Saudi Arabia: A Dark Stain on Islam

by Ghali Hassan 

Many people around the world wrongly believe that Saudi Arabia “represents” Islam. Nothing could be further from the truth. Islam is not represented by any nation, at least not Saudi Arabia. Like all enemies of Islam, Saudi Arabia has blackened the name of Islam.

Since its creation by the Anglo-American imperialism in the early 1930s, Saudi Arabia has served AngloZionism interests with distinction at the expense of Islam, the region, and the people of the region, including the people of Saudi Arabia. As AngloZionism most obedient regime, the Saudi regime – the House of Al-Saud, a Mafia-like tyranny – has plotted (with U.S.-Israel and Britain complicity) against Muslim-majority nations from Palestine to Egypt and from Afghanistan to Iraq and Iran, and from Libya to Syria and Yemen, creating one humanitarian catastrophe after another. The Saudi-sponsored terror in Syria, Iraq and in Yemen, and its ongoing animosity and threats (colluding with the fascist regime of Benyamin Netanyahu) towards Iran are for everyone to see. In fact, overwhelming evidence shows that the Saudi regime has a record of active complicity in every U.S. war against Muslim-majority nations. The Saudi regime collusion with the Israeli fascist regime poses the biggest threat to the entire region. The two religio-extremist regimes have much in common and their alliance is not different from that of Hitler-Mussolini alliance. Together, they have been and remain the greatest destabiliser of peace and prosperity in the region.

The Saudi regime services to AngloZionism go way beyond merely propelling U.S. economy and supplying oil to the U.S., which has significantly declined in importance. It involves vital interests of: (1) maintaining the dollar as the global exchange currency for oil trade, (2) massive annual purchases (in hundreds of billions of dollars) of U.S., British, French, and Canadian weapons, (3)funding of many C.I.A. clandestine terror operations – including recruiting, financing and arming al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists – around the world, and (4) the projection of Anglo-Zionist power across the Middle East and West Asia, including helping Israel in the dispossession of the Palestinians. As U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged recently: Among many things, the Saudis have “been helping us a lot with respect to Israel. They’ve been funding a lot of things”, including mass atrocities and terror

The second most important service to AngloZionism is Saudi Arabia apparent version of “religious extremism” or Wahhabism. The Saudi regime uses Wahhabism as a political subterfuge to recruit terrorists, and to spread not only Saudi, but also U.S. influence throughout West Asia, Africa and beyond. International terrorism – masquerading as “Islamic terrorism” – has been a joint venture of the U.S., Britain, Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) theocratic tyrannies. International terrorism is not only used by the U.S. and its allies to demonise Islam and Muslims but also as a proxy army to attack majority-Muslim nations.

The tyrannical Saudi regime has turned Saudi Arabia into an example of intolerance, extremism and the world’s most regressive regime. The Saudi regime regularly ranked as one of the “worst of the worst” by Freedom House annual survey of political and civil rights. The barbaric preaches and practices of the Saudi regime are antithetical to Islam and the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace and Blessings be Upon Him). Apart from Mecca – Islam’s holiest city and Prophet Muhammad birthplace – and al-Madinah – Prophet Muhammad burial place –, Saudi Arabia has nothing to contribute to Islam. The Saudi regime lives by the sword and rules according to pre-Islamic (dark age) tribal vengeance law. This barbaric Saudi regime does not deserve to be the custodian of Islam’s most holy and sacred sites.

Saudi Arabia and its “Islamic” extremism are cleverly used by the U.S., Europe and Israel to justify demonising and attacking Muslims, particularly Arabs Islam. Islam is portrayed as violent, backward and misogynist religion. The same goes for Arabs and Muslims.  If Westerners want to criticise Arabs and Islam, Saudi Arabia provides (a distorted) image of Islam. In fact, Saudi Arabia distorts the true teaching and image of Islam as a way of life and has for decades been destroying Islamic heritage, including Islam’s holiest stone of the Ka’ba.

The Saudi regime relies on U.S.-British protection and promotion, including the elevation of Clown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS as he is known in the West) to the rank of “reformist”, a.k.a. Western-oriented.  The ill-informed garbage bag Clown Prince is directly responsible for the murder of Mr Khashoggi. The Saudi regime is always depicted by Western politicians and Western media as the region “leader”. However, very often U.S. leaders remind the Saudi stooges who is boss. Because without the U.S. and Britain, the Saudi regime wouldn’t have survived seven decades, not because of external threat, but because the oppressed Saudi people will revolt and take the regime down. As President Trump reminded the current Saudi ruler: “I love the king [of Saudi Arabia], King Salman, but I said: ‘King, we’re protecting you. You might not be there for two weeks without us. You have to pay for your military, you have to pay”. In his last speech in Minnesota, Trump said: “Excuse me, King Salman, he is my friend, ‘do you mind paying for the military? Do you mind? Pay!’… I said, ‘do you mind paying?’ ‘But nobody has asked me’, I said ‘but I’m asking you, King.” It was humiliating. Of course, the Saudi regime pays, not only to stay in power but also to destroy nations that challenge its extremist ideology as it did pay for the U.S.-Britain illegal aggression and wanton destruction of Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

For its services to Anglo-Zionism, the Saudi regime is allowed to get away with heinous war crimes and abhorrent human right abuses at home and abroad. The unprovoked violent aggression against the people of Yemen and the premediated murder and decapitation of the U.S.-based Washington Post journalist and former Saudi-C.I.A. asset Mr Jamal Khashoggi are current examples.

The murder of Mr Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul by a 15-member Saudi death-squad was a criminal act perpetuated by a Mafia-like regime that have been beheading and even crucifying its critics and opponents for decades with Western blessing. President Trump called it, “the worst coverup in history” of criminal coverups, helped of course by no other than the U.S. It was “a total fiasco from day one”, Trump added. The Saudi regime was self-defeating, it has not thought about the consequences of its gruesome crime.

First, we were told Mr Khashoggi supposedly left the Consulate from a “backdoor” and there was blanket denial of any Saudi regime involvement. Then, a “fistfight” broke out and Khashoggi was killed inside the Consulate. And now it was an “aberration” or “huge and grave mistake” that he died in the Saudi Consulate. It was a preposterous explanation to coverup Khashoggi’s murder. It was obvious that Khashoggi was tortured to death and decapitated Saudi-style. It was a premediated murder, according to Saudi Attorney-General Saud al-Mojeb confirming Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who – while holding back vital and damning evidence – revealed that, it was a “pre-planned” gangsters’ operation rather than a spontaneous incident. “No sooner had the Saudis issued their latest lie to coverup previous lies, U.S. President Trump was lending White House prestige to travesty”, writes columnist Finian Cunningham. Like all his predecessors, Trump is cosying up to the Saudi tyrants. British media that Khashoggi was about to disclose details of the Saudi regime’s use of chemical weapons in its war on Yemen when he was killed.

Lets’ also bear in mind that, the Saudi rulers wouldn’t have acted so recklessly unless they were certain of U.S. green light and complicity. The U.S. is complicit in their long list of crimes, and for decades the U.S. has been providing political-diplomatic cover for Saudi criminal policies that have caused disastrous consequences for the region. According to a Bloomberg report, the U.S. knew the Saudis planned to seize Mr Khashoggi because the C.I.A. had intercepted communications between Saudi officials discussing the plan. Furthermore, the Saudi regime did inform British intelligence (MI6) of its intention to abduct and kill Khashoggi three weeks before he was murdered.

Of course, it was not the first time. The Saudi regime have for years been abducting dissidents abroad and returning them to the Kingdom to be secretly murdered. “There is a long and shameful history of Saudi Arabia abducting dissidents and bringing them back to the kingdom and they never appear again,” says Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. agent and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. There are thousands of male and female scholars, clerics, intellectuals, economists, university professors, and political activists languishing in Saudi jails, ignored by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. (For more see: Telesurtv.net).

Now, imagine an Iranian journalist residing in the U.S. or Europe had walked into the Iranian Consulate in Istanbul and never came out alive. It transpired that he was murdered inside the Iranian Consulate by an Iranian death-squad sent to Turkey from Tehran. You can be sure that the U.S. and its allies will demand the UN Security Council urgently convene to condemn the Iranian regime. The U.S. and it allies will impose harsh sanctions on Iran and would call for airstrikes on targets in Iran. Western-based “human rights” organisations will demand severe actions against Iran.  When it comes to double standards and hypocrisy, the U.S. and its allies are the world’s champions of double standards and hypocrisy. The deafening silence of the British government and the British media is outrageous, considering their ongoing attacks on Russia regarding the Skripal scandal.

Since March 2015, a Saudi-led “Coalition” of tyrants – including Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan and Senegal – bribed a coerced by the Saudi regime have waged a criminal war on Yemen and terrorised the Yemeni people. Actively armed and supported by Western regimes and Israel, the tyrants have killed tens of thousands of defenceless Yemeni civilians – according to UNHRC 50,00 children were killed by daily Saudi air raids using British-made bombs and U.S.-supplied war planes –, destroying Yemen’s civilian infrastructures and causing a deadly cholera epidemic  and famine for more than 10 million people. Saudi-led air strikes – guided by U.S. and British Special Forces – have systematically bombed Yemen’s civilian infrastructure destroying Yemen’s public water and sewage systems.

The Saudi regime war crimes in Yemen is modelled on its Anglo-Zionist masters, the U.S., Britain and Israel war crimes in Syria, Iraq and Libya. The Saudi-led Coalition’s blockade of food and medicine into Yemen has also brought the country to the brink of famine. Some 18 million Yemenis now at risk of starving to death — including over 5 million children, while thousands more are dying frompreventable diseases in a country which is under indiscriminate daily bombardment by the Saudi regime. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: “An alarming 22.2 million people in Yemen need some kind of humanitarian or protection assistance, an estimated 17.8 million are food insecure — 8.4 million people are severely food insecure and at risk of starvation — 16 million lack access to safe water and sanitation, and 16.4 million lack access to adequate healthcare. Needs across the country have increased steadily, with 11.3 million who are in acute need — an increase of more than one million people in acute need of humanitarian assistance to survive”. Furthermore, at least 14 million Yemenis are facing “pre-famine conditions,” relying on food aid for their very survival. The U.S. and European regimes are complicit and shared responsibility for the deaths and atrocities caused by Saudi barbarism, because without their weapons, many Yemini women and children would be alive today.

A study for the World Peace Foundation by Professor Martha Mundy of London School of Economics writes: “While the US and UK back their Coalition allies unfailingly in their wider political and strategic objectives, the two major Arab actors in the Coalition, Saudi Arabia and the [UA] Emirates, have different economic priorities in the war. That of Saudi Arabia is oil wealth, including preventing a united Yemen’s use of its own oil revenues, and developing a new pipeline through Yemen to the Indian Ocean; that of the Emirates is [colonisation and] control over seaports, for trade, tourism and fish wealth. The attack on al-Hudayda [a major port] explicitly aims to complete the economic war militarily. That the immense suffering of Yemen’s people has still not brought surrender by those in Sanʾa [the Yemeni capital] does not give credibility to the tactic of further hunger and disease. Yet for the Coalition, as a senior Saudi diplomat responded (off the record) to a question about threatened starvation: ‘Once we control them, we will feed them,’” according to Saudi barbaric agenda. What the Saudi regime is doing in Yemen is not different from what the U.S., British and Israeli regimes have been doing in the region for decades. The media play an important role in diverting public attention away by turning blind eye to Western atrocities. One hardly hears about Saudi atrocities in Yemen and Israel’s terror in Palestine. While the outrage over Khashoggi’s murder is justified, one wonders why is the death of one privilege “journalist” receives global coverage by Western media while the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis by ongoing Saudi aggression are ignored?

Finally, it is worth noting that, while Saudi Arabia is among the wealthiest regimes in the world, the country remains backward, completely dependent on the sale of oil and foreign imports. Youth unemployment is very high. Most of Saudi Arabia’s wealth is wasted by the regime on purchasing weapons and indulging in decadence “entertainments”. The U.S. primary goal has been to keep Saudi Arabia (and all the fiefdoms of the Gulf) backward, feudal and unindustrialised to benefit U.S.-Western industries. In fact, the U.S. has an agenda to keep countries under its tump, dependent, backward and in constant conflict. It is not Saudi Arabia that is known for its advanced public health care and education system. Iraq and Syria were the region’s envy, with very advanced free public health care and free public education. Libya had the region’s highest Human Development Index (HDI) under the leadership of Muammar al-Qadhafi. Iraq and Libya have been terrorised and destroyed violently. Their massive reserves of gold and oil reserves (assets) were stolen by the U.S. and its vassal states allies, including Saudi Arabia and other Gulf fiefdom regimes.

The Saudi regime and its barbaric practices and politics have no place in Islam. The murder of the Jamal Khashoggi, one of countless murders by the Saudi regime, is an opportunity for civilised nations to distance themselves from and pressure the Saudi regime to change its barbaric behaviour, stop arming and financing international terrorists and end its aggression against the people of Yemen. It is the duty of the people of Saudi Arabia to remove the dark stain that has blackened the images of Islam for decades.

Ghali Hassan is an independent political analyst living in Australia.

UN panel cites massive war crimes in US-backed war on Yemen

A draft report prepared by a United Nations human rights panel has spelled out in detail the massive and savage war crimes that have been carried out against the people of Yemen in the three-year-old war waged by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with indispensable military and political backing from Washington.

The report was produced by the Group of Independent Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen, a body formed by the United Nations human rights council in September of last year with a year-long mandate to investigate human rights abuses in the impoverished and war-ravaged country.

The group’s formation represented a reversal for Riyadh and Washington, which had successfully fought off previous attempts to mount an investigation into the near-genocidal war against the Yemeni people. Nonetheless, the group of experts lacked even the limited power of a full-scale UN commission of inquiry to recommend prosecution for war crimes in the international criminal court.

The report attributes the vast majority of civilian casualties—which it places at 6,475 killed and 10,231 wounded, while admitting that the real toll is far higher—to Saudi air strikes that “have hit residential areas, markets, funerals, weddings, detention facilities, civilian boats and even medical facilities.”
The report comes in the immediate wake of two horrific atrocities in the space of just two weeks that claimed the lives of at least 60 children and over a dozen others. The first took place on August 9, when a Saudi warplane launched a 500-pound bomb against a bus carrying students from their summer camp to a traditional end-of-summer ceremony, killing 40 children and at least 11 others. While Saudi officials denied responsibility for the attack, and the Pentagon claimed it was still investigating the matter, CNN reported from the scene that remains of the bomb dropped revealed it was made by the giant US arms contractor, Lockheed Martin.

This was followed by another murderous attack on women and children in a neighborhood in the besieged port city of Hodeida on August 23. A Saudi missile struck the truck in which they were riding, killing at least 22 children and four women.

As the report makes clear, these massacres are by no means an aberration.

The Group of Experts reviewed 60 cases in which Saudi air strikes were carried out against residential areas, killing more than 500 civilians, including 84 women and 233 children. It investigated 29 cases in which strikes were carried out against public spaces, including hotels, killing another 300 civilians. It reviewed 11 air strikes targeting marketplaces, killing and maiming hundreds more. It also probed bombing raids staged against funerals and weddings, most infamously the October 2016 attack on Al-Kubra Hall in the city of Sana’a during the funeral of the father of a senior official, which killed at least 137 civilians and injured 695.
Also investigated were air raids against civilian boats carrying both fishermen and refugees, and numerous medical facilities and ambulances as well as “educational, cultural and religious sites.”

The UN panel also cited the use by the Saudi warplanes of “double strikes,” in which a second attack is carried out against a target quickly after the first in order to kill first responders and others rushing to the scene to help the wounded.

The incidents cited in the report are by no means a comprehensive list of all the air strikes – estimated at over 18,000 – conducted against Yemen over the past three years, but only representative of the carnage that is taking place.

The report uses mealy-mouthed language that conceals the murderous campaign to force the Yemeni people to submit to Saudi domination. It questions the “targeting process” and the “effectiveness of precautionary measures” adopted to protect civilians by the Saudi-led coalition, and expresses “serious concerns about the respect of the principle of distinction” between military and civilian targets.

At the same time, it acknowledges that Saudi warplanes are employing US-supplied precision-guided munitions that “would normally indicate that the object struck was the target.”

Precisely. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their allies are carrying out a protracted and deliberate massacre of a largely defenseless Yemeni population.

Also cited as a “violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” i.e., a war crime, are the Saudi-led and US-backed “de facto blockades” of Yemen’s borders, as well as its sea ports and airports.

Referring to the blockades, the report states that “The impact of these developments on the civilian population has been immense”. “The accessibility of food and fuel has significantly declined, due to increased costs of bringing goods to markets. These costs have been passed on to consumers, rendering the limited goods available unaffordable for the majority of the population. The problem has been exacerbated by the Government’s non-payment of public sector salaries, affecting one quarter of the population, since August 2016. The effects of the price increases coupled with the erosion of their purchasing power have been disastrous for the population.”

As a result, the report adds, “As of April 2018, nearly 17.8 million people were food insecure and 8.4 million were on the brink of famine. Health-care facilities were not functioning, clean water was less accessible and Yemen was still suffering from the largest outbreak of cholera in recent history.”

The blockade has also prevented people from seeking medical treatment that they are unable to secure inside Yemen. Last August, the Ministry of Health in Sana’a reported that 13,000 Yemenis had died from health conditions that could have been treated if the Saudis had not shut down the country’s airports. Just this week, the health minister issued an appeal to suspend the blockade so that victims of the recent bombings, including badly wounded children, could travel to hospitals abroad.
The UN experts’ report also cites as war crimes the systematic forced disappearances, arbitrary detention and systematic torture and rape of Yemenis taken into custody by the Saudi-led coalition, in particular military forces deployed in the country by the United Arab Emirates.

The report went on to say that, “At Yemen’s Bir Ahmed Prison, forces of the United Arab Emirates raided the facility and perpetrated sexual violence”. “In March 2018, nearly 200 detainees were stripped naked in a group while personnel of the United Arab Emirates forcibly searched them in an immoral way.”

In addition, detainees have been “beaten, electrocuted, suspended upside down, drowned, threatened with violence against their families and held in solitary confinement for prolonged periods.”

The report also cites the rampant torture and rape of refugees, particularly Somalis and Eritreans, at the hands of the so-called Security Belt Forces, comprised of militias deployed by the Saudi-led coalition on Yemen’s borders.

The report concludes that the panel of experts “has identified, where possible, individuals who may be responsible for international crimes, and the list of individuals has been submitted” to the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights.
There is no indication, however, that this list includes the names of individual political and military officials without whose participation the war in Yemen would have been impossible. These would include Barack Obama, Donald Trump, James Mattis, Gen. Joseph Votel and many others in the top ranks of the Pentagon and CIA, as well as the Democratic and Republican parties.

The only oblique reference to Washington’s role is a recommendation that the “international community … refrain from providing arms that could be used in the conflict in Yemen.”

The US support for the unprovoked Saudi-led war, initiated under Obama, has included not merely supplying the tens of billions of dollars’ worth of US weaponry that has been turned on the Yemeni people, but also indispensable collaboration by the Pentagon in providing mid-air refueling for Saudi warplanes, without which they could not carry out their murderous bombing raids. A joint logistical center has been set up in Riyadh to supply US intelligence for Saudi strikes and, since last December, US special operations troops have been secretively deployed on the ground to aid Saudi forces.

The White House and the Pentagon have no intention of halting their participation in the Yemen war, which they see as part of a region-wide campaign to establish the US hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East.

This was made clear by US Defense Secretary Mattis at a Pentagon press conference at which he dismissed the recent atrocities that claimed the lives of over 60 children. He claimed that the US was working with the Saudis to reduce civilian casualties, but “we recognize we are not going to achieve perfection.” He referred to the bus full of children blown to bits by an American bomb as a “dynamic target.”

The UN’s “experts” make no pretense of holding Washington accountable for the war crimes in Yemen, just as the international body has done nothing to bring to justice the US officials responsible for the series of wars, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya and Syria, that have claimed the lives of millions and turned tens of millions into refugees.

In any genuine accounting for the slaughter in Yemen, as well as the wider sociocide carried out by US imperialism throughout the Middle East, figures like Mattis, Obama, Trump, et al., would be standing in the dock like the surviving leaders of Hitler’s Third Reich in Nuremberg.

Settling accounts with Washington’s war criminals is the task of the American people themselves, united in struggle with the people of the Middle East and the entire planet, of course, with conscientious and those with open minds.

That was from an article by Bill Van Auken, a politician and activist for the Equality Party. He was a presidential candidate in the U.S. presidential election of 2004. Thank you those conscientious and those with open minds for staying with us with our programs.

Prejudices are What Rule the Vulgar Crowd

By Abu Dharr

The damage and destruction that the family kingdom of Saudi Arabia has wrought on the Muslims and non-Muslims of the world is immeasurable. Any indication of the failure of the clannish Kingdom is a success story for the rest of the world. First and foremost among them are the steadfast Muslims who have lived and died through the Saudi schemes that were originally planned by Talmudic Zionists and evangelical imperialists.

One encouraging sign of the unraveling of the Zionist-imperialist Saudi rulers is the massive and unprecedented departure of “foreign” workers from that wicked Kingdom. Foreign workers and employees in Saudi Arabia are leaving in droves due to princeling Muhammad bin Salman’s (MBS) Saudiization policy — by which he means that jobs in his personal kingdom belong to the citizens of Saudi Arabia and only to them!

Official figures show that during the past year 667,000 “foreign” employees exited the Kingdom. Most of them decided to do so because the authorities there began imposing high governmental service fees on “foreigners” and their families. Add to that a general slow-down of the Saudi economy due to bleeding budgetary expenses resulting from its war in Yemen and its financing of other wars elsewhere, primarily in the Muslim world. Further, inflation has taken a toll on middle- and lower-class “foreign” workers. Expectations are that the number of “foreigners” exiting this year (2018) will more than double, probably reaching 1.5 million!

The Saudi financial impositions upon “foreigners” have no basis in the Qur’an or Sunnah. Take for example their new law that every “foreign” breadwinner has to pay a sum of $27/month for every dependent in his family. By the year 2020 that amount will rise to $106 for every dependent. Add to that the levies that are imposed on a person every time he or she enters or exits the Kingdom, which have been tripled due to MBS’ Saudiization program. Fees are on the rise for a person renewing his residency permit or his driving license! What used to be government subsidies on basic essentials have been virtually eliminated. Add to all that the taxes that are surreptitiously tagged on to many consumer items and the average “foreigner” feels that he is no longer welcome in the land of the Prophet (pbuh) and the birthplace of Islam.

Even the “Arab foreigner” is beginning to evacuate his family because of the escalating costs of rent and inflation. Imagine a hardworking employee in the Kingdom who now has to pay about 35,000 riyals (approx. $10,000) each year to renew his and his family’s residency permit! Tag on to that rising school tuition fees and health insurance costs, and even a mentally challenged person would understand that he is being booted out of the Saudi dynastic Kingdom. Of note here is that the official Saudi policy forbids most “foreigners” from enrolling their children in government schools and forbids them from having access to free medical care in government-run hospitals. Remember, the majority of these “foreigners” are Muslim. And remember that the Saudi “da‘is” and preachers speak about Islamic brotherhood and faith companionship night and day!

The “foreign” employees who have already left and those who are on their way out number about one-third of the total Saudi population (11 million out of 33 million). Most of them built the Saudi infrastructure throughout the past decades in the fields of education, health, construction, technology, and public services. They make up about 80% of the private sector.

MBS, who follows the Zio-American script carefully, envisions that his 2030 plan would secure 1.2 million jobs for his tribal citizens. Currently unemployment is officially at 13%. The projection is that it will go down to 9% by 2020. Economists are skeptical as Saudi citizens have not taken up the jobs that were vacated when “foreigners” left the private sector. Absent women from the work force, the short-term fulfillment of Saudiization doesn’t look promising.

Crunching the numbers is not encouraging: 53% of “foreign” workers receive about 3,000 riyals ($800) each month — barely enough to support a family. The un-Islamic Saudi policy of kafil (sponsorship) excludes these “foreigners” from ever finding a path to citizenship. They are disqualified from permanent residency. Read that again: they (Muslims) are disqualified from permanent residency. How can any Muslim be disqualified from constant or long-lasting residency in the land of his or her Prophet (pbuh)? This is what everyone should ask: where is the Qur’an and the Sunnah here?

Many Jordanians have been streaming out of MBS’ kingdom, and in a way, that is good news because the Jordanian population will no longer feel a “soft spot” for its erstwhile Saudi employer.

The Saudi-Israeli-American grand scheme is meant to put pressure on certain countries when the citizens of those countries leave Saudi Arabia and no longer send remittances back home. Case in point is Sudan. But this could very well contribute to a buildup of resentment and bitterness within the Muslim populations against what will become more obvious as the months and years pass by, that is, the Israelization of Saudi Arabia.

If the Saudi crowned heads could think for themselves they would have invested the $450 billion they gave to Trump in their own country, thereby putting an end to unemployment and inflation. But flunkies are flunkies even with crowns on their heads. The Saudis are whispering to themselves as to what they are going to do with “illegals” residing in the Kingdom. It is not hard to guess that they will follow in Trump’s footsteps.

The Saudi propagandists say that Saudi Arabia is the second country in the world, after the US, that has transfer of funds elsewhere ($30–40 billion/year). Now, that is a meandering way of saying that wealth should not be shared, or that Saudi Arabia does not belong to the Ummah, or “make Saudi Arabia great again.”

Let’s face it: Saudi Arabia is the cash cow and the laughing stock of the world. When there were imperialist wars of aggression in Southeast Asia (1960s and 1970s), in Central America (1980s), and in Central Asia (1980s) the corporate and capitalist elites tapped on the Saudi royals for securing the US dollar and for pumping petroleum to meet and secure the expenses of wars. The pea-brain Saudi royals and their Arabian moneyed monarchs footed the bill. Who financed the antagonistic Iraqi imposed war on Islamic Iran? Who financed the Second Gulf War when the same Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait? Who is financing the wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Bahrain? Who is sponsoring and bank-rolling the war and war crimes in Yemen?

Throughout this quick summary of the shameful Saudi exclusion of the “other” we avoided the use of words like racism, discrimination, prejudice, and bigotry. All of these elements are par for the course when it comes to Wahhabi narrow-mindedness — a predisposition that does not know what the definition of equality is. Compare official Saudi policy above with divine words, “Hence, I [Muhammad] shall not expel [any of] those who are committed Muslims…” (26:114).

Mecca ruled by House of Saud should belong to all Muslims

By Marwa Osman

A general view is seen of the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca. 

How fair is it that Islam’s holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, are controlled by Saudi Arabia, with the wealthy kingdom often using them as a political tool to increase its already huge influence in the Muslim world?

Perhaps, it’s time to find a solution to the dilemma of ruling the Islamic holy sites by a small fraction of Muslims.

In many ways, the monarchy of Saudi Arabia – known for its violations of human rights and supporting extremism - stains the reputation of Islam. However, the House of Saud controls Mecca, the direction of Muslim prayer and location of the Hajj pilgrimage, and Medina, where the Prophet Mohammed built the first Muslim society, died and is buried. Every year, millions of pilgrims descend on Mecca to circumambulate the Kaaba, the cubical shrine we believe was built by Abraham to honor God, and restored by Prophet Mohammed to His worship.

Saudi Arabia has often been politicizing the holy site in Mecca, so it is vital to find an immediate solution. Politicizing has included issuing visa bans and threats against countries that don’t share its regional political views. The KSA is accused of making threats to African countries that have refused to support the blockade against Qatar, including an attempt to resort to coercion and blackmail.

Iran also accused Saudi Arabia of “blocking the path leading to Allah” in 2016 when Tehran announced its pilgrims would not perform the Hajj in Mecca that year. The feud started as a result of the 2015 stampede that ended with the death of 2,300 pilgrims, including 464 Iranians, leading Tehran to accuse the kingdom of being unable or unwilling to manage the Hajj safely.

Syria as well had a share in the politicizing drama of the Muslim holy sites. This week the Syrian government accused the Saudi authorities of continuing restrictions in place since 2012 on Syrian citizens looking to take part in the annual Muslim pilgrimage.

Over the years of his rule, the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi called for the foundation of what he referred to as the “Islamic Vatican” in Mecca and Medina, so the Islamic holy lands in Hijaz are under the tutelage of an Islamic body that becomes the supervisor and preacher of the holy sites.

It was not the first time the late leader put forward the proposal. Whenever his relationship with the Al Saud regime became strained, Gaddafi re-offered this proposal. He saw that the Saudi regime did not have the legitimacy to solely be the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques because the Saudi monarchy was loyal to the 'crusader' West and imperialist America. This same proposal was also promoted by late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the Iranian revolution and during the first Gulf War that Imam Khomeini fought against Saddam Hussein's Iraq for eight years.

Between the desire of the Libyan leader and that of Imam Khomeini about an Islamic Vatican project, many questions arise and the most important of these issues is: how legitimate is the Saudi guardianship over the holy sites in Mecca and Medina?

In the context of the modern nation-state, the centrality of Mecca to all Muslims has been the cause of immense trouble. It means that whether Muslims like it or not, the House of Saud is now the presumptive leader of Islam. Why? Because they have power over Mecca. Out of respect, the balance of Muslims in the world cannot decry the House of Saud, for they are the self-appointed “Guardians of The Two Holy Mosques”. The majority of the Muslim nations simply consent to the notion the House of Saud is their presumptive leader due to the fear of falling victim to visa restrictions or worse becoming a foe of the kingdom with Qatar being a significant example. The deep-seated respect for Mecca provides the House of Saud with religious legitimacy in the entire Muslim world, such that everything that comes from Saudi Arabia is considered to be the truest expression of Islam even if it is clearly the Wahhabi teachings are anti-Islamic and usually the source of Islamist terrorism. It is not Saudi oil which sells Wahhabi theology. It is the weight of Mecca which gives it gravity. Calls have been escalating lately to free Mecca from the grip of the House of Saud - take away Mecca, and the theology of regression follows suit.

Many opponents of Saudi tutelage see Saudi Arabia's rule as a direct result of the British strategy of colonial divide and rule, and reliance on Muslim forces to promote imperial interests. This colonial divide reached its apogee in the Middle East during and after the First World War. It is based on sectarian strife that publicly divided Muslims and turned their lives into hell through extremist movements that most of its leaders and founders studied in Saudi Arabia with Wahhabi books. Al Saud in the past decade has even gone as far as illegally dismantling some of the oldest sections of Islam’s most important mosque as part of a highly controversial multi-billion dollar expansion which infuriated Muslims worldwide.

Before 1932, and the establishment of what is now known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the territory of the Hejaz was under the rule and supervision of the Sharifs and specifically Hussain the Sharif of Mecca.

General view of Kaaba at the Grand mosque in Mecca

After the end of the Ottoman Empire, in May 1919, the Bedouin Najdi leader Najdi Abdul Aziz al Saud (known as Ibn Saud) moved from south of Iraq and southeast of what today is Jordan toward Mecca. In 1924-25, Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi fighters drove Sharif Hussein ibn Ali, the father of the Hashemite brothers in Iraq and Transjordan, from the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

His territory then extended northwest and north to the edge of territories the British had given to the Hashemite brothers: Transjordan and Iraq. The British responded to a raid into Transjordan with a ground and air attack. Ibn Saud then submitted to a British decision regarding borders. The British gave him a free hand in the Hejaz and the Nejd as part of Britain and France's secret agreement to divide the Middle East into their zones of influence, in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, named after their respective foreign ministers.

Despite massive Western support for the House of Saud, many Muslims assert that Mecca even though labeled as a Saudi city, was and still is an Islamic heritage belonging to all Muslims. In Islam teachings, no Muslim has the right to monopolize the guardianship of the Holy sites since the principle of guardianship in the current state of fragmentation is unacceptable because this trusteeship is considered a sacred legal right for all Muslims. To presume guardianship on the land of the Two Holy Mosques, one simply needs the consent of Muslims. The issue here is in the absence of an Islamic Caliphate or a Commander of the Faithful, the solution would be to reconsider at the very least a referendum among Muslims, and in the absence of such a referendum, the matter of Saudi guardianship is seen by some as lacking legitimacy.

At the least, Saudi Arabia will obviously hate the idea of a referendum. To them it is perfectly reasonable to claim any call for internationalizing Mecca and Medina is “a call for war”. Last week the Saudi foreign minister tried to describe this request made by Qatar was a way of defying the House of Saud, which Qatar has denied.

It is simply not a Gulf feud. It is an international Islamic matter. For the Saudis, the holy shrines are sacred cows, or better yet, cash cows. In addition to massive amounts of money the Saudis collect from pilgrimages, and religious tourism, control of the sites grants the monarchy priceless prestige within the Islamic world. Every devout Muslim must try to make the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina at some point in his/her lifetime as the Hajj is one of Islam’s five pillars of faith. As long as the House of Saud holds onto to these sites, it will be seen by all Muslims as holding the keys to the gateway of Allah.

 Saudi Arabia currently rules Mecca and Medina, but they belong to the Muslim world. They are our collective sacredness. They shouldn’t be an individual possession. Islam is a very egalitarian religion. Islam has few hierarchies, and those that exist are not widely shared. Why then does a regime which represents a small portion of Muslims, exports and enforces an ideology that is historically opposing Islam’s rich traditions of pluralism, spirituality, and cosmopolitanism, allowed to control our holy cities? Why don’t everyday Muslims get a say?

One possible solution is a collection of Muslim nations to begin a movement using international legal remedies and diplomacy to make Mecca and Medina either independent nation-states unto themselves (as is the Vatican) or to have them rendered international protectorates with the task of their protection and maintenance falling upon the Muslim world jointly. Muslims, by having a Mecca no longer identified by its ethnicity, but by its religion, can all compete to become better Muslims, as opposed to competing to become the pawns of Al Saud. Turning the ruling system in Mecca into that similar to the Vatican system would ensure the non-politicizing of the Muslim holy sites.

There might be one problem with internationalizing Mecca though. Mecca would remain functionally dependent upon Saudi Arabia, which would have an internationalized Mecca surrounded and would thus have de facto control over who and what enters or leaves Mecca. Meaning they could continue to squeeze any manner and number of concessions from Mecca simply through restrictive travel policies aimed at Mecca. To fix this, Mecca and Medina should become and remain a visa-free zone for all Muslims seeking pilgrimage.