Natana’s comprehensive and original analysis of the writings of the influential Arabian religious reformer Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab rejects the conventional idea that the movement is a radical departure from the mainstream of Islam.
She debunks the common journalistic portrayal of Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab as an illiterate, rural bumpkin with no scholarly formation.
She provides a convincing reinterpretation of this controversial thinker’s beliefs, especially, in regard to the status of women. He emerges as an original thinker whose views on Jihad and women in particular are not extreme or fanatical but scholarly and moderate.
By amassing so much evidence for her original interpretation of a rich intellectual vision at the core of Wahhabism, DeLong opens the way for historians to reconsider and revise the standard, perhaps mistaken, notions about it.