Ikhwan,s Movement in Wahhabism

Since coming to the power of Ibn Saud in the early twentieth century until the late eighties of this century significant changes have occurred in the history of Wahhabis. This inflexible, rigid, fundamentalist and reactionary religion that could not meet the needs of domestic and international dimensions of time and solve the problems of the newly established Saudi Arabia, gradually retreated and took conservatism. The first milestone of this retreat and revisionism backs to reign of Abdulaziz bin Abdurrahman  known as Ibn Saud till to the end of Faisal bin Abdul-Aziz’s reign  in the early seventies. In contrast to this Conservatism, opposition movements took place within Wahhabi community. The first and main Wahhabi movement in Saudi Arabia is known as the Ikhwan Movement that took place in protest against the policies of the ruling Wahhabism. Ikhwan were nomads from the desert bedouin tribes of Najd such as Utaibeh and Motyr and ideologically strongly believed in the teachings of Wahhabism and militarily had become the main group in the army of Ibn Saud for conquering areas; but when the conquests of Saudi Arabia reached to the areas under British protection, Ibn Saud ordered to stop the conquests and Ikhwan quickly turned to become one of the main critics of Ibn Saud for taking western technological and modern advances. Ikhwan opposed with Western emblems, British advisers and Jihad’s cease and some of their leaders rose against Ibn Saud and had political goals in mind that was futiled by Ibn Saud, but in the sixties and seventies, there is resurgence and protests of this movement with divisions and commons. This research study the emergence and evolution of this movement and in addition to the study of the causes of Ikhwan,s disagreement with the rule of Wahhabi, tries to compare the ideology of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the first Wahhabism and eventually proves the hypothesis that the ideology of Ikhwan follows the  Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s function and is in conflict with the rule of Al-Saud.