Religious movements often originate in a dream. It was said in Arabia in the 1800s that a man in Najd province dreamed that his body produced flames that spread far and wide, consuming desert camps and towns alike. He told his dream to a sheik, who said the man's son would found a new faith that the desert Arabs would adopt. And so it transpired--although the founder was ultimately the man's grandson: Mohammed ibn Abd Wahhab.
The version of Islam that Wahhab conceived in the 1740s is now the state religion of Saudi Arabia. These days, many would interpret that...
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