Wahhabism in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Horn of Africa, East Africa and Sahel region
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest country in the Arabian Peninsula, which borders on Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yemen. It also borders on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia is approximately one-fourth the size of the United States, with a population of 27 million people. ABD AL-AZIZ bin Abd al-Rahman Al SAUD spent years defeating weaker tribes and combining territory, Saudi Arabia became a sovereign state in 1932, controlling over 80 percent of the Arabian Peninsula. The Kingdom was then under the control of Al Saud the first monarch. The country adopted the Wahhabi version of Islam, as the official religious doctrine in Saudi Arabia.
The Prophet Muhammad was born in Mecca in 571. The two mosques of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia are considered the holiest sites of the Islamic faith. One of the pillars of Islam is to go on a Hajj to Mecca (pilgrimage) at least once in a lifetime.
The Kaaba (or 'cube') is the most sacred site in Islam. All Muslims are expected to pray towards it five times a day, and make a pilgrimage to it (and walk around it seven times counter-clockwise). (O'Connor, T. 2012) In the early 1700′s Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab launched his fundamentalist movement aimed at restoring Islam’s basic tenets. The Imam formed a religious and political alliance with Al Saud, the Bedouin ruler who controlled a large portion of the territory. Wahhabism morphed into an orthodox version of Islam going back to the Middle Ages. Wahhbists supported Al Saud’s expansion ambitions, helping him defeat competing tribes, non-adherents and those considered infidels. Al-Wahhab gave armed jihad a prominence in his teachings.
Salafism took hold in Egypt in the mid-1800′s observing the tenets of early generations of Muslims, as-Salaf as-Saleh (pious predecessors). Religious conservatives adopted this orthodox belief, which spread to other parts of Africa, including Morocco, Mauritania and Somalia. The early 1960′s struggle with secular Arab factions prompted King Faisal of Saudi Arabia to allow the migration of the Muslim Brotherhood, and with it came the Salafist movement. This eventually led to integration with Wahhabists who rejected modern influences, and Salafists who follow the original tenets of Islam.
Osama bin Laden was indoctrinated by Wahhabist preachers in Saudi madrassas. Killing of infidels had become a justifiable act in the teachings of the Wahhabi doctrine. When U. S. troops were invited by the Saudi monarchy in 1991, as a result of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, there was opposition by many of the Wahhabists. When bin Laden returned from Afghanistan he proffered the overthrow of the Royal family, for allowing American boots on Saudi soil. He declared a jihad against the United States, stating it was not permissible for infidels to step on the sacred soil of the “Land of the Two Holy Mosques, Mecca and Medina”.
In the March 1997 CNN interview Osama bin Laden reiterated, “In our religion, it is not permissible for any non-Muslim to stay in our country.” A similar message had come several years earlier from radical Muslims in Beirut who did not want American troops on their soil and attacked our soldiers regularly.
In the Arabian Peninsula Wahhabists have a significant presence in Kuwait, Qatar, Iraq and Iran. In North Africa they are in Egypt, Libya and Algeria; in sub-Saharan Africa they are in Somalia, Sudan, Comoros, and Mauritania. It is the goal of Wahhabists and Salafists to take us back to the Twelfth Century when Sultan Saladin controlled most of North Africa and the Middle East, under Sharia law.
Wahhabists indoctrination allows for no tolerance of anyone considered an infidel. Radical followers were responsible for the beheading of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, Nick Berg in Iraq, and Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia. Of the terrorists involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks against the U.S., fifteen of the nineteen terrorists came from Saudi Arabia.
In the Horn of Africa and East Africa, Wahhabism was introduced in the early 1950′s. Saudi sponsored charities, al-Haramain Islamic Foundation and the International Islamic Relief Organization associated with Osama bin Laden’s brother-in- law, built numerous mosques and madrassas. These Saudi NGO’s offered education, humanitarian aid, and other charitable programs. Both organizations were subsequently accused of supporting and financing terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda.
In the Center for Security Policy’s January 2005, No. 4 Occasional Paper, “An African Vortex: Islamism in Sub-Saharan Africa”, David McCormack noted, “Saudi money often ends up in [the] hands of militants. Saudi-sponsored NGOs operating in sub-Saharan Africa have been unmistakably linked to global terrorist groups. [T]he Somalia office of the Saudi-sponsored charity al-Haramain has been connected to al-Qaeda and the group Al-Itihaad Al-Islamiya (AIAI) that has terrorized the Horn of Africa.”
Saudi Arabia for the most part, has been considered a friend of the United States going back to the early 1930′s, when the Standard Oil of California (Socal) was given a large concession of land, discovering oil in the vast desert region. It wasn’t until years later that anti-American sentiment built up, in 1991, when U.S. military troops were invited onto Saudi soil.
U.S. – Saudi relations were further strained by the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, with the Saudi monarchy refusing to support the war. In May 2003, three residential complexes located in eastern Riyadh, were bombed by al-Qaeda terrorists. According to CNN and diplomatic security sources, there had been warnings of this attack, and a nearby “safe house” filled with munitions was uncovered in a raid. Even after that no additional precautions were reportedly taken. As a result thirty-six people, including ten Americans, were killed in the attack and more than 160 people were wounded. Anti-American sentiment has continued ever since.
While serving as U.S. Ambassador to Mauritius, Comoros and Seychelles from 2002-2005, I met with Comoros government leaders. We discussed on several occasions the large number of imams coming from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Pakistan. They preached and taught in mosques and madrassas built by the Saudi-based al-Haramain. The fundamentalists were offering scholarships to the young students, to travel to other countries for further education— which could lead to radical Islamic indoctrination. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the most dangerous terrorists received his primary education in one of these madrassas in Comoros. He went on to become a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden.
With the African terrorists involved in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, journalist Charles Cobb Jr. wrote, “The large number of Africans reflects the continent’s fertility as a recruiting ground for the radical Islamist movements that, some believe, have emerged due to the failures of post-colonial African governments to provide adequate education systems and healthy economies.”
In a June 2004 news conference, Adel al-Jubeir spokesman for the Saudi royal family, agreed with the U.S. Treasury Department to freeze assets of the Saudi charity al-Haramain. In a subsequent meeting with the Comoros president, I noted that some of the projects funded by al-Haramain in Comoros were suspect. He mentioned the many projects the Saudi foundation was involved in, and how the people welcomed their support. He remarked that he hated to shut them down without having other sources of financial support. I added that the U. S. had received a list of seven suspected al-Qaeda members in Comoros, two of whom being associated with al-Haramain; that training and staging had taken place there. It was our contention that Comoros had been used as an exfiltration route for the perpetrators of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies, with al-Haramain supplying financial and other operational support for these terrorist attacks.
This Saudi NGO had a major influence over the life of civil society in Comoros, but was asked to leave the country. I had made numerous requests to Washington for financial assistance to fill the funding gap left, when the Saudi NGO departed, of programs for the orphanages, schools, village infrastructure, and water projects–none were fulfilled.
The Comoros branch of al-Haramain was officially designated in September 2004 by the U.S. Treasury Department and the UN 1267 Sanctions Committee as a rogue organization that financially supports terrorists and has links to al-Qaeda. Other branches of this charity in Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia were designated by the United States and the UN between 2002–2004.
In November 2004 during Ramadan, the U.S. embassy in Jeddah reported that Sheikh Usama Abdullah Khayat had delivered a sermon in Mecca, preaching violence and attacks against Israel, stating: “O God, give wisdom to the Muslim leaders. O God, support our leader and promote Islam through him. O God, help the mujahidin elevate your religion and your word. O God, support them in Palestine. O God, destroy the tyrant Jews, for they are within your power. O God, defeat these tyrant Jews.” Sermons similar to this had emanated from Riyadh and Medina before, but had fallen short of explicitly mentioning the Jews.
During the nine-year Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979–1988), the U.S. supported Osama bin Laden, and the mujahideen (Muslim guerilla fighters) in their battle against the Soviet Union. When the war ended the U.S. abandoned them, and in the chaos that followed mujahideen warlords fought among themselves, while thousands of Afghans fled to refugee camps in Pakistan. In these refugee camps, Islamic students distrustful of the U.S. banded together as the Students of the Jamiat Ulema-eIslam. They withdrew from society and evolved into the fundamentalist Taliban (students), a radical Sunni Islamist political movement, which came to the forefront with the help of Saudi money that established an extensive network of radical madrassas. Pakistan assisted in developing militia training schools where student recruiting took place.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban defeated the corrupt warlords and ruled much of the country as an “alternative government” enforcing strict Sharia. Under their regime, modern-day radical Islam was born. Since the war in Afghanistan, many radical-teaching madrassas have sprung up and taken hold around the world, pulling away students from the study of Islamic theology, and the humanitarian lessons on ethics, morals, virtues and justice, and cordoning them within a growing society of extremism and violence. The editorial by the Daily Times on September 12, 2005 describing these madrassas as, “The incubator of personalities that later lead Muslim society to extremism and violence…”
There are numerous imams in the United States and Europe preaching a form of Sunni fundamentalism practiced in Saudi Arabia that justifies armed jihad. Saudi Arabia has financed over 4,000 mosques, religious schools, and cultural centers around the world in recent years. Across America there are over 2,000 mosques and Islamic centers, an increase of almost 50 percent since the year 2000, and over 100 percent since 1990.
In a 2007 Citizen Warrior article, author Mark Silverberg stated that for American Muslim moderates, the harsh reality of having their religion hijacked by Wahhabi radicals is something they have yet to confront. “Radical Islamic groups have now taken over leadership of the ‘mainstream’ Islamic institutions in the United States and anyone who pretends otherwise is deliberately engaging in self-deception,” as noted by the late Seif Ashmawi an Egyptian-American newspaper publisher, referenced in Silverberg’s article.
Silverberg also quotes, Former CIA Director James Woolsey as telling Congress, “Wahhabi extremism today is the soil in which al-Qaeda and its sister terrorist organizations are growing”. He further noted, “According to the Council on Foreign Relations Report, Saudi Arabia is the largest source of financing for al-Qaeda.” Al-Qaeda ideology is essentially Wahhabism, and most, if not all members of al-Qaeda are ideologically Wahhabist.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he noted as saying “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban…and other terrorist groups. Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”
Osama bin Laden was the spokesman for al-Qaeda since his rise to power in the 1980′s. Subsequently the Egyptian born medical doctor, Ayman al-Zawahri, a close friend and chief deputy, has become the spokesman for al-Qaeda. The ground swell for Muslim youths to fill their ranks came from radical teachings and recruiting in the madrassas. Each imam, as a fundamentalist Islamic preacher, had varying interpretations of the Koran, and how the message of jihad against the infidels was delivered.
Saudi Arabia built many madrassas in Pakistan and elsewhere beginning in the 1980′s. That was two generations ago, and countless young men have been brain washed since, with radical thoughts–five times a day and endlessly in between. These young Muslims have grown up with killing all around them, and a chance of being killed. Few have ever worked or had a wish to have a loving family, or even planning for the future, with their only thoughts being of giving their life in a terrorist act, in the name of Islam. The global armed jihad is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.
The “Arab Spring” which started with uprisings by dissidents in the North African countries, has spread to the Arabian Peninsula. Syria and Yemen are under siege by dissidents, with al-Qaeda taking advantage of the destabilization with their own style of terrorist activity. In the May 23, 2012 Reuters article, “Yemen troops advance; donors pledge $ 4bln aid”, Mohammed Mukhashaf and Angus McDowall note, the Gulf Arab countries are alarmed by the political crisis in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state [of Yemen] which has “given al-Qaeda the opportunity to develop a base from which to launch attacks around the world”, and Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi stating, “Saudi Arabia is cognizant that the stability of Saudi Arabia depends on that of Yemen”.
Wahhabist imams, funded by Saudi Arabia, have indoctrinated many terrorists around the world. Yemen has become the epicenter for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Al-Qaeda has been involved in many terrorist attacks in North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. Now they are focusing on their backyard with recent attacks in Syria.
Wahhabists helped to build the Saudi kingdom, and exported its fundamentalist teachings. Saudi Arabia’s oil brought them wealth, and control of many of the world’s economies. Saudi Arabia also brought the world Osama bin Laden. Syria is the next country to go through a regime change, as has taken place in Yemen, Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Saudi Arabia may follow, with Osama bin Laden’s legacy coming back to its roots.
Africa and the Arabian PeninsulaGovernment overthrown; Sustained civil disorder and governmental changes; Protests and governmental changes; Major protests; Minor protests
[Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen; Syria; Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman; Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Israeli border; Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Mauritania, Western Sahara] Wikipedia