Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s message was thus intended to be divisive and disruptive. The idea was to emphasize the distinction between the community of belief (i.e., the Wahhābīs), on the one hand, and the community of unbelief or shirk (i.e., those seen as participating in the cult of saints or even just tolerating it), on the other, and then to enforce the distinction by means of condemning and confronting the latter group.
