"
Regarding the influence of Wahhabism, Wahhabis, mainly because of oil money, and their funding of 'Islamic' education, have been able to make inroads in many poor countries, where a four year stipend to study religion goes a long way. So they have had some influence in sub-Sharan Africa and in Asia (including China), and even among Zaidis in Yemen and elsewhere. But the numbers of followers of Wahhabism are not huge, and also the loyalty is not always strong. The case of al-Qa'ida is different, since that is a combination of Wahhabism and offshoots of Egyptian radicals who are not Wahhabi. Also, there is currently a rift between the Saudi state and the ideological Wahhabis, although the state still does not have an alternative to this ideology and therefore does not seem able to do away with it.
A couple of more points. First the use of the term salafiyya is very a-historical in the writings of Adonis and many others. To make a long story short, the term means so many different things in different places and periods, and even to different people; so much so, that it cannot be used as a tool for explaining anything, and it always needs to be historicized. A case in point is the difference between Ibn Taymiyya and 'his student' Ibn iAbd al-Wahhab who, by the way, makes very little reference to Ibn Taymiyya in his meagre writings. Whatever one thinks of Ibn Taymiyya, he was certainly one of the most erudite, original and influential thinkers in Muslim history. He certainly was eccentric, but he was complex and his thought is rich, and there is much in it that can be discussed and studied. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, on the other hand, was reductive and superficial, and can hardly be called a thinker. His whole writings add up to half a volume, all little epistles and letters in which he threatens Najdi tribes, and one so-called book, kitab al-Tawhid that reads like a long table of contents and is all about what makes a person an unbeliever. It is interesting then, that Adonis reserves his criticism Ibn Taymiyya, who has no money to pay, and is much more generous in his assessment of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and I guess the reasons for that are obvious. By the way, the modern Wahhabi ideological establishment published a censored edition of Ibn Taymiyya's majmu'at al-fatawa, after removing what adds up to about two volumes of what is not Islamic enough for them. At any rate, to make sweeping generalization about salafi thought or other things Islamic without reference to time and place and function is worse than what even most serious contemporary orientalists would do, and is akin to old fashioned and defunct forms of orientalism in its crudest forms."
