Griffith Uni's Professor of "Unity" needs more context and perhaps dialogue

Following the concerns raised by CWW, The Australian presented O'Connor with the issues relating to his use of 'Unitarianism', 'Tawhid', as well as the plagiarism. O'Connor conceded error on all accounts, but his justification and excuses raise even more suspicions. He defended charges he had flagrantly breached his own university's policy on plagiarism by insisting "it was not an academic article." However, O'Connor raises even more disturbing issues admitting his articles were "based on material provided by senior staff." Why are GU Islamic Studies scholars relying on copy and pastes from Wikipedia? Surely these basic issues should be at the tip of their tongues, like a Mathematics academic knowing her six times table?

Either way, O'Connor's excuses are lame and completely unacceptable.

On his using "Unitarianism" to describe Saudi Islam, O'Connor conceded "the more correct label is Muwahiddun, rather than the popular but problematic term Wahhabism." This is quite an ironic statement given how "problematic" O'Connor's use of "Unitarianism" has become. Even one of O'Connor's fellow academics and Griffith University council member Dwight Zakus, senior lecturer at the university's Department of Tourism, Leisure, Hotel and Sports Management described O'Connor's Wikipedia plagiarism as, you guessed it, "problematic."

O'Connor does not resile from his misunderstanding or misrepresentation of "Unitarianism." He still insists the Saudi government's "official religion" is

Unitarianism, which is the belief espoused by the unifiers of Islam or Muwahiddun.

He provides no reference for this extraordinary claim. The CIA Factbook states Saudi Arabia's religion as just "Muslim." On the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia website, once more the official religion is just "Islam."

So where would O'connor have got this bizarre idea about the 'Saudi government's official religion'? And what about Muwahiddun being "the unifiers of Islam"? But Muwahiddun were not a group of me "unifying" fractious Islamic sects. Muwahiddun has its etymological roots in Tawhid - "oneness of god."

Left's take a brief detour to get a full appreciation of just how 'off-piste' this '"Unitarianism" as official Saudi religion' narrative really is.

Around the blogosphere and media online sites, many have slammed critics of O'Connor, such as the ABC's Religion Team. One prominent left-wing culture war blog accused The Religion Report's Stephen Cittenden of "having a bit of a thing about Islam. He’s hardly rational about it Others defended O'Connor's use of "unitarian" as an English transliteration of Muwahiddun.

However, O'Connor does not use the lower case noun "unitarian." O'Connor explicitly and repeatedly uses "Unitarianism", which is a completely different concept. As I explained in a previous post "Unitarianism" is a Christian notion, which in the twentieth century has been adopted by universalist spiritual movements. As we now see not only is this statement plain wrong, it is not even what his plagiarised Wikipedia states! So we can see that Tawhid is THE central concept in Islam, and not "the primary doctrine of Unitarianism."

Memo to Professor O'Connor: Next time - should you be so unwise as to engage in Anglicisations ever again - you wheel out this, use "unitarian" not "Unitarianism"

It is true that "unitarian" is indeed one of the many words sometimes used loosely as synonymous with muwahiddun. Other English transliterations include "monotheist," "literalist," and so on. But when Saudis and other - mostly Sunni - Muslims use Tawhid what they are really talking about is the specific tradition of Koranic monotheism; a tradition that has been a constant in Islamic belief and ritual since the day Muhammad first emerged from the desert: the "oneness of god." There are naturally many theological implications of Tawhid, which do not accord with "Unitarianism", and which we do not need to explore here. All we need to note is the just how bizarre Professor O'Connor's claims about "Unitarianism" as Tahwid are.

On the other hand, the connection of Tawhid (and hence "unitarian") with Wahhabism dates back to the late eighteenth century as the Islamic empire was falling behind the rapidly ascending West. While there were many other Sunni Arabs seeking to revitalise Islam, the most prominent was Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Wahhab was a passionate follower of the ancient Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence which insisted the only sources of authority were The Koran and the hadiths. Wahhab's revivalist movement became associated with a reactionary puritanism.

But why by the late eighteenth century was there this perceived need to 'get back to the basics' of Tawhid? Wahhab believed that Islamic decline was caused by centuries of mainly Sufist encouragement of a syncretic strain of Islam. The amazing success of the transmission of Islam - across central and south Asia down to Indonesia - had largely been facilitated by accommodating local cults and rituals of the societies conquered, including toleration of idols, temples, and representational art. By the fourteenth century Suuni Arabs in particular had started to taken exception to Sufi laxity towards Sharia.


During the early fourteenth century, the leading Hanbali school jurist Ahmad ibn Taymiyya led a violent resistance to this Sufi 'liberalism' from Damascus. Decrying the 'Christian' appropriations of Sufis and Shia Muslims - in the form of the Shia class of imams and the Sufis relatively relaxed attitudes towards relics and mosques - Taymiyya taught violent jihad against all who followed man-made law rather the Koran. Much of the current sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shia is energised by the teachings of Taymiyya and their adoption by Wahhab.

Tellingly, in one paragraph O'Connor plagiarises from Wikipedia, he deletes a sentence which attributes the influence of Taymiyya on Wahhab. As my earlier article noted, Wikipedia says.

The primary doctrine of Wahhabism is Tawhid, or the uniqueness and unity of God. [4] Ibn Abdul Wahhab was influenced by the writings of scholars such as Ibn Taymiyya and rejected medieval interpretations of Islam, relying on Quran and hadith. [5] He preached against a "perceived moral decline and political weakness" in the Arabian peninsula and condemned idolatry, the popular cult of saints, and shrine and tomb visitation. [6] (bold added)

In both The Australian and the ABC's Unleashed O'Connor copies and pastes word for word from the Wikipedia paragraph except substituting the word “Unitarianism” for Wikipedia's “Wahhabism.”


The primary doctrine of Unitarianism is Tawhid, or the uniqueness and unity of God. Wahhab also preached against a perceived moral decline and political weakness in the Arabian peninsula and condemned idolatry, the popular cult of saints, and shrine and tomb visitation. (bold added)

So clearly, O'Connor and his "senior staff" were not so rushed that they could not carefully change a couple of words from Wikipedia to make their case seem scholarly credible. Even on his updated website version, O'Connor attributes to Wikipedia

The primary doctrine of Unitarianism ‘is Tawhid , or the uniqueness and unity of God’ (bold added).

Thus we see that by the eighteenth century Wahhab was merely the latest in a two century old push to banish both Sufism and the non-Koran-based rational sciences. Thus, we see the beginning of the Arab and wider Muslim world away from science, progress, and modernity. The inclusiveness, cosmopolitanism, and highly artistically and scientifically accomplished Islamic civilisation and empire at its peak - that people in the West quite rightly often need reminding of - was only possible by adopting a form of Islam that Islamic scholars (particularly Sunni Arab) considered blasphemous and idolatrous.

Ironically, all those calls we hear for an "Islam Reformation" miss the point. Wahhab was Islam's Martin Luther. Thus, the Islamic Reformation has been underway for two hundred years! It's most spectacular expression seen as the Twin Towers collapsed on September, 11, 2001.

It is hard not to smell the odour of a PR con job where the GU people are singing from the Saudi song-sheet trying to re-brand Saudi Islam as a warm and cuddly "Christian like" religion. Further suspicion is raised by the need to use this Anglicised term. What next? "Group Hug" as an English transliteration of jihad?