Saudi Arabia’s approach to terrorism, hypocritical

File photo shows Saudi-backed militants in Syria.

By Dr. Kevin Barrett

On Friday, the government of Saudi Arabia listed five groups as "terrorist organizations." Two of those groups – Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) – actually are terrorist organizations. They have engaged in a policy of indiscriminate killing, including targeting civilians, in Syria.

The odd thing is that the Saudi government has long been the main supporter of both groups! 

Now, by royal decree, any Saudi citizen fighting abroad must return within two weeks, on pain of imprisonment. And any member of Jabhat al-Nusra or ISIL faces 20 years in prison.

The first Saudi who ought to go to prison is Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, former head of Saudi Intelligence "Bandar Bush," as he is affectionately known in American organized crime circles, ran the main conduit of arms to the terrorists until he was relieved of his Syria duties two weeks ago.

Bandar should be arrested and charged in connection with the false-flag chemical weapons attack in al-Ghouta last August. The whole Obama Administration, along with several top Israeli leaders, should be also arrested as suspected accessories.

But the Saudi government is hardly in a position to prosecute terrorists. If laws against terrorism were enforced in the kingdom, the whole Saudi elite would have to go to jail.

Come to think of it, that might not be such a bad idea.

The new Saudi "anti-terror" move is a virtual admission of defeat in Syria. By firing Bandar, and then outlawing Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIL, the Saudis apparently have given up on overthrowing the Syrian government. Saudi withdrawal from Syria may help open the door for a diplomatic solution.

But will the Saudis really stop funding Syrian terrorists? Or is the new Saudi "war on terror" merely cosmetic?

One indication that the new Saudi "anti-terror" policy is phony: Three of the alleged "terrorist" organizations banned by the Saudis are not really terrorists at all.

There is no evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Hizbollah, or the Yemeni Houthis have a policy of indiscriminate violence or attacks on civilians. The Saudi claim that these groups are "terrorists" is a self-serving lie.

Saudi Hizbollah has been blamed for attacks on property and on occupation forces. But even if these disputed claims are true, it has never engaged in indiscriminate attacks on civilians.

The Houthis in Yemen, likewise, do not engage in indiscriminate violence or attacks on civilians. The Takfiris they oppose, not the Houthis themselves, deserve the terrorist label.

But of all the hypocritical aspects of Saudi Arabia's anti-terror proclamation, the most outrageous is the claim that the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is a terrorist group. The MB, by far the biggest international Islamic organization, does not even have an armed militia. Since the 1970s, its official policy has been strictly non-violent activism. Even the MB's Western enemies, who consider virtually all Muslims as likely terrorists, concede that the Brotherhood has followed a policy of non-violence for decades.

Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of peaceful Muslim Brotherhood activists have disappeared and been tortured in Egypt during the decades of vicious repression by the Zionist-backed Mubarak and al-Sisi dictatorships.

Will Saudi Arabia follow Egypt's lead and begin disappearing and torturing Muslim Brotherhood activists and intellectuals?

The new wave of persecution should concentrate the minds of MB leaders. They ought to reconsider the organization's alliances and methods.

While ostensibly non-sectarian and pan-Islamic, the Muslim Brotherhood has been strongly influenced by Salafism, a puritanical, intolerant, politically-quietist strain of Islam. Saudi money has promoted Salafism in the MB. Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first-ever democratically-elected president and still its legitimate leader, was hamstrung by the need to placate the Saudi-funded Egyptian Salafis.

Now that Saudi Arabia is turning against the MB, perhaps the Brotherhood will escape the Salafi influence and become a genuine brotherhood of all Muslims – and a promoter of brotherhood between Muslims and all mankind. A good first step would be for the MB to launch a global campaign against sectarian violence. By demonstrating and speaking out against sectarian violence not just in Syria, but also in Yemen, Iraq, Nigeria, Myanmar, and elsewhere – and intensifying its opposition to the genocidal persecution of non-Zionist people in Palestine – the MB could gain support from progressive forces around the world.

The MB needs to learn how to build bridges among people of good will, beginning with Muslims of different orientations, and then reaching out to include justice-seeking non-Muslims. What Gandhi said of "Western Civilization" is also true of Muslim Brotherhood: It would be a good idea.

The MB should intensify its dedication to social justice, and reconsider its traditional policy of cooperation with oppressors – not just Saudis but also Western governments. The Saudis and the West are in bed with the Zionists. The MB needs to preserve its integrity and independence; it must not allow itself to be bought.

The ridiculous Saudi assertion that the MB is a "terrorist" group could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to the Brotherhood. It could wean the group of Saudi government money and influence once and for all.

The Saudi turn against the MB could create a new set of alliances in the Middle East. On one side, the house of Zionism, Takfiri fanaticism, social injustice, dictatorship, and submission to empire: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and their acolytes. On the other side, the house of anti-Zionism, anti-imperialism, democracy, social justice, and inclusive Islam: Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, a more inclusive Muslim Brotherhood...a newer and broader "Axis of Resistance" that could spread across the region as it gradually democratizes and wins genuine independence.

When that happens, the Saudi and Zionist regimes will be tossed in the proverbial dustbin of history, and remembered as the two biggest sources of terrorism in the region since the Mongol invasion.

KB/SS

Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America's best-known critics of the War on Terror. Dr. Barrett has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He is the co-founder of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance, and author of the books Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (2007) and Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters (2009). 

Saudi Arabia: a Kingdom that prays publicly and preys privately

by Abu Dharr

Misleading a generation of Muslim youth to create a “Sunni” militia to launch sectarian warfare will ultimately recoil on the House of Saud. It is setting itself up for a fall.

This column in the Crescent International has been coming down like a thunderbolt on the royal fiends of Arabia, otherwise referred to in the mainstream media as the Saudi royal family. And with the world turning into a global village, we hear about good-mannered individuals whose Islamic credentials are sterling, who say that we are becoming somewhat obsessed with Saudi Arabia! We are not preoccupied by Saudi Arabia, much less obsessed by it. The fact of the matter is that there is something like a public silence in Islamic circles when it comes to the Arabian billionaire royals who are wreaking havoc from Makkah eastward to Makkah westward. And we can’t stand by and watch the “transgression of the law” and the deadly sins that are traceable to the mob of pseudo-Muslims who masquerade as the “custodians of the two harams” while they are the willing accomplices of wars against Muslims and wars among Muslims.

If the Muslim Brotherhood does not have the moral courage to speak truth to power or to fight foolishness with facts then we will try to fill that void. If any other Islamic orientation is impotent and ineffectual in exposing the Saudi deadly and mortal sins then we will try to help them out.

Let us begin. Saudi Arabia — the best kept American-British-Israeli secret in the Muslim East — has come out swinging against the Ikhwan (the Muslim Brotherhood). When Washington’s Egyptian military overthrew a duly elected president of Egypt — Dr. Mohamed Mursi — the Saudi king-emperor said, “Let the entire world know that the people and government of the Saudi kingdom stood and still stand today with our brothers in Egypt against terrorism, extremism, and fitnah [sedition].” The grand Arabian, the political descendant of Abu Lahab is equating the rule of the Ikhwan to terrorism, extremism, and sedition! We wonder out-loud: after all this, is there a difference between ‘Abdullah and Mu‘awiyah — both Arabian potentates — in the minds of the leaders within the Ikhwan and their counterparts around the world?!

From its official birth which was midwifed by British colonialism in the 1930s up until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the retreat of communism (1990s), the Saudis camouflaged their subservience to the US under that broad worldwide banner of combating atheist communism.

The Islamic Revolution in Iran caused the Saudi ruling elites to redouble their efforts to furbish their “Islamic credentials” and thus we had the Saudi regime channeling a restive youth population to go to Afghanistan and fight the honorable jihad against Soviet occupation. In one sense, this was one way the masterminds that created Saudi Arabia in the first place (colonialism, imperialism, and Zionism) sought to have Riyadh eclipse Tehran during the 1980s. Tens of thousands of committed and less-than-committed Muslims went to fight the good war in Afghanistan, not knowing that they were used for a war-effort in which the rollback of the Soviet forces from Afghanistan was one of its lesser goals.

The other more important objective of that dual-purpose war was to kill off a revivalist Islamic youth generation while overshadowing the Islamic Revolution in Iran. If there were any Islamic leaders who were unaware of this then we have an acute problem; if they were in fact aware of this, then we have a chronic problem. So the Saudi masters were able to delay Islamic revival outside Islamic Iran for one generation. But time does not stop there. Now there are more generations coming of age. And so the Saudi un-intelligentsia seeks to be ahead of the curve — relying of course on strategies and stratagems that originate in Washington and London directly, and in Tel Aviv indirectly; although the lines are being blurred nowadays.

The uprisings in North Africa in general, and the one in Bahrain in particular although meant to burn the “Islamic card” did not sit well with a mentally disordered and an emotionally high-strung Saudi monarchy.

Enter Bandar ibn Sultan, the kingdom’s troubleshooter, now in charge of virtually all matters relating to intelligence and security. This nightlife ambassador sought to create a “Sunni” militia in Lebanon relying on another Washingtonian-Lebanese nighttime creature by the name of Sa‘d al-Hariri. Bandar’s imbibing of CIA and Mossad instructions not only left him with a hangover, he got a rude awakening when the combined forces of Zionism in 2006 and Saudi patronism (al-Hariri’s al-Mustaqbal party) in 2008 both were dealt resounding defeats, militarily and politically.

Enter Syria. In the commotion of what the establishment media calls the “Arab Spring” the Saudis and their political siblings — the clients of Zionist hegemony — all threw in their lot to bring down the rulers in Damascus — and not all the ruling individuals, only the ones who have a record of coordinating policies with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Their grand plan can be distilled into a single word: sectarianism.

In Syria, the Saudis want to play off (kill off) Sunnis and Shi‘is. This Zionist-imperialist campaign financed and fanaticized by Saudi Wahhabis can only turn against the Saudi officials themselves. According to some approximations, more than two-thirds of the population in Saudi Arabia do not consider themselves Wahhabis. Hijaz is predominantly Shafi‘i and Maliki. The eastern oil-rich province is teaming with Shi‘is. In some southern areas of Arabia the Zaidis and Isma‘ilis have a substantial presence.

Once the Saudi sectarian scheme comes to light all these Muslims will turn their wrath on the Saudi decision makers who in retrospect were accountable for a generation lost in Afghanistan, then a generation lost in Syria, and then a generation lost who knows where else before the Saudi sectarians face their day in the court of justice.

Let us clarify an important point that some of our readers may think we are oblivious to; that point is: we acknowledge there are many unsuspecting Muslims who are unaware of the larger picture, who went to Afghanistan or who are going to Syria today, all of whom do not have the slightest idea of their utility from a Saudi-Zionist-imperialist perspective.

Bandar may not have known at the time but he has set into motion a sequence of events that may result in the undoing of the Saudi regime itself. Syria may become Saudi Arabia’s Masada. What began as controlled jihadi groups in Syria has undergone numerous mutations. There are scores of “Islamic” jihadi fronts from “The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) ” to al-Nusrah.

The Turks have become very edgy about this development because all this is happening in close proximity to them. Once this mutually hostile potpourri of jihadi groups make their way southward to the Jordanian area, then the Saudis will have realized that the magic has turned against the magician. What began as a supervised campaign to topple the Syrian regime will wind up as a snowballing campaign to topple the Saudi regime. To preempt this looming threat his najasty majesty issued a decree recently threatening any Saudi who goes outside of the kingdom for jihad with a punishment of anywhere from 3–20 years of imprisonment. The grand mufti of Saudi Arabia (the king’s echo chamber) reinforced the king’s statement by describing such Saudi jihadists as miscreants who are being misled.

In the middle of all this, isn’t it a shame that all this Islamic youth and vitality is left to the shenanigans of the likes of Bandar who inject them with sectarian venom, and then set them loose on innocent people throughout the region and throughout the world? Isn’t it a painful emotion resulting from an awareness of inadequacy or guilt to see a young generation — in its prime — leaderless?

President Obama is scheduled to go to Saudi Arabia this month. Do the Saudi royals have the sectarianism in them to consider Obama a kafir, as they instructed their surrogates in Egypt to consider the Copts as kafirs? There are words from the grapevine (even reported in the Washington Post on February 19) to the effect that Bandar is going to be replaced by his cousin Muhammad ibn Nayef who for the last decade or so has been in charge of combating terrorism in the kingdom and who came to Washington, DC in February to set the stage for Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia.

Will Saudi Arabia, with direct and clear instructions from Washington, join regional governments who are now lined up to combat terrorism — most of which they themselves created? Will there be anyone in that decrepit royal family who will discover that the Saudi clan has been and cannot be anything but an instrument for Zionists and imperialists? Will the leaders of the Ikhwan ever face tyrants with words of truth and justice?

We seriously and regrettably doubt it.



O my Sustainer! Had You so willed, You would have destroyed them before this, and me [with them]. Will You destroy us for what the weak-minded amongst us have done? All this is but a trial from You… (7:155).