As the second definition has predominated, the terms "Wahhabism" which also pays great respect to Ibn Taymiyyah and "Salafism" are now often used interchangeably. Followers of Salafiyyah consider it wrong to be called "Wahhabis" due to the 16th Name of Allah, al-Wahhab (the Bestower) and to be called a "Wahhabi," they see it as being associated equal to Allah, which the Salafis strictly prohibit anything being associated with Allah. Wahhabism has been called a "belittling" and derogatory term for Salafi,[41] while another source defines it as "a particular orientation within Salafism,"[39] an orientation some consider ultra-conservative,[46][47] and yet another describes it as a formerly separate current of Islamic thought that appropriated "language and symbolism of Salafism" until the two became "practically indistinguishable" in the 1970s.[48]
Scholar Trevor Stanley states that while the origins of the terms Wahhabism and Salafism "were quite distinct" "Wahhabism was a pared-down Islam that rejected modern influences, while Salafism sought to reconcile Islam with modernism" they both shared a rejection of "traditional" teachings on Islam in favor of direct, more puritan reinterpretation.
Stéphane Lacroix, a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at Sciences Po in Paris, also affirmed a distinction between the two: "As opposed to Wahhabism, Salafism refers here to all the hybridations that have taken place since the 1960s between the teachings of Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab and other Islamic schools of thought. Al-Albanis discourse can therefore be a form of Salafism, while being critical of Wahhabism."[49]
But despite their beginnings "as two distinct movements", the migration of Muslim Brotherhood members from Egypt to Saudi Arabia and Saudi King Faisal's "embrace of Salafi pan-Islamism resulted in cross-pollination between Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab's teachings on tawhid, shirk and bidah and Salafi interpretations of ahadith (the sayings of Muhammad).[50]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salafis#Association_with_.27Wahhabism.27