Btw, here is an informative article, rare of its kind, about the differences between the Saudi's
Salafi/Wahhabi/Takfiri vs
Sunni, as articulated by those experts from al-Azhar University in Cairo. One should know the differences to have the more correct views as well as to understand the underlying problems of the radicalizations within the last three decades, the phenomenon of ISIS/ISIL/IS/LEVANT/DAESH is just the tip of the iceberg!
I posted it earlier
here:
Grozny conference challenges the Saudis
By Tahir Mustafa - Dhu al-Hijjah 29, 1437 (2016-10-01)
[...]
After spending more than $100 billion over four decades to try and buy the loyalty of Muslims around the world, the Saudi Wahhabis received a tight slap on their collective face from none other than the Shaykh of al-Azhar, Dr. Ahmed el-Tayeb. The stinging rebuke was delivered at a conference in Grozny, Chechnya at the end of August (August 25–27), which was attended by hundreds of leading Islamic scholars from the Muslim world. Shaykh al-Tayeb said that the Salafis — the label preferred by the Wahhabis themselves — are not “Sunnis.”
To understand the true import of this statement, consider this. The
Salafis and their even more extreme offshoot, the
takfiris, are certainly not Shi‘is — the other branch of Islam. The Salafis consider themselves authentic Sunnis, in fact, super Sunnis and insist others must follow them. This claim has not only been challenged by the head of the most prestigious Islamic institution in the Muslim world, al-Azhar University in Cairo, but they have been banished from the fold of Islam altogether!
Some
200 Sunni scholars from around the world participated in the Grozny conference at the invitation of the Yemeni Sufi scholar, al-Habib Ali al-Jafri. What was the conference convened to discuss? To define the term Ahl al-Sunnah wa-al-Jama‘ah, which a myriad of “Sunni” groups have used to claim authenticity and legitimacy to their particular interpretation of Islam. Each claims to be following the Sunnah of the noble Messenger (pbuh). The tragedy is that each group also invariably excludes others they disagree with from being “true Sunnis.” A further problem is — and this has to do with semantics — the expression Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l Jama‘ah does not exist in the Qur’an or the authentic prophetic hadith. The first Umayyad king, Mu‘awiyah coined this expression to claim legitimacy for his rule, which had no basis in Islam.
[...]
