WI: No Wahhabism?

Say that al-Wahhab either died in infancy or never became interest in theology, and consequently the sect that bears his name never arose. How would this affect the course of Middle Eastern and world history over the past three hundred years?
 
Well, it would have a huge impact on contemporary fudamentalist Islamism, as it served as model, logistical and monetary support all over the world.
Butterflies would be enormous.

As an aside, we may still have Medina and Mecca as religious historical site, instead of an Islamist Las Vegas that destroyed everything on sight.
 
He was simply the one who bore the torch, which could've been anybody. Fatwa e-Alamgiri is the basis of Salafi revival muslim world wide and admittedly Ottoman-Hejazi treatment of interior Arabia wasn't entirely fair. A political movement will eventually rise against urban harassments of the interior Arabia and there's no other kind of ideology with stronger grip over a disparate tribal people then one of dogmatic religious nature. Extreme Salafism simply made for a natural contrast to Ottoman brand of Islam.
 
He was simply the one who bore the torch, which could've been anybody.

A political movement will eventually rise against urban harassments of the interior Arabia and there's no other kind of ideology with stronger grip over a disparate tribal people then one of dogmatic religious nature.

I somewhat disagree : you have many exemple of rigorist Islamic schools that eventually died out when beduin adopted more mainstream ones, or because of their own irrelevance.
Furthermore, a failing wahhabism (that I agree with you, would be as well religious than political) could as well serve as an anti-model, leading to diffent schools appearing (maybe not as rigorist, at least not on the long run).
 
Perhaps a resistance movement against Ottoman-Hejazi yoke in Nejd wasn't inevitable, at least not to persist, but Salafist current in general has always been part of Islamic history, and a critical Salafi school will going to pop up somewhere. If not in Nejd, then somewhere else. I'd agree that an urban-groomed one will be less crude then OTL Wahabism.
 
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Maybe the desert tribes might have reacted against Ottoman/Hejaz influence by turning Shi'ite -- joining in faith with the various groups who IOTL folllowed that creed along the eastern coasts -- instead?
 
Maybe the desert tribes might have reacted against Ottoman/Hejaz influence by turning Shi'ite -- joining in faith with the various groups who IOTL folllowed that creed along the eastern coasts -- instead?

I think it would have been too much of an identitary twist. While Sunni/Shia differences weren't really that mutually exclusive before the XIIth century, it really get town to identity afterwards.
 
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