Suleiman ibn Abdullah Aal Al-Sheikh

Suleiman bin Abdullah Al Sheikh (1785 – October 1818) was a religious scholar in the Emirate of Diriyah and one of the grandsons of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. He was the author of "al-Dalail fi Hukm Muwalat Ahl al-Ishrak" .

Biography Suleiman was born in 1785 into the Al Sheikh family, and his father was Abdullah bin Muhammad, a son of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Suleiman was a religious scholar like his father, uncles and grandfather and served as the qadi of Diriyah. For him it was not an ordinary battle between two political forces with conflicting interests, but between believers and non-believers or infidels. In these fatwas Suleiman also outlined the conditions about visiting the lands of infidels. He argued that Wahhabi visitors should overtly practice their religion in such places and that they should not have close relations with infidels while visiting their land. since he did not accept their supremacy which he regarded as the submission to kufr. Sulayman's works served as a manual for later Salafi scholars to make sense of the major tenets of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Based on Sulayman's approach, classical Wahhabi scholars would formulate a novel doctrine of Takfir that expanded beyond the traditional paradigm of early Salafis and excommunicated most of the political opponents of the Second Saudi state.

He suggested that true believers should not hesitate to show their hostility against the people having different religious beliefs. His view was just a reproduction of the approach that had existed in Islam, since the seventh century which emphasized the difference between true and false religion and banned all interaction with infidels. Here, infidels refer to Muslims from different religious sects.

The views of Suleiman bin Abdullah were frequently adopted by his cousin, Abdul Rahman bin Hasan, and other religious scholars during the second Saudi State, or Emirate of Najd. His views were also used by the Ikhwan leaders in the late 1920s just before their revolt against King Abdulaziz as a justification for their resistance to him. King Abdulaziz argued that Suleiman's views should be taken into consideration in the related context and period of time.