A report on Wahhabism

It was later popularized by pan-Islamic scholars such as Muhammad Rashid Rida in his treatise as-Sunna wa-š-šiʿa au al-Wahhābīya wa-r-Rāfiḍa: Ḥaqāʾiq dīnīya taʾrīḫīya iǧtimaʿīya iṣlaḥīya ("The Sunna and the Shia, Or Wahhabism and Rāfidism: religious history, sociological und reformoriented facts“) published in 1928-29 C.E. The term "sunna" is usually used in Arabic discourse as designation for Sunni Muslims, when they are intended to be contrasted with Shias. The word pair "Sunnah-Shia" is also used on Western research literature to denote the Sunni-Shia contrast.

Some of the major Salafi reform movements in the Islamic world today include the Ahl-i Hadith movement, inspired by the teachings of Shah Waliullah Dehlvi and galvanized through the South Asian jihad of Sayyid Ahmad Shahid; the Wahhabi movement of the Arabia; the Padri movement of Indonesia; Algerian Salafism, spearheaded by 'Abd al-Hamid Bin Badis; and others.

The ultraconservative Wahhabi religious movement within Sunni Islam has been described as a "predominant feature of Saudi culture", although the power of the religious establishment has been significantly eroded in the 2010s.

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab ibn Sulayman al-Tamimi (محمد ابن عبدالوهاب ابن سليمان; 1703–1792) was an Arabian Islamic scholar, theologian, preacher, activist, religious leader, reformer, and theologian from Najd in central Arabia, considered as the eponymous founder of the Wahhabi movement.

Another major division within Islamism is between what Graham E. Fuller has described as the fundamentalist "guardians of the tradition" (Salafis, such as those in the Wahhabi movement) and the "vanguard of change and Islamic reform" centered around the Muslim Brotherhood.

During the 18th century in Arabia, Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, influenced by the works of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim, founded a movement, called Wahhabi with their self-designation as Muwahiddun, to return to what he saw as unadultered Islam.

Most of the Shīʿa sacred places and heritage sites in Saudi Arabia have been destroyed by the Al Saud-Wahhabi armies of the Ikhwan, the most notable being the tombs of the Imams located in the Al-Baqi' cemetery in 1925.

The Hanbali school, with its particularly strict adherence to the Quran and hadith, has inspired conservative currents of direct scriptural interpretation by the Salafi and Wahhabi movements.

In the contemporary world, he may be considered at the root of Wahhabism, the Senussi order and other later reformist movements.

Contemporary Purist Salafism, widely known as "the Salafi Manhaj" emerged from the 1960s as an intellectual hybrid of three similar, yet distinct, religious reform traditions: the Wahhabi movement in Arabia, Ahl-i Hadith movement in India and Salafiyya movement in the Arab World of the late-19th and early 20th centuries.