SAUDI’S PRO-WEST SHARIAH POLITICS

By Ameen Izzadeen

Old men cannot dye their hair and beard black and women cannot appear in public places without Hijab or the veil, say Saudi Imams. But the last seen visuals of King Abdullah who passed away last Friday showed the 90-year-old monarch sporting a thick black beard -- and this week, the social media drew a plethora of comments, mostly in jest, when the Saudi royals did not mind the United States’ first lady Michelle Obama appearing without a head scarf and in a dress Saudi imams would condemn as un-Islamic.  She even shook hands with the new king, Salman bin Abdulaziz.  Islamic law forbids men from touching women, if they are not a mahrem – meaning the woman’s father, brother, son, uncle or a close relative who cannot marry her in terms of Islamic law.  But the law bends itself for the royals in the name of diplomacy.

Interpreting Shariah law to prop up the male chauvinistic social order in the kingdom, Saudi Arabia does not allow women to drive. Women can’t go out unless they are accompanied by a male mahrem. But they do not mind when housemaids, including Muslim housemaids, come to the kingdom unaccompanied by a mahrem.

Shariah law, though criticised by liberals, has its merits -- because it gives more weight to the rights of the community than to the rights of the individual.  It is seen as a body of law that is not in consonance with 21st century thinking largely because those who adopt Shariah enforce it selectively while ignoring its human face.  The Salafi or Wahhabi version of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia conveniently forgets the Islamic democratic concepts that were found in the early caliphates. 

Shariah has become a convenient political tool to safeguard the royal’s hold on power.  Terms such as fitnah and fasad -- terms that denote sins -- are invoked to justify suppression of dissent.

Giving the king a veneer of religious legitimacy is the title ‘Khadim al-Haramaini Sharifine’ or the servant or custodian of the two sacred mosques in Makkah and Medina.  By conveniently confining his role to the service of the holy mosques, the king has apparently shirked his religious duty towards the oppressed people of Palestine.  

The late King Abdullah aroused much hope in the Arab world when he was the crown prince.  His land-for-peace plan to solve the Palestinian crisis is even today touted as one of the best proposals that could have won the Palestinian people their state and ensured Israel’s security.  But when he became the king, he failed to revive the plan or use his influence with the US to find a solution to the issue.  As crown prince, he opposed the presence of US troops in his country.  But when he became the king, he was seen to be doing the West’s bidding.  Among his provocative acts was the conferring of the kingdom’s highest award on President George W Bush, the man who was responsible for the deaths of more than one million Iraqis, Palestinians, Lebanese and people in other Arab and Muslim countries.  

Often the kingdom’s foreign policy was seen to be in harmony with that of Israel -- and nothing will emphasise this convergence more than their policies on Iran and Egypt.  Leaked US embassy cables published on WikiLeaks claimed that the king had urged the US to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. “Cut off the snake’s head,” the king was quoted in the cables as saying, referring to Iran. As regards Egypt, King Abdullah made no effort to hide his dislike of the Muslim Brotherhood, which won Egypt’s first presidential and parliamentary elections after the 2011 Arab Spring. The king feared that the Brotherhood cancer would gradually spread in the region, converting the Gulf Arab sheikdoms into democracies.  The kingdom sponsored a military coup in Egypt and subverted the will of the people.  The late king also sent troops to Bahrain to put down a pro-democracy uprising there.  When the king passed away last Friday, there were very few tears in the streets of the Arab world. 

The kingdom’s special relations with the United States go back to the early days of Saudi Arabia in the 1920s or to the days when the US was wandering in eastern Saudi deserts in search of oil after Britain refused to share Iraq’s oil pie with Washington.  In terms of an understanding, the US had pledged to protect the Ibn Saud family, which came to possess a new country called Saudi Arabia -- a gift from Britain in return for the Arab tribal leaders’ betrayal of the Ottoman caliph, the ruler of Arabia during World War One.

Ever since, the kingdom has remained a loyal ally of the US. The only aberration was the rule of King Faisal. He was deeply committed to the Palestinian cause and had an ambitious vision for the Arab and Islamic world.  He was killed by a royal family member and many believe his death was a Western conspiracy.

Today the kingdom works in tandem with the United States.  Its recent decision to glut the oil market was seen as following the West’s directive aimed at further punishing Russia and Iran – oil-importing countries that are already hit by Western economic sanctions. 

Saudi Arabia has also been accused of rekindling the age-old Sunni-Shia conflict within Islam and this was seen as another case of doing the West’s bidding. 

That Western leaders, including US President Barak Obama, are trooping to Riyadh to meet the new king shows the strategic importance of the kingdom in containing Iran and safeguarding Israel’s and the West’s interests in the region. But there have also been instances of policies going wrong.  One such instance is the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).  This was largely due to Saudi Arabia’s initial support to Sunni extremists fighting the regime in Syria. In yet another instance of foreign policy bungling, Saudi Arabia is today faced with a major crisis in neighbouring Yemen where Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have virtually taken over the country. 

With the new king reportedly suffering from Alzheimer’s, it will be new Crown Prince Muqrin and deputy crown prince Mohammed ibn Nayef who will be running the show.  Prince Mohammed was long seen as Washington’s preferred candidate. He has closely worked with the US in counter-terrorist measures in the region. 

With the kingdom’s fate firmly affixed to the West, there is little hope for the oppressed people of Palestine and other Arab states. 

Fintan O’Toole: Time to lift veil on Saudi Arabia’s hijacking of Islam

Saudi Arabia has spent $100 billion in recent decades spreading an extremist ideology

Fintan O'Toole

A Muslim protester holds a placard reading “Islam” and another one holds one reading “For peace and against terrorism” during a demonstration outside Atocha Station in Madrid against the recent Paris Charlie Hebdo attacks . Photograph: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images

Imagine an attempt to ban the veneration of the Prophet Muhammad. Go further and imagine a plan to level his tomb in Medina, the second holiest site in Islam, dig up his remains and rebury them in a secret, unmarked grave. Go further again and imagine the actual, systematic destruction, in the early years of Islam, of the tombs of the major figures, including the prophet’s closest relatives.

What lunatic would even imagine going to these extreme lengths to provoke, insult and enrage Muslims? Well, the House of Saud, rulers of Saudi Arabia and guardians of the extremist ideology that fuels much of today’s Islamist terrorism, wouldn’t just imagine them. It does them.

In all the official rhetoric about freedom of speech in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, it is notable that there are two words that apparently must not be spoken: Saudi Arabia. Yet it is impossible to understand what is happening now without grasping the fact that the mentality of the killers is not a weird aberration. It is shaped by an official cult propagated by a government western states are anxious to appease at almost any cost. Saudi Arabia has spent about $100 billion in recent decades spreading an extremist ideology, a hybrid of Wahhabism and Salafism, two versions of an Islam supposedly “purified” of its “foreign” influences.

Saudi largesse

These are not ancient traditions. Wahhabism was born in the 18th century, Salafism in the 19th. And they are not “Islam” – Salafis and Wahhabis make up 3 per cent of Muslims. One of the more bizarre aspects of this ideology is that it involves attacks on things most Muslims regard as sacred. When western liberals wring their hands about giving offence to Muslims by depicting or representing the prophet, they miss the most important point. Cartoons in Charlie Hebdo are vastly less offensive to most Muslims than the destruction of early Islamic tombs by the Saudis. But of course self-appointed defenders of Islamic sensitivities, funded by Saudi largesse, won’t tell you that.

In the last 20 years or so, the Saudis have destroyed hundreds of holy sites in Mecca to clear ground for the construction of hotels and shopping malls and around the Grand Mosque. Much of this is about money, of course, but the destruction is sanctioned by Wahhabi ideology and Saudi history. The Wahhabi sect regarded the veneration of sacred tombs as heretical.

The Wahhabis destroyed dozens of holy tombs in Mecca and Medina when they conquered those cities in 1806 and even attempted to level the prophet’s tomb. They did the same when they reconquered the cities in 1925. This mania continues: just last year, a senior Saudi cleric prepared a detailed plan for the dismantling of the prophet’s tomb. The followers of this ideology have continued to destroy sacred Islamic sites and tombs in Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.

Muslim outrage

How do most Muslims feel about this? Outraged of course. A large survey in 2012 of opinion among Muslims in western Europe, west Africa and Malaysia found 75 per cent of respondents believed the veneration of the graves of Muslim “saints” (ziyarah) was essential or desirable.

For the vast majority of Muslims the running story of sacrilege and provocation is not a few cartoons in secularist European newspapers, it is the Saudi iconoclastic assault on veneration of the prophet.

And yet we never hear about this when the question of “insulting” the prophet or disrespecting the sacred traditions of Islam is raised in Europe. Why? Money. The Saudis have vast amounts of it and use it to fund mosques, schools and Islamic cultural centres all over Europe. A hundred billion dollars buys you a lot of silence. And that silence engenders one of the great hypocrisies of our times: a cartoon of the prophet is a provocation that deserves death but the destruction of his tomb is a religious duty.

This hypocrisy is underwritten by a tacit understanding among western governments: don’t mention the Saudis. The house of Saud runs a vicious tyranny that, among other things, treats women as badly as apartheid South Africa treated blacks. While theCharlie Hebdo killers were going about their ultimate acts of censorship, the Saudi government was savagely lashing the blogger Raif Badawi for daring to promote public debate in his blog.

But the Saudis are “our” Islamist extremists and they’re sending us lots of cheap oil right now. So when we talk about not insulting Muslims, we ignore what most Muslims regard as most offensive. And when we talk about confronting the nihilistic bigotry of extremist Islamism, we ignore the government that is pumping it into our societies through its promotion of a cult that most Muslims reject. It is long past time for democracies to take offence.

I am NOT Charlie

Okay, let’s be clear.  I am not Muslim.  I oppose terrorism.  I don’t even support the death penalty.  I loathe Takfirism.  I oppose violence as a means to make a political or ethical point.  I fully support freedom of speech, including critical speech and humor.

But this morning I am most definitely NOT Charlie.

In fact, I am disgusted and nauseated by the sick display of collective hypocrisy about the murders in France.  Here is why:

Charlie Hebdo for the Darwin Awards

The folks at Charlie Hebdo had it coming. Here is what I wrote about them in September 2012 when they published their famous caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed: Worthy of the Darwin Awards, if you ask me.  Excellent, the “gene pool” of the French “caviar-Left” badly needs some cleaning“.  Today I fully stand by my words.

Just a stupid dare?

Let me ask you this: what would be the point of, say, taking a nap on train tracks?  You don’t have to “agree” with the train which will run you over, but it still will, won’t it?  What about taking a nap on train tracks specifically to make a point?  To prove that the train is bad?  To dare it?  To make fun of it?  Would that not be the height of stupidity?  And yet, that is *exactly* what Charlie Hebdo did.  I would even argue that that his how Charlie Hebdo made it’s money, daring the “Muslim train” to run them over.  You think I am exaggerating?  Check out the caricature which one of the folks who got murdered yesterday had just posted.  The text reads: “Still no terrorist attacks in France – Wait, we have until the end of January to send you are best wishes“.  The crazy person shown in the drawing is packing a Kalashnikov and wearing an Afghan “Pakol” – the typical “crazy Muslim” in Charlie Hebdo’s world.  Talk about a stupid dare…

“Spitting in people’s souls”

There is an expression in Russian: spitting in somebody’s soul.  It fully applies here.  Muslims worldwide have be unambiguously clear about that.  They take blasphemy very, very seriously, as they do the name of the Prophet and the Quran.  If you want to really offend a Muslim, ridicule his Prophet or his Holy Book.  That is not a secret at all.  And when Charlie Hebdo published their caricatures of the Prophet and when they ridiculed him the a deliberately rude and provocative manner, they knew what they were doing: they were very deliberately deeply offending 1.6 billion Muslims world wide.  Oh, and did I mention that in Islam blasphemy is a crime punishable by death?  Well, it turns out that of 1.6 billion Muslims exactly three decided to take justice in their own hands and kill the very deliberately blaspheming Frenchmen.    You don’t have to be Muslim or to approve of the death penalty for blasphemy to realize that this was inevitable and that this has nothing to do with Islam as a religion.  Offend any group as large as 1.6 billion and sooner or later you will find 1-5 folks willing to use violence to make you pay for it.   This is a statistical inevitability.

Are some victims more equal then others?

So 12 deliberately “soul spitting blasphemers” were murdered and all of France is in deep mourning.  The media worldwide does such a good job presenting it all as a planetary disaster that many thousands people worldwide say “I am Charlie”, sob, light candles and take a “courageous” stance for freedom of speech.

Crocodile tears if you ask me.

The Empire’s freedom fighter

The fact is that the AngloZionists have carefully and lovingly nurtured, organized, armed, financed, trained, equipped and even directed the Takfiri crazies for decades.  From the war in Afghanistan to Syria today these murderous psychopaths have been the foot-soldiers of the AngloZionist Empire for decades.  But, apparently, nobody cares about their victims in Afghanistan, in Bosnia, in Chechnia, in Kosovo, in Libya, in Kurdistan, in Iraq or elsewhere.  There these liver-eating murderers are “freedom fighters” who get full support.  Including from the very same media which today is in mourning over Charlie Hebdo.  Apparently, in the western ethos some victims are more equal then others.

And when is the last time somebody in Europe shed a single tear over the daily murders of innocent people in the Donbass whose murder is paid for and directly directed by the western regimes?

How stupid do they think we are?

And then this.  Even a drooling idiot knew that Charlie Hebdo was THE prime target for that kind of attack.  And I promise you that French cops are not drooling idiots.  Yet, for some reason, they were nowhere to be seen that day.  Only a van with two (or one?) cop was parked nearby (hardly an anti-terrorist protection detail) and one poor cop was shot and then executed with an AK shot to the head while he was begging for mercy.  Is this the best the French state can do?

Hardly.

So what is going on here?  I will tell you what – the EU 1%ers are now capitalizing on these murders to crack down on their own population.  Sarkozy already met Hollande and they both agreed that new levels of firmness and vigilance need to be implemented.  Does that not reek of a French 9/11?

So no, I am most definitely NOT Charlie this morning and I am disgusted beyond words with the obscene display of doubleplusgoodthinking “solidarity” for a group of “caviar-lefties” who made their money spitting in the souls of billions of people and then dared them to do something about it.  And I am under no illusion whatsoever about the fact that cui bono clearly indicates that the French regime either organized it all, or let it happen or, at the very least, makes maximal political use of it all.

But most of all, I am disgusted with all those who play along and studiously avoid asking the right questions about all this.  I guess they really are “Charlies” all of them.

I am not.

The Saker

Hindu Nazis and Zionists in tight embrace

Crescent International

India is under the grip of Hindu Nazis and their true colors, always known, are becoming clearer by the day. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has signaled that he plans to embrace the Zionists more tightly and abandon support for the Palestinians.

The Hindu Nazis have signaled they plan to change their policy on Palestine by embracing the Zionists more tightly. Since Narendra Modi’s election as prime minister of India in April 2014, relations between the two leper states have warmed up greatly.

India plans to change its stance vis-à-vis the Palestinians at the United Nations with no automatic support for them. Instead, Delhi may either abstain from casting a vote in favor of the Palestinians or even vote against them.

Emerging from the ranks of the Hindu fascist outfit, the RSS, Modi is staunchly anti-Muslim and is very close to the Zionists. In 2006, Modi made a highly publicized visit to Tel Aviv and as soon as he became prime minister, he approved a number of defence deals with Israel.

Given his gory record and involvement in the murder of at least 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat in February 2002, Modi was denied a visa to the US in 2006. Only after his election as prime minister did he get a visa to the US where Barack Obama welcomed him at the White House.

He also had a well-publicized meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations. Not surprisingly, the two men got along fabulously well because of their pathological hatred of Muslims.

As a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement, India (and by extension, Modi) has a lot of explaining to do since the Palestinian cause is very popular among NAM members.