title: George Segal

text: After college and the army, Segal eventually studied at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen and got a job as an understudy in the 1956 off-Broadway production of "The Iceman Cometh" starring Jason Robards. He appeared in "Antony and Cleopatra" for Joseph Papp and joined an improvisational group called The Premise, which performed at a Bleecker Street coffeehouse and whose ranks included Buck Henry and Theodore J. Flicker. Segal continued to perform on Broadway with roles in "Gideon" (1961–62) by Paddy Chayefsky, which ran for 236 performances, as well as "Rattle of a Simple Man" (1963), an adaptation of a British hit, with Tammy Grimes and Edward Woodward.


title: George Segal

text: He was signed to a Columbia Pictures contract in 1961, making his film debut in "The Young Doctors". Segal made several television appearances in the early 1960s, including "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "Armstrong Circle Theatre", and "Naked City", and appeared in the well-known World War II film "The Longest Day" (1962). He also had a small role in "Act One" (1963) and a more prominent part in the western "Invitation to a Gunfighter" (1964) alongside Yul Brynner.


title: George Segal

text: Segal came to Hollywood from New York City to star in a TV series with Robert Taylor that never aired. Nonetheless, he joined the cast of Columbia Pictures' medical drama "The New Interns" (1964), and the studio then put him under long-term contract. The role ultimately earned him the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year, alongside Harve Presnell and Chaim Topol.


title: George Segal

text: In 1965, Segal played an egocentric painter in an ensemble cast led by Vivien Leigh and Lee Marvin in Stanley Kramer's acclaimed drama "Ship of Fools", which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The same year, he also played the title role as a scheming P.O.W. in the well-regarded war drama "King Rat" (a role originally meant for Frank Sinatra) and received acclaim for both performances. In other notable film appearances, he played the titular role of a secret service agent on assignment in Berlin in "The Quiller Memorandum" (1966), an Algerian paratrooper who becomes a leader of the FLN in "Lost Command" (1966), and a Cagney-esque gangster in Roger Corman's "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre" (1967).


title: George Segal

text: Segal also appeared in several prominent television films, playing Biff in an acclaimed production of "Death of a Salesman" (1966) next to Lee J. Cobb, a gangster in an adaptation of "The Desperate Hours" (1967), and George in an adaptation of "Of Mice and Men" (1968). The latter two films were both directed by Ted Kotcheff, with whom he worked again several times.


title: George Segal

text: Segal was loaned to Warner Bros. for Mike Nichols' directorial debut "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), a now-classic adaptation of the Edward Albee play. Nichols had previously directed Segal in a 1964 Off-Broadway play titled "The Knack" and cast him again in "Woolf" after Robert Redford had turned down the role. In the four-person ensemble piece, Segal played the young faculty member, Nick, alongside Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Sandy Dennis. The film, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture and was later selected to the National Film Registry, is arguably Segal's best known and, for his role, he was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe.


title: George Segal

text: The same year, Segal released his debut LP, "The Yama Yama Man". The title track is a ragtime version of the 1908 tune "The Yama Yama Man" with horns and banjos. Segal released the album at a time when he appeared regularly playing banjo on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson". In the same year, Segal played banjo and sang with The Smothers Brothers when they performed Phil Ochs's "Draft Dodger Rag" on their CBS television show.


title: George Segal

text: For over ten years after his success with "Woolf", Segal received many notable film roles, often working with major filmmakers and becoming a significant figure in the New Hollywood movement. He starred in Carl Reiner's celebrated dark comedy "Where's Poppa?" (1970), played the lead role in Sidney Lumet's "Bye Bye Braverman" (1968), starred with Robert Redford in Peter Yates's diamond heist comedy "The Hot Rock" (1972), starred as the titular midlife crisis victim in Paul Mazursky's acclaimed romantic comedy "Blume in Love" (1973), and starred alongside Elliott Gould as a gambling addict in Robert Altman's classic "California Split" (1974), considered by some to be the greatest gambling film of all time.


title: George Segal

text: In one of his most successful roles, Segal played a philandering husband in Melvin Frank's continental romantic comedy "A Touch of Class" (1973) opposite Glenda Jackson. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, Jackson won an Oscar for her performance, and Segal won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, which was the second Golden Globe of his career.


title: George Segal

text: During this time, he had many other leading roles in various genres. He played a perplexed police detective in "No Way to Treat a Lady" (1968), a war-weary platoon commander in "The Bridge at Remagen" (1969), a man laying waste to his marriage in "Loving" (1970), and a hairdresser-turned-junkie in "Born to Win" (1971). "The Owl and the Pussycat" (1970), a romantic comedy starring Segal and Barbra Streisand and written by his former improv teammate Buck Henry, was particularly popular; and though Segal played against type as a dangerous computer scientist in "The Terminal Man" (1974), he used his popular appeal as a card shark in "The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox" (1976), as a suburbanite-turned-bank robber in "Fun with Dick and Jane" (1977), as a heroic ride inspector in "Rollercoaster" (1977), and as a wealthy serial restaurant entrepreneur in "Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?" (1978). Other films starring Segal from this time include "The Girl Who Couldn't Say No" (1968), "Russian Roulette" (1975), and "The Black Bird" (1975).


title: George Segal

text: During the 1970s and 1980s, Segal appeared frequently on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" both as a guest and occasionally as a guest host. His appearances were marked by eccentric banter with Johnny Carson and were usually punctuated by bursts of banjo playing. In addition to playing banjo while appearing on "The Tonight Show", Segal played the instrument in several of his acting roles and sang in others, such as "Blume in Love".


title: George Segal

text: Segal continued his music career during this time as well. In 1974, Segal's band, The Imperial Jazz Band, released an album called "A Touch of Ragtime", in which Segal played the banjo. He made frequent television appearances with the "Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band", whose members included actor Conrad Janis on trombone, and in 1981 they performed live at Carnegie Hall.


title: George Segal

text: In 1976, Segal co-hosted the Academy Awards along with Gene Kelly, Goldie Hawn, Walter Matthau, and Robert Shaw.


title: George Segal

text: Segal reunited with his "Touch of Class" co-star Jackson and director Frank in another European-set romantic comedy, "Lost and Found" (1979), but the film was not a success. Neither was "The Last Married Couple in America" (1980) with Natalie Wood. Segal famously pulled out of the lead role in Blake Edwards' hit comedy "10" (1979), resulting in his being replaced by Dudley Moore and sued by Edwards.


title: George Segal

text: With a few exceptions, in films such as Denzel Washington's film debut "Carbon Copy" (1981), Burt Reynolds's crime drama "Stick" (1985), and the popular family comedy "Look Who's Talking" (1989), Segal received fewer prominent roles in the 1980s. Instead, he began to star more frequently in television films, such as "The Deadly Game" (1982) for which he received a CableAce Award nomination for best actor in a theatrical or non-musical production, "The Cold Room" (1984), and "The Zany Adventures of Robin Hood" (1984). He also starred in two short-lived television series, the semi-autobiographical sitcom "Take Five" (1987) and the crime drama "Murphy's Law" (1988–89). In 1985, he returned to Broadway in a short-lived production of "Requiem for a Heavyweight" by Rod Serling and in 1990 toured in a play called "Double Act".


title: George Segal

text: In the first 10 years, I was playing all different kinds of things. I loved the variety, and never had the sense of being a leading man but a character actor. Then I got frozen into this "urban" character. About the time of "The Last Married Couple in America" (1980) I remember Natalie (Wood) saying to me ... "It's one typed role after another, and pretty soon you forget everything. You forget why you're here, why you're doing it." Then my marriage started to fall apart ... I was disenchanted, I was turning in on myself, I was doing a lot of self-destructive things ... there were drugs ... I'm also sure I was guilty of spoiled behavior. I think it's impossible when that star rush comes not to get a little full of yourself, which is what I was.


title: George Segal

text: Nevertheless, after this relatively dry period, Segal re-established himself as a successful character actor in the 1990s. Though he appeared in some less-acclaimed films, he also worked with directors such as Mark Rydell, Gus Van Sant, Barbra Streisand, David O. Russell, Randal Kleiser, and Ben Stiller, respectively, in well-received films such as "For the Boys" (1991), "To Die For" (1995), "The Mirror Has Two Faces" (1996), "Flirting with Disaster" (1996), "It's My Party" (1996), and "The Cable Guy" (1996). Additionally, he had guest appearances on various shows such as "Murder She Wrote" and "The Larry Sanders Show" and continued to appear in television films such as "Seasons of the Heart" (1994), "Houdini" (1998), and "The Linda McCartney Story" (2000). In 1999, he briefly performed in Yasmina Reza's "Art" on Broadway, and in 2001 he reprised his performance in the West End.


title: George Segal

text: From 1997 to 2003, Segal had his most prominent role in years when he starred in the NBC workplace sitcom "Just Shoot Me!" as Jack Gallo, the successful yet often oblivious owner and publisher of a New York City fashion magazine. For this role, he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy in 1999 and 2000 as well as a Satellite Award in 2002. The show, which also starred David Spade and Laura San Giacomo, among others, and which once aired between iconic sitcoms "Friends" and "Seinfeld", lasted for seven seasons and 148 episodes.


title: George Segal

text: After finishing his run on "Just Shoot Me", Segal appeared in supporting roles in films such as "Heights" (2005), "2012" (2009), and "Love & Other Drugs" (2010). Additionally, he worked more frequently as a voice actor, including a role in the English-language version of Studio Ghibli's "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya" (2013) and a comedic reprisal of his "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" role in a 2018 episode of "The Simpsons". His most recent film performance was alongside Christopher Plummer in "Elsa & Fred" (2014). In other roles, Segal played talent manager Murray Berenson in three episodes of the television series "Entourage" (2009), guest starred in shows such as "Boston Legal", "Private Practice", and "Pushing Daisies", appeared in comedic short videos such as "Chutzpuh, This Is", and starred in the TV Land sitcom "Retired at 35" (2011–2012), alongside his "Bye Bye Braverman" co-star Jessica Walter.


title: George Segal

text: Segal had another success when he starred in the ABC sitcom "The Goldbergs" (2013–2021), playing Albert "Pops" Solomon, the eccentric but lovable grandfather of a semi-autobiographical family based on that of series creator Adam F. Goldberg. The long-running series entered its eighth season in 2021, and Segal was part of the regular cast up until his death in March of that year. Throughout the show, Segal had appeared in most, though not all, episodes and, as in some of his earlier roles, he played the banjo several times on-screen.


title: George Segal

text: Segal was married three times. He married film editor Marion Segal Freed in 1956, who would go on to work as an associate producer or editor on three of his films. They had two daughters and were together until their divorce in 1983. From 1983 until her death in 1996, he was married to Linda Rogoff, a one-time manager of The Pointer Sisters whom he met at Carnegie Hall when he played the banjo with his band the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band. He married his former George School boarding school classmate Sonia Schultz Greenbaum in 1998.


title: George Segal

text: Later in his life, Segal lived part-time in Sonoma County when he was not filming "The Goldbergs" in Los Angeles.


title: George Segal

text: Segal died of complications from bypass surgery in Santa Rosa, California, on March 23, 2021, at age 87.


title: The Babysitter (2017 film)

text: The Babysitter is a 2017 American teen black comedy horror film directed by McG and written by Brian Duffield. It stars Samara Weaving, Judah Lewis, Hana Mae Lee, Robbie Amell and Bella Thorne. The film follows a lonely 12-year-old boy (Lewis) who falls in love with his babysitter (Weaving) only to discover that she is part of a satanic cult that wants to kill him. The film was released by Netflix on October 13, 2017, and received mostly positive reviews from critics. A sequel, "", was released on September 10, 2020.


title: The Babysitter (2017 film)

text: Pre-teen student Cole is bullied by his neighbor Jeremy, but his babysitter Bee, who is one of his only two friends, stands up for him and scares Jeremy off. The following day, when his parents go out for an overnight stay at a hotel, Bee and Cole spend quality time together until he has to go to bed. Bee offers him some liquor to drink, but he secretly pours it out when she is not looking.


title: The Babysitter (2017 film)

text: Cole is encouraged by a text from his neighbor and other friend Melanie to go see what Bee gets up to after he goes to sleep. He sees Bee and several of her high school friends (Max, John, Allison, Sonya, and Samuel) playing a game of truth or dare formatted as a game of spin the bottle. However, as Bee kisses Samuel on a dare, she pulls two daggers from behind her back and stabs him in the skull. The others collect Samuel's blood, revealing themselves to be members of a demonic cult. Cole hurries to his room where he calls 911, puts on his shoes, and finds his pocket knife. He pretends to be asleep as Bee and the cult members enter his room to draw a sample of his blood. After they leave, he tries to escape out the window, but Bee secretly hides in his room and waits until Cole passes out from the exhaustion and loss of blood.


title: The Babysitter (2017 film)

text: Bee and her cult question Cole, while fending off his questions by saying they needed his blood for a science project. When two cops arrive, Max kills one of them with a poker, but the other cop accidentally shoots Allison in the chest before Bee slits his throat. Cole is forced to give the cult the police code to call off the other cops. While Allison cries over being shot, Cole rushes up the stairs; John pursues him, but is pushed over the banister, landing on a trophy that impales his neck.


title: The Babysitter (2017 film)

text: Cole escapes out his bedroom window and hides in the crawlspace under his house. Although Sonya finds him, he traps her in the basement and then ignites a firework rocket with bug spray, burning her to death. Max runs into Cole and shows appreciation for Cole's ingenuity. Max then hears Cole's bully egging Cole's house. Max urges Cole to start standing up for himself which results in Cole getting punched in the face by his bully. Max then chases Cole up a tree house; Max is killed when he falls and is hanged by the rope swing. Cole escapes to Melanie's house, but Bee follows him. While hiding in a room, Cole apologizes to Melanie for dragging her into this situation and assures her that he is going to take care of things. He asks Melanie to call the police, then she kisses Cole before he leaves.


title: The Babysitter (2017 film)

text: Cole returns to his house to find that the evidence of the night's events had been cleaned up. He also finds Allison pretending to be dead; before she can stab Cole with a kitchen knife, Bee kills her with a police officer's shotgun. Bee explains to Cole that she was once insecure like him until she made a deal with the Devil to get whatever she wanted by sacrificing innocent people and spilling their blood on an ancient book while reciting its verses. Since then, she has been traveling from town to town, preying on young boys like him. Although she offers to let him join her cult, Cole refuses and burns the spell book. He rushes to Melanie's house to take her dad's car, and drives it into his house while Bee is distracted by the burning book. After crashing the car into her, they have one last emotional farewell before Cole climbs out of the wreckage and leaves her to die. As the police and emergency crew arrive, Cole tells his parents that he no longer needs a babysitter.


title: The Babysitter (2017 film)

text: On November 24, 2014, it was announced that Brian Duffield's horror comedy script "The Babysitter" had been bought by McG's Wonderland Sound and Vision, with McG and Mary Viola producing the film. The project was brought in by executive producer Steven Bello. In December 2014, the script appeared on the 2014 Black List of the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood. Joe Lynch and Jason Eisener were both in talks to direct the film. On September 10, 2015, McG was attached to direct the film for New Line Cinema, while Wonderland co-financed the film, along with the Boies/Schiller Film Group. Principal photography began on October 27, 2015, in Los Angeles.


title: The Babysitter (2017 film)

text: In December 2016, Netflix acquired distribution rights to the film from New Line Cinema. It premiered on the service on October 13, 2017.


title: The Babysitter (2017 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 72% based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Enjoyable if not particularly original, "The Babysitter" makes the most of its familiar genre ingredients with energetic direction and a killer cast."


title: The Babysitter (2017 film)

text: Felix Vasquez Jr. of "Cinema Crazed" called it: "A great horror comedy with a genuinely touching tale of growing up tucked underneath the buckets of blood, and Satanism."


title: The Babysitter (2017 film)

text: Matt Donato of "Dread Central" gave it 4 out of 5 and wrote: "McG's hilarious and gruesome occult comedy proves Samara Weaving's worth seventy-billion times over, turning her into the new genre 'it' girl overnight."


title: The Babysitter (2017 film)

text: William Bibbiani at IGN gave the film 4.8 out of 10, saying "Netflix's "The Babysitter" doesn't really work as either a horror film or a comedy." Blake Goble at Consequence of Sound panned the film, saying "McG's hyper-referential slasher comedy fails as a horror movie and meta-commentary alike." Furthermore, he called the film "heinous" and suggested various other insults to describe the film, concluding with, "It can't be stated emphatically enough – stay away from "The Babysitter"."


title: The Babysitter (2017 film)

text: On September 26, 2019, Netflix announced a sequel to "The Babysitter" was being produced with McG returning as director and producer. Shortly after the announcement, it was reported that McG, Dan Lagana, Brad Morris and Jimmy Warden would write the screenplay for the sequel. Original cast members Lewis, Weaving, Thorne, Amell, Lee, Bachelor, Lind, Marino, and Bibb also returned. The film was released on Netflix on September 10, 2020.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The United States Secret Service (USSS or Secret Service) is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security charged with conducting criminal investigations and protecting U.S. political leaders, their families, and visiting heads of state or government. Until 2003, the Secret Service was part of the Department of the Treasury, as the agency was founded in 1865 to combat the then-widespread counterfeiting of U.S. currency.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The Secret Service is mandated by Congress with two distinct and critical national security missions: protecting the nation's leaders and safeguarding the financial and critical infrastructure of the United States.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The Secret Service is tasked with ensuring the safety of the president of the United States, the vice president of the United States, the president-elect of the United States, the vice president-elect of the United States, and their immediate families; former presidents, their spouses and their minor children under the age of 16; major presidential and vice-presidential candidates and their spouses; and visiting foreign heads of state and heads of government. By custom, it also provides protection to the secretary of the treasury and secretary of homeland security, as well as other persons as directed by the president (usually the White House chief of staff and national security advisor, among others). By federal statute, the president and vice-president may not refuse this protection. The Secret Service also provides physical security for the White House Complex; the neighboring Treasury Department building; the vice president's residence; the principal private residences of the president, vice president and former presidents; and all foreign diplomatic missions in Washington, D.C. The protective mission includes protective operations to coordinate manpower and logistics with state and local law enforcement, protective advances to conduct site and venue assessments for protectees, and protective intelligence to investigate all manners of threats made against protectees. The Secret Service is the lead agency in charge of the planning, coordination, and implementation of security operations for events designated as National Special Security Events (NSSE). As part of the service's mission of preventing an incident before it occurs, the agency relies on meticulous advance work and threat assessments developed by its Intelligence Division to identify potential risks to protectees.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The Secret Service is tasked with safeguarding the payment and financial systems of the United States from a wide range of financial and cyber-based crimes. Financial investigations include counterfeit U.S. currency, bank and financial institution fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, illicit financing operations, and major conspiracies. Cyber investigations include cybercrime, network intrusions, identity theft, access device fraud, credit card fraud, and intellectual property crimes. The Secret Service is also a member of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) which investigates and combats terrorism on a national and international scale. Also, the Secret Service investigates missing and exploited children and is a partner of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).


title: United States Secret Service

text: The Secret Service's initial responsibility was to investigate the counterfeiting of U.S. currency, which was rampant following the American Civil War. The agency then evolved into the United States' first domestic intelligence and counterintelligence agency. Many of the agency's missions were later taken over by subsequent agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and IRS Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CI).


title: United States Secret Service

text: The Secret Service combines the two responsibilities into a unique dual objective. The two core missions of protection and investigation synergize with the other, providing crucial benefits to special agents during the course of their careers. Skills developed during the course of investigations which are also used in an agent's protective duties include but are not limited to:


title: United States Secret Service

text: Protection of the nation's highest elected leaders and other government officials is one of the primary missions of the Secret Service. After the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley, Congress also directed the Secret Service to protect the president of the United States. The Secret Service investigates thousands of incidents each year of individuals threatening the president of the United States.


title: United States Secret Service

text: In addition to the above, the Secret Service can also protect other individuals by executive order of the president. Under Presidential Policy Directive 22, "National Special Security Events", the Secret Service is the lead agency for the design and implementation of operational security plans for events designated a NSSE by the secretary of homeland security.


title: United States Secret Service

text: There have been changes to the protection of former presidents over time. Under the original Former Presidents Act, former presidents and their spouses were entitled to lifetime protection, subject to limited exceptions. In 1994, this was amended to reduce the protection period to 10 years after a former president left office, starting with presidents assuming the role after January 1, 1997. On January 10, 2013, President Barack Obama signed legislation reversing this limit and reinstating lifetime protection to all former presidents. This change impacted Presidents Obama and G.W. Bush, as well as all future presidents.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Protection of government officials is not solely the responsibility of the Secret Service, with many other agencies, such as the United States Capitol Police, Supreme Court Police and Diplomatic Security Service, providing personal protective services to domestic and foreign officials. However, while these agencies are nominally responsible for services to other officers of the United States and senior dignitaries, the Secret Service provides protective services at the highest-level – i.e. for heads of state and heads of government.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The Secret Service's other primary mission is investigative; to protect the payment and financial systems of the United States from a wide range of financial and electronic-based crimes including counterfeit U.S. currency, bank and financial institution fraud, illicit financing operations, cybercrime, identity theft, intellectual property crimes, and any other violations that may affect the United States economy and financial systems. The agency's key focus is on large, high-dollar economic impact cases involving organized criminal groups. Financial criminals include embezzling bank employees, armed robbers at automatic teller machines, heroin traffickers, and criminal organizations that commit bank fraud on a global scale.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The USSS plays a leading role in facilitating relationships between other law enforcement entities, the private sector, and academia. The service maintains the Electronic Crimes Task Forces, which focus on identifying and locating international cyber criminals connected to cyber intrusions, bank fraud, data breaches, and other computer-related crimes. Additionally, the Secret Service runs the National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI), which provides law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges with cyber training and information to combat cybercrime.


title: United States Secret Service

text: In the face of budget pressure, hiring challenges and some high-profile lapses in its protective service role in 2014, the Brookings Institution and some members of Congress are asking whether the agency's focus should shift more to the protective mission, leaving more of its original mission to other agencies.


title: United States Secret Service

text: With a reported one third of the currency in circulation being counterfeit at the time, Abraham Lincoln established a commission to make recommendations to remedy the problem. The Secret Service was later established on July 5, 1865, in Washington, D.C., to suppress counterfeit currency. Chief William P. Wood was sworn in by Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch. It was commissioned in Washington, D.C. as the "Secret Service Division" of the Department of the Treasury with the mission of suppressing counterfeiting. At the time, the only other federal law enforcement agencies were the United States Customs Service, the United States Park Police, the U.S. Post Office Department's Office of Instructions and Mail Depredations (now known as the United States Postal Inspection Service), and the United States Marshals Service. The Marshals did not have the manpower to investigate all crime under federal jurisdiction, so the Secret Service began investigating a wide range of crimes from murder to bank robbery to illegal gambling.


title: United States Secret Service

text: After the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901, Congress informally requested that the Secret Service provide presidential protection. A year later, the Secret Service assumed full-time responsibility for presidential protection. In 1902, William Craig became the first Secret Service agent to die while on duty, in a road accident while riding in the presidential carriage.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The Secret Service was the first U.S. domestic intelligence and counterintelligence agency. Domestic intelligence collection and counterintelligence responsibilities were later vested in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) upon the FBI's creation in 1908.


title: United States Secret Service

text: In 1909, President William H. Taft agreed to meet with Mexican president Porfirio Díaz in El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, the first meeting between a U.S. and a Mexican president and also the first time an American president visited Mexico. But the historic summit resulted in serious assassination threats and other security concerns for the then small Secret Service, so the Texas Rangers, 4,000 U.S. and Mexican troops, BOI agents, U.S. Marshals, and an additional 250-man private security detail led by Frederick Russell Burnham, the celebrated scout, were all called in by Chief John Wilkie to provide added security. On October 16, the day of the summit, Burnham discovered a man holding a concealed palm pistol standing at the El Paso Chamber of Commerce building along the procession route. The man was captured and disarmed only a few feet from Díaz and Taft.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The Secret Service assisted in arresting Japanese American leaders and in the Japanese American internment during World War II.


title: United States Secret Service

text: In 1950, President Harry S. Truman was residing in Blair House while the White House, across the street, was undergoing renovations. On November 1, 1950, two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, approached Blair House with the intent to assassinate President Truman. Collazo and Torresola opened fire on Private Leslie Coffelt and other White House Police officers. Though mortally wounded by three shots from a 9 mm German Luger to his chest and abdomen, Private Coffelt returned fire, killing Torresola with a single shot to his head. Collazo was also shot, but survived his injuries and served 29 years in prison before returning to Puerto Rico in late 1979. Coffelt is the only member of the Secret Service killed while protecting a US president against an assassination attempt (Special Agent Tim McCarthy stepped in front of President Ronald Reagan during the assassination attempt of March 30, 1981, and took a bullet to the chest but made a full recovery).


title: United States Secret Service

text: In 1968, as a result of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, Congress authorized protection of major presidential and vice presidential candidates and nominees. In 1965 and 1968, Congress also authorized lifetime protection of the spouses of deceased presidents unless they remarry and of the children of former presidents until age 16.


title: United States Secret Service

text: In 1984, the US Congress passed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, which extended the Secret Service's jurisdiction over credit card fraud and computer fraud.


title: United States Secret Service

text: In 1990, the Secret Service initiated Operation Sundevil, which they originally intended as a sting against malicious hackers, allegedly responsible for disrupting telephone services across the entire United States. The operation, which was later described by Bruce Sterling in his book "The Hacker Crackdown", affected a great number of people unrelated to hacking, and led to no convictions. The Secret Service, however, was sued and required to pay damages. On March 1, 1990, the Secret Service served a search warrant on Steve Jackson Games, a small company in Austin, Texas, seizing three computers and over 300 floppy disks. In the subsequent lawsuit, the judge reprimanded the Secret Service, calling their warrant preparation "sloppy."


title: United States Secret Service

text: In 1994 and 1995, it ran an undercover sting called Operation Cybersnare. The Secret Service has concurrent jurisdiction with the FBI over certain violations of federal computer crime laws. They have created 24 Electronic Crimes Task Forces (ECTFs) across the United States. These task forces are partnerships between the service, federal/state and local law enforcement, the private sector and academia aimed at combating technology-based crimes.


title: United States Secret Service

text: In 1998, President Bill Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive 62, which established National Special Security Events (NSSE). That directive made the Secret Service responsible for security at designated events. In 1999, the United States Secret Service Memorial Building was dedicated in DC, granting the agency its first headquarters. Prior to this, the agency's different departments were based in office space around the DC area.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The New York City Field office was located at 7 World Trade Center. Immediately after the World Trade Center was attacked as part of the September 11 attacks, Special Agents and other New York Field office employees were among the first to respond with first aid. Sixty-seven Special Agents in New York City, at and near the New York Field Office, helped to set up triage areas and evacuate the towers. One Secret Service employee, Master Special Officer Craig Miller, died during the rescue efforts. On August 20, 2002, Director Brian L. Stafford awarded the Director's Valor Award to employees who assisted in the rescue attempts.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Effective March 1, 2003, the Secret Service transferred from the Treasury to the newly established Department of Homeland Security.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The USA Patriot Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001, mandated the Secret Service to establish a nationwide network of ECTFs in addition to the one already active in New York. As such, this mandate expanded on the agency's first ECTF—the New York Electronic Crimes Task Force, formed in 1995—which brought together federal, state and local law enforcement, prosecutors, private-industry companies, and academia. These bodies collectively provide necessary support and resources to field investigations that meet any one of the following criteria: significant economic or community impact; participation of organized criminal groups involving multiple districts or transnational organizations; or use of schemes involving new technology.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Investigations conducted by ECTFs include crimes such as computer generated counterfeit currency; bank fraud; virus and worm proliferation; access device fraud; telecommunications fraud; Internet threats; computer system intrusions and cyberattacks; phishing/spoofing; assistance with Internet-related child pornography and exploitation; and identity theft.


title: United States Secret Service

text: On July 6, 2009, the U.S. Secret Service expanded its fight on cybercrime by creating the first European Electronic Crime Task Force, based on the successful U.S. domestic model, through a memorandum of understanding with Italian police and postal officials. Over a year later, on August 9, 2010, the agency expanded its European involvement by creating its second overseas ECTF in the United Kingdom.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Both task forces are said to concentrate on a wide range of "computer-based criminal activity," including:


title: United States Secret Service

text: As of 2010, the service had over 6,500 employees: 3,200 Special Agents, 1,300 Uniformed Division Officers, and 2,000 technical and administrative employees. Special agents serve on protective details and investigate financial, cyber, and homeland security-related crimes.


title: United States Secret Service

text: In September 2014, the United States Secret Service came under criticism following two high-profile incidents involving intruders at the White House. One such intruder entered the East Room of the White House through an unlocked door.


title: United States Secret Service

text: On April 15, 2020, the ICE Homeland Security Investigations unit launched "Operation Stolen Promise" that targets COVID-19 related fraud. The operation conscripted resources from various branches of law enforcement and the government, including the U.S. Secret Service. About $2 trillion in the relief package known as the CARES Act were earmarked by law in March 2020, bringing unemployment benefits and loans to millions of Americans. However, as Secret Service spokesmen subsequently pointed out, the Act also opened up opportunities for criminals to fraudulently apply for aid. By the end of 2021, nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the Secret Service had seized more than $1.2 billion in relief funds appropriated by fraudsters.


title: United States Secret Service

text: On June 1, 2020, during a peaceful protest outside Lafayette Square, the U.S. Secret Service acted contrary to an operational plan and began advancing seven minutes before U.S. Park Police gave any dispersal warnings. This early deployment increased tensions between law enforcement and the protesters. They faced resistance and used pepper spray in response to eggs and bottles being thrown. Attorney General William Barr spoke with the U.S. Park Police operational commander seven minutes before the Secret Service began advancing, and again later, before President Trump visited a nearby Parish House to pose for a photo while holding a bible. The U.S. Secret Service later apologized but Joseph Cuffari, the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General, prevented career officials from investigating the role U.S. Secret Service played in the Trump administration’s controversial use of force to remove protesters that day.


title: United States Secret Service

text: In August 2020, a Secret Service officer shot a man once in the chest at the corner of 17th street and Pennsylvania during one of then-President Trump’s press conferences. The President was evacuated but returned later and told the White House press corps that the man had a gun. However, according to court documents, the man was actually holding a comb, told the officers he was armed and took a shooting stance before being shot. The man is schizophrenic and was charged with simple assault of a law enforcement officer.


title: United States Secret Service

text: A day before the January 6 United States Capitol attack in 2021, the Secret Service warned Capitol Police of threats of violence that Capitol Police officers could face violence at the hands of supporters of President Donald Trump. On January 6, Secret Service agents provided security in and around the United States Capitol, as well as evacuating Vice President Mike Pence during the riot. Testimony in Congress indicates Pence was concerned his security detail would remove him from the Capitol, stopping him from completing his duty to oversee the final count of electoral college votes. At the center of the controversy surrounding the Secret Service and January 6 investigations is Anthony M. Ornato, who had been the head of Trump's security detail, but took the unprecedented step of leaving the Secret Service to become deputy White House chief of staff and becoming a "key part of Trump’s effort to get reelected."


title: United States Secret Service

text: In April 2022, four Secret Service agents, one of whom was assigned to First Lady Jill Biden, were placed on leave after accepting lavish gifts, rent free apartments, and other bribes from 2 men ultimately convicted of impersonating federal officers.


title: United States Secret Service

text: On August 24, 2022, President Joe Biden named Kim Cheatle, an official with PepsiCo, as the agency's new director. Cheatle was in the Secret Service for 27 years and became the first woman to serve as assistant director of protective operations, a department tasked with protecting the president and dignitaries.<ref name="Viser_8/24/2022"></ref>


title: United States Secret Service

text: Since the 1960s, presidents John F. Kennedy (killed), Gerald Ford (twice attacked, but uninjured) and Ronald Reagan (seriously wounded) have been attacked while appearing in public. Agents on scene, though not injured, during attacks on presidents include William Greer and Roy Kellerman. One of the agents was Robert DeProspero, the Special Agent In Charge (SAIC) of Reagan's Presidential Protective Division (PPD) from January 1982 to April 1985. DeProspero was deputy to Jerry Parr, the SAIC of PPD during the Reagan assassination attempt on March 30, 1981.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The Kennedy assassination spotlighted the bravery of two Secret Service agents. First, an agent protecting Mrs. Kennedy, Clint Hill, was riding in the car directly behind the presidential limousine when the attack began. While the shooting continued, Hill leaped from the running board of the car he was riding on and jumped onto the back of the president's moving car and guided Mrs. Kennedy from the trunk back into the rear seat of the car. He then shielded the president and the first lady with his body until the car arrived at the hospital.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Rufus Youngblood was riding in the vice-presidential car. When the shots were fired, he vaulted over the front seat and threw his body over Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. That evening, Johnson called Secret Service Chief James J. Rowley and cited Youngblood's bravery. Youngblood would later recall some of this in his memoir, "Twenty Years in the Secret Service".


title: United States Secret Service

text: The period following the Kennedy assassination was the most difficult in the modern history of the agency. Press reports indicated that morale among the agents was "low" for months following the assassination. The agency overhauled its procedures in the wake of the Kennedy killing. Training, which until that time had been confined largely to "on-the-job" efforts, was systematized and regularized.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The Reagan assassination attempt also involved several Secret Service agents, particularly agent Tim McCarthy, who spread his stance to protect Reagan as six bullets were being fired by the would-be assassin, John Hinckley Jr. McCarthy survived a .22-caliber round in the abdomen. For his bravery, McCarthy received the NCAA Award of Valor in 1982. Jerry Parr, the agent who pushed President Reagan into the limousine, and made the critical decision to divert the presidential motorcade to George Washington University Hospital instead of returning to the White House, was also honored with U.S. Congress commendations for his actions that day.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Arrest and indictment of Max Ray Butler, co-founder of the Carders Market carding website. Butler was indicted by a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after his September 5, 2007, arrest, on wire fraud and identity theft charges. According to the indictment, Butler hacked over the Internet into computers at financial institutions and credit card processing centers and sold the tens of thousands of credit card numbers that he acquired in the process.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Operation Firewall: In October 2004, 28 suspects—located across eight U.S. states and six countries—were arrested on charges of identity theft, computer fraud, credit-card fraud, and conspiracy. Nearly 30 national and foreign field offices of the U.S. Secret Service, including the newly established national ECTFs, and countless local enforcement agencies from around the globe, were involved in this operation. Collectively, the arrested suspects trafficked in at least 1.7 million stolen credit card numbers, which amounted to $4.3 million of losses to financial institutions. However, authorities estimated that prevented loss to the industry was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The operation, which started in July 2003 and lasted for more than a year, led investigators to identify three cybercriminal groups: Shadowcrew, Carderplanet, and Darkprofits.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Arrest and indictment of Albert Gonzalez and 11 individuals; three U.S. citizens, one from Estonia, three from Ukraine, two from the People's Republic of China, one from Belarus, and one known only by an online alias. They were arrested on August 5, 2008, for the theft and sale of more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers from major U.S. retailers, including TJX Companies, BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever 21, and DSW. Gonzalez, the main organizer of the scheme, was charged with computer fraud, wire fraud, access device fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy for his leading role in the crime.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The Secret Service special agent position is highly competitive. In 2011, the service accepted less than 1% of its 15,600 special agent applicants.


title: United States Secret Service

text: At a minimum, a prospective agent must be a U.S. citizen, possess a current valid driver's license, be in excellent health and physical condition, possess visual acuity no worse than 20/100 uncorrected or correctable to 20/20 in each eye, and be between age 21–37 at the time of appointment, but eligible veterans may apply past age 37. In 2009, the Office of Personnel Management issued implementation guidance on the "Isabella v. Department of State" court decision: OPM Letter.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Prospective agents must also qualify for a TS/SCI (Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information) clearance, and undergo an extensive background investigation, to include in-depth interviews, drug screening, medical diagnosis, and full-scope polygraph examination.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Special agents receive training in two locations, totaling approximately 31 weeks. The first phase, the Criminal Investigator Training Program (CITP) is conducted at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) in Glynco, Georgia, lasting approximately 13 weeks. The second phase, the Special Agent Training Course (SATC) is conducted at the Secret Service Academy, James J. Rowley Training Center (JJRTC), just outside Washington, D.C. in Laurel, Maryland, lasting approximately 18 weeks.


title: United States Secret Service

text: A typical special agent career path, depending upon performance and promotions that affect individual assignments, begins with the first six to eight years on the job assigned to a field office. Applicants are directed to list their office location preference during the application process, and upon receiving a final job offer, usually have several locations to choose from. After their field office experience, agents are usually transferred to a protective assignment where they will stay for three to five years. Following their protective assignment, many agents return to a field office for the rest of their careers, or opt for a headquarters based assignment located in Washington, D.C. During their careers, agents also have the opportunity to work overseas in one of the agency's international field offices. This typically requires foreign language training to ensure language proficiency when working alongside the agency's foreign law enforcement counterparts.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Special agents are hired at the GL-07, GL-09, or GS-11 grade level, depending on individual qualifications and/or education. Agents are eligible for promotion on a yearly basis, from GL-07, to GL-09, to GS-11, to GS-12, to GS-13. The full performance grade level for a journeyman field agent is GS-13, which a GL-07, GL-09, or GS-11 agent may reach in as little as four, three, or two years respectively. GS-13 agents are eligible for competitive promotion to supervisory positions, which encompasses the GS-14, GS-15, and SES grade levels. GS-13 agents who wish to remain as journeyman field agents, will continue to advance the GS-13 step level, capping at GS-13 Step 10.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Special agents also receive Law Enforcement Availability Pay (LEAP), a type of premium overtime pay which provides them with an additional 25% bonus pay on top of their salary, as agents are required to work an average workweek of 50 hours as opposed to 40. Therefore an agent living in the Greater New York City area (NY, NJ, CT) will earn an annual salary of $73,666 (GL-07), $82,162 (GL-09), $96,201 (GS-11), $115,306 (GS-12), $137,112 (GS-13), $162,026 (GS-14), and $176,300 (GS-15). Journeyman field agents at GS-13 Step 10 are also paid a salary of $176,300.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Due to the nature of their work and unique among their federal law enforcement counterparts (e.g. FBI, DEA, ATF, ICE), Secret Service agents are regularly eligible for scheduled overtime pay (in addition to LEAP), and enjoy a raised statutory pay cap of $203,700 per year (Level II of the Executive Schedule) as opposed to the standard pay cap of $176,300 per year (Level IV of the Executive Schedule).


title: United States Secret Service

text: The Secret Service Uniformed Division is a security police similar to the U.S. Capitol Police or DHS Federal Protective Service and is in charge of protecting the physical White House grounds and foreign diplomatic missions in the Washington, D.C. area. Established in 1922 as the White House Police, this organization was fully integrated into the Secret Service in 1930. In 1970, the protection of foreign diplomatic missions was added to the force's responsibilities, and its name was changed to the Executive Protective Service. The name United States Secret Service Uniformed Division was adopted in 1977.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Secret Service Uniformed Division officers provide protection for the White House Complex, the vice president's residence, the main Treasury Building and Annex, and foreign diplomatic missions and embassies in the Washington, D.C., area. Additionally, Uniformed Division officers travel in support of presidential, vice presidential and foreign head of state government missions. Officers may, as their careers progress, be selected to participate in one of several specialized units, including the:


title: United States Secret Service

text: Agents and officers are trained on standard shoulder weapons that include the FN P90 submachine gun, the 9mm Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun, and the 12-gauge Remington 870 shotgun.


title: United States Secret Service

text: As a non-lethal option, Special Agents, Special Officers, and Uniformed Division Officers are armed with the ASP 16" expandable baton, and Uniformed Division officers also carry pepper spray.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Special Operations Division (SOD) units are authorized to use a variety of non-standard weapons. The Counter Assault Team (CAT) and the Emergency Response Team (ERT) both use the 5.56mm Knight's Armament Company SR-16 CQB assault rifle in an 11.5" configuration. CAT also deploys 12 gauge Remington 870 MCS breaching shotguns. Uniform Division technicians assigned to the Counter Sniper (CS) team use custom built .300 Winchester Magnum-chambered bolt-action rifles referred to as JARs ("Just Another Rifle"). These rifles are built with Remington 700 long actions in Accuracy International stocks and use Schmidt & Bender optics. CS technicians also use the 7.62mm KAC SR-25/Mk11 Mod 0 semi-automatic sniper rifle with a Trijicon 5.5× ACOG optic.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The Secret Service's current duty sidearm, the SIG-Sauer P229 double-action/single-action pistol chambered .357 SIG, entered service in 1999. It is the issued handgun to all special agents as well as officers of the Uniformed Division. As of 2019, the SIG-Sauer P229 is scheduled to be replaced with Glock 9mm pistols. Most special agents will be issued the Glock 19 Gen 5 MOS with forward slide serrations, Ameriglo Bold night sights, and a Streamlight TLR-7A weapon light. US Secret Service's Special Operations will be issued the Glock 47 with Ameriglo Bold sights and a Surefire X300 Ultra weapon light.


title: United States Secret Service

text: Special agents and special officers of the Secret Service wear attire that is appropriate for their surroundings, in order to blend in as much as possible. In most circumstances, the attire of a close protection shift is a conservative suit, but it can range from a tuxedo to casual clothing as required by the environment. Stereotypically, Secret Service agents are often portrayed wearing reflective sunglasses and a communication earpiece. Often their attire is customized to conceal the wide array of equipment worn in service. Agents wear a distinctive lapel pin that identifies them to other agents.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The attire for Uniformed Division Officers includes standard police uniforms or utility uniforms and ballistic/identification vests for members of the counter-sniper team, Emergency Response Team (ERT), and canine officers. The shoulder patch of the Uniformed Division consists of the U.S. coat of arms on white or black, depending on the garment. Also, the shoulder patch is embroidered with "U.S. Secret Service Uniformed Division Police" around the emblem.


title: United States Secret Service

text: When transporting the president in a motorcade, the Secret Service uses a fleet of custom-built armored Cadillac Limousines, the newest and largest version of which is known as "The Beast". Armored Chevrolet Suburbans are also used when logistics require such a vehicle or when a more low-profile appearance is required. For official movement, the limousine is affixed with U.S. and presidential flags and the presidential seal on the rear doors. For unofficial events, the vehicles are left sterile and unadorned.


title: United States Secret Service

text: The Secret Service has agents assigned to 136 field offices and field agencies, and the headquarters in Washington, D.C. The service's offices are located in cities throughout the United States and the world. The offices in Lyon and The Hague are respectively responsible for liaison with the headquarters of Interpol and Europol, located in those cities.


title: United States Secret Service

text: On April 14, 2012, the U.S. Secret Service placed 11 agents on administrative leave as the agency investigated allegations that the men brought prostitutes to their hotel rooms in Cartagena, Colombia, while on assignment to protect President Obama and that a dispute ensued with one of the women over payment the following morning.


title: United States Secret Service

text: After the incident was publicized, the Secret Service implemented new rules for its personnel. The rules prohibit personnel from visiting "non-reputable establishments" and from consuming alcohol less than ten hours before starting work. Additionally, they restrict who is allowed in hotel rooms.


title: United States Secret Service

text: In 2015, two inebriated senior Secret Service agents drove an official car into the White House complex and collided with a barrier. One of the congressmen in the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that investigated that incident was Jason Chaffetz. In September 2015, it was revealed that 18 Secret Service employees or supervisors, including Assistant Director Ed Lowery, accessed an unsuccessful 2003 application by Chaffetz for employment with the agency and discussed leaking the information to the media in retaliation for Chaffetz' investigations of agency misconduct. The confidential personal information was later leaked to "The Daily Beast". Agency Director Joe Clancy apologized to Chaffetz and said that disciplinary action would be taken against those responsible.


title: United States Secret Service

text: In March 2017, a member of Vice President Mike Pence's detail was suspended after the agent was caught visiting a prostitute at a hotel in Maryland.


title: United States Secret Service

text: In July 2022, during President Biden's trip to the Middle East, a Secret Service agent was sent back to the United States from Israel after assaulting a woman at a bar in Machane Yehuda. A Secret Service spokesman said in a statement that the agency was informed of the encounter, and the agent, who was working in Israel, was "briefly detained and questioned by Israeli police, who released him without charges."


title: United States Secret Service

text: On July 15, 2022, "The Intercept" reported that a letter from the Department of Homeland Security revealed the Secret Service had erased text messages from the day before and day of the January 6 insurrection, shortly after those messages were requested by oversight officials investigating the agency’s response to the US Capitol riots. The agency claimed that the messages “were erased as part of a device-replacement program,” although the agency is bound by regulation to preserve all records of its activity (including text messages, emails, and other electronic communications). According to "Politico" on July 19, 2022, as new material becomes available to the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, "a potential second round of hearings gets slated for the fall [of 2022]". Such related new materials may include further details regarding “the potential unauthorized deletion” of text messages, particularly those from around January 5 and 6, 2021, by the Secret Service, then headed by Director James M. Murray, an appointee by then-President Trump in 2019. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general has initiated a criminal investigation into the erasure of text messages exchanged by Secret Service agents relating to the January 6 Capitol riot.


title: I Ching

text: The I Ching or Yi Jing (, ), usually translated Book of Changes or Classic of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000750), the "I Ching" was transformed over the course of the Warring States and early imperial periods (500200) into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the "Ten Wings". After becoming part of the Five Classics in the 2nd century BC, the "I Ching" was the subject of scholarly commentary and the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East, and eventually took on an influential role in Western understanding of East Asian philosophical thought.


title: I Ching

text: As a divination text, the "I Ching" is used for a traditional Chinese form of cleromancy known as "I Ching" divination, in which bundles of yarrow stalks are manipulated to produce sets of six apparently random numbers ranging from 6 to 9. Each of the 64 possible sets corresponds to a hexagram, which can be looked up in the "I Ching". The hexagrams are arranged in an order known as the King Wen sequence. The interpretation of the readings found in the "I Ching" has been endlessly discussed and debated over the centuries. Many commentators have used the book symbolically, often to provide guidance for moral decision making as informed by Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and been paralleled with many other traditional names for the processes of change such as yin and yang and Wu Xing.


title: I Ching

text: The core of the "I Ching" is a Western Zhou divination text called the "Changes of Zhou" (). Various modern scholars suggest dates ranging between the 10th and 4th centuries BC for the assembly of the text in approximately its current form. Based on a comparison of the language of the "Zhou yi" with dated bronze inscriptions, the American sinologist Edward Shaughnessy dated its compilation in its current form to the last quarter of the 9th century BC, during the early decades of the reign of King Xuan of Zhou (). A copy of the text in the Shanghai Museum corpus of bamboo and wooden slips (discovered in 1994) shows that the "Zhou yi" was used throughout all levels of Chinese society in its current form by 300 BC, but still contained small variations as late as the Warring States period (c. 475–221). It is possible that other divination systems existed at this time; the "Rites of Zhou" name two other such systems, the "Lianshan" and the "Guicang".


title: I Ching

text: The name "Zhou yi" literally means the "changes" () of the Zhou dynasty. The "changes" involved have been interpreted as the transformations of hexagrams, of their lines, or of the numbers obtained from the divination. Feng Youlan proposed that the word for "changes" originally meant "easy", as in a form of divination easier than the oracle bones, but there is little evidence for this. There is also an ancient folk etymology that sees the character for "changes" as containing the sun and moon, the cycle of the day. Modern Sinologists believe the character to be derived either from an image of the sun emerging from clouds, or from the content of a vessel being changed into another.


title: I Ching

text: The "Zhou yi" was traditionally ascribed to the Zhou cultural heroes King Wen of Zhou and the Duke of Zhou, and was also associated with the legendary world ruler Fu Xi. According to the canonical "Great Commentary", Fu Xi observed the patterns of the world and created the eight trigrams (), "in order to become thoroughly conversant with the numinous and bright and to classify the myriad things." The "Zhou yi" itself does not contain this legend and indeed says nothing about its own origins. The "Rites of Zhou", however, also claims that the hexagrams of the "Zhou yi" were derived from an initial set of eight trigrams. During the Han dynasty there were various opinions about the historical relationship between the trigrams and the hexagrams. Eventually, a consensus formed around 2nd-century AD scholar Ma Rong's attribution of the text to the joint work of Fu Xi, King Wen of Zhou, the Duke of Zhou, and Confucius, but this traditional attribution is no longer generally accepted.


title: I Ching

text: The basic unit of the "Zhou yi" is the hexagram ( "guà"), a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines ( "yáo"). Each line is either broken or unbroken. The received text of the "Zhou yi" contains all 64 possible hexagrams, along with the hexagram's name ( ), a short hexagram statement ( ), and six line statements ( "yáocí"). The statements were used to determine the results of divination, but the reasons for having two different methods of reading the hexagram are not known, and it is not known why hexagram statements would be read over line statements or vice versa.


title: I Ching

text: The book opens with the first hexagram statement, (). These four words, translated traditionally by James Legge as "originating and penetrating, advantageous and firm," are often repeated in the hexagram statements and were already considered an important part of "I Ching" interpretation in the 6th century BC. Edward Shaughnessy describes this statement as affirming an "initial receipt" of an offering, "beneficial" for further "divining".


title: I Ching

text: The word (, ancient form ) was also used for the verb "divine" in the oracle bones of the late Shang dynasty, which preceded the Zhou. It also carried meanings of being or making upright or correct, and was defined by the Eastern Han scholar Zheng Xuan as "to enquire into the correctness" of a proposed activity.


title: I Ching

text: The names of the hexagrams are usually words that appear in their respective line statements, but in five cases (2, 9, 26, 61, and 63) an unrelated character of unclear purpose appears. The hexagram names could have been chosen arbitrarily from the line statements, but it is also possible that the line statements were derived from the hexagram names. The line statements, which make up most of the book, are exceedingly cryptic. Each line begins with a word indicating the line number, "base, 2, 3, 4, 5, top", and either the number 6 for a broken line, or the number 9 for a whole line. Hexagrams 1 and 2 have an extra line statement, named "yong". Following the line number, the line statements may make oracular or prognostic statements. Some line statements also contain poetry or references to historical events.


title: I Ching

text: Archaeological evidence shows that Zhou dynasty divination was grounded in cleromancy, the production of seemingly random numbers to determine divine intent. The "Zhou yi" provided a guide to cleromancy that used the stalks of the yarrow plant, but it is not known how the yarrow stalks became numbers, or how specific lines were chosen from the line readings. In the hexagrams, broken lines were used as shorthand for the numbers 6 () and 8 (), and solid lines were shorthand for values of 7 () and 9 (). The "Great Commentary" contains a late classic description of a process where various numerological operations are performed on a bundle of 50 stalks, leaving remainders of 6 to 9. Like the "Zhou yi" itself, yarrow stalk divination dates to the Western Zhou period, although its modern form is a reconstruction.


title: I Ching

text: The ancient narratives "Zuo zhuan" and "Guoyu" contain the oldest descriptions of divination using the "Zhou yi". The two histories describe more than twenty successful divinations conducted by professional soothsayers for royal families between 671 BC and 487 BC. The method of divination is not explained, and none of the stories employ predetermined commentaries, patterns, or interpretations. Only the hexagrams and line statements are used. By the 4th century BCE, the authority of the "Zhou yi" was also cited for rhetorical purposes, without relation to any stated divination. The "Zuo zhuan" does not contain records of private individuals, but Qin dynasty records found at Shuihudi show that the hexagrams were privately consulted to answer questions such as business, health, children, and determining lucky days.


title: I Ching

text: The most common form of divination with the "I Ching" in use today is a reconstruction of the method described in these histories, in the 300 BC "Great Commentary", and later in the "Huainanzi" and the "Lunheng". From the "Great Commentary"'s description, the Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi reconstructed a method of yarrow stalk divination that is still used throughout the Far East. In the modern period, Gao Heng attempted his own reconstruction, which varies from Zhu Xi in places. Another divination method, employing coins, became widely used in the Tang dynasty and is still used today. In the modern period; alternative methods such as specialized dice and cartomancy have also appeared.


title: I Ching

text: In the "Zuo zhuan" stories, individual lines of hexagrams are denoted by using the genitive particle (), followed by the name of another hexagram where that specific line had another form. In later attempts to reconstruct ancient divination methods, the word was interpreted as a verb meaning "moving to", an apparent indication that hexagrams could be transformed into other hexagrams. However, there are no instances of "changeable lines" in the "Zuo zhuan". In all 12 out of 12 line statements quoted, the original hexagrams are used to produce the oracle.


title: I Ching

text: In 136 BC, Emperor Wu of Han named the "Zhou yi" "the first among the classics", dubbing it the "Classic of Changes" or "I Ching". Emperor Wu's placement of the "I Ching" among the Five Classics was informed by a broad span of cultural influences that included Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, yin-yang cosmology, and Wu Xing physical theory. While the "Zhou yi" does not contain any cosmological analogies, the "I Ching" was read as a microcosm of the universe that offered complex, symbolic correspondences. The official edition of the text was literally set in stone, as one of the Xiping Stone Classics. The canonized "I Ching" became the standard text for over two thousand years, until alternate versions of the "Zhou yi" and related texts were discovered in the 20th century.


title: I Ching

text: Part of the canonization of the "Zhou yi" bound it to a set of ten commentaries called the Ten Wings. The Ten Wings are of a much later provenance than the "Zhou yi", and are the production of a different society. The "Zhou yi" was written in Early Old Chinese, while the Ten Wings were written in a predecessor to Middle Chinese. The specific origins of the Ten Wings are still a complete mystery to academics. Regardless of their historical relation to the text, the philosophical depth of the Ten Wings made the "I Ching" a perfect fit to Han period Confucian scholarship. The inclusion of the Ten Wings reflects a widespread recognition in ancient China, found in the "Zuo zhuan" and other pre-Han texts, that the "I Ching" was a rich moral and symbolic document useful for more than professional divination.


title: I Ching

text: Arguably the most important of the Ten Wings is the "Great Commentary" ("Dazhuan") or "Xi ci", which dates to roughly 300 BC. The "Great Commentary" describes the "I Ching" as a microcosm of the universe and a symbolic description of the processes of change. By partaking in the spiritual experience of the "I Ching", the "Great Commentary" states, the individual can understand the deeper patterns of the universe. Among other subjects, it explains how the eight trigrams proceeded from the eternal oneness of the universe through three bifurcations. The other Wings provide different perspectives on essentially the same viewpoint, giving ancient, cosmic authority to the "I Ching". For example, the "Wenyan" provides a moral interpretation that parallels the first two hexagrams, 乾 (qián) and 坤 (kūn), with Heaven and Earth, and the "Shuogua" attributes to the symbolic function of the hexagrams the ability to understand self, world, and destiny. Throughout the Ten Wings, there are passages that seem to purposefully increase the ambiguity of the base text, pointing to a recognition of multiple layers of symbolism.


title: I Ching

text: The "Great Commentary" associates knowledge of the "I Ching" with the ability to "delight in Heaven and understand fate;" the sage who reads it will see cosmological patterns and not despair in mere material difficulties. The Japanese word for "metaphysics", "keijijōgaku" (; pinyin: "xíng ér shàng xué") is derived from a statement found in the "Great Commentary" that "what is above form ["xíng ér shàng"] is called Dao; what is under form is called a tool". The word has also been borrowed into Korean and re-borrowed back into Chinese.


title: I Ching

text: The Ten Wings were traditionally attributed to Confucius, possibly based on a misreading of the "Records of the Grand Historian". Although it rested on historically shaky grounds, the association of the "I Ching" with Confucius gave weight to the text and was taken as an article of faith throughout the Han and Tang dynasties. The "I Ching" was not included in the burning of the Confucian classics, and textual evidence strongly suggests that Confucius did not consider the "Zhou yi" a "classic". An ancient commentary on the "Zhou yi" found at Mawangdui portrays Confucius as endorsing it as a source of wisdom first and an imperfect divination text second. However, since the Ten Wings became canonized by Emperor Wu of Han together with the original I Ching as the Zhou Yi, it can be attributed to the positions of influence from the Confucians in the government. Furthermore, the Ten Wings tends to use diction and phrases such as "the master said", which was previously commonly seen in the Analects, thereby implying the heavy involvement of Confucians in its creation as well as institutionalization.


title: I Ching

text: In the canonical "I Ching", the hexagrams are arranged in an order dubbed the King Wen sequence after King Wen of Zhou, who founded the Zhou dynasty and supposedly reformed the method of interpretation. The sequence generally pairs hexagrams with their upside-down equivalents, although in eight cases hexagrams are paired with their inversion. Another order, found at Mawangdui in 1973, arranges the hexagrams into eight groups sharing the same upper trigram. But the oldest known manuscript, found in 1987 and now held by the Shanghai Library, was almost certainly arranged in the King Wen sequence, and it has even been proposed that a pottery paddle from the Western Zhou period contains four hexagrams in the King Wen sequence. Whichever of these arrangements is older, it is not evident that the order of the hexagrams was of interest to the original authors of the "Zhou yi". The assignment of numbers, binary or decimal, to specific hexagrams, is a modern invention.


title: I Ching

text: Yin and yang are represented by broken and solid lines: yin is broken (⚋) and yang is solid (⚊). Different constructions of three yin and yang lines lead to eight trigrams (八卦) namely, Qian (乾, ☰), Dui (兌, ☱), Li (離, ☲), Zhen (震, ☳), Xun (巽, ☴), Kan (坎, ☵), Gen (艮, ☶), and Kun (坤, ☷).


title: I Ching

text: The sinologist Michael Nylan describes the "I Ching" as the best-known Chinese book in the world. In East Asia, it is a foundational text for the Confucian and Daoist philosophical traditions, while in the West, it attracted the attention of Enlightenment intellectuals and prominent literary and cultural figures.


title: I Ching

text: During the Eastern Han, "I Ching" interpretation divided into two schools, originating in a dispute over minor differences between different editions of the received text. The first school, known as New Text criticism, was more egalitarian and eclectic, and sought to find symbolic and numerological parallels between the natural world and the hexagrams. Their commentaries provided the basis of the School of Images and Numbers. The other school, Old Text criticism, was more scholarly and hierarchical, and focused on the moral content of the text, providing the basis for the School of Meanings and Principles. The New Text scholars distributed alternate versions of the text and freely integrated non-canonical commentaries into their work, as well as propagating alternate systems of divination such as the "Taixuanjing". Most of this early commentary, such as the image and number work of Jing Fang, Yu Fan and Xun Shuang, is no longer extant. Only short fragments survive, from a Tang dynasty text called "Zhou yi jijie".


title: I Ching

text: With the fall of the Han, "I Ching" scholarship was no longer organized into systematic schools. The most influential writer of this period was Wang Bi, who discarded the numerology of Han commentators and integrated the philosophy of the Ten Wings directly into the central text of the "I Ching", creating such a persuasive narrative that Han commentators were no longer considered significant. A century later Han Kangbo added commentaries on the Ten Wings to Wang Bi's book, creating a text called the "Zhouyi zhu". The principal rival interpretation was a practical text on divination by the soothsayer Guan Lu.


title: I Ching

text: At the beginning of the Tang dynasty, Emperor Taizong of Tang ordered Kong Yingda to create a canonical edition of the "I Ching". Choosing Wang Bi's 3rd-century "Annotated Zhou-dynasty (Book of) Changes" ('; ) as the official commentary, he added to it further commentary drawing out the subtler details of Wang Bi's explanations. The resulting work, the "Right Meaning of the Zhou-dynasty (Book of) Changes" ('; ), became the standard edition of the "I Ching" through the Song dynasty.


title: I Ching

text: By the 11th century, the "I Ching" was being read as a work of intricate philosophy, as a jumping-off point for examining great metaphysical questions and ethical issues. Cheng Yi, patriarch of the Neo-Confucian Cheng–Zhu school, read the "I Ching" as a guide to moral perfection. He described the text as a way to for ministers to form honest political factions, root out corruption, and solve problems in government.


title: I Ching

text: The contemporary scholar Shao Yong rearranged the hexagrams in a format that resembles modern binary numbers, although he did not intend his arrangement to be used mathematically. This arrangement, sometimes called the binary sequence, later inspired Leibniz.


title: I Ching

text: The 12th century Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi, cofounder of the Cheng–Zhu school, criticized both of the Han dynasty lines of commentary on the "I Ching", saying that they were one-sided. He developed a synthesis of the two, arguing that the text was primarily a work of divination that could be used in the process of moral self-cultivation, or what the ancients called "rectification of the mind" in the "Great Learning". Zhu Xi's reconstruction of I Ching yarrow stalk divination, based in part on the "Great Commentary" account, became the standard form and is still in use today.


title: I Ching

text: As China entered the early modern period, the "I Ching" took on renewed relevance in both Confucian and Daoist studies. The Kangxi Emperor was especially fond of the "I Ching" and ordered new interpretations of it. Qing dynasty scholars focused more intently on understanding pre-classical grammar, assisting the development of new philological approaches in the modern period.


title: I Ching

text: Like the other Chinese classics, the "I Ching" was an influential text across East Asia. In 1557, the Korean Neo-Confucianist philosopher Yi Hwang produced one of the most influential "I Ching" studies of the early modern era, claiming that the spirit was a principle ("li") and not a material force ("qi"). Hwang accused the Neo-Confucian school of having misread Zhu Xi. His critique proved influential not only in Korea but also in Japan. Other than this contribution, the "I Ching"—known in Korean as the "Yeok Gyeong"()—was not central to the development of Korean Confucianism, and by the 19th century, "I Ching" studies were integrated into the "silhak" reform movement.


title: I Ching

text: In medieval Japan, secret teachings on the "I Ching"—known in Japanese as the "Eki Kyō"()—were publicized by Rinzai Zen master Kokan Shiren and the Shintoist Yoshida Kanetomo during the Kamakura era. "I Ching" studies in Japan took on new importance during the Edo period, during which over 1,000 books were published on the subject by over 400 authors. The majority of these books were serious works of philology, reconstructing ancient usages and commentaries for practical purposes. A sizable minority focused on numerology, symbolism, and divination. During this time, over 150 editions of earlier Chinese commentaries were reprinted across Edo Japan, including several texts that had become lost in China. In the early Edo period, Japanese writers such as Itō Jinsai, Kumazawa Banzan, and Nakae Toju ranked the "I Ching" the greatest of the Confucian classics. Many writers attempted to use the "I Ching" to explain Western science in a Japanese framework. One writer, Shizuki Tadao, even attempted to employ Newtonian mechanics and the Copernican principle within an "I Ching" cosmology. This line of argument was later taken up in China by the Qing politician Zhang Zhidong.


title: I Ching

text: Leibniz, who was corresponding with Jesuits in China, wrote the first European commentary on the "I Ching" in 1703. He argued that it proved the universality of binary numbers and theism, since the broken lines, the "0" or "nothingness", cannot become solid lines, the "1" or "oneness", without the intervention of God. This was criticized by Hegel, who proclaimed that binary system and Chinese characters were "empty forms" that could not articulate spoken words with the clarity of the Western alphabet. In their commentary, "I Ching" hexagrams and Chinese characters were conflated into a single foreign idea, sparking a dialogue on Western philosophical questions such as universality and the nature of communication. The usage of binary in relation to the I Ching was central to Leibniz's characteristica universalis, or universal language, which in turn inspired the standards of Boolean logic and for Gottlob Frege to develop predicate logic in the late 19th century. In the 20th century, Jacques Derrida identified Hegel's argument as logocentric, but accepted without question Hegel's premise that the Chinese language cannot express philosophical ideas.


title: I Ching

text: After the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, the "I Ching" was no longer part of mainstream Chinese political philosophy, but it maintained cultural influence as China's most ancient text. Borrowing back from Leibniz, Chinese writers offered parallels between the "I Ching" and subjects such as linear algebra and logic in computer science, aiming to demonstrate that ancient Chinese cosmology had anticipated Western discoveries. The Sinologist Joseph Needham took the opposite opinion, arguing that the "I Ching" had actually impeded scientific development by incorporating all physical knowledge into its metaphysics. However with the advent of quantum mechanics, physicist Niels Bohr credited inspiration from the Yin and Yang symbolisms in using intuition to interpret the new field, which disproved principles from older Western classical mechanics. The principle of complementarity heavily used concepts from the I Ching as mentioned in his writings. The psychologist Carl Jung took interest in the possible universal nature of the imagery of the "I Ching", and he introduced an influential German translation by Richard Wilhelm by discussing his theories of archetypes and synchronicity. Jung wrote, "Even to the most biased eye, it is obvious that this book represents one long admonition to careful scrutiny of one's own character, attitude, and motives." The book had a notable impact on the 1960s counterculture and on 20th century cultural figures such as Philip K. Dick, John Cage, Jorge Luis Borges, Terence McKenna and Hermann Hesse. Joni Mitchell references the six yang hexagram in her song "Amelia" from her "Hejira" album after she describes the image of "...six jet planes leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain...". It also inspired the 1968 song While My Guitar Gently Weeps by The Beatles.


title: I Ching

text: The modern period also brought a new level of skepticism and rigor to "I Ching" scholarship. Li Jingchi spent several decades producing a new interpretation of the text, which was published posthumously in 1978. Modern data scientists including Alex Liu proposed to represent and develop I Ching methods with data science 4E framework and latent variable approaches for a more rigorous representation and interpretation of I Ching. Gao Heng, an expert in pre-Qin China, reinvestigated its use as a Zhou dynasty oracle. Edward Shaughnessy proposed a new dating for the various strata of the text. New archaeological discoveries have enabled a deeper level of insight into how the text was used in the centuries before the Qin dynasty. Proponents of newly reconstructed Western Zhou readings, which often differ greatly from traditional readings of the text, are sometimes called the "modernist school".


title: I Ching

text: The "I Ching" features significantly in Philip K. Dick's "The Man in the High Castle" (an alternate reality novel where the Axis Powers won World War II), where various characters in the Japanese-controlled portion of America base their decisions on what it tells them.


title: I Ching

text: "I Ching" is also used in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" where it guides the physicist Mary Malone on her interactions with Dust/Dark Matter and leads her to another dimension.


title: I Ching

text: In "The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul" by Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently buys an electronic calculator that contains a badly-translated version of the "I Ching", and uses it to decide if he should buy a new fridge.


title: I Ching

text: In the "Discworld" novel "Mort", Cutwell the wizard uses a similar divination technique called the Ching-Aling.


title: I Ching

text: The "I Ching" has been translated into Western languages dozens of times. The earliest published complete translation of the "I Ching" into a Western language was a Latin translation done in the 1730s by the French Jesuit missionary Jean-Baptiste Régis that was published in Germany in the 1830s. Historically, the most influential Western-language "I Ching" translation was Richard Wilhelm's 1923 German translation, which was translated into English in 1950 by Cary Baynes. Although Thomas McClatchie and James Legge had both translated the text in the 19th century, the text gained significant traction during the counterculture of the 1960s, with the translations of Wilhelm and John Blofeld attracting particular interest. Richard Rutt's 1996 translation incorporated much of the new archaeological and philological discoveries of the 20th century. Gregory Whincup's 1986 translation also attempts to reconstruct Zhou period readings.


title: Wahhabism

text: Wahhabism () is a Sunni Islamic revivalist and fundamentalist movement associated with the reformist doctrines of the 18th-century Arabian Islamic scholar, theologian, preacher, and activist Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (). He established the "Muwahhidun" movement in the region of Najd in central Arabia as well as South Western Arabia, a reform movement that emphasised purging of rituals related to the veneration of Muslim saints and pilgrimages to their tombs and shrines, which were widespread amongst the people of Najd. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab and his followers were highly inspired by the influential thirteenth-century Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328 C.E/ 661 – 728 A.H) who called for a return to the purity of the first three generations ("Salaf") to rid Muslims of inauthentic outgrowths ("bidʻah"), and regarded his works as core scholarly references in theology. While being influenced by their Hanbali doctrines, the movement repudiated "Taqlid" to legal authorities, including oft-cited scholars such as Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim (d. 1350 C.E/ 751 A.H).


title: Wahhabism

text: Wahhabism has been variously described as "orthodox", "puritan(ical)", "revolutionary"; and as an Islamic "reform movement" to restore "pure monotheistic worship" by devotees. The term "Wahhabism" was not used by Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab himself, but is chiefly used by outsiders, while adherents typically reject its use, preferring to be called ""Salafi"" (a term also used by followers of other Islamic reform movements as well). The movement's early followers referred to themselves as "Muwahhidun" ( derived from "Tawhid" (the oneness of God). The term "Wahhabism" is also used as a sectarian and Islamophobic slur. Socio-politically, the movement represented the first major Arab-led protest against the Turkish, Persian and foreign empires that dominated the Islamic World since the Mongol invasions and the fall of Abbasid Caliphate in the 13th century; and would later serve as a revolutionary impetus for 19th-century pan-Arabism.


title: Wahhabism

text: In 1744, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab formed a pact with a local leader, Muhammad bin Saud, a politico-religious alliance that continued for the next 150 years, culminating politically with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. His movement would eventually arise as one of the most influenctial 18th century anti-colonial reform trends that spread across the Islamic World; advocating a return to pristine Islamic values based on "Qur’an" and Sunnah for re-generating the social and political prowess of Muslims; and its revolutionary themes influenced numerous Islamic revivalists, scholars, pan-Islamist ideologues and anti-colonial activists as far as West Africa. For more than two centuries through to the present, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab's teachings were championed as the official form of Islam and the dominant creed in three Saudi States. As of 2017, changes to Saudi religious policy by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have led some to suggest that "Islamists throughout the world will have to follow suit or risk winding up on the wrong side of orthodoxy".


title: Wahhabism

text: In 2018 Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, denied that anyone "can define this Wahhabism" or even that it exists. By 2021, the waning power of the religious clerics brought forth by the social, religious, economic, political changes and a new educational policy asserting a "Saudi national identity" that emphasize non-Islamic components have led to what has been described as the "post-Wahhabi era" of Saudi Arabia. By 2022, the decision to celebrate the "Saudi Founding Day" annually on 22 February to commemorate the 1727 establishment of Emirate of Dir'iyah by Muhammad ibn Saud, rather than the past historical convention that traced the beginning to the 1744 pact of Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab; have led to the official "uncoupling" of the religious clergy by the Saudi state.


title: Wahhabism

text: The term Wahhabi should not be confused to Wahbi which is the dominant creed within Ibadism. Since the colonial period, the Wahhabi epithet has been commonly invoked by various external observers to erronoeusly or pejoritavely denote a wide range of reform movements across the Muslim World. Algerian scholar Muhammad El Hajjoui states that it was Ottomans who first attached the label of "Wahhabism" to the Sunni Hanbalis of Najd, hiring "Muslim scholars in all countries to compose, write and lie about the Hanbalis of Najd" for political purposes.


title: Wahhabism

text: The labelling of the term "Wahhabism" has historically been expansive beyond the doctrinal followers of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab; all of whom tend to reject the label. Hence the term remains a controversial as well as a contested category. During the colonial era, the British Empire had commonly employed the term to refer to those Muslim scholars and thinkers seen as obstructive to their imperial interests; punishing them under various pretexts. Many Muslim rebels inspired by Sufi "Awliyaa" (saints) and mystical orders, were targeted by the British Raj as part of a wider "Wahhabi" conspiracy which was portrayed as extending from Bengal to Punjab. Despite sharing little resemblance with the doctrines of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, outside observers of the Muslim world have frequently traced various religious purification campaigns across the Islamic World to Wahhabi influence. According to Qeyamuddin Ahmed:


title: Wahhabism

text: Indian "Ahl-i Hadith" leader Nawab Sīddïq Hasān Khán (1832–1890 C.E) strongly objected to the usage of the term "Wahhabi"; viewing it as a restrictive regional term primarily rooted in geography and also considered the term to be politically manipulative. According to him, labelling the exponents of "Tawhid" as "Wahhabi" was wrong since it symbolised a form of regionalism that went against Islamic universalism. Khan argues that the term has different, unrelated and narrow localised connotations across different parts of the World. According to him, the term had become a political and pejorative phrase that borrowed the name as well as the damaging connotation of the culturally exclusivist movement of Ibn 'Abd-al-Wahhab of Najd, and falsely applied it to a wide range of anti-colonial Islamic reform movements. He distanced himself as well as the Indian Muslim public from this label, writing:


title: Wahhabism

text: In contemporary discourse, the post-Soviet states widely employ the term "Wahhabism" to denote any manifestation of Islamic assertion in neighbouring Muslim countries. During the Soviet-era, the Muslim dissidents were usually labelled with terms such as "Sufi" and "fanatic" employing Islamophobic vocabulary that conjured up fears of underground religious conspiracies. By the late 1990s, the "Wahhabi" label would become the most common term to refer to the "Islamic Menace", while "Sufism" was invoked as a "moderate" force that balanced the "radicalism" of Wahhabis. The old-guard of the post-Soviet states found the label useful to depict all opposition as extremists, thereby bolstering their strongman credentials. In short, any Muslim critical of the religious or political status quo, came at risk of being labelled "Wahhabi".


title: Wahhabism

text: According to M. Reza Pirbhai, Associate Professor of History in Georgetown University, notions of a "Wahhabi Conspiracy" against the West have in recent times resurfaced in various sections of the Western media; employing the term as a catch-all phrase to frame an official narrative that erases the concerns of broad and disparate disenchanted groups pursuing redress for local discontentment caused by neo-colonialism. The earliest mention of "Wahhabism" in "The New York Times" had appeared in a 1931 editorial which described it as a "traditional" movement; without associating it with "militant" or "anti-Western" trends. Between 1931 and 2007, "The New York Times" published eighty-six articles that mentioned the word "Wahhabism", out of which six articles had appeared before September 2001, while the rest were published since. During the 1990s, it began to be described as "militant", but not yet as a hostile force. By the 2000s, the 19th century terminology of "Wahhabism" had resurfaced, reprising its role as the " 'fanatical' and 'despotic' antithesis of a Civilized World". Reza Pirbhai asserts that this usage is deployed to manufacture an official narrative that assists imperial motives; by depicting a coherent and coordinated International network of ideological revolutionaries. Common Liberal depictions of "Wahhabism" define it as a collection of restrictive dogmas, particularly for women, while neo-conservative depictions portray "Wahhabis" as "Savages" or "fanatics".


title: Wahhabism

text: Wahhabis do not likeor at least did not likethe term. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab was averse to the elevation of scholars and other individuals, including using a person's name to label an Islamic school ("madhhab"). Due to its perceived negative overtones, the members of the movement historically identified themselves as ""Muwahhidun"", Muslims, etc. and more recently as "Salafis". According to Robert Lacey "the Wahhabis have always disliked the name customarily given to them" and preferred to be called "Muwahhidun" (Unitarians). Another preferred term was simply "Muslims", since they considered their creed to be the "pure Islam". However, critics complain these terms imply that non-Wahhabi Muslims are either not monotheists or not Muslims. Additionally, the terms "Muwahhidun" and Unitarians are associated with other sects, both extant and extinct.


title: Wahhabism

text: Other terms Wahhabis have been said to use and/or prefer include "Ahl al-Hadith" ("People of the Hadith"), "Salafi dawah" ("Salafi preaching"), or "al-da'wa ila al-tawhid"("preaching of monotheism" for the school rather than the adherents) or "Ahl ul-Sunna wal Jama'a" ("people of the tradition of Muhammad and the consensus of the Ummah"),


title: Wahhabism

text: "Ahl al-Sunnah" ("People of the Sunnah"), "al-Tariqa al-Muhammadiyya" ("the path of the Prophet Muhammad"), "al-Tariqa al-Salafiyya" ("the way of the pious ancestors"), "the reform or Salafi movement of the Sheikh" (the sheikh being Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab), etc. The self-designation as "People of the Sunnah" was important for Wahhabism's authenticity, because during the Ottoman period only Sunnism was the legitimate doctrine.


title: Wahhabism

text: Other writers such as Quinton Wiktorowicz, urge use of the term "Salafi", maintaining that "one would be hard pressed to find individuals who refer to themselves as Wahhabis or organizations that use 'Wahhabi' in their title, or refer to their ideology in this manner (unless they are speaking to a Western audience that is unfamiliar with Islamic terminology, and even then usage is limited and often appears as 'Salafi/Wahhabi')". A "New York Times" journalist writes that Saudis "abhor" the term Wahhabism, "feeling it sets them apart and contradicts the notion that Islam is a monolithic faith". Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud for example has attacked the term as "a doctrine that doesn't exist here (Saudi Arabia)" and challenged users of the term to locate any "deviance of the form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia from the teachings of the Quran and Prophetic Hadiths". Ingrid Mattson argues that "'Wahhbism' is not a sect. It is a social movement that began 200 years ago to rid Islam of rigid cultural practices that had (been) acquired over the centuries."