I finished Natana Delong-Bas's book, Wahhabi Islam on the plane. Now, I don't mind her publishing whatever she wants but this book should have had the imprint of some Saudi ministry of propaganda and not Oxford University Press. I don't have time to give a detailed review but suffice to say that she considered--I am not making this up--the stoning of a woman to death by Ibn `Abdul-Wahab himself an indication of his "concern for justice for women." (p. 28). As my friend Ahmad Dallal says, anybody who claims that Ibn `Abdul-Wahab is "a prolific" writer--as this author does--has not really opened the books of Ibn `Abdul-Wahab. You go the library and you see tons of volumes with his names as the author: and Delong-Bas was mightily impressed. Has she bothered to open them and read them she would have discovered the obvious: he only compiled Hadith and Qur'anic sayings. That is it. Even his only book--really his only one--Risalat At-Tawhid--is a compilation of Hadith and Qur'anic saying. She does not think that he was bigoted against Shi`ites: why? Because he only attacked "the extremist" Rafidah sect of Shi`ite Islam, not knowing that he meant ALL Shi`ites by Rafidah. The author, and Ibn `Abdul-Wahab, did not know that Shi`ite twelvers consider Hasan their second Imam. How odd is that? She made the fellow like an early feminist: her evidence? That he forbade anal sex. And on and on. She kept saying that you read in his books and you don't find references to violence: of course, because he left NO BOOKS. OK?? Look: I said before and I say it again: the alternative to classical Orientalism is not Islam/Arab aplogias? In fact, I prefer to the knowledge and erudition of the early Orientalists. I can say more but I am tired.