Manifest Enmity: The Origins, Development, and Persistence of Classical Wahhābism (1153-1351/1741-1932)

This dissertation presents a critical reexamination of Wahhābism (al-Wahhābiyya), the Islamic revivalist movement named for Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1792), from its emergence in central Arabia in the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. Drawing on an array of new primary source material, including rare manuscripts gathered from around the world, this study provides a new account of the movement’s origins, development, and persistence over a nearly two-hundred-year span, namely, 1741-1932. Its main contention is that throughout this period Wahhābism was a fundamentally exclusivist and activist movement, one set on converting the nominal Islamic world to its version of the faith by coercive means, including violence. In addition to calling on Muslims to turn away from what it considered polytheism (shirk), Wahhābism adamantly required its adherents to manifest enmity (ʿadāwa) to those Muslims deemed polytheists. As is examined in detail, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb grounded his doctrine in the religious thought of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350), two fourteenth-century Syrian Ḥanbalī scholars who stoked controversy in their own day for their views. Among other things, they held that the widespread practices associated with visiting the burial sites of saints and prophets constituted shirk. Following them, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb likewise deemed such practices to be shirk. Yet not only did he adopt these earlier scholars’ views, he adapted them in a more extremist direction. Furthermore, he launched a religio-political movement to eliminate shirk, following the example of the Prophet Muḥammad and the early Muslim community. For nearly two-hundred years, the exclusivist and activist spirit of classical Wahhābism persisted in the writings and activities of the leading Wahhābī scholars. It was only attenuated in the early decades of the third Saudi state (1902-present). From that point onward, while Wahhābī scholars continued to elaborate their doctrine as before, the hard-edged elements of the creed were less observed. Much later, beginning in the 1970s, the classical Wahhābī heritage was rediscovered and reappropriated by the emergent Jihādī Salafī movement, which found in the Wahhābī tradition ample justification, as well as inspiration, for a new form of Islamic activism

Dynamic variation in allele-specific gene expression of Paraoxonase-1 in murine and human tissues

Differential allelic expression has been shown to be common in mice, humans and maize, and variability in the expression of polymorphic alleles has been associated with human disease. Here, we describe the differential expression pattern of Paraoxonase-1, a gene involved in lipid metabolism and implicated in the formation of atherosclerotic lesions. We measured the expression of the murine Paraoxonase-1 gene (Pon1) in livers at different stages of embryonic development using F1 hybrid crosses and quantified the transcriptional level of both parental alleles. Using human foetal tissues, we analysed the expression of the human orthologue (PON1) and found monoallelic or preferential allelic expression in 6/7 and 4/4 samples from liver and pancreas, respectively. We observed that Pon1 does not show a parent-of-origin preference in its allelic expression, but has dramatic variations in allele-specific expression occurring throughout development. This study has important repercussions in the analysis of haplotypes at disease loci, since it implies that the expression of polymorphic alleles can be unequal and dynamic