Wahhabism to ISIS: how Saudi Arabia exported the main source of global terrorism

Although IS is certainly an Islamic movement, it is neither typical nor mired in the distant past, because its roots are in Wahhabism, a form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia that developed only in the 18th century.

BY KAREN ARMSTRONG

 

As the so-called Islamic State demolishes nation states set up by the Europeans almost a century ago, IS’s obscene savagery seems to epitomise the violence that many believe to be inherent in religion in general and Islam in particular. It also suggests that the neoconservative ideology that inspired the Iraq war was delusory, since it assumed that the liberal nation state was an inevitable outcome of modernity and that, once Saddam’s dictatorship had gone, Iraq could not fail to become a western-style democracy. Instead, IS, which was born in the Iraq war and is intent on restoring the premodern autocracy of the caliphate, seems to be reverting to barbarism. On 16 November, the militants released a video showing that they had beheaded a fifth western hostage, the American aid worker Peter Kassig, as well as several captured Syrian soldiers. Some will see the group’s ferocious irredentism as proof of Islam’s chronic inability to embrace modern values.

Yet although IS is certainly an Islamic movement, it is neither typical nor mired in the distant past, because its roots are in Wahhabism, a form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia that developed only in the 18th century. In July 2013, the European Parliament identified Wahhabism as the main source of global terrorism, and yet the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, condemning IS in the strongest terms, has insisted that “the ideas of extremism, radicalism and terrorism do not belong to Islam in any way”. Other members of the Saudi ruling class, however, look more kindly on the movement, applauding its staunch opposition to Shiaism and for its Salafi piety, its adherence to the original practices of Islam. This inconsistency is a salutary reminder of the impossibility of making accurate generalisations about any religious tradition. In its short history, Wahhabism has developed at least two distinct forms, each of which has a wholly different take on violence.

During the 18th century, revivalist movements sprang up in many parts of the Islamic world as the Muslim imperial powers began to lose control of peripheral territories. In the west at this time, we were beginning to separate church from state, but this secular ideal was a radical innovation: as revolutionary as the commercial economy that Europe was concurrently devising. No other culture regarded religion as a purely private activity, separate from such worldly pursuits as politics, so for Muslims the political fragmentation of their society was also a religious problem. Because the Quran had given them a sacred mission – to build a just economy in which everybody was treated with equity and respect – the political well-being of the umma (“community”) was always a matter of sacred import. If the poor were oppressed, the vulnerable exploited or state institutions corrupt, Muslims were obliged to make every effort to put society back on track.

So the 18th-century reformers were convinced that if Muslims were to regain lost power and prestige, they must return to the fundamentals of their faith, ensuring that God – rather than materialism or worldly ambition – dominated the political order. There was nothing militant about this “fundamentalism”; rather, it was a grass-roots attempt to reorient society and did not involve jihad. One of the most influential of these revivalists was Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-91), a learned scholar of Najd in central Arabia, whose teachings still inspire Muslim reformers and extremists today. He was especially concerned about the popular cult of saints and the idolatrous rituals at their tombs, which, he believed, attributed divinity to mere mortals. He insisted that every single man and woman should concentrate instead on the study of the Quran and the “traditions” (hadith) about the customary practice (Sunnah) of the Prophet and his companions. Like Luther, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab wanted to return to the earliest teachings of his faith and eject all later medieval accretions. He therefore opposed Sufism and Shiaism as heretical innovations (bidah), and he urged all Muslims to reject the learned exegesis developed over the centuries by the ulema (“scholars”) and interpret the texts for themselves.

This naturally incensed the clergy and threatened local rulers, who believed that interfering with these popular devotions would cause social unrest. Eventually, however, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab found a patron in Muhammad Ibn Saud, a chieftain of Najd who adopted his ideas. But tension soon developed between the two because Ibn Abd al-Wahhab refused to endorse Ibn Saud’s military campaigns for plunder and territory, insisting that jihad could not be waged for personal profit but was permissible only when the umma was attacked militarily. He also forbade the Arab custom of killing prisoners of war, the deliberate destruction of property and the slaughter of civilians, including women and children. Nor did he ever claim that those who fell in battle were martyrs who would be rewarded with a high place in heaven, because a desire for such self-aggrandisement was incompatible with jihad. Two forms of Wahhabism were emerging: where Ibn Saud was happy to enforce Wahhabi Islam with the sword to enhance his political position, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab insisted that education, study and debate were the only legitimate means of spreading the one true faith.

Yet although scripture was so central to Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s ideology, by insisting that his version of Islam alone had validity, he had distorted the Quranic message. The Quran firmly stated that “There must be no coercion in matters of faith” (2:256), ruled that Muslims must believe in the revelations of all the great prophets (3:84) and that religious pluralism was God’s will (5:48). Muslims had, therefore, been traditionally wary of takfir, the practice of declaring a fellow Muslim to be an unbeliever (kafir). Hitherto Sufism, which had developed an outstanding appreciation of other faith traditions, had been the most popular form of Islam and had played an important role in both social and religious life. “Do not praise your own faith so exclusively that you disbelieve all the rest,” urged the great mystic Ibn al-Arabi (d.1240). “God the omniscient and omnipresent cannot be confined to any one creed.” It was common for a Sufi to claim that he was a neither a Jew nor a Christian, nor even a Muslim, because once you glimpsed the divine, you left these man-made distinctions behind.

Despite his rejection of other forms of Islam, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab himself refrained from takfir, arguing that God alone could read the heart, but after his death Wahhabis cast this inhibition aside and the generous pluralism of Sufism became increasingly suspect in the Muslim world.

After his death, too, Wahhabism became more violent, an instrument of state terror. As he sought to establish an independent kingdom, Abd al-Aziz Ibn Muhammad, Ibn Saud’s son and successor, used takfir to justify the wholesale slaughter of resistant populations. In 1801, his army sacked the holy Shia city of Karbala in what is now Iraq, plundered the tomb of Imam Husain, and slaughtered thousands of Shias, including women and children; in 1803, in fear and panic, the holy city of Mecca surrendered to the Saudi leader.

Eventually, in 1815, the Ottomans despatched Muhammad Ali Pasha, governor of Egypt, to crush the Wahhabi forces and destroy their capital. But Wahhabism became a political force once again during the First World War when the Saudi chieftain – another Abd al-Aziz – made a new push for statehood and began to carve out a large kingdom for himself in the Middle East with his devout Bedouin army, known as the Ikhwan, the “Brotherhood”.

In the Ikhwan we see the roots of IS. To break up the tribes and wean them from the nomadic life, which was deemed incompatible with Islam, the Wahhabi clergy had settled the Bedouin in oases, where they learned farming and the crafts of sedentary life and were indoctrinated in Wahhabi Islam. Once they exchanged the time-honoured ghazu raid, which typically resulted in the plunder of livestock, for the jihad, these Bedouin fighters became more violent and extreme, covering their faces when they encountered Europeans and non-Saudi Arabs and fighting with lances and swords because they disdained weaponry not used by the Prophet. In the old ghazu raids, the Bedouin had always kept casualties to a minimum and did not attack non-combatants. Now the Ikhwan routinely massacred “apostate” unarmed villagers in their thousands, thought nothing of slaughtering women and children, and routinely slit the throats of all male captives.

In 1915, Abd al-Aziz planned to conquer the Hijaz (an area in the west of present-day Saudi Arabia that includes the cities of Mecca and Medina), the Persian Gulf to the east of Najd, and the land that is now Syria and Jordan in the north, but during the 1920s he tempered his ambitions in order to acquire diplomatic standing as a nation state with Britain and the United States. The Ikhwan, however, continued to raid the British protectorates of Iraq, Transjordan and Kuwait, insisting that no limits could be placed on jihad. Regarding all modernisation as bidah, the Ikhwan also attacked Abd al-Aziz for permitting telephones, cars, the telegraph, music and smoking – indeed, anything unknown in Muhammad’s time – until finally Abd al-Aziz quashed their rebellion in 1930.

After the defeat of the Ikhwan, the official Wahhabism of the Saudi kingdom abandoned militant jihad and became a religiously conservative movement, similar to the original movement in the time of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, except that takfir was now an accepted practice and, indeed, essential to the Wahhabi faith. Henceforth there would always be tension between the ruling Saudi establishment and more radical Wahhabis. The Ikhwan spirit and its dream of territorial expansion did not die, but gained new ground in the 1970s, when the kingdom became central to western foreign policy in the region. Washington welcomed the Saudis’ opposition to Nasserism (the pan-Arab socialist ideology of Egypt’s second president, Gamal Abdel Nasser) and to Soviet influence. After the Iranian Revolution, it gave tacit support to the Saudis’ project of countering Shia radicalism by Wahhabising the entire Muslim world.

The soaring oil price created by the 1973 embargo – when Arab petroleum producers cut off supplies to the US to protest against the Americans’ military support for Israel – gave the kingdom all the petrodollars it needed to export its idiosyncratic form of Islam. The old military jihad to spread the faith was now replaced by a cultural offensive. The Saudi-based Muslim World League opened offices in every region inhabited by Muslims, and the Saudi ministry of religion printed and distributed Wahhabi translations of the Quran, Wahhabi doctrinal texts and the writings of modern thinkers whom the Saudis found congenial, such as Sayyids Abul-A’la Maududi and Qutb, to Muslim communities throughout the Middle East, Africa, Indonesia, the United States and Europe. In all these places, they funded the building of Saudi-style mosques with Wahhabi preachers and established madrasas that provided free education for the poor, with, of course, a Wahhabi curriculum. At the same time, young men from the poorer Muslim countries, such as Egypt and Pakistan, who had felt compelled to find work in the Gulf to support their families, associated their relative affluence with Wahhabism and brought this faith back home with them, living in new neighbourhoods with Saudi mosques and shopping malls that segregated the sexes. The Saudis demanded religious conformity in return for their munificence, so Wahhabi rejection of all other forms of Islam as well as other faiths would reach as deeply into Bradford, England, and Buffalo, New York, as into Pakistan, Jordan or Syria: everywhere gravely undermining Islam’s traditional pluralism.

A whole generation of Muslims, therefore, has grown up with a maverick form of Islam that has given them a negative view of other faiths and an intolerantly sectarian understanding of their own. While not extremist per se, this is an outlook in which radicalism can develop. In the past, the learned exegesis of the ulema, which Wahhabis rejected, had held extremist interpretations of scripture in check; but now unqualified freelancers such as Osama Bin Laden were free to develop highly unorthodox readings of the Quran. To prevent the spread of radicalism, the Saudis tried to deflect their young from the internal problems of the kingdom during the 1980s by encouraging a pan-Islamist sentiment of which the Wahhabi ulema did not approve.

Where Islamists in such countries as Egypt fought tyranny and corruption at home, Saudi Islamists focused on the humiliation and oppression of Muslims worldwide. Television brought images of Muslim suffering in Palestine or Lebanon into comfortable Saudi homes. The gov­ernment also encouraged young men to join the steady stream of recruits from the Arab world who were joining the Afghans’ jihad against the Soviet Union. The response of these militants may throw light on the motivation of those joining the jihad in Syria and Iraq today.

A survey of those Saudi men who volunteered for Afghanistan and who later fought in Bosnia and Chechnya or trained in al-Qaeda camps has found that most were motivated not by hatred of the west but by the desire to help their Muslim brothers and sisters – in rather the same way as men from all over Europe left home in 1938 to fight the Fascists in Spain, and as Jews from all over the diaspora hastened to Israel at the beginning of the Six Day War in 1967. The welfare of the umma had always been a spiritual as well as a political concern in Islam, so the desperate plight of their fellow Muslims cut to the core of their religious identity. This pan-Islamist emphasis was also central to Bin Laden’s propaganda, and the martyr-videos of the Saudis who took part in the 9/11 atrocity show that they were influenced less by Wahhabism than by the pain and humiliation of the umma as a whole.

Like the Ikhwan, IS represents a rebellion against the official Wahhabism of modern Saudi Arabia. Its swords, covered faces and cut-throat executions all recall the original Brotherhood. But it is unlikely that the IS hordes consist entirely of diehard jihadists. A substantial number are probably secularists who resent the status quo in Iraq: Ba’athists from Saddam Hussein’s regime and former soldiers of his disbanded army. This would explain IS’s strong performance against professional military forces. In all likelihood, few of the young recruits are motivated either by Wahhabism or by more traditional Muslim ideals. In 2008, MI5’s behavioural science unit noted that, “far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could . . . be regarded as religious novices.” A significant proportion of those convicted of terrorism offences since the 9/11 attacks have been non-observant, or are self-taught, or, like the gunman in the recent attack on the Canadian parliament, are converts to Islam. They may claim to be acting in the name of Islam, but when an untalented beginner tells us that he is playing a Beethoven sonata, we hear only cacophony. Two wannabe jihadists who set out from Birmingham for Syria last May had ordered Islam for Dummies from Amazon.

It would be a mistake to see IS as a throwback; it is, as the British philosopher John Gray has argued, a thoroughly modern movement that has become an efficient, self-financing business with assets estimated at $2bn. Its looting, theft of gold bullion from banks, kidnapping, siphoning of oil in the conquered territories and extortion have made it the wealthiest jihadist group in the world. There is nothing random or irrational about IS violence. The execution videos are carefully and strategically planned to inspire terror, deter dissent and sow chaos in the greater population.

Mass killing is a thoroughly modern phenomenon. During the French Revolution, which led to the emergence of the first secular state in Europe, the Jacobins publicly beheaded about 17,000 men, women and children. In the First World War, the Young Turks slaughtered over a million Armenians, including women, children and the elderly, to create a pure Turkic nation. The Soviet Bolsheviks, the Khmer Rouge and the Red Guard all used systematic terrorism to purge humanity of corruption. Similarly, IS uses violence to achieve a single, limited and clearly defined objective that would be impossible without such slaughter. As such, it is another expression of the dark side of modernity.

In 1922, as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk rose to power, he completed the Young Turks’ racial purge by forcibly deporting all Greek-speaking Christians from Turkey; in 1925 he declared null and void the caliphate that IS has vowed to reinstate. The caliphate had long been a dead letter politically, but because it symbolised the unity of the umma and its link with the Prophet, Sunni Muslims mourned its loss as a spiritual and cultural trauma. Yet IS’s projected caliphate has no support among ulema internationally and is derided throughout the Muslim world. That said, the limitations of the nation state are becoming increasingly apparent in our world; this is especially true in the Middle East, which has no tradition of nationalism, and where the frontiers drawn by invaders were so arbitrary that it was well nigh impossible to create a truly national spirit. Here, too, IS is not simply harking back to a bygone age but is, however eccentrically, enunciating a modern concern.

The liberal-democratic nation state developed in Europe in part to serve the Industrial Revolution, which made the ideals of the Enlightenment no longer noble aspirations but practical necessities. It is not ideal: its Achilles heel has always been an inability to tolerate ethnic minorities – a failing responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. In other parts of the world where modernisation has developed differently, other polities may be more appropriate. So the liberal state is not an inevitable consequence of modernity; the attempt to produce democracy in Iraq using the colo­nial methods of invasion, subjugation and occupation could only result in an unnatural birth – and so IS emerged from the resulting mayhem.

IS may have overreached itself; its policies may not be sustainable and it faces determined opposition from Sunni and Shia Muslims alike. Interestingly Saudi Arabia, with its impressive counterterrorist resources, has already thwarted IS attempts to launch a series of attacks in the kingdom and may be the only regional power capable of bringing it down. The shooting in Canada on 22 October, where a Muslim convert killed a soldier at a war memorial, indicates that the blowback in the west has begun; to deal realistically with our situation, we need an informed understanding of the precise and limited role of Islam in the conflict, and to recognise that IS is not an atavistic return to a primitive past, but in some real sense a product of modernity. 

Karen Armstrong is the author of “Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence” (Bodley Head, £25)

World’s Biggest Pilgrimage Now Underway, And Why You’ve Never Heard of it!

By Sayed Mahdi al-Modarresi Faith Leader, Lecturer, Author of “The Lost Testament”

It’s not the Muslim Hajj, or the Hindu Kumbh Mela.. Known as Arbaeen, it is the world’s most populous gathering and you’ve probably never heard of it! Not only does the congregation exceed the number of visitors to Mecca (by a factor of five, in fact), it is more significant than Kumbh Mela, since the latter is only held every third year. In short, Arbaeen dwarfs every other rally on the planet, reaching twenty million last year. That is a staggering %60 of Iraq’s entire population, and it is growing year after year.

 Above all, Arbaeen is unique because it takes place against the backdrop of chaotic and dangerous geopolitical scenes. Daesh (aka ‘Islamic State’) sees the Shia as their mortal enemy, so nothing infuriates the terror group more than the sight of Shia pilgrims gathering for their greatest show of faith. There’s another peculiar feature of Arbaeen. While it is a distinctively Shia spiritual exercise, Sunnis, even Christians, Yazidis, Zoroastrians, and Sabians partake in both the pilgrimage as well as serving of devotees. This is remarkable given the exclusive nature of religious rituals, and it could only mean one thing: people regardless of color or creed see Hussein as a universal, borderless, and meta-religious symbol of freedom and compassion.

 Why you have never heard of it probably has to do with the fact that the press is concerned more with negative, gory, and sensationalized tabloids, than with positive, inspiring narratives, particularly when it comes to Islam. If a few hundred anti-immigration protestors take to the streets in London and they will make headlines.. The same level of airtime is awarded to a pro-democracy march in Hong Kong or an anti-Putin rally in Russia.. But a gathering of twenty million in obstreperous defiance of terror and injustice somehow fails even to make it into the TV news ticker! An unofficial media embargo is imposed on the gargantuan event despite the story having all the critical elements of an eye-catching feature; the staggering numbers, the political significance, the revolutionary message, the tense backdrop, as well as originality..

But when such a story does make it through the editorial axe of major news outlets, it creates shockwaves and touches the most random people. Among the countless individuals inspired by it, is a young Australian man I met several years ago who had converted to Islam. Evidently, no one takes such a life-altering decision lightly, so upon inquiry he told me it all started in 2003. One evening, as he was watching the news only to be drawn by scenes of millions streaming towards a holy city known as Karbala, chanting the name of a man he had never heard of: “Hussein”. For the first time in decades, in a globally televised event, the world had caught an glimpse into previously suppressed religious fervor in Iraq. With the Sunni Ba’athist regime toppled, Western viewers were eager to see how Iraqis would respond to a new era free from dictatorship persecution.

The ‘Republic of Fear’ had crumbled and the genie had irreversibly escaped from the bottle. “Where is Karbala, and why is everyone heading in its direction?” he recalls asking himself. “Who is this Hussein who motivates people to defy all the odds and come out to mourn his death fourteen centuries after the fact?” What he witnessed in that 60-second report was especially moving because the imagery was unlike any he had ever seen. A fervent sense of connection turned human pilgrims into iron filings, swarming together other as they drew closer to what could only be described as Hussein’s irresistible magnetic field. “If you want to see a living, breathing, lively religion, come to Karbala” he said. How could a man who was killed 1396 years ago be so alive and have such a palpable presence today that he makes millions take up his cause, and view his plight as their own? People are unlikely to be drawn into a dispute (much less one that transpired in ancient times) unless they have a personal interest in the matter. On the other hand, if you felt someone was engaged in a fight over your right to freedom, your prerogative to be treated justly, and your entitlement to a life of dignity, you would feel you had a vested interest and would empathize with him to the point where conversion to his beliefs is not a far-fetched possibility.

The Ultimate Tragedy Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, is revered by Muslims as the “Prince of Martyrs”. He was killed in Karbala on a day which became known as Ashura, the tenth day of the Islamic month of Muharram, having refused to pledge allegiance to the corrupt and tyrannical caliph, Yazid. He and his family and companions were surrounded in the desert by an army of 30,000, starved of food and water, then beheaded in the most macabre manner, a graphic tale recounted from pulpits every year since the day he was slain. Their bodies were mutilated. In the words of the English historian Edward Gibbon: “In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hussein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.”

 Shia Muslims have since mourned the death of Hussein, in particular on the days of Ashura, then, forty days later, on Arbaeen. Forty days is the usual length of mourning in many Muslim traditions. This year, Arba’een falls on Friday 12 December. Long Trek I travelled to Karbala, my own ancestral home, to find out for myself why the city is so intoxicating. What I witnessed proved to me that even the widest-angle camera lens is too narrow to capture the spirit of this tumultuous, yet peaceful gathering. An avalanche of men, women and children, but most visibly black-veiled women, fill the eye from one end of the horizon to the other.The crowds were so huge that they caused a blockade for hundreds of miles. The 425 mile distance between the southern port city of Basra and Karbala is a long journey by car, but it’s unimaginably arduous on foot.

It takes pilgrims a full two weeks to complete the walk. People of all age groups trudge in the scorching sun during the day and in bone-chilling cold at night. They travel across rough terrain, down uneven roads, through terrorist strongholds, and dangerous marshlands. Without even the most basic amenities or travel gear, the pilgrims carry little besides their burning love for “The Master” Hussein. Flags and banners remind them, and the world, of the purpose of their journey: O self, you are worthless after Hussein. My life and death are one and the same, So be it if they call me insane! The message recalls an epic recited by Abbas, Hussein’s half-brother and trusted lieutenant, who was also killed in the Battle of Karbala in 680AD while trying to fetch water for his parched nieces and nephews. With security being in the detrimental state that makes Iraq the number one headline in the world, no one doubts that this statement is genuine in every sense. Free lunch.. And dinner, and breakfast!

 One part of the pilgrimage which will leave every visitor perplexed is the sight of thousands of tents with makeshift kitchens set up by local villagers who live around the pilgrims’ path. The tents (called ‘mawkeb’) are places where pilgrims get practically everything they need. From fresh meals to eat and a space to rest, to free international phone calls to assure concerned relatives, to baby diapers, to practically every other amenity, free of charge. In fact, pilgrims do not need to carry anything on the 400 mile journey except the clothes they wear. More intriguing is how pilgrims are invited for food and drink. Mawkeb organizers intercept the pilgrims’ path to plead with them to accept their offerings, which often includes a full suite of services fit for kings: first you can a foot massage, then you are offered a delicious hot meal, then you are invited to rest while your clothes are washed, ironed, then returned to you after a nap. All complimentary, of course.

 For some perspective, consider this: In the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, and with worldwide sympathy and support, the UN World Food Programme announced delivery of half a million meals at the height of its relief efforts.. The United States military, launched Operation Unified Response, bringing together the massive resources of various federal agencies and announced that within five months of the humanitarian catastrophe, 4.9 million meals had been delivered to Haitians. Now compare that with over 50 million meals per day during Arbaeen, equating to about 700 million meals for the duration of the pilgrimage, all financed not by the United Nations or international charities, but by poor laborers and farmers who starve to feed the pilgrims and save up all year round so that visitors are satisfied.

Everything, including security is provided mostly by volunteer fighters who have one eye on Daesh, and another on protecting the pilgrim’s path. “To know what Islam teaches,” says one Mawkeb organizer, “don’t look at the actions of a few hundred barbaric terrorists, but the selfless sacrifices exhibited by millions of Arbaeen pilgrims.” In fact, Arbaeen should be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records in several categories: biggest annual gathering, longest continuous dining table, largest number of people fed for free, largest group of volunteers serving a single event, all under the imminent threat of suicide bombings.

  Unmatched Devotion Just looking at the multitudes leaves you breathless. What adds to the spectacle is that, as the security conditions worsen, even more people are motivated to challenge the terrorist threats and march in defiance. Thus, the pilgrimage isn’t a mere religious exercise, but a bold statement of resistance. Videos have been posted online showing how a suicide bomber blows himself up in the midst of the pilgrims, only to have the crowds turn out in even greater numbers, chanting in unison: If they sever our legs and hands, We shall crawl to the Holy Lands! The horrific bomb blasts which occur year-round, mostly targeting Shia pilgrims and taking countless lives, illustrate the dangers facing Shias living in Iraq, and the insecurity that continues to plague the country.

Yet the imminent threat of death doesn’t seem to deter people - young and old, Iraqis and foreigners - from making the dangerous journey to the holy city. It isn’t easy for an outsider to understand what inspires the pilgrims. You see women carrying children in their arms, old men in wheelchairs, people on crutches, and blind seniors holding walking sticks. I met a father who had travelled all the way from Basra with his disabled boy. The 12-year-old had cerebral palsy and could not walk unassisted. So for a part of the trek the father put the boy’s feet on top of his and held him by the armpits as they walked. It is the kind of story out of which Oscar-winning films are made, but it seems Hollywood is more concerned with comic heroes and with real life heroes whose superpower is their courage and commitment.

Golden Dome of Hussein

Visitors to the shrine of Hussein and his brother Abbas are not driven by emotion alone. They cry be reminded of the atrocious nature of his death, in doing so, they reaffirm their pledge to his ideals. The first thing that pilgrims do upon reaching his shrine is recite the Ziyara, a sacred text which summarizes the status of Hussein. In it, they begin the address by calling Hussein the “inheritor” of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus. There is something profound in making this proclamation. It shows that Hussein’s message of truth, justice, and love for the oppressed is viewed as an inseparable extension of all divinely-appointed prophets. People go to Karbala not to marvel at the city’s landscape - lush with date palms, or to admire the mausoleum’s physical beauty, or to shop, be entertained, or to visit ancient historical sites. They go to cry.

To mourn and experience the angelic aura of Hussein. They enter the sacred shrine weeping and lamenting the greatest act of sacrifice ever seen. It is as though every person has established a personal relationship with the man they have never seen. They talk to him and call out his name; they grip the housing of his tomb; they kiss the floor leading into the shrine; they touch its walls and doors in the same manner one touches the face of a long-lost friend. It is a picturesque vista of epic proportions. What motivates these people is something that requires an understanding of the character and status of Imam Hussein and the spiritual relationship that those who have come to know him have developed with his living legend.

If the world understood Hussein, his message, and his sacrifice, they would begin to understand the ancient roots of Daesh and its credo of death and destruction. It was centuries ago in Karbala that humanity witnessed the genesis of senseless monstrosities, epitomized in the murderers of Hussein. It was pitch black darkness v. Absolute shining light, an exhibition of vice v. a festival of virtue, hence the potent specter of Hussein today. His presence is primordially woven into every facet of their lives. His legend encourages, inspires, and champions change for the better, and no amount of media blackout can extinguish its light. “Who is this Hussein”? For hundreds of millions of his followers, a question this profound, which can cause people to relinquish their religion for another, can be answered only when you have marched to the shrine of Hussein on foot.

Radical face of Saudi Wahhabism

By S. IRFAN HABIB

The agenda of the Islamic State today is merely an extension of the devious plan laid down by Abdul Wahhab almost two hundred years ago It is ironical indeed that the Turkish regime today is implicated in propping up a terrorist group called the Islamic State (IS), which has vowed to spread Wahhabi Islam all over the world. The present Wahhabism, legitimated and empowered by the Saudi regime, has violent, almost criminal, origins in the 19th century. If we care to look into its beginnings, we won’t be surprised at its utter contempt for human life and everything else which doesn’t conform to its own narrow/sectarian agenda. Let me explain the irony first.

 It was the Ottoman regime which bore the brunt of Wahhabi Islam soon after it became a force in the Central Arab region. The toxic combine of 18th century Islamic scholar Abdul Wahhab and the first monarch of Saudi Arabia Ibn Saud posed a challenge to the Ottoman rule. They also questioned the prevalent Islamic beliefs and practices. The Turks not only defended their power but also assiduously fought for the mystic Islam they had professed and supported all these years. The Ottomans fought and exiled the Wahhabis to the Arab deserts where they remained for almost a century.

This Wahhabi bigotry was condemned by the Turks as criminal and unIslamic. The sad irony is that the current Turkish regime has joined the Wahhabi bandwagon, forgetting all about the Bektashis, Qadiris and other dervishes they had cherished all these centuries. The IS agenda today is merely an extension of the devious plan laid down by Abdul Wahhab almost 200 years ago. Let us look at this so-called puritan Islam proposed by the Wahhabis, its violent ‘othering’ of Muslims they disliked and the parallels with the present day IS terrorists.

 DANGEROUS LESSONS: If the Islamic State is detonating shrines, it is following the precedent set in the 1920s by the House of Saud. Picture shows the Prophet Younis Mosque after it was destroyed in a bomb attack by Islamic State militants in Mosul.DANGEROUS LESSONS: If the Islamic State is detonating shrines, it is following the precedent set in the 1920s by the House of Saud. Picture shows the Prophet Younis Mosque after it was destroyed in a bomb attack by Islamic State militants in Mosul. Hate-filled agenda

Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, and his radical, exclusionist puritanism became deadlier when Ibn Saud decided to add its religious fervour to his banditry. (The latter was then no more than a minor leader amongst many of continually fighting and raiding Bedouin tribes in the desperately poor deserts of the Nejd.) Thus Abdul Wahhab, in collaboration with Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, laid down its sectarian and hate-filled agenda. He denounced his opponents and all Muslims unwilling to accept his views as idolaters and apostates, and abused the prophets, scholars, saints and other pious figures of the past. All those who did not adhere to his proposed version of Islam were to be killed; their wives and daughters violated. Shias, Sufis, and other Muslims whom he judged unorthodox were to be exterminated, and all other faiths to be humiliated or destroyed. With this awful doctrine, the foundation was laid for Islamic fundamentalism, leading ultimately to terrorism, vitiating the lives of not only Muslims but everyone else in the world.


 Most of the so-called Islamic terrorist groups today are inspired by this devious political ideology. Saudi money and power has succeeded in mainstreaming this hate-filled conning of Islam as the true, puritan Islam, where any deviation is dubbed as unIslamic. Unfortunately, most Western writers on Islam took Wahhabi claims to represent reform against the alleged decadence of traditional Islam at face value. American journalist Stephen Schwartz says that the Wahhabi rejection of ostentatious spirituality is much the same as the Protestants detesting the veneration of saints in the Roman Church. Western observers have seen the movement as analogous with Christian Reformation. Sadly, they have failed to make a distinction between reform and bigotry.



 IS and other terrorist groups today have taken the original Wahhabi perversion to even greater heights where they don’t even refer to their roots. The Saudi regime itself feels threatened by the monster their ideology helped create. They have publicly distanced themselves from IS terrorism and even used the chief cleric of Mecca to declare IS terrorism a heinous crime under sharia law. This is one consistent duplicity which the Saudis have pursued whenever they found themselves stuck in a tight spot. However, the stark parallels between IS and its ilk and the Saudi-Wahhabi travesty are telling. If IS is detonating shrines, it is following the precedent set in the 1920s by the House of Saud with the Wahhabi-inspired demolition of 1,400-year-old tombs in the Jannat ul Baqi cemetery in Medina. Again, the hatred for the Shia Muslims is one of the core beliefs of the Wahhabis. The earliest destructions and killings they carried out were in Karbala in the early 19th century, which was followed by the looting and wrecking of the tomb of Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet. Whatever be the face, bile against the Shias has remained a constant throughout Wahhabi-Saudi history, which is being carried forward by its latest flag bearers, the IS and Al Qaeda.

  Wahhabism’s reinvention Why did hydra-headed Wahhabism become so menacingly active during the past few decades? One factor may be the Iranian Revolution of the 1970s, which was perceived as a threat by Wahhabism that had begun to look dated by then. It, therefore, had to reinvent itself to remain relevant. This reinvention had deadly manifestations such as the Boko Haram, the Al Shabab, the Al Qaeda, the Taliban and now the IS, and many others all over the world. Even Shia Islam changed radically in the post Ayatollah Khomeini era; it is no more as relaxed as it used to be.


 The Saudi and Qatari regimes seem to have realised that they have created a monster in ISIS, which is now a threat to their own peaceful existence. Though IS remains deeply Wahhabist, it is ultra radical and “could be seen essentially as a corrective movement to contemporary Wahhabism.” Today, a collective military action seems to be the only way to check the IS menace, but a lasting peace in the Islamic world is possible only if a battle is waged within Islam to change the mindset. Besides we need to look beyond the usual Islamophobic and Islamophilic perspectives. (S. Irfan Habib holds the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Chair, National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi.)

America Occupies Iraq Step by Step

Alwaght-  According to Reuters Barack Obama has approved sending up to 1,500 more troops to Iraq, roughly doubling the number of American forces on the ground to fight ISIS terrorist group. A group that initially trained, funded, and armed by America to fight on their behalf to topple a member of Resistance Axis, that is Syria. Due to years of Syrian people's heroic resistance terrorists failed to fulfill their masters' demands.

On the other hand, after America's humiliating defeat in Iraq that made it to withdraw from Iraq, American officials were seeking for an opportunity to return back to Iraq. What excuse better than fighting their handmade terrorism, i.e. ISIS. Undoubtedly with America's green light, ISIS terrorist group invaded Iraq to create another opportunity for their master's return to Iraq soil. 

Obama's decision greatly expands the geographic distribution of American forces, some of whom will head into Iraq's fiercely contested western Anbar province for the first time.

It also raises the stakes in Obama's first interactions with Congress after his Democratic Party was thumped by Republicans in mid-term elections this week. The White House said it would ask Congress for $1.6 billion for a new "Iraq Train and Equip Fund".

About 1,400 American troops are now on the ground, just below the previous limit of 1,600 troops. The new authorization gives the American military the ability to deploy up to 3,100 troops.

Kirby claimed about 870 of the additional troops would be involved in "hands-on training," and disclosed that "well over 700 additional trainers will come from foreign governments."

Indeed, America is occupying  the strategic country of Iraq step by step under the pretext of fighting its handmade terrorism. Terrorist groups like ISIS not only act as America and its allies proxy to eradicate those who resist against their imperialistic demands but also are used as an alibi for western power to interfere directly wherever terrorist groups are not able to serve their illegal interests.   

How Many Muslim Countries Has the U.S. Bombed Or Occupied Since 1980?

Glenn Greenwald

The people who denounce the violence of Islam live in countries whose governments unleash more violence than anyone else by far.

 Barack Obama, in his post-election press conference yesterday, announced that he would seek an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) from the new Congress, one that would authorize Obama’s bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria—the one he began three months ago. If one were being generous, one could say that seeking congressional authorization for a war that commenced months ago is at least better than fighting a war even after Congress explicitly rejected its authorization, as Obama lawlessly did in the now-collapsed country of Libya.

When Obama began bombing targets inside Syria in September, I noted that it was the seventh predominantly Muslim country that had been bombed by the U.S. during his presidency (that did not count Obama’s bombing of the Muslim minority in the Philippines). I also previously noted that this new bombing campaign meant that Obama had become the fourth consecutive U.S. President to order bombs dropped on Iraq. Standing alone, those are both amazingly revealing facts. American violence is so ongoing and continuous that we barely notice it any more. Just this week, a U.S. drone launched a missile that killed 10 people in Yemen, and the dead were promptly labeled “suspected militants” (which actually just means they are “military-age males”); those killings received almost no discussion.

To get a full scope of American violence in the world, it is worth asking a broader question: how many countries in the Islamic world has the U.S. bombed or occupied since 1980? That answer was provided in a recent Washington Post op-ed by the military historian and former U.S. Army Col. Andrew Bacevich:

As America’s efforts to “degrade and ultimately destroy” Islamic State militants extent into Syria, Iraq War III has seamlessly morphed into Greater Middle East Battlefield XIV. That is, Syria has become at least the 14th country in the Islamic world that U.S. forces have invaded or occupied or bombed, and in which American soldiers have killed or been killed. And that’s just since 1980.

Let’s tick them off: Iran (1980, 1987-1988), Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011), Lebanon (1983), Kuwait (1991), Iraq (1991-2011, 2014-), Somalia (1992-1993, 2007-), Bosnia (1995), Saudi Arabia (1991, 1996), Afghanistan (1998, 2001-), Sudan (1998), Kosovo (1999), Yemen (2000, 2002-), Pakistan (2004-) and now Syria. Whew.

Bacevich’s count excludes the bombing and occupation of still other predominantly Muslim countries by key U.S. allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, carried out with crucial American support. It excludes coups against democratically elected governments, torture, and imprisonment of people with no charges. It also, of course, excludes all the other bombing and invading and occupying that the U.S. has carried out during this time period in other parts of the world, including in Central America and the Caribbean, as well as various proxy wars in Africa.

There is an awful lot to be said about the factions in the west which devote huge amounts of their time and attention to preaching against the supreme primitiveness and violence of Muslims. There are no gay bars in Gaza, the obsessively anti-Islam polemicists proclaim—as though that (rather than levels of violence and aggression unleashed against the world) is the most important metric for judging a society. Reflecting their single-minded obsession with demonizing Muslims (at exactly the same time, coincidentally, their governments wage a never-ending war on Muslim countries and their societies marginalize Muslims), they notably neglect to note thriving gay communities in places like Beirut and Istanbul, or the lack of them in Christian Uganda. Employing the defining tactic of bigotry, they love to highlight the worst behavior of individual Muslims as a means of attributing it to the group as a whole, while ignoring (often expressly) the worst behavior of individual Jews and/or their own groups (they similarly cite the most extreme precepts of Islam while ignoring similarly extreme ones from Judaism). That’s because, as Rula Jebreal told Bill Maher last week, if these oh-so-brave rationality warriors said about Jews what they say about Muslims, they’d be fired.

But of all the various points to make about this group, this is always the most astounding: those same people, who love to denounce the violence of Islam as some sort of ultimate threat, live in countries whose governments unleash far more violence, bombing, invasions, and occupations than anyone else by far. That is just a fact.

Those who sit around in the U.S. or the U.K. endlessly inveighing against the evil of Islam, depicting it as the root of violence and evil (the “mother lode of bad ideas“), while spending very little time on their own societies’ addictions to violence and aggression, or their own religious and nationalistic drives, have reached the peak of self-blinding tribalism. They really are akin to having a neighbor down the street who constantly murders, steals and pillages, and then spends his spare time flamboyantly denouncing people who live thousands of miles away for their bad acts. Such a person would be regarded as pathologically self-deluded, a term that also describes those political and intellectual factions which replicate that behavior.

The sheer casualness with which Obama yesterday called for a new AUMF is reflective of how central, how commonplace, violence and militarism are in the U.S.’s imperial management of the world. That some citizens of that same country devote themselves primarily if not exclusively to denouncing the violence and savagery of others is a testament to how powerful and self-blinding tribalism is as a human drive.

In Open Letter To Muslim World, French Muslim Philosopher Says Islam Has Given Birth To Monsters, Needs Reform

In an essay published October 3, 2014 in the French newspaper Marianne, Abdennour Bidar, philosopher and author of Self Islam, a personal history of Islam(Seuil, 2006); Islam without submission: a Muslim existentialism (Albin Michel, 2008), and History of humanism in the West (Armand Colin, 2014), wrote that believing Muslims cannot avoid a discussion of the causes of jihadi excesses by merely denouncing terrorist barbarism. He says that in the face of the dogmas and political manipulation to which it is being subjected, the Muslim world must be self-critical, and must act to reform itself. The following is his essay:

Abdennour Bidar (image: aujourdhui.ma)

"I See That You Are Losing Yourself, Losing Your Time And Your Honor, In Your Refusal To Recognize That This Monster [ISIS] Is Born Of You"

"Dear Muslim world: I am one of your estranged sons, who views you from without and from afar – from France, where so many of your children live today. I look at you with the harsh eyes of a philosopher, nourished from infancy on tasawwuf (Sufism) and Western thought. I look at you therefore, from my position of barzakh, from an isthmus between the two seas of the East and the West.

"And what do I see? What do I see better than others, no doubt precisely because I see you from afar, from a distance? I see you in a state of misery and suffering that saddens me infinitely, but that makes my philosopher's judgment even harsher. Because I see you in the process of birthing a monster that presumes to call itself the Islamic State, and which some prefer to call by a demon's name – Da'esh. But worst of all is that I see that you are losing yourself, losing your time and your honor, in your refusal to recognize that this monster is born of you, of your irresoluteness, of your contradictions, of your being torn between past and present, of your perpetual inability to find your place in human civilization.

"What, indeed, do you say when faced with this monster? You shout, 'That's not me!' 'That's not Islam!' You reject [the possibility] that this monster's crimes are committed in your name (#NotInMyName). You rebel against the monster's usurpation of your identity, and of course you are right to do so. It is essential that you proclaim to the world, loud and clear, that Islam condemns barbarity. But this is absolutely not enough! For you are taking refuge in your self-defense reflex, without realizing it, and, above all, without taking responsibility to self-criticize. You become indignant and are satisfied with that – but you are missing an historical opportunity to question yourself. Instead of taking responsibility for yourself, you accuse others: 'You Westerners, and all you enemies of Islam – stop associating us with this monster! Terrorism is not Islam! The true Islam, the good Islam doesn't mean war, it means peace!'"

"The Root Of This Evil That Today Steals Your Face Is Within Yourself; The Monster Emerged From Your Own Belly"

"Oh my dear Muslim world, I hear the cry of rebellion rising in you, and I understand it. Yes, you are right: Like every one of the great sacred inspirations in the world, Islam has, throughout its history, created beauty, justice, meaning, and good, and it has [been a source of] powerful enlightenment for humans who are on the path through the mystery of existence...Here in the West, I fight, in all my books, so that this wisdom of Islam and of all religions is not forgotten or despised. But because of my distance [from the Muslim world], I can see that which you cannot... And this inspires me to ask: Why has this monster stolen your face? Why has this despicable monster chosen your face and not another? The truth is that behind this monster hides a huge problem, one you do not seem ready to confront. Yet in the end you will have to find the courage [to do so].

"The problem is that of the root of the evil. Where do the crimes of this so-called 'Islamic State' come from? I'll tell you, my friend. And it will not make you happy, but it is my duty as a philosopher. The root of this evil that today steals your face is within yourself; the monster emerged from your own belly. And other monsters, some even worse, will emerge, as long as you refuse to acknowledge your sickness and to finally tackle the root of this evil!

"Even Western intellectuals have difficulty seeing this. For the most part they have so forgotten the power of religion – for good and for evil, over life and over death – that they tell me, 'No, the problem of the Muslim world is not Islam, not the religion, but politics, history, economics, etc.' They completely forget that religion may be the core of the reactor of a human civilization, and that tomorrow the future of humanity will depend not only on a resolution to the financial crisis, but also, and much more essentially, on a resolution to the unprecedented spiritual crisis that is affecting all of mankind."

"I See In You, Oh Muslim World, Great Forces Ready To Rise Up And Contribute To This Global Effort To Find A Spiritual Life For The 21st Century"

"Will we be able to all come together, across the world, to face this fundamental challenge? The spiritual nature of man abhors a vacuum, and if finds nothing new with which to fill it, it will tomorrow fill it with religions that are less and less adapted to the present – and which, like Islam today, will [also]begin producing monsters.

"I see in you, oh Muslim world, great forces ready to rise up and contribute to this global effort to find a spiritual life for the 21st century. Despite the severity of your sickness, you have in you a great multitude of men and women willing to reform Islam, to reinvent its genius beyond its historical forms, and to be part of the total renewal of the relationship that mankind once had with its gods. It is to all these, both Muslims and non-Muslims, who dream together of a spiritual revolution that I have addressed my books– to whom I offer, with my philosopher's words, confidence in that which their hope glimpses."

"Al-Qaeda, Jabhat Al-Nusra, AQIM, And Islamic State – They Understand All Too Well That These Are Only The Most Visible Symptoms Of An Immense Diseased Body"

"But these Muslim men and women who look to the future are not yet sufficiently numerous, nor is their word sufficiently powerful. All of them, whose clarity and courage I welcome, have plainly seen that it is the Muslim world's general state of profound sickness that explains the birth of terrorist monsters with names like Al-Qaeda, Jabhat Al-Nusra, AQIM, and Islamic State. They understand all too well that these are only the most visible symptoms of an immense diseased body, whose chronic maladies include: the inability to establish sustainable democracies that recognize freedom of conscience vis-à-vis religious dogmas as a moral and political right; chronic difficulties in improving women's status towards equality, responsibility and freedom; the inability to sufficiently free political power from its control by religious authority; and the inability to establish respectful, tolerant and genuine recognition of religious pluralism and religious minorities."

"Could All This, Then, Be The Fault Of The West? How Much Precious Time Will You Lose, Dear Muslim World, With This Stupid Accusation[?]"

"Could all this, then, be the fault of the West? How much precious time will you lose, dear Muslim world, with this stupid accusation that you yourself no longer believe, and behind which you hide so that you can continue to lie to yourself?

"Particularly since the eighteenth century – it's past time you acknowledged it – you have been unable to meet the challenge of the West. You have childishly and embarrassingly sought refuge in the past, with the obscurantist Wahhabism regression that continues to wreak havoc almost everywhere within your borders –the Wahhabism that you spread from your holy places in Saudi Arabia like a cancer originating from your very heart. Or, you followed the worst of the West – with nationalism and a modernism that caricatures modernity. I refer here especially to the technological development, so inconsistent with the religious archaism,that makes your fabulously wealthy Gulf 'elite' mere willing victims of the global disease – the worship of the god Money.

"What is admirable about you today, my friend? What do you still have that is worthy of the respect of the peoples and civilizations of the Earth? Where are your wise men? Have you still wisdom to offer the world? Where are your great men? Who is your Mandela, your Gandhi, your Aung San Suu Kyi? Where are your great thinkers whose books should be read worldwide, as they were when Arab or Persian mathematicians and philosophers were referred to from India to Spain? You are actually so weakened behind the self-assuredness that you always display... You have no idea who you are or where you want to go, and it makes you as unhappy as you are aggressive... You persist in not listening to those who call on you to change by finally freeing yourself from the dominion over all of life that you have granted to religion.

"You chose to consider Muhammad a prophet and king. You chose to define Islam as a moral, political, and social religion that must rule as a tyrant in the state as well as in civilian life, in the street and in the home, and in everyman's conscience. You chose to believe that Islam means 'submission' and to impose that belief – while the Koran itself declares that 'there is no compulsion in religion' (the ikraha fi Din). You have made [the Koran's] cry for freedom into the reign of coercion. How can a civilization so betray its own sacred text? I say that in Islamic civilization, the time has come to institute this spiritual freedom – the most sublime and difficult of all [freedoms]– in the place of all the laws invented by generations of theologians!"

"Numerous Voices That You Refuse To Hear Are Rising Today In The Ummah To Denounce This Taboo In This Authoritarian Religion That Cannot Be Questioned"

"Numerous voices that you refuse to hear are rising today in the ummah [Islamic nation] to denounce this taboo in this authoritarian religion that cannot be questioned... to the point where many believers have so internalized a culture of submission to tradition and to the 'masters of religion' (imams, muftis, sheikhs etc.) that they don't realize that we are talking to them about spiritual freedom or personal choice vis-à-vis the 'pillars' of Islam. All this is a 'red line' for them – so sacred to them that they dare not allow their own conscience to question. And there are so many families in which this confusion between spirituality and servitude is implanted from such an early age, and in which spiritual education is so meager, that nothing concerning religion may be discussed."

"But this [taboo] is clearly not imposed by the terrorism of some crazy fanatics who have been accepted as part of the 'Islamic State.' No, this problem is infinitely deeper. But who is willing to hear? In the Muslim world, there is only silence on this matter; in the Western media, they only listen to all those terrorism experts, who exacerbate the general myopia day by day. Do not delude yourself, my friend, by pretending that by finishing off Islamist terrorism we will settle all Islam's problems. Because what I have described here – a tyrannical, dogmatic, literalist, formalistic, macho, conservative, and regressive religion –is too often the ordinary Islam, the everyday Islam, that suffers and that causes suffering to too many consciences, the irrelevant Islam of the past, the Islam that is distorted by all those who manipulate it politically, the Islam that always ends up strangling the various Arab Springs as well as the voice of all the young people who are demanding something else. So when will you finally bring about this revolution in societies and consciences that will make spirituality rhyme with liberty?

"Of course, there are pockets of spiritual freedom in your great territory: families that hand down [to their children]an Islam of tolerance, personal choice and spiritual depth. There are places where Islam still gives the best of itself, a culture of sharing, honor, pursuit of knowledge, and spirituality in search of the sacred place where man and the ultimate reality called Allah meet. In the land of Islam, and in Muslim communities worldwide, there are strong and free consciences. But they are condemned to live their freedom without the recognition of real rights, facing the peril of community control or sometimes even of religious police. Never yet has the right to say 'I choose my Islam' or 'I have my own relationship with Islam' been recognized by the 'official Islam' of the dignitaries, who fight to impose [the view] that 'the doctrine of Islam is unique' and that 'obeying the pillars of Islam is the only right path (sirâtou-l-Moustaqim).

"This denial of the right to freedom vis-à-vis religion is one of the roots of the evil from which you suffer, oh my dear Muslim world; it is one of those dark wombs in which, in recent years, monsters grow, and from whence they leap out at the frightened faces of the whole world. For this iron religion imposes excruciating violence on all your societies; she too closely confines your daughters, and your sons, in the cage of good and evil, the lawful (halal) and the illicit (haram), chosen by none but imposed on all. It traps the wills, it conditions the mind, it prevents or hinders every personal life choice. In too many of your countries, you still tie together religion with violence – against women, against 'bad believers,' against Christians and other minorities, against thinkers and free spirits, against rebels – so that religion and violence ultimately merge in the most unbalanced and fragile of your own sons – in the monstrous form of jihad."

"You Must Begin By Reforming The Entire Education You Give To Your Children, In All Of Your Schools, All Of Your Places Of Knowledge And Power; You Must Reform Them According To Universal Principles"

"So, I beg of you, don't pretend to be amazed that demons such as the so-called 'Islamic State' have taken your face. Monsters and demons steal only those faces that are already distorted by too much grimacing. And if you want to know how to not bring forth such monsters, I will tell you. It's simple yet so difficult: You must begin by reforming the entire education you give to your children, in all of your schools, all of your places of knowledge and power. You must reform them according to [the following] universal principles – even if you are not the only one violating or disregarding them: freedom of conscience, democracy, tolerance, civil rights for [those of] all worldviews and beliefs, gender equality, women's emancipation from all male guardianship, and a culture of reflection and criticism of the religion in universities, literature, and the media. You cannot go back, and you can do no less than this. For it is only by doing so that you will no longer give birth to such monsters. If you do not do so, you will soon be devastated by [these monsters'] destructive power.

"Dear Muslim world: I am but a philosopher, and as usual some will call the philosopher a heretic. Yet I seek only to let the light shine once again –indeed, the name that you have given me commands me to do so: Abdennour, Servant of the Light. If I did not believe in you, I would not have been so harsh in this letter. As we say in French, 'He who loves well, punishes well' – and those who today are not tough enough with you, who want to make you a victim, are doing you no favors. I believe in you. I believe in your contribution to build the future of our planet, to create a world that is both humane and spiritual!

"Salaam, peace be upon you.