intra-Muslim divisions can be systematically exploited by external powers.
The Ottoman Empire represented, whatever its internal contradictions and failings, a pluralistic political framework in which Sunnis, Shii Muslims, Christians, and Jews coexisted under a shared political order. As David Fromkin documents in A Peace to End All Peace, European imperial powers — particularly Britain — systematically leveraged the Empire's internal ethnic and religious diversity to undermine its cohesion and accelerate its decline. The "Divide and Rule" strategy was not merely a background assumption of British imperial policy but an actively cultivated and institutionally embedded approach to managing the Ottoman domain.
The British relationship with the Wahhabi-Saudi alliance provides a particularly revealing case study. As Robin Alexander Plant documents, British officials in the Gulf observed the Wahhabi movement with a strategic eye that combined fear of Wahhabi militancy's potential to destabilize trade routes with calculation about how the movement's anti-Ottoman orientation could be leveraged for imperial purposes (Plant). The result was not a simple conspiracy in which Britain invented Wahhabism, but a more complex and historically attested pattern of selective support, political recognition, and diplomatic cover that enabled the Wahhabi-Saudi project to expand at the expense of Ottoman authority.
From the early nineteenth century onward, British political agents in the Gulf entered into a series of informal understandings and treaties with the Saudis, providing diplomatic cover and, in some cases, material support that enabled their expansion against Ottoman-aligned powers (Sindi). The confluence of interests was straightforward: British imperial strategy required the weakening of Ottoman authority in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf; the Saudi-Wahhabi project required external support for its campaigns against Ottoman-aligned rivals; the alliance delivered both. By the 1916-1918 period, when Britain needed allies against the Ottomans in the First World War, the Hashemite Arab Revolt in the Hijaz was secured while Saudi-Wahhabi expansion from the interior was quietly facilitated — a dual-pronged assault on Ottoman authority in the peninsula.
At the doctrinal level, the Wahhabi movement's takfir of the Ottoman Caliphate — its declaration that Ottoman practices were un-Islamic or deviant — provided theological cover for this imperial project. By declaring the Ottoman Caliph's claim to Islamic legitimacy invalid, Wahhabism removed the most powerful religiously-grounded argument against British expansion in the peninsula. The fragmentation of Muslim political solidarity into competing sectarian camps — Ottoman-loyal Sunnis, Shii communities, Sufis, and Wahhabi-aligned Saudis — served British aims precisely by making coordinated resistance to imperial expansion impossible.
Ottoman primary sources document the state's evolving perception of this threat. Archival records in the Bab-i Ali and Cevdet classifications record the Ottoman government's shift from treating the Wahhabis as a local Najdi problem to recognizing them as an existential challenge after their capture of Mecca and Medina in 1803. Fatwas issued by Ottoman-affiliated scholars declared the Wahhabis heretical on the grounds that their practices — destruction of shrines, killing of Sufis and Shii communities, takfir of mainstream Muslims — placed them outside the fold of normative Sunni Islam. These fatwas, preserved in major libraries, function as primary-source evidence that the Ottoman religious establishment understood Wahhabism not merely as a political-military threat but as a theological danger to the Caliphate's claim to be the legitimate guardian of Islamic civilization.
The pattern documented in Ottoman history has been replicated in numerous subsequent contexts. Colonial administration of Iraq by the British mandate authority involved the deliberate privileging of Sunni Arab minorities in governance structures at the expense of Shii majorities — institutionalizing sectarian hierarchy as a tool of colonial control. The resulting political architecture systematically prevented the development of a cross-sectarian Iraqi political culture, ensuring that communal divisions remained the primary axis of political identity. When these structures collapsed following the 2003 invasion, sectarian violence erupted along the fault lines that British administration had helped to create and deepen.
The contemporary Middle East presents analogous dynamics in sharper relief. Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel document in Sectionalization how regional and international actors systematically deploy sectarian narratives to justify intervention, sustain conflict, and fragment societies that might otherwise develop the cohesion to resist external domination. The Salafi-Wahhabi framing of conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and beyond as struggles between pure Sunni Islam and Shii "contamination" provides precisely the ideological framework needed for this sectionalization: it converts political conflicts with material causes into cosmic battles between religious identities, making political resolution more difficult and external intervention easier to justify.
Al-Zahawi's Quranic Critique and the Hermeneutics of Inclusion
The comprehensive Quranic critique mounted by al-Zahawi in al-Fajr al-Sadiq deserves extended attention, for it demonstrates that the refutation of Salafi-Wahhabi extremism is not a modern liberal accommodation but a classical Sunni argument grounded in the deepest methodological commitments of the tradition.
Al-Zahawi's central hermeneutical charge — that Wahhabis misapply Quranic verses about polytheists to ordinary Muslims — operates on the principle that the Quran must be read in its historical and textual context, not extracted as a collection of floating prohibitions applicable to any situation the reader finds analogous. The Quranic condemnation of shirk was directed at people who explicitly believed in multiple deities, who attributed offspring to God, and who maintained that their idols possessed independent power of intercession operating outside divine permission. To apply these verses to Muslims who invoke the Prophet's intercession while affirming that all power belongs to God and that intercession is effective only by divine permission is a contextual error of the most fundamental kind — one that collapses the distinction between genuine polytheism and monotheistic devotion that the Quran itself carefully maintains.
Al-Zahawi's second hermeneutical argument concerns the Quranic treatment of scholarly authority and consensus. The Quran's affirmation of "those who have knowledge among the servants of God" (Q.39:9) as worthy of respect and deference, and its characterization of following paths "other than the Muslims" (Q.4:115) as a spiritual danger, together support the classical Sunni case for the authority of the established schools of jurisprudence and their scholarly transmission. The Wahhabi rejection of taqlid (following established scholarly authority) and its condemnation of the four schools as deviant is, in al-Zahawi's reading, a violation of Quranic principle — a substitution of the authority of a small self-appointed vanguard for the accumulated wisdom of centuries of scholarly consensus.
The Quranic promotion of tolerance toward differing madhahib — schools of law and, by extension, religious traditions — finds its clearest expression in the foundational verse "There shall be no compulsion in religion; the right way has become clear from the wrong" (Q.2:256). This verse is read by classical and modern scholars alike as prohibiting coercion in matters of religious adherence and practice — not merely the coercion of non-Muslims to convert, but the coercion of Muslims to conform to a single doctrinal or legal pattern. Mohammad Hashim Kamali argues that this principle of non-compulsion, combined with the Quranic concept of wasatiyyah (the middle way of moderation), establishes a Quranic framework for tolerating legitimate internal diversity that Wahhabism fundamentally violates. The declaration of entire schools, traditions, and communities as deviant or apostate is precisely the kind of compulsive conformism that "there is no compulsion in religion" was designed to preclude.
Al-Zahawi's final argument — that Wahhabi takfir violates the Quranic spirit of brotherhood, unity, and protection of Muslim life — brings together all the preceding threads. The Quran repeatedly frames the community of believers as a brotherhood (Q.49:10), commands that members of this brotherhood not wrong, fail, or despise each other (Muslim 2564), and reserves for God the ultimate adjudication of internal theological differences (Q.5:48). The systematic use of takfir to expel vast portions of the Muslim community from this brotherhood — not on the basis of explicit, unambiguous denial of core dogmas, but on the basis of devotional practices that classical scholars classified as error or innovation — is a usurpation of divine authority and a violation of the communal bond that the Quran places at the centre of Islamic social ethics.
Strategic Myopia and the Self-Defeating Logic of Anti-Shia Sectarianism
Beyond its theological illegitimacy, the Salafi-Wahhabi project of constructing Shiism as an existential threat suffers from what can only be described as strategic myopia of the most profound kind. By directing the community's adversarial energies toward an internal target that the Quran does not sanction as an adversary, it systematically weakens Muslim collective capacity to address the genuine external threats that the Quran does identify as objects of resistance.
The most immediate strategic consequence is the squandering of community solidarity. The global Muslim population of approximately 1.8 billion includes somewhere between 150 and 200 million Shii Muslims — roughly ten to fifteen percent of the total. A movement that defines this substantial portion of the community as apostates and existential threats has, at a stroke, rendered inter-Muslim solidarity on any political question vastly more difficult. The Quranic warning against internal division — "and do not quarrel with one another, lest you falter and your strength fade" (Q.8:46) — could hardly be more directly applicable. Anti-Shia sectarianism ensures that precisely this weakening occurs, as resources of attention, energy, rhetoric, and in the most extreme cases physical force are directed inward rather than outward.
The second strategic consequence is the creation of openings for precisely those forces the Quran identifies as legitimate objects of opposition. When Muslim communities are consumed by intra-Muslim polemics and violence, Zionist expansion in Palestine proceeds, imperialist military interventions continue, and racist ideologies flourish without encountering coordinated resistance. The Quran's vision of the Muslim community as a "witness unto mankind" (Q.2:143) — a community that models justice, protects the oppressed, and resists tyranny — requires a degree of internal cohesion and clarity of moral purpose that perpetual sectarian warfare makes impossible.
The third and perhaps most troubling strategic consequence is the alignment of Salafi-Wahhabi discourse with the structures of hegemonic power. The "clash of civilizations" narrative — the idea that Islam is inherently violent, irrational, and incompatible with modernity — relies on the image of a fragmented, internally violent, and doctrinally totalitarian Muslim world. Every sectarian massacre carried out in the name of Sunni purity against Shii communities, every fatwa declaring Muslim scholars and communities apostate, every broadcast of theological hatred between Muslim factions provides the visual and rhetorical raw material for Islamophobic discourse in the West and for imperialist architecture in the Muslim world. The extremist Salafi-Wahhabi preacher and the far-right white nationalist converge in their rejection of the Quranic vision of a common humanity "created from a single soul" (Q.4:1) — both demanding a world of pure, segregated identities and rejecting the creative tension of pluralism.
The contemporary Middle East has demonstrated these strategic consequences with painful clarity. The prioritization by certain Gulf state regimes of "containing Shia influence" over supporting Palestinian liberation, resisting imperial military intervention, or developing regional economic independence has produced exactly the alignment with hegemonic power that the Quran prohibits. When Muslim states permit or facilitate operations against Palestinian civilians while simultaneously funding sectarian violence against Shii communities, they have abandoned the Quranic framework of adversarial politics entirely — replacing the Quran's identification of oppressive conduct as the criterion of enmity with a sectarian calculus that serves imperial interests.
The Consequences of Global Wahhabism: Deepening Fracture and Civilizational Damage
The global diffusion of Wahhabi doctrine, accelerated by Saudi petrodollar funding from the 1970s onward, has had consequences for the Muslim world that can only be described as civilizational damaging. These consequences extend across multiple dimensions: the intensification of Sunni-Shii hostility, the normalization of takfir and jihadist violence, cultural and legal rigidity in Muslim-majority societies, and the fragmentation of moral and political unity among Muslims globally.
The intensification of sectarian hostility has been perhaps the most immediately visible consequence. By labelling Sufi-style saint veneration, shrine visiting, and Shii devotional practices as shirk, Wahhabism and its Salafi export forms have treated entire Muslim traditions as illegitimate or apostate communities. The result has been the persecution of Shii and Sufi communities across the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and Pakistan; atrocities in which Wahhabi-linked groups target Shii and Sufi mosques, shrines, and gatherings as "heretical"; and the entrenchment of a binary view of Islam as either "pure Wahhabi-Salafi Islam" or "corrupt, polytheistic traditionalism" that distorts Islamic civilizational self-understanding in ways that will take generations to undo.
The normalization of takfir has had consequences beyond its immediate sectarian targets. When religious authorities teach that Muslims who follow different schools, practise certain forms of tawassul, or support "un-Islamic" governments are disbelievers, it becomes ideologically possible — and for some psychologically necessary — to justify assassination, bombing, and civil war against fellow Muslims. Khaled Abou El Fadl documents extensively in The Great Theft how this logic has been deployed to justify violence across the Muslim world. The Wahhabi theological infrastructure of takfir does not directly cause these specific acts of violence, but it provides the ideological framework within which such violence becomes thinkable and even obligatory.
The cultural and legal consequences within Gulf societies have been equally significant. State-sponsored religious education and media in Saudi Arabia and allied states have presented Wahhabi doctrine as the "authentic Islam," systematically marginalizing Sufi, Shii, and liberal-modernist currents and eroding the pluralistic religious culture that existed in many regions for centuries. Fazlur Rahman's observation that the Quran's "major themes" include a consistent emphasis on ethical monotheism, social justice, and intellectual engagement — rather than doctrinal conformism and ritual police — suggests how far the Wahhabi project has departed from the Quranic center of gravity.
On the international stage, the Wahhabi frame of Islam has become a factor in geopolitical polarization, particularly through the Saudi-Iranian rivalry. Because the Saudi state controls the Haramayn and major pilgrimage infrastructure, it wields religious authority as a soft power tool, using its custodianship of Islam's most sacred sites to present Wahhabi theology as normative Islam and to portray Iran and Shiism as heretical deviations. This has contributed to the sectionalization of regional conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, where Wahhabi-linked actors help frame local political struggles as cosmic battles between pure Sunni Islam and Shii contamination — a framing that serves both external intervention and internal political control. Shahab Ahmed's analysis of Islamic diversity as a constitutive feature of what Islam is, rather than a deviation from it, suggests how radically the Wahhabi project misunderstands the nature of the tradition it claims to defend.
Towards a Quranic Alternative: Pluralist Solidarity and Justice-Centered Engagement
The Quranic refutation of Salafi-Wahhabi extremism is not merely negative — not simply a demolition of a flawed ideology — but points toward a positive alternative: a vision of Muslim engagement with the world grounded in pluralist solidarity, justice-centered ethics, and the intellectual humility of recognizing divine sovereignty over all human theological disputes.
The pursuit of shared ethical and spiritual commonalities as a central Muslim agenda — what the Quran calls "kalimatin sawa'" (a common word) — is not merely a pragmatic accommodation to pluralist modernity but a Quranic imperative. The invitation to the People of the Book in Surah Al-Imran (3:64) is strategically as well as theologically significant: it proposes cooperation on the basis of mutually affirmed principles — the worship of God alone, the rejection of idolatry, the refusal to take others as lords — as the foundation for a moral coalition that transcends religious boundaries. In the contemporary context, this suggests a Muslim politics that seeks alliance with all who resist oppression and affirm human dignity, regardless of their religious or philosophical commitments.
Farid Esack's framework of "Quranic liberation and pluralism," developed in the context of the South African anti-apartheid struggle, provides a model for this kind of engagement. Esack argues that the Quran's consistent identification of the mustad'afin (the oppressed) as the primary object of divine concern, and its command to stand with them against oppression regardless of their religious identity, provides the theological basis for a solidarity that transcends communal boundaries (Esack). In this reading, the question "who is my ally?" is answered not by examining the ally's creed but by examining their conduct: do they resist oppression, affirm human dignity, and act with justice?
The Quranic ethic of engagement with difference — "Invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and argue with them in a way that is best" (Q.16:125) — establishes dialogue rather than condemnation as the normative mode of Islamic encounter with otherness. This applies to intra-Muslim disagreement as much as to inter-religious engagement: the existence of genuine theological differences between Sunni and Shii traditions is not denied or suppressed, but it is addressed through "argument in the best way" rather than through excommunication and violence. Edward Said's analysis of the ways in which essentialist representations of the Other serve the interests of power provides a useful analytical lens for understanding why the Salafi-Wahhabi reduction of Shiism to a fixed set of deviant characteristics is not merely intellectually dishonest but politically functional.
The Quranic affirmation of human dignity — "And We have certainly honored the children of Adam" (Q.17:70) — provides the ultimate theological foundation for this pluralist ethic. Human dignity, in this framework, is not a contingent quality that can be revoked by theological disagreement or communal difference; it is an intrinsic attribute of every human being, conferred by divine creation rather than earned by doctrinal conformity. Any ideology that denies or qualifies this dignity on the basis of religious identity — whether through the dehumanization of racial others characteristic of racism and colonialism, or through the spiritual dehumanization of Muslim others characteristic of Salafi-Wahhabi extremism — stands condemned by the Quran's most foundational anthropological commitment.
Abdulaziz Sachedina's work on the Islamic roots of democratic pluralism argues that the Quranic framework for religious coexistence — with its emphasis on freedom of conscience, non-compulsion, and competitive virtue — is not merely compatible with pluralist political arrangements but actually generates them from within Islamic theological resources. This suggests that the Quranic vision of the Muslim community is not one that seeks to subsume all others into its own framework, but one that models a particular kind of ethical engagement with diversity — rigorous in its commitments, generous in its hospitality, and confident enough in the truth of its own revelation to encounter others without anxiety or aggression.
The Salafi-Wahhabi Project as a Betrayal of Islam
The evidence assembled in this essay — Quranic, hadith-based, scholarly, and historical — supports a conclusion that is sobering in its directness: The Salafi-Wahhabi construction of Shiism as a principal existential threat to Islam is not a defensible theological position but a political-theological project that is simultaneously anti-Quranic in its methods, anti-Islamic in its consequences, and strategically convergent with the imperial and hegemonic interests it claims to oppose.
The Quranic condemnation of firqat is explicit and unambiguous. The verses commanding believers to hold fast to the rope of God (Q.3:103), warning against those who split their religion into sects (Q. 6:159; 30:32), and reserving ultimate adjudication of theological differences to divine judgment (Q. 5:48) together establish a comprehensive prohibition of the kind of permanent sectarian antagonism that the Salafi-Wahhabi project has institutionalized. The hadith framework reinforces this prohibition with prophetic authority: the warnings that takfir of a Muslim brother rebound upon the accuser (Bukhari 6104; Muslim 111), the model of prophetic restraint in declaring Muslims disbelievers, and the explicit prohibition of accusations of depravity or unbelief without definitive proof together construct takfir as a grave, exceptional judgment rather than a routine polemical tool (Muslim 2564).
Classical Sunni scholarship, from al-Ghazali's stringent conditions for takfir to al-Zahawi's comprehensive refutation of Wahhabi hermeneutics, consistently identifies the Salafi-Wahhabi approach as a deviation from mainstream Sunni methodology — one that violates the Salaf's own practice of caution and restraint in matters of excommunication, misapplies Quranic verses on pagans to ordinary Muslims, and collapses the traditional distinctions between shirk, bid'a (innovation), and sin in ways that criminalize everyday devotional culture. Al-Zahawi's identification of Wahhabism as a Kharijite revival locates the movement within a well-defined tradition of Islamic self-critique that the movement itself cannot easily dismiss.
The Quran's framework for interfaith relations, examined in detail above, permits and encourages alliances with the People of the Book on the basis of shared ethical and spiritual commitments, as long as those communities do not engage in active oppression against Muslims. This framework makes the Salafi-Wahhabi posture of hostility toward Shii Muslims — people who share the Quran, the Prophet, and the five pillars — not merely inconsistent but intellectually perverse: if the Quran permits seeking common ground with communities that do not affirm Muhammad's prophethood, on what scriptural basis can it be argued that those who do affirm it constitute an existential threat?
Historical evidence demonstrates that the sectarian fragmentation promoted by Salafi-Wahhabi ideology has served imperial rather than Islamic interests at every documented historical juncture. The British cultivation of the Wahhabi-Saudi alliance against Ottoman authority, the colonial institutionalization of sectarian hierarchy in Iraq, and the contemporary mobilization of sectarian narratives to justify external intervention and resource extraction together confirm what Quranic analysis suggests: divide-and-rule is the logic of imperialism, and any Muslim movement that promotes division serves that logic, whatever its professed intentions.
The contemporary alignment of Salafi-Wahhabi discourse with hegemonic power structures is perhaps the most damning indictment of the movement's strategic failure. By constructing internal enemies — Shii Muslims, Sufi communities, "innovators" of every description — rather than directing its considerable resources and influence toward resisting genuine oppression, the movement has inadvertently confirmed the most vicious stereotypes deployed by Islamophobes and imperialists alike. As Wael Hallaq demonstrates, the combination of state power with theological exclusivism produces a form of political religion in which the state's claim to represent authentic Islam becomes impossible to challenge without being accused of attacking Islam itself — a configuration that serves authoritarian governance rather than the Quranic vision of a community accountable to divine justice.
The Quranic alternative is clear, demanding, and urgent. It requires the rejection of takfir as a political tool and the return to al-Ghazali's stringent conditions for its application. It requires the recognition of intra-Muslim diversity as a feature of the divinely ordered community, to be navigated through "argument in the best way" rather than excommunication and violence. It requires the active pursuit of alliances with non-Muslim communities on the basis of shared ethical commitments and shared resistance to oppression. And it requires the reorientation of Muslim adversarial energy toward the genuine enemies that the Quran identifies: racism, imperialism, and exclusionary ideologies that deny human dignity and perpetuate injustice.
The Salafi-Wahhabi project, in its essence and its effects, is not a defence of Islam but a betrayal of it. It takes the scripture of a community called to be "a witness unto mankind" (Quran 2:143) — a moral exemplar and a champion of justice for all humanity — and converts it into a warrant for fratricidal sectarian violence that serves the interests of those who wish to dominate and divide the Muslim world. To reclaim the Islamic tradition from this betrayal is not a concession to liberal modernity but a return to the Quran's own most fundamental ethical commitments: unity, justice, mercy, and the recognition of the divine image in every human being. Only by rejecting the project of firqat and embracing the Quranic vision of pluralistic unity can the ummah fulfil its divinely ordained role as a community of justice for all humanity.
Bibliography
Abou El Fadl, Khaled. The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists. New York: HarperOne, 2007.
Ahmed, Shahab. What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.
Bunzel, Cole M. Wahhabism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023.
“A Statement on: Calling for the Preservation of Brotherly Ties and the Rejection of Conflict and Disagreement.” Amman: General Iftaa' Department of Jordan, 3 Apr. 2014. aliftaa.jo/ArticlePrintEn.aspx?ArticleId=231. Accessed 6 May 2026.
Esack, Farid. Quran, Liberation and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity against Oppression. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1997.
Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1989.
General Iftaa' Department of Jordan. “Ruling on Accusing Muslims of Disbelief and Killing Them for That.” Fatwa No. 3412. Amman, 16 Aug. 2018. aliftaa.jo/en-fatwas/3412/Ruling-on-Accusing-Muslims-of-Disbelief-and-Killing-them-for. Accessed 6 May 2026.
Hallaq, Wael B. The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity's Moral Predicament. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
Hashemi, Nader, and Danny Postel, eds. Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Kamali, Mohammad Hashim. The Middle Path of Moderation in Islam: The Quranic Principle of Wasatiyyah. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Plant, Robin Alexander. “Discuss the Relationship between Wahhabism and British Imperial Policy in the Nineteenth Century Persian Gulf.” QM History Journal, 6 Nov. 2020. qmhjournal.wixsite.com/qmhj/post/discuss-the-relationship-between-wahhabism-and-british-imperial-policy. Accessed 6 May 2026.
Rahman, Fazlur. Major Themes of the Quran. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Sachedina, Abdulaziz. The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
Sindi, Abdullah Mohammad. “Britain, the Rise of Wahhabism and the House of Saud.” Kanaan Online, 19 Jan. 2015. kanaanonline.org/en/2015/01/20/britain-the-rise-of-wahhabism-and-the-house-of-saud/. Accessed 6 May 2026.
…
V.A. Mohamad Ashrof is an independent Indian scholar specializing in Islamic humanism. With a deep commitment to advancing Quranic hermeneutics that prioritize human well-being, peace, and progress, his work aims to foster a just society, encourage critical thinking, and promote inclusive discourse and peaceful coexistence. He is dedicated to creating pathways for meaningful social change and intellectual growth through his scholarship.
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism