ab was a man of great intellectual power and
vigour. He could pierce through the mists of a thousand years, and see with
an eagle eye how one sect and another had laid accretions on the Faith. He
had the rare gift of intuition, and could see that change (Bida't) and
progress were alien to the truth. This recognition of his ability is due to
him; but what a sad prostration of great gifts it was to seek to arrest, by
the worship of the letter, all hope of progress, and to make "the
starting-point of Islam its goal." That he was a good Musalman in so doing
no one can doubt, but that his work gives any hope of the rise of an
enlightened form of Islam no one who really has studied Islam can believe.

Wahhabiism simply amounts to this, that while it denounces all other
Musalmans as polytheists, it enforces the {112} Sunnat of the Prophet with
all its energy.[97] It breaks down shrines, but insists on the necessity of
a pilgrimage to a black stone at Mecca. It forbids the use of a rosary, but
attaches great merit to counting the ninety-nine names of God on the
fingers. It would make life unsocial. The study of the Fine Arts with the
exception of Architecture can find no place in it. Isma'il quotes with
approval the following Tradition. "'Ayesha said: 'I purchased a carpet on
which were some figures. The Prophet stood in the doorway and looked
displeased.' I said: 'O messenger of God, I repent to God and His
Messenger; what fault have I committed that you do not enter?' His Highness
then said: 'What is this carpet?' I replied; 'I have bought it for you to
sit and rest upon.' Then the messenger of God replied: 'Verily, the maker
of pictures will be punished on the day of resurrection, when God will
desire them to bring them to life. A house which contains pictures is not
visited by the angels.'" In a Tradition quoted by Ibn 'Abbas, the Prophet
classes artists with murderers and parricides. Wahhabiism approves of all
this, and thus by forbidding harmless enjoyments it would make society "an
organised hypocrisy." It would spread abroad a spirit of contempt for all
mankind except its own followers, and, where it had the power, it would
force its convictions on others at the point of the sword.

Wahhabiism was reform after a fashion, in one direction; in the history of
Islam there have been attempts at reform in other directions; there will
yet be such attempts, but so long as the Quran and the Sunnat (or, in the
case of the Shia'h,