How to deal with the fitnah of Al Saud

by Zafar Bangash

Muslims worldwide must develop a better understanding of the true nature of Al Saud and not fall for their poisonous propaganda

The Muslim world is beset by myriad problems ranging from illegitimate oppressive regimes ruled by dictators and tyrants to massive corruption, mismanagement and extreme inequalities in every society. Almost all ruling elites are also subservient to the West. In its war on Islam and Muslims, the West, led by the US, has murdered countless innocent civilians, their numbers running into the hundreds of thousands, with the connivance of these very Muslim rulers. These problems are serious enough; what Muslims have paid little attention to is to identify the root cause behind their plight. In particular, some regimes more than others, have been eager proponents of advancing imperialism and Zionism’s nefarious agenda against Muslims. The House of Saud, which controls the Arabian Peninsula, tops this list. Readers paying close attention would have noticed that we have not used the name “Saudi” Arabia for the land that was named the Arabian Peninsula by the noble Messenger (pbuh) himself. It is not a piece of real estate that a family from Najd can lay claim to. In any case, the House of Saud, a band of marauding thieves from the backward outpost of Dar‘iyyah in Najd, used to attack and pillage pilgrims’ caravans going for Hajj before the British discovered their murderous skills. The Saudi hordes were recruited for the British colonial enterprise in the Muslim East.

In the early part of the last century, the House of Saud served the British; since the Second World War they have accepted the US as master. To comprehend this relationship and what devastation it has caused to the Ummah, let us consider some basic facts. The House of Saud has deposited nearly $1 trillion in US banks, money that does not belong to it. This money is used by the US to make weapons that are used against innocent Muslims in different parts of the world ranging from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan toYemen and Somalia. The US also gives these weapons to the Zionist regime to slaughter the hapless Palestinians. Muslims, however, should not be surprised by US behaviour; it is an avowed enemy not only of Muslims but of all the oppressed people in the world. Muslims should look closely into the conduct of the House of Saud, which, not coincidentally, claims to follow Islam.

Instead, this family of thieves has caused immense damage to Islam. It specializes in creating sectarian divisions among Muslims. It has peddled its narrow extremist ideology and imposed it on Muslims in distant lands by using petrodollars to finance madrasahs in places like Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The narrow-minded extremists that have emerged from these madrasahs have cause havoc in the Ummah through suicide bombings and other terrorist acts. The ongoing terrorist campaign in Pakistan, Iraq andSyria is the direct result of this extremist ideology spawned by the Saudis and actively financed by them. The US and the Zionist regime are active promotors and enablers of this campaign. It should now be clear that al-Qaeda, which had deep roots in the Saudi desert kingdom, is part of the US campaign to re-colonize the Muslim world. The mayhem in Syria is the direct result of al-Qaeda operations, actively encouraged by the US and Israel and financed by the House of Saud.

The reason why most Muslims have failed to grasp the true nature of the House of Saud is because the two holy cities of Makkah and Madinah are located in the Arabian Peninsula, most particularly the Hijaz. Muslims have immense respect and regard for these two holy places. This is natural and this is how it should be but it is a grave error to transfer the sanctity, love and respect Muslims have for the two holy cities to the ruling family in the Arabian Peninsula. This family of thieves is busy destroying the historical sites of Islam in the name of “development” and “progress.” Instead of preserving Islamic heritage sites, the House of Saud has deliberately wiped them out and replaced them with steel and concrete monstrosities designed by Westerners who have no regard or respect for Islam or the sanctity of its historic sites.

The House of Saud’s role as agents of Zionism and imperialism has now been fully exposed with events in Syria. What is underway in Syria is an attempt by external forces — the US, Israel, the House of Saud as well the Gulf sheikhdoms — to destroy the weakest link in the resistance front against Zionist Israel. Despite purchasing billions of dollars in weapons — $60 billion from the US and $10 billion from Germany in the last few months — the House of Saud has never fired a single shot in defence of Islam or Muslims. Instead, all these weapons have been used against Muslims to advance the agenda of imperialism and Zionism.

The House of Saud and their court ‘ulama oppress women — they are not allowed to drive cars, for instance, nor leave the house without being accompanied by a male guardian — mistreat domestic servants to the point of torture, and extract basically slave labor from desperate foreign workers, who in some cases are not paid for months. There are at least 30,000 political prisoners in the kingdom. People have no say in how their affairs are conducted or how decisions are made.

The question Muslims must ask is: how should we confront the Saudi fitnah? First, it is vital to be properly informed of its true nature and role. Muslims must not extend their respect for the Haramayn (the two holy cities of Makkah and Madinah) to the House of Saud. It deserves no respect from human beings, let alone Muslims. Muslims must make every effort to highlight the destruction of Islamic historic sites underway in Makkah and Madinah and mobilize global opinion against such vandalism. Such destruction must be stopped. Saudi court ‘ulama have made no secret of their plans to destroy the green dome over the Prophet’s (pbuh) rawdah (grave) in al-Masjid al-Nabawi and move the grave elsewhere (nastaghfirullah). Even the Sahabah (close Companions of the Prophet (pbuh)) did not dare think of such acts yet the barbaric savages from Najd are openly taking about it!

Muslims must boycott preachers trained in Saudi madrasahs and not give them any position in their masjids or Islamic schools. Even if the Saudis come with offers of money, these should be rejected outright. Such poisoned gifts will bear poisonous fruit. Similarly, Muslims must refuse to welcome into their masjids Saudi preachers from Makkah and Madinah donning an aura of spirituality when in fact these people are active promoters of the hate-filled ideology of the House of Saud. It is time to take drastic steps against these hate-mongers and not provide them an opportunity to distort the message of Islam or peace and security of the Ummah by creating sectarian divisions.

The Anglo-Wahhabi-zionist war on Syria goes into high gear

by Tahir Mustafa 



 The Anglo-Wahhabi-zionist mafia is determined to prevent a peaceful resolution to the crisis in Syria by flooding the country with weapons and al-Qaeda terrorists.

The tribal-owned network, al-Jazeera has dubbed it the “War in Syria.” Its news broadcasts run this banner on the screen while reporting on Syria. This tries to create the impression that there are two clearly identifiable sides in the conflict: one comprises the opposition groups while the other consists of government forces. This is a grossly simplistic and inaccurate projection of the far more complex reality on the ground. True, there are myriad groups battling government forces but they are neither independent nor have support of the Syrian people. The overwhelming majority is made up of mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar — two “shining examples” of democracy in the Muslim East — and aided and abetted by the US, Israel, the Hariri clan in Lebanon and an odd assortment of US allies from Europe. Nor is the uprising in Syria as spontaneous as those that occurred in Tunisia andEgypt. The Syrian uprising has multiple layers and numerous players. Its roots can be traced as far back as 2005, according to the Washington Post (April 16, 2011) when a number of Syrian opposition figures were recruited by the George Bush administration. He funded their activities in an attempt to overthrow theBashar al-Asad regime. Many of the characters currently promoted as spokespersons for the Syrian opposition — primarily from the Syrian National Council (SNC) that is projected as the main group — have been on US payroll for many years. They have deep links with the most hawkish rightwing and Zionist groups within the US establishment.

Their statements are given much prominence in the media, which has waged a relentless campaign against the Syrian government. Not only the Qatari-owned al-Jazeera and Saudi-owned al-Arabiya channels that carry little credibility, have peddled endless lies, but a number of Western outlets have also deliberately lied about events in Syria. Every atrocity, no matter who the perpetrator, is immediately blamed on the regime. The Houla massacre of May 25 is just one example of this campaign of lies. The BBC, considered by many as a venerable institution, published a photo of hundreds of dead children wrapped in white shrouds with a child jumping over one of them. It claimed these were children massacred by Syrian forces in Houla. The photographer, Marco Di Lauro of Getty Images had to personally intervene to say this was a picture he had taken after US forces massacred children in Iraq in 2003. It took the BBC four days before Chris Hamilton, its social media editor, issued an apology. The BBC had picked up the image from the notoriously unreliable Syrian opposition groups. In any case, most of the victims of the Houla massacre were Alawis or Shi‘is and had their throats slit, a signature mark of al-Qaeda or the equally thuggish Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Have Western media outlets stopped using Syrian opposition sources for news? Perish the thought. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a one-man show run from a clothing store in Coventry, England, is the main source of news about Syria in most media outlets. Run by Rami Abdulrahman, whatever stories he dishes out are immediately lapped up by a compliant lapdog media that wants to project the Syrian regime in negative light. To be fair to SOHR, it is not the only unreliable source of news. Last year, the story of a gay girl in Damascus, run allegedly by one Amina Abdallah Arraf al-Omari grabbed headlines for several weeks. She became the “poster girl” for Western do-gooders as well as opposition groups in Syria until the hoax was exposed in June 2011 by its perpetrator: Tom MacMaster, an American student in Scotland. Then there was the story of Zainab al-Hosni who had disappeared from her home in September 2011. Her relatives claimed the regime’s forces had abducted her. Opposition sources added their own spice claiming the regime wanted her brother but unable to find him, they grabbed Zainab instead to put pressure on the family to surrender the man. When a charred female body was found, the mother claimed it was Zainab’s. The regime was roundly condemned by the West as well as opposition groups for its brutality. No amount of denial by the regime could convince people that it was not responsible for the crime. A few weeks later, a dazed Zainab appeared on Syrian television to narrate that she had run away from home to escape beatings by her brothers. She hid with relatives in a village and was completely oblivious of the stories swirling around her “torture” and “death.” Can other horror stories be any more accurate?

Beyond the media war is a convergence of forces that appear determined to bring about regime change in Syria. Mass murder of civilians and killing of top government officials is part of this campaign. The larger the number of deaths, the more propaganda mileage the opposition and its masters squeeze from them. Into this toxic brew have flooded al-Qaeda operatives forever in search of killings and suicide bombings. Their funding comes from Saudi Arabia while the Americans, the Zionists and the Turks are providing logistical support.

The US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Hariri clan in Lebanon are all part of the destabilization plot in Syria whose ultimate aim is not only regime change but also the breakup of Syria into ethnic and confessional enclaves. The war on Syria is also part of another installment in the long-running war against Islamic Iran that was subjected to a brutal eight-year (1980–1988) war waged by then President Saddam Husain of Iraq. The entire confederacy of Arabian client regimes backed the Iraqi tyrant; the only exception was Syria. Saudi Arabia had pumped $26 billion into the Iraqi war effort, as admitted by Ghazi al-Ghoseibi, Saudi ambassador to Britain in the 1980s. Other Gulf sheikhdoms contributed their own billions or sold oil on behalf of Iraq, unable — and never have been — to wage war themselves. Western powers provided intelligence and military hardware. Despite eight years of war, the confederacy of kufr was unsuccessful in destroying the only Islamic state of our times.

The Zionist State then tried to destroy Hizbullah in July–August 2006 only to get a bloody nose and flee Lebanon with its tail between its legs. The aim was to weaken the resistance front and destroy one of its arms. The next attempt was made against Hamas in Gaza in December 2008–January 2009. This, too, failed. The war on Syria is a far more serious affair in which many interests, parties and policies are involved. If the Syrian regime can be brought down, a US-Zionist-Saudi client regime would be installed in Damascus dealing a serious blow to the resistance front against Zionist Israel. This is essentially meant to open the way for the war on Islamic Iran that the US and its allies have been itching for, for decades.

The Syrian crisis has also successfully neutralized the gains people made in the Muslim East (aka the Middle East) to oust long-entrenched dictators from power. The House of Saud could feel the heat and feared a similar fate awaiting them in the desert kingdom. It may still come about but for now, the tide has been somewhat contained. The longer the Syrian crisis drags on, the greater will the divisions in the Ummah be. The Saudis are notorious for stoking sectarian divisions. They are masters at it and regrettably, most Muslims are susceptible to such negative propaganda. Its poisonous effects will continue to debilitate the Ummah for decades.

The cast of characters in the Syrian opposition and their Western sponsors have been exposed in a detailed article by Charlie Skelton in the British daily, the Guardian on July 12, under the title: “The Syrian opposition: who's doing the talking?” It should be compulsory reading for those who want to understand how the long arm of the CIA, Mossad and other nefarious organizations and characters involved for many years in plotting the overthrow of the Asad regime, work. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/12/syrian-opposition-doing-the-talking)

Skelton names the characters. The Syrian National Council (SNC) is presented as an umbrella group of Syrian opposition but it has little support inside Syria. That does not bother those claiming to be its leaders or spokespersons or their foreign sponsors. The name of the game is to create the illusion of an opposition group that will do the West’s bidding. Haytham Manna, a respected opposition figure and representing the Local Coordination Committee inside Syria has denounced the SNC as a front for Washington.

Bassma Kodmani, a member of the executive bureau and head of foreign affairs in the SNC, has twice attended Bilderberg conferences (2008 and 2012), according to Skelton. She has also worked for the Ford Foundation in Cairo (2005) and has strong connections with the French intelligence service, the DGSE, holding the position of research director at the Académie Diplomatique Internationale, headed by Jean-Claude Cousseran, a former head of the DGSE. With such credentials, it is not surprising she rejects any dialogue with the regime and has repeatedly called for foreign intervention in Syria. In September 2006, theCouncil on Foreign Relations appointed her executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative.

Bilderberg is a secretive group of powerful political, financial and other figures that meet in secret and make plans to install people as leaders in various countries worldwide. It also reportedly supports the idea of a world government. Some leading figures in the Bilderberg group include members of European royal families, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcraft and Peter Sutherland (chairman ofGoldman Sachs). The Bushs, and prime ministers — past and present — are also members of this secretive group that shuns media publicity. What are they so afraid of if their activities are legitimate?

Another shady character in the SNC caste is Radwan Ziadeh, director of foreign relations for the group that is based in Turkey. He is senior fellow at the Washington think tank, the US Institute of Peace (USIP). It is involved in anything but peace. “The USIP Board of Directors is packed with alumni of the defence department and the National Security Council; its president is Richard Solomon, former adviser to Kissinger at the NSC,” according to Skelton in the Guardian. Together with Washington rightwingers, Ziadeh has called for military intervention in Syria.

The caste of villains is long. These include SNC spokesman Ausama Monajed and SNC member Najib Ghadbian. Monajed frequently appears on television presenting himself as a “media commentator” and calling for military intervention. He has close links with officials from the former George Bush administration. Almost all American rightwing think tanks and Zionist groups support the opposition SNC to overthrow the Asad regime. They are also linked with the British-based group, Movement for Justice and Development that WikiLeaks cables showed has been receiving generous funding from the US State Department long before the eruption of the Arab Spring. The money has been used to set up so-called independent television channels as well as fake, one-man organizations presenting themselves as opposition groups. They carry fancy titles but are ultimately no more than fronts for American rightwing or Zionist organizations that want to shape the Muslim East to serve their agenda and protect the Zionist State of Israel.

The hysterical media campaign, sabotage and bombings as well as the bogey of Syria’s “chemical weapons” are all meant to destabilize Syria, force members of the Syrian establishment to defect and pave the way for direct Western military intervention. So far all such attempts have failed as was witnessed in the aftermath of the killing of top security officials and occupation of some neighbourhoods in Damascus. The same strategy has been used in Aleppo. The more outrageous the operation, the stronger will be the regime’s response. This is precisely what the US-NATO-Zionist-Wahhabi alliance wants as part of its destabilization strategy.

The cabal of foreign powers do not want a peaceful outcome to the conflict. They are determined to bring down the government by force. So far Russia and China have resisted such attempts and refused to go along with the Western plan for another regime change, a la Libya.

Amid all the doom and gloom, a ray of hope emerged when Iran’s Foreign Minister Dr. Ali Akbar Salehiannounced on July 25 that he was inviting Syrian opposition groups not involved in acts of terror to come toTehran to meet Syrian officials. He insisted that a peaceful resolution to the conflict was possible and that opposition groups desirous of such an outcome should make the trip. Whether they will take the offer, or they will be permitted to do so by the terrorists operating in Syria under the cover of the Free Syrian Army aided by CIA-Mossad-Saudi funded SNC is difficult to tell.