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Molenbeek
The perpetrators of
a string of attacks in France and Belgium passed through the Brussels
quarter.
The Belgian
government came to have a close relationship with Saudi salafists via
a freak department store fire in 1967 that killed 323 people while
the Saudi king was visiting Belgium. His offer of financial
assistance to the victims and their families was repaid with the gift
of a building opposite today’s EU diplomatic service that became
Belgium’s first mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre (ICC) in 1969.
The Belgian state formalized its relationship with the ICC, long
regarded as the official voice of Muslims in Belgium, and encouraged
the arrival of both more Muslim migrant workers and clerics. In
contrast to most countries, Belgium’s preachers are mostly born or
trained outside the country. The ICC encouraged clerics from the
1980s onwards to shift to fundamentalist Salafist teachings,
including the placement of over 600 salafist teachers into schools.
Pointing at Molenbeek, the MP Georges Dallemagne said: “The very
strong influence of Salafists … is one of the particularities that
puts Belgium at the center of terrorism in Europe today.”
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You
Can't Understand ISIS If You Don't Know the History of Wahhabism in
Saudi Arabia
Posted: 08/27/2014
11:56 am EDT Updated: 10/27/2014 5:59 am EDT
Alastair Crooke
BEIRUT -- The
dramatic arrival of Da'ish (ISIS) on the stage of Iraq has shocked
many in the West. Many have been perplexed -- and horrified -- by its
violence and its evident magnetism for Sunni youth. But more than
this, they find Saudi Arabia's ambivalence in the face of this
manifestation both troubling and inexplicable, wondering, "Don't
the Saudis understand that ISIS threatens them, too?"
It appears -- even
now -- that Saudi Arabia's ruling elite is divided. Some applaud that
ISIS is fighting Iranian Shiite "fire" with Sunni "fire";
that a new Sunni state is taking shape at the very heart of what they
regard as a historical Sunni patrimony; and they are drawn by
Da'ish's strict Salafist ideology.
Other Saudis are
more fearful, and recall the history of the revolt against Abd-al
Aziz by the Wahhabist Ikhwan (Disclaimer: this Ikhwan has nothing to
do with the Muslim Brotherhood Ikhwan -- please note, all further
references hereafter are to the Wahhabist Ikhwan, and not to the
Muslim Brotherhood Ikhwan), but which nearly imploded Wahhabism and
the al-Saud in the late 1920s.
Many Saudis are
deeply disturbed by the radical doctrines of Da'ish (ISIS) -- and are
beginning to question some aspects of Saudi Arabia's direction and
discourse.
THE SAUDI DUALITY
Saudi Arabia's
internal discord and tensions over ISIS can only be understood by
grasping the inherent (and persisting) duality that lies at the core
of the Kingdom's doctrinal makeup and its historical origins.
One dominant strand
to the Saudi identity pertains directly to Muhammad ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhab (the founder of Wahhabism), and the use to which his
radical, exclusionist puritanism was put by Ibn Saud. (The latter was
then no more than a minor leader -- amongst many -- of continually
sparring and raiding Bedouin tribes in the baking and desperately
poor deserts of the Nejd.)
The second strand to
this perplexing duality, relates precisely to King Abd-al Aziz's
subsequent shift towards statehood in the 1920s: his curbing of
Ikhwani violence (in order to have diplomatic standing as a
nation-state with Britain and America); his institutionalization of
the original Wahhabist impulse -- and the subsequent seizing of the
opportunely surging petrodollar spigot in the 1970s, to channel the
volatile Ikhwani current away from home towards export -- by
diffusing a cultural revolution, rather than violent revolution
throughout the Muslim world.
But this "cultural
revolution" was no docile reformism. It was a revolution based
on Abd al-Wahhab's Jacobin-like hatred for the putrescence and
deviationism that he perceived all about him -- hence his call to
purge Islam of all its heresies and idolatries.
MUSLIM IMPOSTORS
The American author
and journalist, Steven Coll, has written how this austere and
censorious disciple of the 14th century scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, Abd
al-Wahhab, despised "the decorous, arty, tobacco smoking,
hashish imbibing, drum pounding Egyptian and Ottoman nobility who
travelled across Arabia to pray at Mecca."
In Abd al-Wahhab's
view, these were not Muslims; they were imposters masquerading as
Muslims. Nor, indeed, did he find the behavior of local Bedouin Arabs
much better. They aggravated Abd al-Wahhab by their honoring of
saints, by their erecting of tombstones, and their "superstition"
(e.g. revering graves or places that were deemed particularly imbued
with the divine).
All this behavior,
Abd al-Wahhab denounced as bida -- forbidden by God.
Like Taymiyyah
before him, Abd al-Wahhab believed that the period of the Prophet
Muhammad's stay in Medina was the ideal of Muslim society (the "best
of times"), to which all Muslims should aspire to emulate (this,
essentially, is Salafism).
Taymiyyah had
declared war on Shi'ism, Sufism and Greek philosophy. He spoke out,
too against visiting the grave of the prophet and the celebration of
his birthday, declaring that all such behavior represented mere
imitation of the Christian worship of Jesus as God (i.e. idolatry).
Abd al-Wahhab assimilated all this earlier teaching, stating that
"any doubt or hesitation" on the part of a believer in
respect to his or her acknowledging this particular interpretation of
Islam should "deprive a man of immunity of his property and his
life."
One of the main
tenets of Abd al-Wahhab's doctrine has become the key idea of takfir.
Under the takfiri doctrine, Abd al-Wahhab and his followers could
deem fellow Muslims infidels should they engage in activities that in
any way could be said to encroach on the sovereignty of the absolute
Authority (that is, the King). Abd al-Wahhab denounced all Muslims
who honored the dead, saints, or angels. He held that such sentiments
detracted from the complete subservience one must feel towards God,
and only God. Wahhabi Islam thus bans any prayer to saints and dead
loved ones, pilgrimages to tombs and special mosques, religious
festivals celebrating saints, the honoring of the Muslim Prophet
Muhammad's birthday, and even prohibits the use of gravestones when
burying the dead.
"Those who
would not conform to this view should be killed, their wives and
daughters violated, and their possessions confiscated, he wrote. "
Abd al-Wahhab
demanded conformity -- a conformity that was to be demonstrated in
physical and tangible ways. He argued that all Muslims must
individually pledge their allegiance to a single Muslim leader (a
Caliph, if there were one). Those who would not conform to this view
should be killed, their wives and daughters violated, and their
possessions confiscated, he wrote. The list of apostates meriting
death included the Shiite, Sufis and other Muslim denominations, whom
Abd al-Wahhab did not consider to be Muslim at all.
There is nothing
here that separates Wahhabism from ISIS. The rift would emerge only
later: from the subsequent institutionalization of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd
al-Wahhab's doctrine of "One Ruler, One Authority, One Mosque"
-- these three pillars being taken respectively to refer to the Saudi
king, the absolute authority of official Wahhabism, and its control
of "the word" (i.e. the mosque).
It is this rift --
the ISIS denial of these three pillars on which the whole of Sunni
authority presently rests -- makes ISIS, which in all other respects
conforms to Wahhabism, a deep threat to Saudi Arabia.
BRIEF HISTORY 1741-
1818
Abd al-Wahhab's
advocacy of these ultra radical views inevitably led to his expulsion
from his own town -- and in 1741, after some wanderings, he found
refuge under the protection of Ibn Saud and his tribe. What Ibn Saud
perceived in Abd al-Wahhab's novel teaching was the means to overturn
Arab tradition and convention. It was a path to seizing power.
"Their strategy
-- like that of ISIS today -- was to bring the peoples whom they
conquered into submission. They aimed to instill fear. "
Ibn Saud's clan,
seizing on Abd al-Wahhab's doctrine, now could do what they always
did, which was raiding neighboring villages and robbing them of their
possessions. Only now they were doing it not within the ambit of Arab
tradition, but rather under the banner of jihad. Ibn Saud and Abd
al-Wahhab also reintroduced the idea of martyrdom in the name of
jihad, as it granted those martyred immediate entry into paradise.
In the beginning,
they conquered a few local communities and imposed their rule over
them. (The conquered inhabitants were given a limited choice:
conversion to Wahhabism or death.) By 1790, the Alliance controlled
most of the Arabian Peninsula and repeatedly raided Medina, Syria and
Iraq.
Their strategy --
like that of ISIS today -- was to bring the peoples whom they
conquered into submission. They aimed to instill fear. In 1801, the
Allies attacked the Holy City of Karbala in Iraq. They massacred
thousands of Shiites, including women and children. Many Shiite
shrines were destroyed, including the shrine of Imam Hussein, the
murdered grandson of Prophet Muhammad.
A British official,
Lieutenant Francis Warden, observing the situation at the time,
wrote: "They pillaged the whole of it [Karbala], and plundered
the Tomb of Hussein... slaying in the course of the day, with
circumstances of peculiar cruelty, above five thousand of the
inhabitants ..."
Osman Ibn Bishr
Najdi, the historian of the first Saudi state, wrote that Ibn Saud
committed a massacre in Karbala in 1801. He proudly documented that
massacre saying, "we took Karbala and slaughtered and took its
people (as slaves), then praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, and
we do not apologize for that and say: 'And to the unbelievers: the
same treatment.'"
In 1803, Abdul Aziz
then entered the Holy City of Mecca, which surrendered under the
impact of terror and panic (the same fate was to befall Medina, too).
Abd al-Wahhab's followers demolished historical monuments and all the
tombs and shrines in their midst. By the end, they had destroyed
centuries of Islamic architecture near the Grand Mosque.
But in November of
1803, a Shiite assassin killed King Abdul Aziz (taking revenge for
the massacre at Karbala). His son, Saud bin Abd al Aziz, succeeded
him and continued the conquest of Arabia. Ottoman rulers, however,
could no longer just sit back and watch as their empire was devoured
piece by piece. In 1812, the Ottoman army, composed of Egyptians,
pushed the Alliance out from Medina, Jeddah and Mecca. In 1814, Saud
bin Abd al Aziz died of fever. His unfortunate son Abdullah bin Saud,
however, was taken by the Ottomans to Istanbul, where he was
gruesomely executed (a visitor to Istanbul reported seeing him having
been humiliated in the streets of Istanbul for three days, then
hanged and beheaded, his severed head fired from a canon, and his
heart cut out and impaled on his body).
In 1815, Wahhabi
forces were crushed by the Egyptians (acting on the Ottoman's behalf)
in a decisive battle. In 1818, the Ottomans captured and destroyed
the Wahhabi capital of Dariyah. The first Saudi state was no more.
The few remaining Wahhabis withdrew into the desert to regroup, and
there they remained, quiescent for most of the 19th century.
HISTORY RETURNS WITH
ISIS
It is not hard to
understand how the founding of the Islamic State by ISIS in
contemporary Iraq might resonate amongst those who recall this
history. Indeed, the ethos of 18th century Wahhabism did not just
wither in Nejd, but it roared back into life when the Ottoman Empire
collapsed amongst the chaos of World War I.
The Al Saud -- in
this 20th century renaissance -- were led by the laconic and
politically astute Abd-al Aziz, who, on uniting the fractious Bedouin
tribes, launched the Saudi "Ikhwan" in the spirit of Abd-al
Wahhab's and Ibn Saud's earlier fighting proselytisers.
The Ikhwan was a
reincarnation of the early, fierce, semi-independent vanguard
movement of committed armed Wahhabist "moralists" who
almost had succeeded in seizing Arabia by the early 1800s. In the
same manner as earlier, the Ikhwan again succeeded in capturing
Mecca, Medina and Jeddah between 1914 and 1926. Abd-al Aziz, however,
began to feel his wider interests to be threatened by the
revolutionary "Jacobinism" exhibited by the Ikhwan. The
Ikhwan revolted -- leading to a civil war that lasted until the
1930s, when the King had them put down: he machine-gunned them.
For this king,
(Abd-al Aziz), the simple verities of previous decades were eroding.
Oil was being discovered in the peninsular. Britain and America were
courting Abd-al Aziz, but still were inclined to support Sharif
Husain as the only legitimate ruler of Arabia. The Saudis needed to
develop a more sophisticated diplomatic posture.
So Wahhabism was
forcefully changed from a movement of revolutionary jihad and
theological takfiri purification, to a movement of conservative
social, political, theological, and religious da'wa (Islamic call)
and to justifying the institution that upholds loyalty to the royal
Saudi family and the King's absolute power.
OIL WEALTH SPREAD
WAHHABISM
With the advent of
the oil bonanza -- as the French scholar, Giles Kepel writes, Saudi
goals were to "reach out and spread Wahhabism across the Muslim
world ... to "Wahhabise" Islam, thereby reducing the
"multitude of voices within the religion" to a "single
creed" -- a movement which would transcend national divisions.
Billions of dollars were -- and continue to be -- invested in this
manifestation of soft power.
It was this heady
mix of billion dollar soft power projection -- and the Saudi
willingness to manage Sunni Islam both to further America's
interests, as it concomitantly embedded Wahhabism educationally,
socially and culturally throughout the lands of Islam -- that brought
into being a western policy dependency on Saudi Arabia, a dependency
that has endured since Abd-al Aziz's meeting with Roosevelt on a U.S.
warship (returning the president from the Yalta Conference) until
today.
Westerners looked at
the Kingdom and their gaze was taken by the wealth; by the apparent
modernization; by the professed leadership of the Islamic world. They
chose to presume that the Kingdom was bending to the imperatives of
modern life -- and that the management of Sunni Islam would bend the
Kingdom, too, to modern life.
"On the one
hand, ISIS is deeply Wahhabist. On the other hand, it is ultra
radical in a different way. It could be seen essentially as a
corrective movement to contemporary Wahhabism."
But the Saudi Ikhwan
approach to Islam did not die in the 1930s. It retreated, but it
maintained its hold over parts of the system -- hence the duality
that we observe today in the Saudi attitude towards ISIS.
On the one hand,
ISIS is deeply Wahhabist. On the other hand, it is ultra radical in a
different way. It could be seen essentially as a corrective movement
to contemporary Wahhabism.
ISIS is a
"post-Medina" movement: it looks to the actions of the
first two Caliphs, rather than the Prophet Muhammad himself, as a
source of emulation, and it forcefully denies the Saudis' claim of
authority to rule.
As the Saudi
monarchy blossomed in the oil age into an ever more inflated
institution, the appeal of the Ikhwan message gained ground (despite
King Faisal's modernization campaign). The "Ikhwan approach"
enjoyed -- and still enjoys -- the support of many prominent men and
women and sheikhs. In a sense, Osama bin Laden was precisely the
representative of a late flowering of this Ikhwani approach.
Today, ISIS'
undermining of the legitimacy of the King's legitimacy is not seen to
be problematic, but rather a return to the true origins of the
Saudi-Wahhab project.
In the collaborative
management of the region by the Saudis and the West in pursuit of the
many western projects (countering socialism, Ba'athism, Nasserism,
Soviet and Iranian influence), western politicians have highlighted
their chosen reading of Saudi Arabia (wealth, modernization and
influence), but they chose to ignore the Wahhabist impulse.
After all, the more
radical Islamist movements were perceived by Western intelligence
services as being more effective in toppling the USSR in Afghanistan
-- and in combatting out-of-favor Middle Eastern leaders and states.
Why should we be
surprised then, that from Prince Bandar's Saudi-Western mandate to
manage the insurgency in Syria against President Assad should have
emerged a neo-Ikhwan type of violent, fear-inducing vanguard
movement: ISIS? And why should we be surprised -- knowing a little
about Wahhabism -- that "moderate" insurgents in Syria
would become rarer than a mythical unicorn? Why should we have
imagined that radical Wahhabism would create moderates? Or why could
we imagine that a doctrine of "One leader, One authority, One
mosque: submit to it, or be killed" could ever ultimately lead
to moderation or tolerance?
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