Detailed reporting on foreigners arrested in Pakistan (very informative)

[TalibanSwatter]

sorry dude - it is what it is.

As you saw in the video clip link with Talat Hussain, there is an organized network in Saudi funding and providing expertise to the Taliban. Not to mention the taliban were groomed in saudi wahhabi-funded madrassas - which of course explains why the taliban think and behave like the wahhabis.

 

[HAIDER]

Well, don't know past history, but present day wahabies are extremely brutal. Slaughtering human being is not a normal person behavior. It is sign of sick mind.These camel jockies travel all the way from far land to make mess on land of poor and innocent people, where they think that human life has no value. What type of Islam they are following.
All arabs are responsible of 911, and Pakistan is paying the price. Why?
Recently read story about how Iraqi kicked out these Alkaida Saudi elements from Alanbar province of Iraq. On day, when Iraqi confronted these AQ people in province and kill few of them, next day these animal slaughtered two teen iraqi girls and put their head on the footsteps of City Building enterence, just to show their power and plus warning. But this act back fired and all iraqi tribes raised the arms against these foreign elements and finish these elements within weeks.

Why not Pakistan

 

[nwmalik]

stitch in time saves nine.
next time hopefully we as a nation will react more quickly rather than waiting the disease to spread to an extent that it needs an operation and millions if IDPs

 

[TalibanSwatter]

haider - here is a useful article on wahhabi origins

Khaled Abou El Fadl (UCLA Professor of Islamic Law and one of the leading authorities on this topic)

The foundations of Wahhabi theology were put in place by the eighteenth-century evangelist Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab in the Arabian Peninsula. With a puritanical zeal, 'Abd al-Wahhab sought to rid Islam of so-called corruptions that he believed had crept into the religion. Wahhabism resisted the indeterminacy of the modern age by escaping to a strict literalism in which the text became the sole source of legitimacy. In this context, Wahhabism exhibited extreme hostility to intellectualism, mysticism and any sectarian divisions within Islam. The Wahhabi creed also considered any form of moral thought that was not entirely dependent on the text as a form of self-idolatry, and treated humanistic fields of knowledge, especially philosophy, as "the sciences of the devil." According to the Wahhabi creed, it was imperative to return to a presumed pristine, simple and straightforward Islam, which could be entirely reclaimed by literal implementation of the commands of the Prophet, and by strict adherence to correct ritual practice. Importantly, Wahhabism rejected any attempt to interpret the divine law from a historical, contextual perspective, and treated the vast majority of Islamic history as a corruption of the true and authentic Islam. The classical jurisprudential tradition was considered at best to be mere sophistry. Wahhabism became very intolerant of the long-established Islamic practice of considering a variety of schools of thought to be equally orthodox. Orthodoxy was narrowly defined, and 'Abd al-Wahhab himself was fond of creating long lists of beliefs and acts which he considered hypocritical, the adoption or commission of which immediately rendered a Muslim an unbeliever.

In the late eighteenth century, the Al Sa'ud family united with the Wahhabi movement and rebelled against Ottoman rule in Arabia. Egyptian forces quashed this rebellion in 1818. Nevertheless, Wahhabi ideology was resuscitated in the early twentieth century under the leadership of 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Sa'ud who allied himself with the tribes of Najd, in the beginnings of what would become Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabi rebellions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were very bloody because the Wahhabis indiscriminately slaughtered and terrorized Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Mainstream jurists writing at the time, such as the Hanafi Ibn 'Abidin and the Maliki al-Sawi, described the Wahhabis as a fanatic fringe group.(3)

Wahhabism Ascendant
Nevertheless, Wahhabism survived and, in fact, thrived in contemporary Islam for several reasons. By treating Muslim Ottoman rule as a foreign occupying power, Wahhabism set a powerful precedent for notions of Arab self-determination and autonomy. In advocating a return to the pristine and pure origins of Islam, Wahhabism rejected the cumulative weight of historical baggage. This idea was intuitively liberating for Muslim reformers since it meant the rebirth of ijtihad, or the return to de novo examination and determination of legal issues unencumbered by the accretions of precedents and inherited doctrines. Most importantly, the discovery and exploitation of oil provided Saudi Arabia with high liquidity. Especially after 1975, with the sharp rise in oil prices, Saudi Arabia aggressively promoted Wahhabi thought around the Muslim world. Even a cursory examination of predominant ideas and practices reveals the widespread influence of Wahhabi thought on the Muslim world today.

But Wahhabism did not spread in the modern Muslim world under its own banner. Even the term "Wahhabism" is considered derogatory by its adherents, since Wahhabis prefer to see themselves as the representatives of Islamic orthodoxy. To them, Wahhabism is not a school of thought within Islam, but is Islam. The fact that Wahhabism rejected a label gave it a diffuse quality, making many of its doctrines and methodologies eminently transferable. Wahhabi thought exercised its greatest influence not under its own label, but under the rubric of Salafism. In their literature, Wahhabi clerics have consistently described themselves as Salafis, and not Wahhabis.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

Another interesting report on Wahhabism and its roots - too long to post here.

USCIRF

http://www.asecondlookatthesaudis.c...iles/asecondlookatthesaudiscauseandeffect.pdf

A few excerpts:

Saudi Arabia is currently under a totalitarian regime, but one that is somewhat unique in that it is bifurcated. On the one hand, the government operates as a monarchy under the rule of King Abdulah and his peers in the Saudi royal family. On the other hand, the day-to-day lives of the people are governed as a theocracy run by the ulema, the council of Wahhabi religious leaders which has de facto control over many of the basic social institutions of the Kingdom. Along with the nation’s religious institutions, which include the holiest sites in Islam – the Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina – the religious authorities also control the justice system. They appoint both the judiciary and the religious police, and impose a strict form of Sharia (Islamic law) as mandated by the Koran and their religious traditions.

Most importantly, it is the religious authorities who dictate the curriculum of the Kingdom’s education system. Each of these social institutions revolves around the official state religion, what is generally referred to in the West as “Wahhabi” Islam.

The USCIRF confirmed this, finding that, “The Saudi education system indoctrinates all students in the government’s favored interpretation of Islam, regardless of the convictions of the children
or their parents.”: All students are taught religion beginning in primary school. The curriculum is exclusively based on Wahhabism. Shi’a and other Muslim doctrines are condemned, from the beginning of the child’s education, as heretical and sinful. . . . In 2001, four
Shi’a high school students in Najran, aged 16 and 17, were arrested after a fight with a Wahhabi instructor who insulted their faith: They received two to four years in jail and 500 to 800 lashes.

In fact, the control of the Wahhabi religious authorities extends far beyond issues of religious education and the mass media, to the very fabric of the society as a whole. Predictably, this has led to an endemic atmosphere of oppression, one which was observed first-hand by Lawrence Wright. He reports that the problem became especially severe after Islamic radicalsseized control of the Holy Mosque of Mecca in 1979. In order to appease the extremists, the
Saudi royal family ceded even more authority to the Wahhabi ulema.

Wright recounted:
Wahhabi clerics, with their fear of outside influences, waged war on art and the pleasures of the intellect. Music was the first victim. Umm Kulthum and Fairouz, the songbirds of the Arab world, disappeared from the Saudi television stations. A magnificent concert hall in Riyadh was completed in 1989, but no performance has ever been held there. The Islamic courts have even banned the music played when a telephone call is placed on hold. There had been some movie theatres, but they were all shut down.

What is true for Saudi men is doubly so for women in the Kingdom. Trapped underneath stifling black robes and veils, and forbidden from leaving their home without a male chaperone, they are systematically denied even the most basic freedoms.

In addition to imposing Sharia law and appointing the judiciary, the religious authorities also employ their own police force to compel obedience to Wahhabi religious mandates. Officially, the religious police are known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and
Prevention of Vice. But colloquially, they are known throughout Saudi Arabia as the mutawaa.

The USCIRF reports:
The mutawaa is intrusive. They arbitrarily raid private homes and exercise broadly defined, vague powers, including the ability to use physical force and detain individuals without due process. . . . the mutawaa harass and beat women for not complying with the dress code; detain men for appearing in public places with women who are not relatives; harass and detain female foreign workers arbitrarily; shear men’s hair if it is determined to violate imposed standards;
detain without charge Saudis and non-Saudis for long periods of time; and flog and beat both Saudis and non-Saudis.

One of the most disturbing illustrations of the power of the religious authorities in Saudi Arabia occurred on March 14, 2000, when a fire broke out in a girl’s school in Mecca. Shortly before the fire started, a janitor had locked all of the gates to the school and then wandered off leaving them unattended, a common practice to enforce the strict segregation of the sexes at girl’s schools in the Kingdom.68 When the fire broke out, many of the students panicked and tried to escape before donning their headscarves and abayas (full-length robes), as mandated by Wahhabi religious law. They were immediately intercepted by members of the mutawaa, who tried to physically beat them back inside the burning building. As several other improperly dressed students pressed against one of the locked gates, another member of the mutawaa stood outside refusing to let them out until they were properly attired. Fifteen schoolgirls died as a result.

 

[great one]

The irony being that it was the wahabbis is Arabia who in co-operation with the British in WW1 rebelled against the Ottoman Islamic Caliphate. How can they claim to represent the Islamic world when they betrayed the Caliphate.

Also with Turkeys resurgent role in the Middle East I wonder what the Wahhabis are planning.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

yes - that is pretty ironic. The wahabbi/salafis originate from the Najd region. I found the hadith cited below quite interesting.

Ibn Umar (Allah be pleased with him) reported the Prophet (Peace be upon him) as saying: "Oh Allah, bless us in our Syria; O Allah, bless us in our Yemen." Those present said: "And in our Najd, O Messenger of Allah!" But he said, "O Allah, bless us in our Syria; O Allah, bless us in our Yemen." Those present said, "And in our Najd, O Messenger of Allah!" Ibn Umar said that he(the prophet) said on the third occasion: "Earthquakes and fitnah are there, and there shall arise the horn of ash-Shaytaan." [Sahih al-Bukhari].

 

[TalibanSwatter]

The Media Journal
David Grundfest

Born out of the extremity of the Arabian dessert, the Wahhabi school of thought and its puritanical adherents have sought to define the political and religious trajectory of the Ara*bian Peninsula for the past three centuries. Through a symbiotic political relationship with the al-Saud royal family, they have been largely successful, and a historic comparison of this relationship sheds light on the intricate history of a kingdom fighting to re*main austere. However, this success has paralleled great and often grudging compromises between the two parties that threaten the fabric of their relationship and the society they have built.

Today these historic compromises divide the Saudi royal family between a faction that is loyal to the conservative clerics, and those who support a comparatively more pluralistic system. This division, which would regularly be of little significance, is amplified glob*ally by the oil-funded expansion of Wahhabi beliefs throughout the Muslim world. If the Wahhabis stay their current course of intolerant puritanical conservatism—exporting their beliefs with the aide of oil revenues—the future of Saudi Arabia and the gulf region as a whole is deeply troubling.

In 1995 King Fahd suffered a debilitating stroke and his half brother Crown Prince Abdullah took over the kingdom’s government. Abdullah began slow but comparatively sweeping reforms within the Saudi system. He liberalized trade, relaxed repressive religious laws, opened the doors to more prominent roles for women, combated the funding of extremist clerics, moderated the education system, and implemented population control measures. Abdullah was capable of effecting much of this reform through the more moderate grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz, who commanded great respect within the ulema, even from the radical clerics. Sheikh Baz died in 1999, opening the door for a resurgence of hard line clerics to gain prominence within the ulema.

Wahhabism & The Future

Saudi Arabia was affected by the events of September 11, 2001, but it was truly rocked by a six-month string of terror that started with the bombing of a residential compound in Riyadh in November 2003. The attackers were disgruntled about Abdul*lah’s reforms, especially his relationship with the West. Most of their activities were linked to radical clerics and were conducted by men who had once traveled to Afghanistan to fight with the Mujahideen. These attacks caused a reversion in Wahhabi doc*trine and exacerbated a deep rift in the royal family.

Since the 1992 Memorandum of Advice to King Fahd, two strains of Wahhabi scholarship—entirely similar from an external perspective but directionally unique in context—had developed. They both held to absolute tawhid as al-Wahhab had but took dif*fering stances on jihad: the first held jihad as a separate concept from tawhid and instead stressed taqarub or reconciliation between faiths, the second drew no distinction between jihad and tawhid and thought them both integral to the practice of true Islam. Within the royal family Crown Prince Abdullah endorsed the more mod*erate strain of clerics, although the death of Sheikh Baz dealt this group a serious blow, while Prince Nayef, the interior minister, a much more fundamentally religious man, endorsed the hard-line strain of Wahhabism. This ideological difference which began with the Crown Prince’s ascension as regent, was exacerbated by the attacks of 2003 and then formalized by King Fahd’s death in 2005, and exists to this day, dividing the royal family along the same lines as the clerics.

After the attacks, Nayef, who possessed a largely independent power base, began to crack down on Abdul*lah’s reforms, especially women’s rights, by strengthening the secret police force responsible for enforcing Islamic morality and sharia. While the struggle between Abdullah and Nayef prevents legitimate progress, a true existential challenge for the Kingdom will come with the next generation. For the entire history of the unified kingdom Ibn Saud and his sons have kept a stranglehold on political power, while elderly Wahhabi clerics have maintained religious control.

However, as these individuals age into their 70s, a new generation is preparing to take over the reins of leadership. This generation is as polarized as it is diverse and sprawling. It is split between Western-educated royals who wish to bring the kingdom forward into politically and religiously moderated mo*dernity, and vehemently anti-Western clerics who were schooled under the tutelage of the most extreme Islamic dissidents of the era and possess their own base of support among less moderate royals.

 

[Irfan Baloch]

Well, don't know past history, but present day wahabies are extremely brutal. Slaughtering human being is not a normal person behavior. It is sign of sick mind.These camel jockies travel all the way from far land to make mess on land of poor and innocent people, where they think that human life has no value. What type of Islam they are following.
All arabs are responsible of 911, and Pakistan is paying the price. Why?
Recently read story about how Iraqi kicked out these Alkaida Saudi elements from Alanbar province of Iraq. On day, when Iraqi confronted these AQ people in province and kill few of them, next day these animal slaughtered two teen iraqi girls and put their head on the footsteps of City Building enterence, just to show their power and plus warning. But this act back fired and all iraqi tribes raised the arms against these foreign elements and finish these elements within weeks.

Why not Pakistan

Brother,

Sadly this discussion is taking a sectarian angle which may result in getting an off topic flame war.

I agree that Daobandi/wahabi school is a religio-political movement and they are very open about it. It is not their fault that they act arrogantly without challenge. It is rest of the Muslim sects that have never had a political design.

Even the Sunni tehriq or the Beralvi tehriq is non-political and mostly a body of Moderate Sunnis who pride themselves for their love and Devotion to the Holy prophet Muhammad PBUH.

On the other hand JUI and Jamiat Islami are very Much run by Wahabi elites. They have ruthless political designs and the roads lead to Saudia.

while I totally agree that blaming the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not right but still may I recall everyone that it was the Saudi Princes who were known to congratulate each other over the 911 incident. whether it was just a knee jerk reaction to celebrate a tragedy in USA or was there something more sinister and telling I leave it to debate.
but completely absolving Saudia from all the troubles is also wrong.
the way they have made in roads religiously in Pakistan is very sinister and frightening. I will give you example of Islamabad. Nearly 99% of the Mosques in Islamabad are headed by the Khatibs who are of Wahabi faith. I will love to be proven wrong but this is a sad fact. Apart from few Shia or one or two Beralvi Mosques at the Sufi Shrines every other mosque is basically propagating Wahabi faith.

I have myself seen people turning into radicals and questioning and opposing the praise or darood of Holy Prophet Muhammad PBUH (unfortunately, wahabism prides it self on making cheap shots at the Prophet PBUH they claim to believe in)

I myself was once in Islamabad near the Golra sheriff Mosque with a guy I grew up, the Azan started at that Beralvi Mosque and like any other Prophet Muhammad PBUH’s devotee, the Moazan started with darood sheriff and this guy couldn’t help himself from commenting… will he just start the Azan or keep wasting time in useless things. I was chocked with shock and anger and only managed to say that this is very basic of our religion which differentiates us from other people of the book.

I never ever saw him again. It was all because he had started attending a Wahabi Mosque.
I don’t care about any other Muslim or nonmuslim country, if they want to do their Jihad. Then fine do it in their own countries don’t fight their proxy wars in my country. Stop taking us for granted. As far as I am concerned if Iran and Saduia want to settle their scores then do it in their own countries I cant care less.
If rest of the Arabs want to do Jihad against USA then remain in Afghanistan.
For me Pakistan is first and that’s it.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

Madrassas and jihad - Khaled Ahmad

Until the 1970s, Pakistani madrassas largely followed the Dars-i-Nizamia curriculum and its variants established in the 1700s in India. Even the Deobandi alteration of this curriculum focused on purification of faith for the purposes of knowledge, rather than militancy and jihad. All this changed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. General Zia ul-Haq, who took power after a military coup in 1977, was an ardent Islamist. He started off with some ill-fated attempts at rushing through "Islamic law" within Pakistan. Zia's existing plans to turn Pakistan into an "Islamic" state gained urgency and a more fundamentalist tone after two major events - the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan 10 years later.

The twin shocks also encouraged a new movement within the Deobandi madrassas , which sought to change the way Islam was taught to students. While it is true that many madrassas dropped secular subjects like mathematics and sciences in part or whole, what was more significant than the narrowing of the syllabus was the change in focus and interpretation in the teaching of the Koran and the Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Mohammed), drawing on the incendiary combination of Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi thinking developed under Saudi funding from places like the Islamic University of Medina, and propagated by other Saudi-controlled foundations, such as the World Muslim League.
The emphasis in madrassa curriculum was shifted almost entirely from the standard pillars of faith such as prayer, charity and pilgrimage to the obligation and rewards of violent jihad. The madrassas taught the young students that the world was divided into believers and unbelievers in a black and white setting. Jews, Hindus and Christians were portrayed as evil usurpers. The curriculum started emphasizing the need for Islamic warriors or jihadis to "liberate" regions dominated by unbelievers as well as "purify" Islamic nations in order to establish a single Islamic caliphate where pure Islam would be followed. The students were taught that the only means to achieving this Utopian state was by waging a near-perpetual war, pursued by any and all means against unbelievers as well as "impure" sects within Muslims. The era of the jihadi madrassas was born.

Jihad as a policy tool
During the 1980s, radical Pakistani madrassas pumped out thousands of Afghan foot soldiers for the US and Saudi-funded jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. They also helped bind the independent-minded Pashtun tribesmen closely to the Pakistani government for the first time in its history; easing the acute insecurity Pakistan had felt towards Afghanistan and the disputed border.

Gulf petrodollars funded a sustained spurt in Deobandi madrassas not only in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan near the Afghan border, but also in the port city of Karachi as well as rural Punjab. The Saudi and Gulf-Arab money also encouraged a Wahhabi jihad-centered curriculum. Prominent madrassas included the Darul Uloom Haqqania at Akora Khattak in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Binori madrassa in Karachi. The Haqqania boasts almost the entire Taliban leadership among its graduates, including Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, while the Binori madrassa, whose leader Mufti Shamzai was recently assassinated, was once talked about as a possible hiding place of Osama bin Laden, and is also reportedly the place where bin Laden met Mullah Omar to form the al-Qaeda-Taliban partnership.

After the Soviets were ousted from Afghanistan in 1989, instead of a slow-down, the rapid spread of jihadi madrassas in Pakistan continued unabated. The reasons for this are manifold. The first and most important reason is that Saudi money continued to flow to the madrassa system. The prestige and influence of the big madrassas encouraged wealthy Pakistanis to contribute more than ever before, sometimes as an expression of conviction, and sometimes as a means of ingratiating themselves with what had become major power players.

Pakistani governments had grown comfortable spending massive amounts of money on defense and almost nothing on education during the days of Afghan jihad when US and Saudi aid flowed freely. In the 1990s, after US-imposed sanctions due to Pakistan's nuclear program, the economy almost collapsed and the education infrastructure deteriorated rapidly.

For the poor, the madrassas offered a place where their children could get free boarding, food and education, and it turned out to be an irresistible option when compared to crumbling or non-existent government-funded secular schools. Pakistani governments also encouraged this to avoid spending much on education. The sheer magnitude of this increase can be fathomed by this simple statistic: according to former Pakistani diplomat Hussain Haqqani, only 7,000 Pakistani children attended madrassas as early as 20 years ago. That number has grown today to closer to 2 million, by conservative estimates.

The Pakistani army on its part saw the large number of madrassa-trained jihadis as an asset for its covert support of the Taliban in Afghanistan, as well as its proxy war with India in Kashmir. While the NWFP madrassas supplied both Afghan refugees and Pakistanis as cannon fodder for the Taliban, the Binori madrassa and associated ones formed the base for Deobandi groups like Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which sought to do the Pakistan army's bidding in Kashmir. The many Ahle-Hadith(Wahhabi) seminaries supplied Salafi groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Arab sheikhs funded madrassas in the Rahimyar Khan area of rural Punjab, which formed the backbone of hardcore anti-Shi'ite jihadi groups like the Sipah-e-Sahaba, and its even more militant offshoot the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

thing is simple
when you lend ur soverignity to others, then you give every right to them. Pakistan was recovering from 71 debacle when we joined US war against soviats. we refused soviat offer in 82 of withdrawl, which they gave on brizevs funeral because US did not want it. We allowed islamists from every where to come and launch from our soil to afghanistan...
our elite earned billions in creating menace to please US and its allies.at present the same elite is earning again by giveing bodies of men it itself created
Saudia hated USSR because of its support to Pan Arab forces. it poured money and propoganda literature

Saudia arab it self is in trouble with fanatics...which it self had allies..
it do not want replay of SIEGE OF MAKKAH of 1979... to cool down these fanatics the king can do any thing ,sacrifise any one to save his kingdom and throne.

Nicely summarized the problem - could'nt agree more.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

There has been a lot of talk about the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the current GoP colling off a bit. The publicly expressed analysis has argued that the strong connections between the Saudis and Nawaz, and the hostility of Zardari towards the Sharif's, has been the primary cause.

I wonder if part of the reason behind that cooling off have been privately expressed concerns, by the GoP, about the funding flowing to these groups from Saudi Arabia.

I think you are right. The Army Chief and JCS's recent trips to Saudi may have been connected to these real concerns about funds flowing to taliban from saudi sources.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

y r many of us here targetin wahabis???
its not wise to demonise any sect. im sure not many wahabis agree with talibanic system.

friend - Research indicates that the taliban were indoctrinated under the wahhabi funded doctrine. The saudi wahhabis have been funding deobandi and wahhabi madrassas since the 80s.

Unfortunately, the wahhabi sect has little to do with our religion and has a lot more common with regressive tribal practices of the region(Najd) it originated in - it is what it is.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

The Kingdom in Pakistan - Saleem Ali - Daily Times

The assassination of Dr Sarfraz Naeemi at a prominent madrassa in Lahore marks a turning point in Pakistan’s civil strife. The Taliban profess to be “pure” Sunni Muslims, and have targeted Shia mosques and seminaries many times before. However, Maulana Naeemi is the first notable Sunni scholar to be murdered by the Taliban.

The growing rift within Sunni Islam that has spread across Pakistan and fuelled the Taliban with foot soldiers from some radical centres of learning has clear connections to Wahhabi doctrines. The culpability of Saudi Arabia, both officially and privately, in perpetuating intolerance across the Muslim world must be duly acknowledged. No longer can we afford to believe cultural excuses from the Saudis for spreading ossified worldviews in other Muslim countries as a means of shielding their own state.

Pakistanis have also been made acutely aware of the arcane interpretations of sharia law in Saudi Arabia this week with the arrests of some poor pilgrims who were duped into drug trafficking by a Karachi agent.

While returning from Hajj three years ago, I had my first encounter with the pernicious evangelism of the Saudi brand of Wahhabi Islam. Before boarding the flight from Jeddah to Islamabad, each passenger was handed a book in Urdu, free of charge, by the Saudi boarding agent in which allegations of heresy were made against any Muslims who did not adhere to the “pure” Saudi brand of Islam. If each Haji returning to Pakistan is to be gifted such vitriol against pluralism, imagine what is going on in madrassas that receive funds from Saudi sources.

Let us not forget also that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were initially the only two countries to recognise the Taliban regime in Afghanistan before 9/11 (the UAE also briefly recognised the regime).

Saudi financing of radical doctrines was acknowledged by the 9/11 Commission report, which points out that “awash in sudden oil wealth, Saudi Arabia competed with Shi’a Iran to promote its Sunni [sic!] fundamentalist version of Islam, Wahabbism.”

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Looming Tower, veteran journalist Lawrence Wright described how the rate of Saudi investment would impact the Muslim world: “...eventually, Saudi Arabia, which constitutes only a little over 1 percent of the world Muslim population would support 90 percent of the expenses of the entire faith, overriding other traditions in Islam.”

The Saudi influence in Pakistan is palpable everywhere. They bail us out when we run out of wheat; they provide political asylum in palaces to former prime ministers; they broker peace deals and provide funds for our weapons programmes.

No doubt some aspects of Saudi assistance to Pakistan and other Muslim countries are to be appreciated. However, what they want in return is an insidious evangelism of their exclusionary version of Islam, which must be resolutely rejected. They feel vindicated in destroying several mosques in their own country (such as the destruction of the Sabah Masajid in Medina) for fear of bidda’, or innovation, and we see the same callous destruction by the Taliban now of shrines and places of worship that deviate from their definition of “pure”.

While the world worries about Iran’s return to radicalism in the aftermath of the election, let us not forget the other radical Islamist country across the Gulf. In terms of human rights and treatment of minorities and women, Saudi Arabia is far more retrogressive than Iran and has played a more consequential role in the radicalisation of strategically important countries like Pakistan.

The Saudi government and Wahhabi sympathisers have recently attempted to differentiate Wahhabi Doctrine from “Qutbist” doctrine, named after the Egyptian Muslim Brother Syed Qutb, who travelled extensively in Western countries as well. They have argued that Al Qaeda leaders follow Qutbist views rather than Wahhabi views. However, this argument is not as compelling if one reads some of the writings of Syed Qutb, in books with misleading titles such as Islam and Universal Peace (1977). Much of this book follows a supremacist ideology that can be found in the Wahhabi tradition as well.

The Saudi government would claim that it has been a victim of terrorism by Al Qaeda as well. Indeed, Osama bin Laden has repeatedly declared war on the Saudi royal family. However, the Saudi government has realised that there is tacit support for many of Al Qaeda’s ideas within the Saudi people, and so they have co-opted many of the radical clerics by allowing them to evangelise in other Muslim countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Even from a theological perspective, the Saudi view of Islam is highly hypocritical. For example, there is no concept of a monarchy in the Islamic tradition and yet Saudi Arabia is a kingdom. Strict Wahhabi doctrine also forbids photography yet the Saudi monarch insists on his portrait being displayed in every office in the country!

The Saudi establishment has thus kept an uneasy and unprincipled balance of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Such an approach is unsustainable from the perspective of regional conflict resolution as well as for Saudi Arabia’s own viability as a state.

Maulana Naeemi had repeatedly warned against the influence of absolutist Saudi doctrines in Pakistan. He recognised that the Taliban ideology was most closely associated with the Salafi/Wahhabi brand of Islam. Many of the draconian capital punishments that the Taliban practised in the Swat valley were emulating judicially prescribed practices in Saudi Arabia. However, this source of Taliban doctrines is still not being fully recognised by Pakistanis or the West.

During my last visit to Lahore when I interviewed various progressive scholars, they also expressed the strongest concern about America’s unflinching support for Saudi Arabia’s policies, which made them more suspicious of the West’s resolve in tackling extremism. Perhaps such matters were on President Obama’s mind as he visited Saudi Arabia last month. The lack of transparency in any communications during that visit has once again left an unsettling impression.

The unholy alliance between the United States and the Saudis is going to be mutually destructive unless it is predicated on international principles and norms. As a member of the new G-20 group of world powers, the Saudis must be pressured by the other members to reform internally and stop exporting intolerance. The Great Kingdom of the Khaadim-ul Harmain risks becoming an unpleasant anachronism if it continues to resist positive change.

 

[TalibanSwatter]

Dr. Mohamed Diriye Abdillahi

Recent news coming out of Somalia is indeed disturbing. A group of Wahhabi inspired clerics have taken control of most of the southern Somalia, thanks to decades of Wahhabi influence streaming from Saudi Arabia, through generous grants and assistance to Somalis willing to abandon their ancestral and tolerant brand of Shafi’i Sunni Islam.

Already, like their counterparts in Afghanistan, the Somali Talibans have forbidden all forms of secular entertainment such as stalls showing innocuous videos and games such as soccer, Somalis favorite sport. According to the latest reports, they have also closed photo studios in Mogadishu. Simply put, their objective is to gradually arrive at the basic tenets of Wahhabism and create a nation devoid of democratic norms where women have few rights, if any.

It should be remembered, contrary to their vision of severely limited women’s rights, Somali women had always enjoyed considerable rights within Somali society, including the right to work, the right to marry the man of their choice, the right to vote, the right to travel without being accompanied by muhrims (muhrims are, according to Wahhabi theology, close blood relatives that must accompany a woman to everywhere outside the home unless she is not escorted by her husband), as well as the right to compose poetry and speak in their own name during village consultations---they were also unveiled and male Somali poets have devoted a large repertoire of romantic poems to Somali female beauty and physique. We only have to remember that the greatest romantic poet, Elmi Bodhari, died for the want of his lady-love, after having devoted his life to composing poems about his romantic affliction; imagine if he had lived in a Taliban-ruled Somalia---he would have been shot having composed romantic poetry. In short, what the Somali Talibans want is to eradicate Somali cultural norms in their entirely and replace them with what they conceive as Muslim culture, which is nothing but a brand of Bedouin Arab culture, from the Najd region of Saudi Arabia, home of the founder of Wahhabism, now universalized as Muslim culture by Saudi Wahhabis, according to Khalid Abou El Fadal, a prominent Muslim scholar of our time.

Such being the precursors of the more dismal things that would come out of Somalia were the Wahhabi inspired clerics allowed to form a government, the question is what both enlightened Somalis and the outside world can do in order to avert eventuality of a disastrous Taliban style rule in Somalia, which is already reeling from 16 years of anarchy.

First, Somalis every where, in particular learned Somalis, should, instead of watching from the sidelines, speak out their opposition to a movement that is trying to change their centuries old brand of Islam, Shafi’i Sunni Islam, which is different from Hanbali Sunni Islam, a literalist brand of Islam which serves as the basis for Wahhabism.

Additionally, Somalis should remember that their forebears had already established a firm separation of state and mosque long before a similar concept came to be practiced in Europe. That concept is known as the division of wadaad iyo waranle (priest and spearman). The priest was paramount in the spiritual domain and enjoyed sanctity and safe conduit even in war while the spearman was paramount in the secular domain. It is upon that division of the secular and the spiritual in Somali culture that some Somalis are betting would shoo away the Somali Wahhabis; but that amounts to an already lost wager since the Wahhabis have guns and money to coerce; they also have the motivation of the outrageously self-righteous, having been brainwashed to think of the native African Cushitic culture of Somalis as pagan concepts whose eradication would entitle them to hasanaat (blessings) in the eyes of God. Therefore, Somalis should make no mistake that what the Somalis Wahhabis want is to usurp both the spiritual as well as the secular sphere, in the utmost dictatorial fashion, in the mistaken belief that they are heeding high powers than mere human thoughts. Thus, we Somalis need to engage the Wahhabis in the public forum. Right now, they have the field to themselves and they are speaking to the like people in the manner of unquestionable oracles. We also need to support traditional institutions of rule such as clan elders and as well as traditional ulema (men of religion), the two groups the Somalis Taliban are trying to replace.