By Rob Smith
Qutb
Sometimes referred to as the Egyptian
Gandhi[wp] of his time, Qutb spent two years in the United States and returned to Egypt horrified by what he had seen. In his 1964 book
Milestones Qutb rediscovered the concept of
jahiliya[wp], or a state of, chaos and savagery (literally
ignorance) before the divine revelations of the Prophet Muhammad. By mid 20th century the whole planet, in Qutb's view, had returned to a state of
jahiliya under Western influences. Even the
nation states in the post-colonial period with
secular Muslim rulers, such as Nasser, had abandoned their Islamic roots and reverted back into
jahiliya. Qutb and other members of the
Muslim Brotherhood ultimately were hanged for conspiring against the regime. However Qutb left behind numerous religious writings and a commentary on the Qur'an (
In the Shade of the Qur'an) which posthumously became the core curriculum in many
madrassas[wp] throughout the Middle East and the Islamic world.
Subsequent generations were, and still are, schooled in the basic concepts of Qutb's ideology. However by the 1990s his organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, assumed a public posture of denouncing violent change and embracing democratic participation. This led to condemnation of the Brotherhood (
Ikhwan) by a newly regenerated Sunni movement known as
Salafism.
[edit] Twin Pillars
In 1943 President Franklin Roosevelt declared the defense of Saudi Arabia was a vital interest to the United States. President Roosevelt and Ibn Saud then met in person and cemented an alliance as FDR returned from the 1945 Yalta Conference. Kings Saud, Faisal, Khalid, and Fahd continued their father's precedent of meeting with United States presidents.
[2]
From the time of
Mosaddegh[wp] til the
fall of the Shah[3], Iran was an integral part of the U.S. anti-Soviet
containment strategy. Outside the
NATO sphere, oil shipments to the West and Japan from the Persian Gulf were protected against Soviet encroachment by the Twin Pillars - the Saudi and Persian
monarchs. Two major events in late 1979 however were to change all that; a third colossal strategic blunder by the Soviet Union, and subsequent
jihad declared by Saudi Arabia against the Soviet Union, shaped the events and outlook of the ISIS jihadis of our day.
Several global events of late 1979 seem astounding today - given that many were wholly based upon misinformation, leaks, misperception and rumour at the time of the three events discussed below in this section. Among the reactions packed into a few short weeks are:
- The Carter administration assumed the rebels at the Grand Mosque were Shi'a spreading Khomeini's revolution.
- The New York Times reported an American official described the militants in Mecca as likely to be responding to Khomeini's call for an "uprising by fundamentalist Muslims."[4]
- Iranians were outraged by the false accusation. Khomeini broadcast a message accusing the U.S. and Israel of orchestrating the takeover of the Grand Mosque.
- People in the Muslim world responded to Khomeini's description of the events at Mecca. In Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Libya, and Kuwait, places identified as American were targeted – embassies, consulates, U.S. information and culture centers, a Bank of America branch, an American Express office and Pan Am offices.
- In Hyderabad, India, where there were no visible American targets, Muslims turned against Hindu merchants who had not shut down their businesses as Muslim merchants had. Violence continued for days until security forces made more than a thousand arrests.
- A crowd broke into the U.S. embassy compound in Islamabad, Pakistan[wp], killed two Americans and burnt the embassy to the ground.
- Pope John Paul II was visiting Turkey when the siege began. A young Muslim, Mehmet ali Agca, escaped from a Turkish prison giving his reason as the siege at Mecca. He described the Pope's visit as part of the infidel plot and warned "the crusaders" would pay for their deeds. Two years later, Agca shot and wounded the Pope.[5]
- President Carter redeployed a battle group from Subic Bay in the Philippines, including the carrier Kitty Hawk, to the Persian Gulf.
- On December 10, the Soviet military began to assemble a force of 75,000 to 80,000 along the Afghan-Soviet border.
[edit] Iranian Revolution
The Shah had been a dedicated western ally and friend of Israel throughout his career. He came to power in 1941 after his father, an ally of
Hitler, was deposed. In 1953
President Eisenhower expanded the Truman Doctrine to include Iran and sponsored the covert overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh,
[6] consolidating the Shah's power. The Shah did not participate in the 1967
Six Day War[wp] and neutralized Iraqi ambitions during the 1973
Yom Kippur War[wp] by positioning troops along the
Shatt al-Arab waterway[wp] forcing
Saddam Hussein to move troops to his eastern border. The Carter administration however, abandoned the focus of U.S. foreign policy since Truman and embraced the
Ayatollah Khomeini as leader of a
national liberation movement.
[7][8]
The success of the 1979 revolution in creating an Islamic state guided by
Sharia law,
albeit under Shi'a jurisprudence, initially gave Muslims worldwide a sense of pride in themselves once again. Inspired by the Iranian revolution, the
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood sought to establish their own
Sunni Islamic state by overthrowing the
Ba'athist regime of
Hafez al-Assad[wp][9] which culminated in the tragic
1982 Hama Massacre[wp].
[10][11] Dynamics changed immediately throughout the Middle East: the
Alawite[wp] dominated regime of Syria grew closer to its Shia cousins in Iran and made a final break in its alliance with Egypt
[12] over the
Camp David Accords[wp]. A covert war between Saudi Arabia and a former U.S. ally, Iran, began. Indeed, the U.S.and its allies became more dependent upon Wahhabi dominated Saudi Arabia and its security interests.
The
Iran-Iraq War[wp] (1980-1988) was one such manifestation of the efforts of Wahhabi dominated Saudi Arabia and its allies to "contain" "Islamic fundamentalism", i.e. the export of the Iranian Shiite revolution. Khomeini denounced the United States as "the Great Satan" behind a conspiracy to destroy the Iranian Islamic State after overrunning the U.S. embassy and taking more than
[13] 52 American hostages on 4 November 1979.
[edit] Siege of Mecca
On 20 November 1979 (1 Muharam 1400, New Year's Day of the Islamic 15th century) the Grand Mosque in Mecca was taken over for several weeks by an obscure group led by a Bedouin tribesman named Juhayman
[14][15] whose theology was an early manifestation of modern violent Salafism. While the Saudi state had been focused on monitoring left-wing and communist subversion, the incident revealed the Saudis were thoroughly unprepared to deal with a challenge to their legitimacy and authority from conservative religious believers.
[16] The group included persons from
Yemen, Sudan, Kuwait, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi domains. After three days of negotiation the Saudi regime turned to foreign, non-Islamic French Special Forces
[17] to help dislodge the domestic threat.
[18][19]
The rebels had specific complaints against the House of Saud: its alliance with the West, its alliance with Christianity, cooperation with the United States, for introducing Western secularism and corruption into Islam's holy lands. Juhayman's speeches resembled Khomeini’s diatribes against the Iranian monarch. The Saudi religious establishment issued a series of
fatwas to justify the use of force against Muslims by infidel French Special Ops at the holiest site in Islam.
Juhayman was captured and beheaded, but a movement of clandestine
Islamist opposition took root in the Kingdom.
[edit] Soviet-Afghan war
The Politburo's decision to introduce troops into Afghanistan was controversial and not unanimous. The idea had been debated several times earlier that year and rejected. Much still remains shrouded in mystery, but evidently President
Jimmy Carter's ordering the
Kitty Hawk to the Persian Gulf gave the impetus and justification for a coalition majority in Soviet ruling circles to intervene.
Soviet expansionism re-energized what was left of the Cold War coalition. The
House of Saud[wp], realizing it had deep social-political unrest among true believers of the Wahhabi creed, tried to regain legitimacy and at the same time rid the kingdom of unemployed malcontents by declaring a
jihad against the godless communist Superpower which had invaded the Muslim lands of Afghanistan. Thus it was the Saudi's who were first to issue the call to
jihad in modern times. The Saudi's even bought the jihadi volunteers one-way air fare to Afghanistan, raising a proxy force to fight the
Evil Empire[wp] with arms provided by the United States.
[20]
Among the jihadi loyalists to the Saudi monarch was
Osama bin Laden. But the notion bin Laden was an egomaniac and grandstander, a rich kid seeking to buy his fame is not just Western propaganda -- the view is shared by other
jihadi veterans
[21], with the exception of those who benefited from his deep pockets. Most were inspired by the success of the Iranian Islamic state in throwing off the yoke of corrupt
Western influence (of which the godless Soviet Union is part, and to which the House of Saud fell prey) and were seeking to establish a Sunni Islamic state governed by Sharia law in Afghanistan.
A later recruit was
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who bore with him a rabid hatred of the "near enemy" after being spoon-fed as a child anti-Shiite propaganda manufactured by the Saudi religious establishment to counter the export of the Iranian revolution.
[22] Unlike the position bin Laden later was to take, Zarqawi was a firm believer in the Qutbist theory of fighting the "near enemy" first -- that is fighting Islamic secular rulers and those who stand in the way of establishing a Caliphiate -- rather than the "far enemy", those outside Islam.
[23]
[edit] Saudi Wahhabism
The Saudi religious establishment has steadily discredited itself over the lifetime of the regime from its earliest days
[24] with increasing momentum since re-taking the Grand Mosque in 1979 and after King Fahd allowed wearing the cross. During the
1991 Gulf War[wp] a
fatwa had been issued to allow American service personal, if they so choose, an expression of their faith by wearing a cross as they went into battle against Muslims in Iraq. The basing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia has since, disparagingly, been referred to as "Fahd taking up the cross", or "Fahd wearing the cross".
[25]
The religious establishment's rulings in support of Fahd shook domestic society to its foundations. Bin Laden, fresh from victory over another Superpower, offered the use of his
jihadis to liberate Kuwait but was rejected by the King. The radical Salafi-jihadi views of
Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi[wp],
Abu Qatada al-Filistini[wp] and
Abu Musab al-Suri[wp][26] and others gained wider acceptance. Two years earlier Maqdisi declared the Saudi rulers
takfir[wp][27] or unbelievers, granting a license to kill Saudi leaders to followers of his teaching. Infidel Crusader armies using Saudi territory for staging a war against Muslims confirmed the Salafist's view of the regime and its 'paid donkeys' - Wahhabi establishment judges and scholars.
The
neocon argument among others for removing Saddam Hussein was basically to close Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia and remove the cross from around King Fahd's neck. U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia continued after the Gulf War because of the threat posed by Saddam and his military.
[28] The
9/11 attacks[29] according to bin Laden, were perpetrated because of U.S. presence. Once Saddam was removed, U.S. presence in the peninsula was no longer needed, the justification for attacks in Manhattan and Washington removed, and the bases hastily closed.
[30]
[edit] Qutbism imported
After Qutb was hung, Saudi Arabia welcomed persecuted Muslim Brotherhood dissidents from Egypt and Syria. At a time of rapid modernization due to the growth of its oil exports, Saudi Arabia needed well-trained professionals. The Brotherhood played a key role in the 1960s and 70s as the government expanded education with oil profits. The bulk of the faculties were Qutbists who designed new curricula for schools and universities. A blended view emerged among students of traditional Wahhabism on social issues with the contemporary Muslim Brotherhood approach to politics. And the regime used the Muslim Brotherhood's more politicized version of Islam in its disputes with its secularized neighbors, Nasser's Eygpt and Ba'athist Syria.
[31]
Qutb's teachings draw heavily on
Ibn Taymiyya[wp] and Abd al-Wahhab, emphasizing
tawhid (the uniqueness and sovereignty of Allah), the importance of relying on the Qur'an, Sunna, and and writings of the Prophet's companions, the fight against
shirk (polytheism)
[32], and the conspiracies of Islam’s enemies. These are now cornerstones of modern Salafism. Young scholars emerged from the universities in the 1980s believing they had a moral responsibility to discuss politics and critique un-Islamic rulers and policies. Unlike the Wahhabi establishment, they sought to influence issues beyond rituals and social norms. Initially they remained deferential to Wahhabi establishment scholars, but things changed dramatically in 1990 when the religious establishment issued a fatwa permitting American troops in Saudi Arabia.
[33]
After the 9/11 attacks severe damage was done to the name and image of Saudi Wahhabism. More significantly, Salafists view the Saudi Wahhabi religious establishment as in the service of Western counterintelligence
[34] as the Saudi religious establishment sought to disassociate themselves from
jihadis they now labeled as Qutbists. The fact Qutb's movement now embraced democracy
[35] and the Salafi-jihadists were vehemently anti-democratic and seeking an Islamic
Caliphate, wrought more confusion.
[edit] Funding the global message
It is estimated the government sponsored Wahhabi religious establishment has spent in excess of $100 billion dollars to take the hardcore, intolerant message of Abd al Wahhab outside the Arabian Peninsula and globally. The money has been used both directly and through various
fronts[wp], publishing houses, broadcasting, and religious scholars. Much shock, passion, and hyperbole is directed at the House of Saud for hypocrisy from both jihadists and infidels, but neither seem to be able to see the world through the Saudi's eyes.
In Islamic societies (as in all societies) it would be convenient to have the person charged with civil administration to have some semblance of morality, however this is not always possible. So most societies recognize the job of civil administration and safeguarding public morality has to be divided up.
[36] The founder of the Saudi dynasty in 1744, a warrior prince named Muhammad bin Saud, needed the religious cleric Abd al Wahhab to grant him legitimacy. Thus was the beginning of an alliance between the House of Saud and Wahhabi clerics that over the space of more than two and a half centuries unified the disparate tribes of the Arabian peninsula, conquered Mecca, and became a global economic force.
By the time of Ibn Saud (1925) there was creeping Westernization and globalization that the founder of the present Saudi state was to exploit to his, and his constituents, advantage: there was black gold-in-them-thar-sand hills. Oil was no use to feed a camel, but in the industrialized West it was worth a fortune. Rather than behead the infidel
MI5[wp] agent
Jack Philby[wp], Ibn Saud showed tolerance and listened to his scheme to defeat the
Hashemites[wp], conquer the
Hejaz[wp], gain political recognition from the West and get filthy rich at the same time. And this all guided by the religious rulings of the intolerant Wahhabi clerics who made it possible for the state of Saudi Arabia to forge treaties, partnerships and alliances with non-Muslims.
In retrospect, modern Salafists and jihadists condemn the official Wahhabi clerics on the payroll of the regime for sanctioning corruption from Westernization and modernization. The Saudis did what was expected of them -- supported the religious establishment with its new found wealth and, to their credit, have been able to persuade the Saudi Wahhabi clerics to be open and more tolerant toward non-Muslims and others. But that changed somewhat after the Shi'a revolution in Iran of 1979. Suddenly the burden of defending the monarchy from renegade Shiites, who didn't care if the godless communists took over the planet or the global economy came crashing down, took precedents. That, with increasing pressure from the United States that both countries destinies were linked. So the Saudi Wahhabi religious establishment cranked up its anti-Shi'a propaganda apparatus and schooled the present generation of ISIS jihadis, then just schoolchildren, on the untrustworthiness of the apostate Shi'a.
[37]
[edit] Prominent clerics
A religious scholar in an Islamic society functions as the judiciary does in Western societies, formulating rulings based upon the
Qur'an and other sources to resolve questions and disputes in ordinary civil society. Although modern Salafists deny it, an Islamic scholar also functions as a legislator, formulating new rulings emanating from the penumbra of old rulings and texts.
It was
Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz[wp] who issued the call for the anti-Soviet jihad.
[38] Only weeks earlier bin Baz doctored a
fatwa legitimizing the unthinkable – spilling blood in Islam’s holiest site. Juhayman was a student of bin Baz in the early 1970s at the Islamic University in Medina. But Juhayman complained he and other students couldn't find 'pure' Sharia education in the official Sharia school.
[39] They stopped attending bin Baz's lectures and formed their own movement, claiming the religious establishment refused to criticize the Saudi ruling clan's un-Islamic behavior. Bin Baz was called to investigate his former pupil's group to see if they were traitorous. Despite their differences, bin Baz protected Juhayman and his group several times, refusing to condemn Juhayman as non Muslim (
takfir) even up to the end of the siege of the Grand Mosque. After Fahd began wearing the cross in 1991, bin Baz was promoted to Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia.
[40]
Imam Muhammad
Nasir al-Din al-Albani[wp] who also taught in Medina condemned Juhayman's seizure of the Mosque. One of his students however, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, fell under the influence of Juhayman's thought. In coming years Maqdisi further developed the idea that the Saudi ruling clan were apostate Muslim infidels worthy of being disposed of, along with a rejection of the very idea of a nation state.
[41]
[edit] The Iranian hegemon
Since the 1979 revolution the Iranian regime has consistently attempted to destabilize the House of Saud's control over the Arabian peninsula. The U.S. State Department has listed the Iranian regime as a major state sponsor of terrorism since 1982.
[42] The Iranian government has been linked to terrorism in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain and the Gulf states.
Iran views itself as a
hegemon[43], that is to say, a Superpower that does not get the respect it deserves from the other competing Superpower entities. The situation is somewhat reminiscent of Imperial Germany's pre-World War I efforts to have its "day in the sun" - recognition from the other Great Powers of that era, the British Empire, the French Empire, the Russian Empire etc., as an equal. Iran's bid for Superpower status is most evident in its attempts to arm itself with nuclear weapons.
Iran has sought to spread its influence outside it's borders, among the Shia in the Gulf States and the eastern provinces of the Arabian peninsula, Yemen, and Afghanistan. And westward to the Mediterranean through what the Salafi-jihadis call the Rejectionist quadrilateral
[44], Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Iran has close ties with Shia of various sects inside the American installed Baghdad regime
[45], the Assad regime of Syria, and
Hezbollah. Most notably Iran has provided weapons and support to further its brand of a revolutionary Islamic state to non-Shia groups in the Palestinian territories, including
Hamas in Gaza. Islamic State jihadists view Iran as a competitor for power and influence over the Palestinian territories.
[edit] Renewing an old debate
The rise of the
genocidal Islamic State renews an important debate - the makeup of the
United Nations Security Council. Does a power structure originally conceived to maintain global peace and security after 1945 fit the needs of the 21st century? FDR originally spoke of "Four Policemen" to keep in order the old
imperialist's "spheres of influence" swept away by two world wars. The Four Policemen being Britain, the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China.
[46] France was added, (although it wasn't able to defend its own borders since 1812) for several reasons: early Cold War tensions, the U.S. and Britain needed a continental power other than the Soviet Union, France still had major influence in Africa and Asia, and any board of directors always needs an odd number for a tie breaking vote.
[47]
Thus was born the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. A billion people of the Indian subcontinent could be represented through Britain; Black Africa could have its interests looked after by Britain and France, and a billion plus Muslims could have their interests guarded by the votes of Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. Each permanent member could be granted a "free hand" to act as policeman on the block should there be trouble.
[48]
The world changed by 2014. No single member, let alone three acting in concert, have shown any willingness or ability to prevent or re-educate an army of psychotic delusionaries from taking modern civilization back to an era of savage hatred and enslavement. That portion of the inhabited human sphere, specifically the Muslim world of the Middle East, desperately needs a policeman, a big boy on the block, to keep order. Who are the candidates?
- (1) Saudi Arabia, fourth largest military budget on the planet but lacking in manpower to shuttle forces against larger threats.
- (2) Egypt, largest population in the region but dirt poor and economically dependent on the United States. Essentially, a U.S. proxy.[49]
- (3) Pakistan, the only Islamic nuclear power but outside the region; also some questions about its stability.
- (4) Iran, multinational, multicultural, educated, independent and stubbornly beholden to no one, but has flaunted international conventions.[50]
- (5) Turkey, since the rise of ISIS and complications over its EU membership application there have been new rumblings of a Turkish Caliphate as a counterweight to growing Iranian influence in the region; like Iran, Turkey has ethnic and linguistic differences with the Arabs.
Now, this is where the contrast with Shi'ism and Sunni Salafism is important: a basic tenet of the Salafi creed is the United Nations is made up of
kufr nations, non-Islamic and the enemies of God.
[51] There is no making peace with the enemies of God. The unbelieving enemies of God all need to be beheaded. No such clear cut directive from Allah exists in Shi'ism, outside giving lip service to peer pressure and intimidation because of their minority status.
Iran's refusal to make a peace treaty with Israel, that and its open support of Sunni radicals in the Palestinian territories, is perhaps the remaining reason the U.N. Security Council has not been expanded to include a Muslim state. Anti-Semitism and hostility toward the State of Israel is the traditional bogeyman used in the Middle East by tyrants to unite the disparate competing factions under their rule that otherwise would be feuding with each other. But to paraphrase
Samuel Huntington[wp] and
Edward Said[wp], Islam's bloody borders and innards
[52] culturally makes it difficult to play nice with others so it will continue to be treated as a retarded step-child by the five permanent members of the U.N Security Council.
[edit] Restoring the alliance
Since the
fall of the Shah[wp] there have been several attempts to re-establish relations between the United States and Shi'ite Iran and make the U.S. less dependent on Saudi Arabia's security.
Ronald Reagan delivered TOW missile's to Iran, restoring a balance on the battlefield and making it impossible for Saddam to win the Iran-Iraq war.
[53] George W. Bush removed the Sunni-dominated regime in Baghdad tilting the scale toward majority Shiites and Iranian influence over the new Iraqi state.
Barack Obama has suggested renewing relations with Iran and reopening the embassy.
[54] Unlike Saudi Arabia, Iran has a long tradition of elections and parliamentary governance pre-dating Mosaddegh. Some say Iran should be a natural ally of the U.S.
[55]
Ex post facto, Jimmy Carter attempted to mend his disastrous foreign policy that led to the fall of the Shah, the rise of the Shi'a Islamic state and the global Islamic revolution. The
Carter Doctrine[wp] committed the United States to Saudi Arabia's security with all the attendant problems the regime and its scholars brought with it. To his credit, Carter is the rare case of a president who recognized a major foul up of his own doing and visibly took high profile steps to mitigate his own mistake while running for re-election.
Papa Bush used the Carter Doctrine to hang the cross round Fahd's neck which, in retrospect, furthered Iran's anti-Saudi policy.
Bill Clinton, as he was famous for
[56] ignored the problem and only re-iterated FDR's line about the Saudi's being vital to America's strategic interests.
[edit] Fighting for status
Iran is proud of its Islamic state under Sharia which has survived for 30 plus years now and views it as a model for other Islamists. It considers itself able to fill an important leadership role among the world's 1.2 billion Muslims but is being opposed by a conspiracy of the Saudi Wabbists, the Great Satan and the little Satan (Zionist Israel), and their various proxies such as al Nusra, the Free Syrian Army and DAESH. Delusion is nothing new among the five permanent members of the U.N Security Council, after all Putin considers Ukrainian democracy as fascist and America considered Castro and the Sandinistas as Soviet proxies.
Sunni clerics have called for a
jihad against Iranian backed Hezbollah and Bashar al-Assad.
[57] Iran accuses the House of Saud of fomenting the current conflicts against Shia in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon as proxy wars.
[58] Iranian Shi'a view the so-called
Arab Spring uprising against Assad as a Saudi Wahhabi plot.
[edit] The Salafist view
The Salafist and jihadi view is nothing new, and is designed to take advantage of the impotency of the post-colonial and Cold War international power structures. Even the most uneducated and illiterate jihadist understands what the Russian, American, French and British public is unable or in denial of. Democracy and Salafist Islam are not just incompatible, but irreconcilable. There is no peaceful co-existence or live and let live. Unlike Judaism and Christianity, Islam is not a religion of forgiveness, redemption and restoration; it is a
religion of vengeance and divine retribution.
The Islamic Thinkers Society posts this extract on its website in an article entitled, "Apostasy of the Rulers"
[59]:
| They do not reject the Taghout[wp] (idolotry) of United Nations, the United Nations is a constitution based on certain rules, it is a kufr[wp] (unbelieving) organization based on sovereignty for man, anything that gives sovereignty to anything other than Allah (swt) is Taghout. All the rulers willingly apply to be a member of the UN, and pay willingly to maintain their membership, and they willingly adhere to their rules and kufr law, they adhere to the kuffar (unbelievers) to be in authority over them and all the Muslims, they accept for the five Kafir (unbelieving) countries in the security council[wp] to have an upperhand over them. |
The Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point has this to say on its website about the growing mainstream popularity of the Salafi ideal throughout the Middle East:
[60]
| The movement gained mass popularity during the last century and Salafis now constitute a majority or significant portion of the Muslim population in the Middle East and North Africa. This is despite the fact that it was often strongly opposed by secular nationalist regimes and non-Salafi clerics. Western governments have neither the local credibility nor the cultural expertise necessary to diminish the popularity of Salafism. |
But that does not reflect the thinking of those who answer the call to fulfill the religious obligation of
jihad, only a measure of support for them. Controversial questions among adherents surround collateral damage to non-combatants, civilians, women, children, the elderly, other Muslims, and where, when, and under what circumstances
shahid (
suicide bombers) may be necessary or acceptable. Salafi scholars may differ on these subjects, but as one scholar might condemn an action, another can always be found to sanction it.
Jihadists seem to have the luxury of picking and choosing which scholars they wish to follow. And of course a scholar can always change his mind about what Allah thinks as time and circumstances warrant.
[edit] Wahhabism, again
So, when the term 'Wahhabism' is cited in Western media it can refer to one of two diametrically opposed groups: (1) the Saudi religious establishment which, despite its conservative veneer, has shown itself tolerant and progressive (by Islamic standards) viz-a-viz being supportive of the central government's foreign policy; or it can refer (2) to Salafists, and their armed movement the Salafi-jihadists, which take quite literally the hardcore 18th century doctrines of Abd al-Wahhab and wish to impose them on Sunni Muslims
outside Saudi Arabia (Sunnis who have resisted Wahhabism for 200 years), and an unsuspecting world.
[61].
The Salafis (true believers of the Wahhabi creed) want to behead the Saudi rulers and its religious establishment; the Saudi Wahhabi religious establishment (many who trace a bloodline back to Wahhab himself) conversely accuse the Salafis of Qutbism, conspiring to overthrow the national government and replace it with the Islamic Caliphate
