“Perhaps the most important development in the differences between the Sunni and the Shia in modern history has been the development of a new school of thought in Sunni religiosity: Salafi or Wahhabi Islam.  The Wahhabis date their history back to the mid-18th century, when an Arab thinker named Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab (1703-1792) developed a new theology that violently rejected what he saw as the corruption of Islam and the growing Christian domination of the Muslim World.  Looking for a source of the ongoing scandalous humiliation of the Muslim world, he looked inwards to flaws within the Ummah.  According to al-Wahhab, if the Muslims were the chosen people of God, their subservience to Christians was not due to Christian superiority but due to God withdrawing his favor because the Muslims had turned away from Him. In this worldview, the goal of the modern Islamic community should be the rejection of corruption and perversion and a return to the true, pure faith of the Prophet and his Companions.”