Wahhab made scripture study a personal duty, bypassing clerical tutelage.

Evidence

Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab asserted that every Muslim layman, even one without modest educational credentials, have a duty to read and study the Qur’an and the Sunnah; encouraging them to research religious scriptures. Regional rivals castigated him as a self-taught “ignorant” since “knowledge could come only from being taught by shaykhs” and not by treating the Scriptures as one’s teacher. — Wikipedia contributors, Wahhabism, 118

Categorization

• XREF: The literacy-without-priests argument echoes Protestant lay Bible reading and anti-clerical knowledge politics.
• SEED: Essay angle: who owns the right to interpret a text — credentialed guilds or any reader? Trace from Najd to modern internet fatwas.