No world religion can be monolithic: it is in the nature
of such a
religion to comprehend disparate people living diverse lives. As might
then be expected, religions vary. For example, both Christianity and
Buddhism are much more fragmented by sectarian divisions than Islam,
both had significantly lower levels of internal contact in premodern
times, and neither had the same degree of cultic uniformity as Islam.
So if we want to place the world religions along the spectrum from heap
of rubble to monolith, there is little doubt that Islam falls closest
to the monolithic pole. There were nevertheless small, but quarrelsome,
groups of Muslims for whom the Islam of premodern times was not
monolithic enough. To them much of its local diversity was beyond the
pale of toleration.
Historically the most significant movement of this
kind was Wahhabism,
a fundamentalism that appeared in the Arabian interior in the
eighteenth century in alliance with the Saudi state. At that stage the
Saudis were able to impose Wahhdbism over much of Arabia by waging holy
war on adversaries whom they deemed to be infidels; but they lacked the
military capacity to spread it farther. Later, however, this reformist
movement was to strike a chord over much of the Muslim world.
