Occupation of the Arabian Peninsula by the Al-e Saud

Zafar Bangash

How the House of Saud came to occupy the Arabian Peninsula makes fascinating reading. It is both a story of intrigue and great gall. That the House of Saud should occupy the entire Arabian Peninsula and then rename it, in complete violation of the Prophet’s sunnah, to Saudi Arabia, shows their brazenness.

The Prophet, upon whom be peace, had named this blessed land the Arabian Peninsula. He had also made the entire Peninsula sacred territory from which the non-Muslims are expressly excluded. The House of Saud has violated both these commands. The Arabian Peninsula is full of najs people as a result of the policies pursued by the House of Saud.

The Saudi tribe emerged from Dari’yyah in the eighteenth century (1744 Ce). Their first foray outside the town near present-day Riyadh was short-lived. After controlling Najd, the Saudi tribe moved towards the Hijaz in 1802. When the people of Taif, 40 miles from Taif, resisted the Saudi hordes, they slaughtered everyone. The terrified people of of Makkah and Medina opened their gates in hopes that they would be spared the fate of Taif.

Without meeting any resistance from the people, the Saudis turned their attention to pillage and sacking the sacred places. Pilgrims were prevented from performing Haij and were robbed of all their possessions. When news of the Saudi massacre in Taif and sacrilege in Makkah and Medina reached the Khalifah in Istanbul, he ordered his governor in Cairo, Muhammad Ali, to deal with the insurgents. After a number of unsuccessful attempts, Muhammad Ali’s son, Ibrahim Pasha defeated the Saudi hordes and drove them back in 1819. Dari’yyah was also razed to the ground as a lesson to the Saudis.

No more was heard of the Saudis until the end of the nineteenth century when the Saudis were driven by the Ibn Rasheeds. The Saudis sought refuge with shaikh Mubarak on the outskirts of Kuwait and sulked. Abdul Aziz ibn Saud was then a 19-year old youth but he had already established his reputation for ruthlessness. His favourite sport was robbing pilgrims’ caravan (the Saudis considered all those who did not share their narrow, literalist interpretations of Islam, as kafirs).

In 1902, two events occurred that were to change the destiny of the Arabian Peninsula in a profound way. One was Abdul Aziz’s attack on the Mismak fortress in Riyadh. Shaikh Ajlan, Ibn Rasheed’s governor, was slain and the fortress occupied by Ibn Saud.

At about the same time, the British consul in Jeddah, one Zohrab, noted the great importance of Makkah and Medina from which non-Muslims were excluded. He sent a memo to Britain pointing out that Muslims met at the time of Hajj and could discuss issues of which the British government would have no knowledge. He felt that this could threaten British interests because great plots could be hatched!

Zohrab suggested that Britain should have direct access to Makkah and Medina. If that were not possible, to have a trusted Muslim agent installed there. This led directly to British intrigue with the sharif Husain who was the wali (governor) of Makkah appointed by the Khalifah in Istanbul. British money and guns started to cultivate the sharif to incite him for a revolt against the Uthmaniyyah Khilafah. Sharif Husain was promised leadership over all the Arabs.

While the British were making these promises to sharif Husain, they were also promising Palestine to the Jews. British designs were not lost on the Turks who alluded to this in their paper The Hijaz (No 1896; 25 Safar 1433 [1914]).The paper correctly questioned the British intent to occupy the holy places.

British duplicity soon became apparent with the Balfour declaration of November 1917 promising a homeland to the Jews in Palestine. The British also had both Sharif Husain and Ibn Saud on their payroll. It is interesting to note that the Saudis considered Muslims who did not share their narrow interpretations as kafir yet they were quite happy to serve as agents of the British.

Abdul Aziz not only managed to defeat Sharif Husain, driving him out of the Hijaz but also fought off his Ikhwan allies who had supported him in his struggle against the sharif. British guns, money and planes were all used to facilitate his rise to power and pre-eminence in the Arabian Peninsula

In 1932, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud also occupied the Hijaz and declared that he would seek the advice of the Ummah about its proper administration. Yet without waiting for any advice, he proceeded to incorporate it into the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He also changed the name of the Arabian Peninsula.

The plan envisioned by the British consul in 1902 was realized in a short span of 30 years. Since then, the House of Saud has become obedient servants of Uncle Sam.

Muslimedia - April 1996-August 1996

 

Zafar Bangash

Book exposes Saudi role in subverting Islam

By Rahhalah Haqq

Subverting Islam: The Role of Orientalist Centres by Dr Ahmad Ghorab, (Minerva Press, London, 1995).

Dr Ahmad Ghorab is to be commended for his fine book, Subverting Islam: The Role of Orientalist Centres. His courage and forthright honesty is an inspiration for concerned Muslims in search of the truth. He has succeeded in identifying an important front in the current Euro-American crusade against the Islamic movement: the formation of an anti-Muslim network of institutions and scholars marching under the banner of `Islamic Studies'.

In his insider expose' of `Islamic Studies,' Dr Ghorab demonstrates how the new school of thought derives legitimacy by employing compliant Muslim scholars and professors, such as Ja'afar Sheikh Idris, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah and Akbar Ahmed, to name just a few. Christian missionaries and professors, such as Bishop Kenneth Cragg, Rev. Montgomery Watt and John Esposito, are, as Dr Ghorab shows, always close at hand to guide verious `Islamic Studies' programmes . Dr Ghorab also exposes the Saudi role in funding such programmes, both in the Muslim world and in various European and American academic institutions.

Dr Ghorab provides a detailed discussion of the Oxford Centre for `Islamic Studies,' and also mentions other institutions with similar programmes, such as the Hartford Seminary, College of the Holy Cross, or Princeton University. By naming people and places subverting Islam, Dr Ghorab has done a great service for the Islamic movement. Muslims who are considering attending these institutions or consulting with these scholars should first study Dr Ghorab's book carefully. Many additional books can, and should, be written about the numerous `Islamic Studies' programmes proliferating in western academic institutions. This is especially urgent, since some Muslim-run schools, such as the Institute of Islamic Thought in Malaysia, hire their faculties almost exclusively from western universities.

Columbia University in New York City, fits Dr Ghorab's description of a centre for subverting Islam. While there is no department of Islamic Studies per se, Islam is the focus of various components within the Departments of Middle East Languages and Cultures (MELAC), Religion, Music, and, Anthropology, as well as the Middle East Institute. Though staffed primarily by Jews and Christians, there are also a few Muslim professors on hand for good measure. While the student body is one-third Jewish, some Muslim students take their degrees from Columbia, a few in MELAC. However, MELAC is especially popular with new or weak Muslims who hope to increase their faith or learn more about their religion and history by taking a few courses in the Department.

MELAC houses primarily language programmes, offering courses on Islam as they relate to the study of classic texts. The faculty includes Maan Madina, Hamid Dabashi, George Saliba, and Jeanette Wakin. A product of the American University in Beirut, Madina is an Arab secular-nationalist and uses his Arabic language courses to promote the works of Taha Husayn, Ali Abdul Raziq, and Michel Aflaq (The latter founded the Ba'ath party and was a mentor of Saddam. Madina is an avid collector of Islamic art, and occasionally offers courses in affiliation with the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. To him, Islam is a vestige of the Arab past, to be revised by western scholars or curated in museums.

Waken offers courses on Islamic texts. Although teaching at Columbia for many years, she apparently has no Ph.D; her academic legitimacy comes from being a student of Joseph Schacht, the notorious orientalist who sought to discredit the shari'ah on the grounds that it was time-bound and irrevelant to modern society. Wakin ascribes to this belief, as well as to Schacht's other `great contribution' to Islamic Studies, his insistence that the hadith are all fabricated and therefore unrliable as sources! Wakin's courses, also disguised as language study, are carefully focused attacks on the foundation of Islamic civilization.

Many of the students who study languages at Columbia do so either to train for the Israeli Mossad or the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). American students with mediocre grades, but who desire such careers, get scholarships to continue studying in places like the American University in Cairo or Robert College in Turkey. MELAC students also include Muslims training to serve American officialdom; one Jordanian-American Muslim student admitted he was mastering Arabic so he could pass a US State department examination. Politically motivated language study disguised as `cultural' studies gives this department its legitimacy, and guarantees a continuous line of funding.

MELAC offers more than language courses. Saliba deals with Islamic sciences, ascribing to Hans Kung's school of thought and assigning books like John Burton's Collection of the Qur'an which attacks the validity of the Qur'an as the word of God. Dabashi is a disgruntled Iranian who harbors animosity toward Imam Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution. Like other professors, he teaches Islamic literature and philosophy through the prism of western tradition, as noted by Dr Ghorab: 1) denying the validity of revelation; 2) ignoring the reliability of Islamic sources; 3) refusing to promote Islam as anything other than an object of academic study; 4) avoiding any personal commitment to Islam.

At Columbia, political studies of Islam are the task of the Middle East Institute, a part of the University's school of International and Public Affairs, which is a recruiting front for the CIA. The Institute houses orientalist historians like Richard Bulliet, as well as a number of zionists. It has a siege mentality toward the Islamic movement and is obsessed with discrediting Imam Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution. Its past directors include Linda S Walbridge, an American Baha'i scholar specializing in Muslims of the US, and whose husband, also a scholar of `Islamic Studies,' is currently editing the encyclopedia of Baha'ism.

One expects to find this in departments whose stated goals are to study Islam and the Middle East. However, other departments at Columbia are also staffed with like-minded people. For example, the Division of Ethnomusicology in the Department of Music is headed by Dieter Christensen, who has a long and questionable history of studying the Islamic world, including work in Iran under the despised Shah. He now has a magic carpet to Oman, invited by Sultan Qaboos annually since 1985. Qaboos hires western scholars to advise him on Muslim cultural policy, and Christensen runs the Centre for Traditional Music in Muscat.

In his seminars at Columbia, Christensen - who doesn't know a word of Arabic - presents Islam as a hindrance for academic study, often complaining about `extremist' Omani Muslims who take too many breaks for prayers, or how Ramadhan disrupts his research schedule. At the same time, he gleefully boasts of swilling beer with `modern' Omanis. He also edits the Yearbook for Traditional Music, which zionist and anti-Muslim scholars use to attack Islam and curate Muslim cultures. Christensen probably has links to American, German and Israeli Intelligence agencies, and has a record of advising graduate students whose research in the Muslim workd and elsewhere is linked to missionary activities.

The Muslim Student Association (MSA) at Columbia reflects `Islamic Studies' in practice. During the early 1990s, its president was a Jewish convert to Islam (who has reportedly now changed his mind). A model `moderate' Muslim, he was a student in the Department of Religion, which projects Islam as a violent antithesis to Buddhism, the preferred religion for this department's faculty. During his reign as MSA chief, it seemed that the campus rabbi had more power in the MSA than Muslims. For example, when the regular room for Jum'ah was double-booked one Friday - despite advance requests by the MSA - some Muslims suggested praying on the sidewalk in protest, since this had occurred in the past as well whenever another group needed space. After consulting his rabbi, the MSA chief intervened and arranged for Muslims to pray in the dungeon-like basement of the campus church!

Like most other MSA chapters, the one at Columbia also answers to the Saudis. In 1992 when Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan offered to join hands with a group of zionists to commemorate the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain, MSA-central in Indiana quickly called for implementation of this plan on its satellite campuses. When some Muslim students at Columbia suggested inviting Dr T B Irving, a Muslim scholar of Islamic Spain, the Jewish student protested, claiming that he was an `extremist' and an `anti-Semite,' the latter a zionist euphemism for anyone who questions Israeli supremacy. The programme was subsequently cancelled, after the Saudis and the zionists could not secure a `moderate' speaker.

These and other stories need to be heard and often. Dr Ghorab has correctly identified many of the allegiances and dynamics found within `Islamic Studies' programmes. In fact, similar `Islamic Studies' agendas can be found in many different organizations outside academia. Given all this, it seems incumbent upon concerned Muslims who are affiliated with any of these institutions or organizations to take Dr Ghorab's initiative and help expose the programmes in their own areas.

Much work along these lines needs to be done in the US, the base of what Syed Qutb called `American Islam.' In the US, people like Esposito are revered as Islamic scholars by several Muslim organizations. As Dr Ghorab points out, Esposito was invited by the Saudis as far back as 1983, when he suggested establishing an institute for `Islamic Studies' in the US. Since then, Shaykh Esposito has had stints on the advisory boards of American Muslim organizations, most recently the American Muslim Council, sharing the latter distinction with other `Islamic Studies' mainstays, including Hassan Hathout and Ali Mazrui. The ubiquitous Ja'afar Sheikh Idris also appears at AMC functions.

The American Muslim Council (AMC) needs to be investigated for ties to the Saudis and official Islam in places like Egypt, as well as for its connections wiht US government agencies and corporations. Its debut was in June 1990, only two months after board member Hathout attended a Saudi-sponsored conference in Riyadh, according to Dr Ghorab. The first AMC newsletter came out in the fall of 1990, at a time when the Saudis were building Muslim support for the murderous American oil war against Iraq.

One of the stated policy goals of the AMC is to entangle Muslims with American party politics, which is also a US government policy goal recommended by CIA analysts and the RAND Corporation in a special report prepared for the US department of Defence in 1990. Founding AMC member Robert Crane, whose long history of US government service includes an appointment as ambassador to the United Arab Emirates by US president Reagan, is one of the AMC ideologues. He fits Dr Ghorab's description to someone who is seeking to "revise" expediency. The AMC also appears to be playing a role in dividing Muslims between `moderates' and `extremists', fulfilling another agenda item for `Islamic Studies', as is evidenced by public statements on Steve Emerson's zionist `jihad' against Muslims or on the rigged `trial' of Shaikh Omar Abdel Rahman and other Muslims in New York.

Dr Ghorab lays the methodological foundation for systematically identifying and exposing `Islamic Studies' programmes in western and Muslim institutions. He has linked them to the ongoing western crusade against the Islamic movement, showing that such programmes operate in the service of taghoot. Concerned Muslims can and should find ways to continue his efforts and help prevent `American Islam' from gaining any further ground.

-Rahhalah Haqq

Dr Kalim Siddiqui 1933-1996 Obituary

Obituary

Crescent International

Dr Kalim Siddiqui was a leading intellectual of the Islamic movement during the final decades of the 20th century. He is best known as the Director of the Muslim Institute, London, which he founded in the early 1970s, and founder and Leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain in the early 1990s, in the wake of the Rushdie controversy.

Well known for his unreserved support for the Islamic Revolution of Iran and its chief exponent to the outside world, Dr. Kalim Siddiqui, the late founder-leader of The Muslim Parliament in Britain, believed that the Muslim world needed a series of revolutions. His last book Stages of Islamic Revolution, which in his own words has the “flavour of his last testament”, was launched only two weeks ago during the Crescent International conference in South Africa.

A leading exponent of the global Islamic movement, his strong defence of Imam Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie endeared him to the Muslim masses throughout the world.

One of his most important articles of faith was that jihad - which can mean anything from holy war to ‘holy struggle’ - is still a basic requirement of Islam. Another is that Islam requires an Islamic theocracy in order to flourish. “At the root of all our problems,” he said in a recent speech, “is the fact that Muslims have little experience of living as a minority in a country where we exercise virtually no political power.”

A third axiom is that the political and moral problems of today cannot be divorced from history. The colonies may have gone, but most Islamic countries are still ruled by Westernised elites who allow their people to be exploited by the West in return for support for their unrepresentative regimes. The only Islamic country ruled by and for its people - not for the West - is Iran.

“The present crop of regimes in Islamic countries, from Morocco to Indonesia, is unacceptable,” he said. “They have to be overthrown. Islamic revolutions are needed all over the Muslim world. Muslims have an overriding duty to overthrow those governments which currently rule Muslim countries.”

Dr Siddiqui’s first brush with the authorities came in 1942, when, as an 11 year-old schoolboy, he was shot at by a British soldier during nationalist agitations in Azamgarh in north-east India. The bullet killed the boy behind him. Most of his teens were spent in the very unpleasant atmosphere of the years leading up to partition, and he fled to Pakistan at the earliest opportunity, aged 17. He spent six dissatisfied years in Pakistan before arriving in Britain in 1954 with plans to become a journalist.

For the next 10 years he worked as a reporter on various local papers. Then, from 1964 until 1972, he was a sub-editor at The Guardian, London. He also married, in 1960, and, at around the same time, began to address what he perceived to be gaps in his education. He spent most of the Sixties as a part-time student, doing his journalism by night and studying by day, starting with O-levels and culminating in a Ph.D from University College, London. He also wrote a book, about Pakistan, which was banned in that country. And he became prominent among Britain’s earliest Islamic activists. Suez saw him demonstrating in Hyde Park; the Algerian war saw him driving friends to Paris to demonstrate in the Champs-Elysees.

In 1972 he abandoned journalism and with some friends founded The Muslim Institute, in Bloomsbury, funded by subscriptions from members and donations from Muslims around the world. “We started from the idea that Muslim political thought needed to be rewritten. We felt that Western political thought had penetrated Islamic political thought and that we needed an institute to disengage from the West at the intellectual level.” He himself became director of the Muslim Institute.

The Iranian revolution in 1979 was a turning-point, establishing for the first time in Dr Siddiqui’s lifetime the sort of Islamic state that his theories advocated. He became a regular visitor to Iran and was a friend of Imam Khomeini. Both men promoted a newly self-confident version of Islam, contemptuous of everything Western. His ideas earned him respect among Islamic activists around the world - including South Africa, Sudan and Malaysia where he last visited in April 1994.

His affection for Imam Khomeini was palpable in his voice whenever he had occasion to speak about the Imam. He saw Imam Khomeini as a role model. Dr Siddiqui used to speak warmly of his hero. “The Imam was a very great man. I think his greatness was not in the sense that people like Churchill or Hitler were great. He was a simple man. He simply believed in certain basic values and rallied people to them. He lived a simple life. He slept on the floor, his food was simple. He took nothing for himself. He was an example to men.”

Some British Muslims prefer not to be associated with Dr Siddiqui’s Muslim manifesto establishing the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, questioned his right to do so and criticised him. Dr Siddiqui was equally keen not to be associated with them. “These so-called moderates who are always being wheeled out to criticise me are not Muslims at all,” he said. Yet in the manifesto he calls for all Muslims to unite in mutual self-defence. They are urged, for example, “to develop the Muslim community as an island of peace, harmony and moral excellence” and to achieve “the greatest possible degree of taqwa” (moral excellence acceptable to Allah). There are also worthy proposals to take practical steps to strengthen Britain’s network of mosques and protect Muslim interests in public life.

The manifesto’s starting point is that “in Britain today, Muslims are being asked to accept subservience and the total disintegration of their identity, culture and religion, as the only real options open to them.” Its finishing point, to quote from the speech with which Dr Siddiqui launched it, is that, “Inside 10 years we can pack a greater punch than the Jews.”

How much influence his vision will have on Britain’s Muslim community remains to be seen. It is possible that its effects will be quite far-reaching. But it is also interesting because of the way it resembles Dr Siddiqui himself: intelligent, eloquent, perceptive and civilised.

Muslimedia - April 1996-August 1996