THE REFORM MOVEMENTS 257advocated ideas not found in the Qur'an were innovators. Both the Shi'i
and the Sufis belonged to this group. Jihad against them was not only le-
gitimate but obligatory, according to Wahhabism as it developed in histor-
ical practice.
Wahhabi attitudes and enthusiasms spread far beyond Arabia. Wah-
habism found particularly fertile ground at the other end of the Muslim
world, in the subcontinent oflndia. In practice, various people who called
themselves Wahhabis emphasized various aspects of the creed the Saudi
tribe preached. In India, for example, some so-called Wahhabis rejected
jihad as an obligation. Others said apostates should be engaged in debate
not battle. Some thought slackards should be reeducated rather than pun-
ished or that hypocrites should be chastened rather than killed, or some
other variation. But all who called themselves Wahhabis looked at the Law
as the core oflslam, even the whole oflslam. All tended to look back to a
golden era that provided a stencil for Muslim life and tended to believe
that restoring the First Community of Mohammed's Medina would re-
store Muslims to favor in Allah's eyes, thereby restoring the vigor and
power the Umma enjoyed under the first four khalifas.
Outside the Islamic world, the Saudi-Wahhabi alliance may have
seemed like some brief anomaly that flared and vanished; but in fact it went
on smoldering in the deserts of Arabia, and the world was to hear a great
deal more about the alliance in the twentieth century, after the British agent
remembered as Lawrence of Arabia found his way to that desert.
THE ALIGARH MOVEMENT: SECULAR MODERNISM
Sayyid Ahmad, or Sir Sayyid Ahmad of Aligarh, as he liked to be called
later in life, represents an attitude of thought that sprang up independently
in many parts of the Muslim world in the nineteenth century. He and oth-
ers began exploring ways to rethink Islam as an ethical system that would
stay true to its own traditions and spirit but make it compatible with a sec-
ular world dominated by Europeans.
Sayyid Ahmad was born in 1817 to a prominent Muslim family in
Delhi. His forebears had been important officials under the Moghuls, back
when the Moghuls ruled this part of the world. Now, the British grip on
the subcontinent had been deepening for many generations and Sayyid