<![CDATA[The landscape of Islamic thought and world history is inseparable from the emergence of various religious reform and purification movements responding to moral decadence, intellectual stagnation, and theological deviations. One of the most disruptive phenomena to the global socio-political order since the 18th century is the dawah movement pioneered by Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab in the Arabian Peninsula. This movement, which essentially aims to restore the purity of Tawhid (absolute monotheism) and eradicate practices of shirk and bid'ah, has historically become more globally recognized by the term "Wahhabism." This research report comprehensively and deeply examines how the term "Wahhabism" is not actually an identity self-constructed by the followers of the movement—who internally prefer the terms Muwahhidun (proponents of Tawhid) or Salafiyyun—but rather a political and pejorative label produced and reproduced by external entities. Through qualitative library research analyzing primary and secondary literature, this report traces the genealogy of the term from its initial emergence in internal polemical works, its massive adoption by the Ottoman Empire's propaganda machine, its semantic expansion by Orientalists and Western colonial authorities (British and Dutch), to its socio-political implications in the Indonesian Archipelago from the Padri War to the contemporary era. Analysis shows that this labeling is an instrument of discursive hegemony and epistemological violence intentionally constructed to delegitimize, alienate, and stem the spread of the Tawhid dawah, which was perceived as a threat to the political stability of traditional empires, Western colonial dominance in the Middle East and South Asia, and syncretic cultural orders in various Muslim regions. Furthermore, this report presents a critical review of the modern commodification of this term as a tool of stigmatization that divides the social integration of the Muslim Ummah.]]>
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