"With all due respect to the pundits out there, 'experts' analyzing Saudi Arabia in previous decades had it too easy." "We need to understand that the days when things took too long to happen -- if they happened at all -- are forever gone. The exciting part is that thanks to the ambitious reforms being implemented ... we are finally living in a country where anything can happen." Faisal Abbas, editor, Arab News, Saudi Arabia
Members of the Saudi security services
inspecting the site of a car bomb attack in May 2015 targeting Shiite
Saudis attending Friday Prayer at a mosque in Dammam, Saudi Arabia.Credit
European Pressphoto Agency
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been the talk of the Arab world for a little while, ever since his father, King Salman, appeared to have anointed his 32-year-old son his successor. King Salman began to change things for women in his Kingdom; enabling women to run for political office and vote -- at the municipal level; a small grace. Now his son has seen to it that Saudi women can finally, legally drive a vehicle. Although presumably, they must still go about in public in a chaste display of full-length burqa, may not converse in public with a man not of their family, may not take out a loan without a man's signature, nor travel abroad without permission of father, husband, uncle, son.
Well, it's a start. The Crown Prince has bold initiatives to his credit, and some not quite to his credit. The decision by Saudi Arabia to lead a 'coalition' of Sunni states into Yemen to fight the Houthi rebels aligned with the Islamic Republic of Iran is viewed by the United Nations and charitable NGOs as an unmitigated disaster for poverty-stricken Yemen, embroiled in a civil war, its population facing famine and and disease epidemics. Saudi Arabia sees its military mired fruitlessly in Yemen, countered by the Houthis, with nothing having been accomplished aside the deaths of civilians.
But great changes are in store for Saudi Arabia. The Crown Prince has vowed to move the country forward into the 21st Century; away from dependence on fossil fuel resources, liberalizing and modernizing society, opening up civil rights to women, and stemming the ossified nation's royal kleptocracy. The Saudi public cheers at the prospect of corruption among state officials, the hundreds of royals and the favoured business leaders being cleansed and those revelling in it held to account. Should that indeed result from the current state of luxury hotel stays imposed on the aristocrats.
The King Fahad Mosque in Los Angeles.Credit
Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times
Ah, and according to the Prince Royal, it is time for the stern Wahhabist brand of Islam to be reformed, and he is the instrument to see it through. No longer will Saudis fund the building of fundamentalist mosques and madrassas across the world, let alone support Sunni terrorists in their jihadist plenitude throughout the Middle East and within Western society. This is startling news, all of it. Remarkable, coming from that most hidebound extreme form of Islam. Leaving onlookers agape -- and silent. What to make of it?
A risky display to be certain. Is the Crown Prince so certain of himself, his security, his presence and his influential power base that he is prepared to risk not only danger to himself at the present time but in the future when resentment from among his royal extended family boils over into remedial action?
Saudi Arabia's newly-perceived, quiet shift in relations with the Zionist Nation whose presence is such a bleeding sore on the Arab/Muslim body politic is certain to see scimitars being sharpened.
The Byzantine business of the Middle East is a mystery to the outside world, and no less to its interior audience, fascinated, mouth agape, eyes wide, wondering, watching, silent. Speculation is rife; will it all collapse as normalcy and the accepted virtues of Islamism, corruption closing ranks and violent reaction prevail? Or is Saudi Arabia destined to lead the Middle East into its version of according freedoms to its long-suffering populations? If so, where does Bashar al-Assad fit into the scheme? Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Iran represent a large and malevolent slice of the Middle East.
The Seoul Central Mosque in South Korea, one of hundreds of mosques around the world built using Saudi donations.Credit
Choi Won-Suk/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Whatever Crown Prince bin Salman does assert and manages to bring off, there are some things that will not change. All the mosques that now crowd Europe with their fundamentalist messages of Islamist jihad and the madrassas teaching the Wahhabist brand of Islam, uncompromising, stern and rigidly hostile to the West, have been installed for posterity. Their purpose is clear; to infiltrate and to influence, to spread the word and the ideology of jihad, to proselytize, to assure the ummah that the longed-for caliphate of influence and conquest is on its way.
Is Crown Prince bin Salmon prepared to renounce all of this? What good would it do? The genie has escaped its confinement.
"Prior to September 11th, the FBI apparently did not focus
investigative [censored]…Saudi nationals in the United States due to
Saudi Arabia’s status as an American ‘ally.’…A representative of the
FBI’s [censored] testified in closed hearings that, prior to September
11th, the FBI received ‘no reporting from any member of the
Intelligence Community’ that there is a [censored] presence in the
United States." Page 11 of the 28 released Congressional investigation report on 9/11
"A search of the Foreign Agents Registration Act website
shows 14 active foreign agents of Saudi Arabia, including the Podesta
Group. It is led by a major Democratic Party financier who is the
brother of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign manager. The group is
paid $140,00 per month by the Saudis." "Documents obtained by the Clarion Project show that President Bush was actually scheduled to meet with representatives from the Saudi-linked Muslim Brotherhood
network on the very day of the attacks, September 11, 2001. This was
the fruition of the Republican Party and Bush presidential campaign’s embrace of Islamists, many of whom belonged to the Saudi-backed Brotherhood network." Ryan Mauro, The Clarion Project
"Saudi money also seeped into the bureaucracy Any Washington bureaucrat with a room-temperature IQ knows that if he stays on the right side of the Kingdom, one way or another, he'll be able to finagle his way to feed at the Saudi trough. A consulting contract with Aramco, a chair at American University, a job with Lockheed -- it doesn't matter." "There's hardly a living former assistant secretary of state for the Near East, CIA director, White House staffer, or member of Congress who hasn't ended up on the Saudi payroll in one way or another, or so it sometimes seems. With this kind of money waiting out there, of course Washington's bureaucrats don't have the backbone to take on Saudi Arabia." Former CIA case officer Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold its Soul for Saudi Crude
Lest
the naive come away from these revelations implicating both a
Democratic and a Republican administration, feel that this is all in the
past, and relations with Islamist groups and the United States' federal
executive body is no longer quite as trusting and cozy, the wake-up
call should be the frequent welcome
Anas Altikriti, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, is closest to the camera, on the left side of the photo.
that the Obama administration gives
to representatives in the United States of the well-established presence
of permanent Muslim Brotherhood groups, the most immediate reason why
President Obama did nothing to support former Egyptian president Hosni
Mubarak, a staunch U.S. ally of a country that did not conspire to
attack America, and why it was that President Obama expressed his and
his administration's dismay at the removal of Mohamed Morsi, elected
president, bringing the Muslim Brotherhood, a known terrorist group, to
finally after 90 years of conspiracy, to control the Egyptian
government.
It took thirteen years but finally the public is privy to part of the information that the Congressional investigation report revealed into events surrounding the attacks of 9/11, even if they are heavily redacted. In fact, that they are heavily redacted and still reveal the damning evidence that was always suspected to be available so that Saudi authorities can no longer complacently respond to charges that they were complicit with the attackers of the World Trade towers and the Pentagon; that there is no evidence cannot now be denied.
Saudi involvement is verifiable and is now in stark evidence, if stark evidence really is required to verify what has always been verifiably evident to begin with on the basis of what could be observed. While the entire story remains hidden yet, deletions and words amounting to the equivalent of three of the 28 pages being obscured entirely, much can be read aside from those deletions that assure a conspiracy of hostility and malign intent did exist emanating from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Take, for example:
While in the United States, some of the September 11 hijackers were in contact with, and received support and assistance from individuals who may be connected to the Saudi government; at least two of those individuals were alleged by some to be Saudi intelligence officers;
One of the individuals identified in the pages as a financial supporter of two of the 9/11hijackers, Osama Bassnan, later received a 'significant amount of cash (from) a member of the Saudi Royal family;
Another Saudi national with close ties to the Saudi Royal Family, is the subject of FBI counterterrorism investigations;
Detained al-Qaeda leader Abu Zaybaida, had in his phone book the unlisted number for the security company that managed the Colorado residence of Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan;
A [deleted] dated July 2, 2002 [indicates] 'incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists inside the Saudi Government;
Bassnan's wife was receiving money 'from Princess Haifa bint Faisal;
Treasury general counsel David Aufhauser testified that 'offices of [the Saudi charity] al-Haramain have significant contacts with extremists, Islamic extremists'.
Two unidentified Clinton administration officials were quoted as saying in 2002, in a report that appeared in U.S. News & World Report that two senior Saudi princes had been paying off Osama bin Laden since the 1995 bombing in Riyadh where five American military advisers were killed. Bin Laden was being given funding to persuade him that he should avoid causing trouble in the Kingdom; elsewhere was perfectly all right. "Where's the evidence? Nobody offers proof", said Adel al-Jubeir a Saudi official back then, and currently the Saudi Foreign Minister, in the U.S. News & World Report article. and this, despite the inquiry quoting a source that was redacted who stated "incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists within the Saudi Government" exists. More latterly, Foreign Minister al-Jubeir held a Friday news conference at the Saudi embassy and declared "The matter is now finished".
When he was asked during that news conference by an intrepid journalist whether the release of the report had the effect finally of exonerating the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from any suspected involvement in the 9/11 attacks, his response was a confident "Absolutely". And so there you have it. If this is what has been permitted to air, what more devastating revelations have been withheld?
"They promoted political Islam." "They spent a lot of money to promote it through different programs mainly with young, vulnerable people, and they brought in a lot of Wahhabi and Salafi literature." "There is no evidence that any organization gave money directly to people to go to Syria. The issue is they supported thinkers who promote violence and jihad in the name of protecting Islam." "They brought these people closer to radical political Islam, which resulted in their radicalization." Fatos Makolli, director, Kosovo counterterrorism police
"They came in the name of aid. But they came with a background of different intentions, and that's where the Islamic religion starting splitting here." Enver Rexhepi, imam, Kjilan, Kosovo
"It is obligated for every Muslim to participate in jihad." "The blood of infidels is the best drink for us Muslims." Zekirja Qazimi, Wahhabi imam
The Muslims of Kosovo were known not so long ago for their tolerance of others, as a society within Europe. There has been a slow, progressive change since that time of amicably living in a moderately pluralist environment. A transformation has taken place with conservatism eroding the former way of religious life, the kind of conservative ideology readily identified with the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia. It has taken 17 years to achieve, but that radicalization is now well in evidence.
In the last two years alone, Kosovo police of the counterterrorism squad have singled out 314 Kosovars, among them two suicide bombers, 44 women and 28 children who have left Kosovo to join the Islamic State. This represents the greatest number of people dedicating themselves per capita to the jihad of Daesh than any other place in Europe. They have been recruited and excited by Salafism extolling jihad.
Two years of investigation by the counterterrorism police in Kosovo yielded 67 people being charged, 24 imams arrested and the shutting down of 19 Muslim organizations on charges they acted against the Constitution of the country by inciting hatred and recruiting for terrorism. A country of 1.8 million, Kosovo was welcoming to Americans as their liberators who helped them become independent but has now become suspicious of the West.
While the United States was defending Kosovar Muslims in a NATO coalition from the lethal attacks of Serbs, when the hostilities and the killing stopped, Saudi Arabian assistance arrived. The U.S. dreamed of a new democracy, the Saudis envisioned an outreach of Wahhabism. Kosovo has over 800 mosques for the faithful, 240 of them built since the war ended. Moderate imams in Kosovo take exception to what they insist has been a deliberate strategy to alienate young Kosovars from tradition.
Is there not boundless irony in this situation? Saudi Arabia has gained its vast wealth through the sale of its fossil fuels, primarily to fill the energy needs of the Western, non-Muslim countries. That sumptuous payback for extracting natural resources in the form of petroleum has enabled Saudi Arabia to export the proceeds of oil sales back to the West in the form of funding new mosques and Islamic centres led by Saudi-trained imams.
The West has effectively bankrolled the infiltration of extreme, fanatic Islamism to undermine its own values and traditions. Wahhabism's major tenets speak to the supremacy of Sharia law, the ideation of violent jihad and takfirism, (the authorization of a death sentence for Muslims held to be heretics for failing to follow the Wahhabist interpretation of Islam). And those Wahhabist mosques have been built everywhere throughout Europe and North America.
GettyHassan Ammar
In 2014, WikiLeaks released Saudi diplomatic cables revealing a system of mosque, Islamic centers and Saudi trained clerics funding that spanned Asia, Africa and Europe. A costly venture, and one with deep intentions to cast a wide net to capture the minds and faith of Muslims in an understanding of Islam as fundamentally pure only if the conditions that speak to Sharia and jihad as imperatives are fully recognized, in the process demeaning all other alternatives.
As part of Yugoslavia before the breakup, men and women in Kosovo reflected a Western way of life with the genders unselfconsciously mingling socially, and women and girls rarely wearing veils. After Serbian forces destroyed 218 mosques in their drive to stamp on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, there was a need to reconstruct. Money and imams arrived to give aid. Imams representing the hundreds of Kosovars who studied Islam in Saudi Arabia, post-war, on 'scholarships'.
Saudi generosity was unparalleled in bankrolling the transition of Kosovar Muslims into those accepting of and steeped in Wahhabism. It soon became clear that Wahhabism was overtaking worship with viral Saudi influence. Eventually the Islamic Community of Kosovo was well infiltrated to echo the sensibilities of Wahhabist Islam. Kosovar Muslims traditionally following the liberal Hanafi school of Islam were being transformed.
Charities operated by the Saudis began to pay 'salaries' and 'overhead costs' to families through monthly stipends. They were obligated to attend sermons at the Wahhabist mosques, and women and girls were to wear the veil. Greater numbers of mosques were built to the Saudi method, and increasing numbers of mosques overall were headed by Saudi-trained imams. A Saudi organization, Al aqf al Islami, funded religion classes.
Around 2004 the-then prime minister, Bajram Rexhepi attempted to introduce a law banning extremist sects, but found opposition to that move coming, of all places, from Europe. Where officials informed him that freedom of religion would be violated by such moves as he suggested. "It was not in their interest; they did not want to irritate some Islamic countries", Mr. Rexhepi divulged recently.
In 2003, Richard Holbrooke, once special envoy to the Balkans of the U.S., warned leaders in Kosovo to avoid working with the Saudi Joint Relief Committee for Kosovo, an organization of Saudi charities. It was revealed a year later that it was among several organizations shuttered in Kosovo under suspicion of being an al-Qaeda front.
Saudi Arabia's involvement in Kosovo has been reduced in recent years. Funding instead has been arriving from Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates propagating a similar version of Wahhabist Islam.
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
