The Saudi government, like Iran and the former Taliban in Afghanistan
is a theocracy.
On February 14, 2005 descendants of former US president Franklin D
Roosevelt and Saudi Arabia's first king, Ibn Saud, celebrated the 60th
anniversary of the first Saudi-US summit at the Suez Canal where the
foundations were laid for a "special relationship" between the two
countries based on an oil-for-security alliance. Despite the importance
of Saudi Arabia to the world this was not noted on CNN, the world’s TV
network.
Until recently Jihadism was strongly supported by the Saudi’s
government and its Wahhabi religious establishment. Wahhabism is a
puritanical form of Islamic extremism that cannot tolerate any other
interpretations of Islam, much less Judaism and Christianity. Their
religious and material support
of Jihadism was similar to the Taliban. Given that fifteen of the actual terrorists of September 11 were from Saudi Arabia and that bin Laden was raised in Saudi Arabia and he was a Saudi businessmen and citizen they can be construed as having some responsibility for World Trade Center disaster. They certainly had a closer responsibility than the government of Iraq.
Saudi funding sources, developed during the Afghan War against the
Soviets continued as the jihad expanded outside Afghanistan. The growth
of jihad from Saudi Arabia was transmitted through Saudi-supported
Islamic international organizations (the Islamic Conference
Organization, the World Muslim League and the World Assembly of Muslim
Youth) to the rest of the Muslim world. Saudi funding has supported
Jihadists throughout the world; in Africa, Central Asia, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Southeast Asia, in the United States and Europe; in fact in
every area where Jihadism has occurred.
The Saudi’s established and financed madrassas (religious schools) and
mosques, indoctrinate young students and communities in virulent
anti-western dogma and have damaged tolerant and pluralistic traditions
in eastern and central Asia and Northern Africa. An example of an
arithmetic lesson in a madrassa is among the fourth-grade math lessons
was this: "The speed of a Kalashnikov bullet is 800 meters per
second.... If a Russian is at a distance of 3,200 meters from a
mujahid, and that mujahid aims at the Russian's head, calculate how
many seconds it will take for the bullet to strike the Russian in the
forehead."
Freedom House (the U.S. based think tank) analyzed Saudi sponsored
books and pamphlets written in Arabic and found in Mosques in the
United States. They stated that they espouse an anti-Christian,
anti-Semitic, misogynist, Jihadist ideologies, assume non Muslims are
enemies and propose Sharia law in America (‘Saudi Publications on Hate
Ideology Fill American Mosques’, 2005).
One former high-level government official described Imam Mohammed bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh as "a factory for terrorism" (Dallas Morning News, May 7). Abd al Hamid al Ansari Dean of the Faculty of Islamic Law at the Qatar University stated “this culture [of terrorism] is rooted in the minds of those who suffered from a closed education that leaves no room for pluralism” (Al Hayat, London, Nov. 29, 2001).
We are not claiming that Saudis were behind Sept. 11, anymore that the
CIA or the Mossad; only that they have a responsibility and more that
of Iraq.
Imagine, Bernard Lewis suggests, “if the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan Nation
obtained total control of Texas and had at its disposal all the oil
revenues and used this money to establish a network of well-endowed
schools and colleges all over Christendom peddling their particular
brand of Christianity. This is what the Saudis have done with
Wahhabism.”
Jihadism is a holy war. It is based on a conspiracy theory of America and Israel (and other western states) being ‘Kufr’ states; that its states who are totally against the religion and way of life of Islam.
Its strategic objective is political change away from globalization and
modernity. Jihadists believe globalization and modernity are part and
parcel of the Judaic-Christian worldview. They have no positive
objectives other than instituting the medieval oriented Sharia based
Islamic law. This could have only negative impact of the socio-economic
problems of the Middle Eastern youth based society – almost 50 percent
of the populations are under voting age with 20-30% unemployment.
Its objective’s are the destruction of Western and Jewish influence
over the western world and all infidels. A well known hadith
(commentary based on Mohammad) states “when even the rocks and trees
will call out Oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill
him!” This hadith is frequently used by bin Laden who has also accused
the Jews of “holding America and the West hostage”. Crown Prince
Abdullah opened up a conference on February 5-8 2005, in Saudi Arabia
on International Counter Terrorism. Two days before the conference and
in anticipation of the conference Saudi official TV interviewed several
prominent Saudis. Suheida Hammed explained how Saudi terrorism was
caused by the Jews. Mash’as al Harathi wrote a poem dedicated to
Saudi Minister of Defense Prince Sultan Feted proclaiming that bin
Laden was sent by the Jews.
For Christians they have stated “First the Saturday people, then the
Sunday people.” Recently some have defined this ‘apocalyptic
thinking’ to mean that every Muslim must kill a Jew or Christian to
substitute for him in Hell. This has (as noted by Richard Landes) been
interpreted to mean that every Muslim has to kill a Jew or a Christian
in order to be saved. A French-Arab youngster slaughtered and mutilated
a Jew, his neighbor since childhood. He triumphantly announced to his
parents, his hands still bloodied, “I've killed my Jew, I can go to
Paradise.” The Jihadists now even include Muslim “infidels” defined as
Shi’ites and Sunni civilians working for westerners.
Jihadists intrinsically believe death to be preferable to life in a
non-Islamic world. Their mission is to create a kingdom of Heaven here
on Earth. From there perspective the eventuality of death prior to the
total eschatology is an insignificant price to pay. Heaven is after all
the ‘true’ world. (See Asia Times ‘Suicide Bombing and the Culture of
Death’ October 22, 2004.)
Jihadism is a modern form of totalitarianism challenging traditional
Islam. Jihadists are fascists with imperial demands on the rest of the
world. Sayyid Abdul Ala Mawdudi, a Pakistani and very well known
theoretician of Jihadism has written, “Islam wants the whole earth and
does not content itself with only a part thereof. Islam wants and
requires the earth in order that the human race altogether can enjoy
the concept and practical program of human happiness, by means of which
God has honored Islam and put it above the other religions and laws”.
Very few Jihadists base their theology on traditional Islam. They are
according to the French Islamic scholar Oliver Roy “a by-product of
westernization and not a backlash against traditional Muslim cultures .
. . they are born again Muslims”. And like other “born agains” despite
their own choosing they believe that choice itself is anti-God. Their
training with few exceptions was not in the madrassas. The majority of
the leaders are western oriented and educated. Sayyid Qutb, the
self-proclaimed theocrat and leader of the Muslim Brotherhood did not
study theology, graduated from an Egyptian secular University and
then engineering at a college in the United States; bin Laden’s deputy
Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri is a medical doctor; Ramzi Yusuf {of the original
1993 World Trade Center bombing) was an electronic engineer trained in
the U.K., Omar Ahmad Saeed Sheikh who murdered Daniel Pearl before a
video recorder was a born British Muslim of Pakistani descent, educated
in private schools and at the London School of Economics and Muhammad
Atta, the leader of the September 11 bombing was a promising
architectural student who resided in Germany. Bin Laden himself despite
issuing fatwas is not a cleric or a trained theologian but a western
oriented businessman more familiar with arms dealing, money transfers
and electronic technology than Islamic theology. He is the most
successful entrepreneur of an enterprise dedicated to anti-liberal,
anti-modern, anti-democratic objectives with a quasi-religious
ideology. (One exception is Abu al Zarqawi, a Jordanian trained in
Afghanistan who so far as is known has never been associated with the
West. He was recently declared the ‘Emir’ of Iraq by bin Laden.)
Jihadism was created by the intersection of Islam and the West and
these creators were trained in the west, modern and urbanized and
influenced more by the leftist terrorists of the 1960-1970’s than by
Traditional Islam. They have developed a modern political ideology
based on their version of how to reconcile ‘Islam’ with the modern
world. Third world members of Islam learnt through television and the
internet about both the freedom and the materialism of the West. Roy
finds the fundamentalist inspiration to be far more mundane than
spiritual: "For many of them, the return to religion has been brought
about through their experience in politics, and not as a result of
their religious belief”. Their arch competitors are capitalism
and globalization; not Christianity or Judaism. This was confirmed by
al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood when he stated that
“the Muslims are not socialist nor capitalist; they are Muslims.”
In 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini and his Shi’a Muslims overthrew the
western based government of the Shah of Iran. Shortly before the Cold
War ended in 1989 Khomeini sent a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev which
asserted the universality of Islam. He stressed the failure of the
communist ideology and implored the Soviet president not to turn
westward to market capitalism for a replacement but to Islam.
During the time when the ayatollahs took over Iran and established an
Islamic state the Arab Sunni fundamentalists (with the help of the
United States) defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. These
victorious mujahadin then combined the puritanical strain of Wahhabism
with the ideology and Jihadism of Qutb’s Muslim Brotherhood to create
the Taliban. Qutb had been executed by the Egyptian government and the
Brotherhood repressed. Its primary success was the founding of Hamas in
Palestine and combining its ideology to create the Taliban in
Afghanistan.
These two events – Iran and Afghanistan - were the birthstones of
global Jihadism. Bin Laden as the self proclaimed child of the
Afghanistan war compares himself loosely to Muhammad and his conquest
of the Empires of Eastern Christendom and Persia as well as Saladin who
defeated the Crusader armies and conquered Jerusalem.
Is Jihad a growth industry? Despite September 11 and with the exception
of Iran twenty five years ago the globalization of Jihadism has not
succeeded. Gilles Kepel, another French scholar has suggested they are
a dying beast. Is Jihadism dying in Iraq? According to several sources
more than half of the suicide bombers in Iraq come from Saudi Arabia
(Rueven Paz, 61% of 154 names, Evan F. Kohlmann, more than 50% of 235
names and a Washington Post analysis of websites listing the dead
suicide bombers, 44% came from Saudi Arabia - Washington Post, May 15).
Can Jihadism not yet succeed in Pakistan or Bangladesh – two very large
and unstable Muslim countries? After September 11, and its aftermath It
may be that Jihadists only purpose is terror justified, in their own
minds by feelings of humiliation. If that is the case how does
one defeat self-destructive acts of vengeance? Jihad used to be Arabs
killing westerners, now it is primarily Arab/Muslims killing other
Arab/Muslims. Will the Arab/Muslims community reject this fratricide?
Fundamentalists and non-Jihadist Muslim spokesmen all are aware of the
nature of Jihadist revolutionaries as enemies of any prevailing order.
Given the opportunity al Qaeda will destroy their self defined ‘near
enemies’ whether in Egypt, Syria, Jordan or Saudi Arabia. Jihadists
consider Islamists as clients of the infidels. Despite the religious
symbiosis between Wahhabism and Jihadism it is important to prevent bin
Laden's call to arms from bringing those Islamic fundamentalists into
his Jihadist arms and into his ideological/political battle.
Saudi Arabia is a conservative society in which religion plays a
central role in framing political discourse for rulers and for
opponents. As the Saudi’s fight a Jihadist insurgency led by al-Qaeda;
both use the same religious grounds from which to draw its legitimacy.
Turki Hamad, a Saudi journalist said they come from the same cultural
discourse. (Dubai TV, June, 27, 2004). Can the Saudi’s alienate their
traditional allies in the religious establishment some of who support
the Jihadists? With U.S. becoming less relevant to Saudi Arabia – both
its security and economy - will the result be a consolidation of the
ideas of Nayef with Abdullah’s and less democratic reform? Is the Saudi
War against Terrorism to silence internal dissent?
Saudi Arabia has been supported militarily and economically by the
United States. A conflict between support of the Islamists and support
by the United States was inevitable. Despite the U.S. support and
despite the bonus of high oil prices Saudi Arabia is in desperate need
of comprehensive political, economic, social, legal and educational
reform.
While the United States has articulated a policy of Democracy in Iraq,
Lebanon and Palestine even vaguely in Syria it has not any policy
regarding political change in Saudi Arabia; it seeks the impossible
‘stability’. It has long been claimed that the primary reason Bush pere
did not go further in 1991 and take over Baghdad was his fear that it
would spark a revolution in Saudi Arabia. The Bushs’ connection to the
House of Saud is too well known to need discussing.
Bin Laden is now the enemy of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is in the
throes of a crisis, and its elite is bitterly divided on how to escape
it. Crown Prince Abdullah leads a camp of reformers who seek
rapprochement with the West, while Prince Nayef, the Minister of
Interior, has sided with an anti-American Wahhabi religious
establishment that has much in common with al Qaeda. Neither believes
in democracy, consider it an infidel religion and reject human
rights. Since the attempt to assassinate Nayef he has changed and now
recognizes the Jihadists danger.
The regime is not intending to give up power or changing its historically repressive domestic policies in the face of opposition, but - more predictably - closing ranks and reasserting its authoritarian rule. Emboldened by its success in the domestic "war on terror", which the Saudi government began only after their rule was directly threatened, the al-Saud family is flexing its other muscles so that the masses, too, are left in no doubt that it is back in total control. Like other Arab regimes, it is using the "war on terror" to silence all dissent.
In Saudi Arabia almost 50% of the native population is aged 18 or under
and 30% of the population is unemployed. The reactionary government is
run by men over 70 years of age. Even the 5,000 Princes are unemployed.
Most of the unemployed are in fact unqualified for any work. There are
four million foreign workers out of a total population of sixteen
million working in Saudi Arabia even while the native population in
largely unemployed. They are overwhelmingly non Wahhabi Sunnis and
therefore have no religious or any other rights. Additionally another
almost two million Saudi’s are Shi’a without religious or other rights.
They follow the Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq; is the government concerned
about that?
Saudi’s are finally realizing their problem. A member of the Majlis
al-Shura (the Saudi Consultative Council that is a pretense for a
Parliament) stated to Muqtedar Khan in 2004 "All they teach is to hate
those who are different," adding: "We are a country that is
economically in the 20th century and intellectually in the 14th
century."
A recent election municipal election (excluding women voters) was held
in Saudi Arabia. The candidates of the hardline ‘golden list’ in that
country's most liberal city, Jeddah, won. Scholars have predicted that
should democracy take hold in Saudi Arabia the Islamists would win.
Almost twenty percent of America’s oil comes from Saudi Arabia! And it is estimated that 60% of the world’s proven oil reserves lie under Saudi Arabia. If the Jihadists take over and control Saudi Arabia they will automatically threaten the exporting of oil to the United States. Some have claimed the American invasion of Iraq (with less than one third of Saudi supply) was based on insuring an additional oil supply. If that is so invading Saudi Arabia, in the case of a danger to that oil supply is a certainty. The America government has to protect its own interests; that is the function of a government. American armed forces being located in the neighborhood would make the task easier. Israel would certainly support an American invasion of Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is a country not longer the master of its own fate.