CORRECTION: Sami has kindly alerted me to the fact that Al-Awdah does mention 9/11 in a negative light, although Gulf News doesn't quote that. It's in the full text of his letter, here. It is refreshing, then, that Al-Awdah apparently rejects the contention (explained by Anjem Chaudary here) that no non-Muslim is innocent.
Now if he can go the whole way and renounce the whole Islamic supremacist project, we might be getting somewhere -- although his emphasis on da'wah in this letter, as more effective than jihad violence, doesn't make that likely.
----------
This is already being hailed, predictably enough, as a major breakthrough, and predictably enough, there is less here than meets the eye. "Why now, Sheikh?," asks Tareq Al Homayed, and he has a good question. In the first place, it's noteworthy that "clerics in his native Saudi Arabia...have avoided direct criticism of the Al Qaida leader." Why have they done that? Are they afraid that if they criticize Osama they will alienate Saudis who find his assumption of Islamic purity compelling?
Also, Salman Al Awdah decries the innocents killed by Al-Qaeda, but does not of course clarify the burning question of just who qualifies as innocent in Islamic law, and whether non-Muslims can ever be legitimately regarded as innocent.
He is upset about Al-Qaeda activity in Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia -- unmentioned, you'll notice, is the United States, or Britain. And his support of Islamic "charity" work -- that is, financial contributions to the global jihad -- and of the jihad in Falluja indicate that his quarrel with Osama is just over the killing of fellow Muslims, and perhaps of some tactics, but not over larger questions of his motives and goals.
"Top Saudi cleric denounces Bin Laden," from Gulf News (thanks to Sami Zaatari):
Riyadh: A leading Saudi cleric has publicly denounced Osama Bin Laden, a rare move among clerics in his native Saudi Arabia who have avoided direct criticism of the Al Qaida leader.Salman Al Awdah issued his "open letter to Osama Bin Laden" on his Web site this week (www.islamtoday.net) and read it out on a show he presents on Saudi-owned pan-Arab channel MBC.
Western and Arab critics of Saudi Arabia's hard line religious establishment have often criticised senior clerics for failing to unequivocally distance themselves from the mastermind of 9/11 attacks that killed 3,000 people.
"Brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocents among children, elderly, the weak and women have been killed and made homeless in the name of Al Qaida?" he said.
"The ruin of an entire people, as is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, ... cannot make Muslims happy," he said, attacking Al Qaida's policy of revolt across the region.
"Who benefits from turning countries like Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon or Saudi Arabia into places where fear spreads and no one can feel safe?"
Al Awdah said Al Qaida's actions had led Western governments to rein in Muslim charity work around the world and Arab governments to jail thousands.
One Saudi commentator said the letter was six years too late.
"Why now, Sheikh?," wrote Tareq Al Homayed in the pan-Arab Saudi daily Asharq Al Awsat on Monday. "He is distancing himself from Bin Laden at a time when those who do so have nothing to lose and no price to pay."
Awdah was one of 26 Saudi clerics who supported resistance to US forces in Iraq as "jihad", or holy war, during the US siege of Falluja in November 2004.
"Also, Salman Al Awdah decries the innocents killed by Al-Qaeda, but does not of course clarify the burning question of just who qualifies as innocent in Islamic law, and whether non-Muslims can ever be legitimately regarded as innocent."
Bingo.
Meaning of Mischief
In his Tafsir, As-Suddi said that Ibn `Abbas and Ibn Mas`ud commented,
﴿وَإِذَا قِيلَ لَهُمْ لاَ تُفْسِدُواْ فِى الأَرْضِ قَالُواْ إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ مُصْلِحُونَ ﴾
(And when it is said to them: "Do not make mischief on the earth,'' they say: "We are only peacemakers.'') "They are the hypocrites. As for,
﴿لاَ تُفْسِدُواْ فِى الأَرْضِ﴾
("Do not make mischief on the earth''), that is disbelief and acts of disobedience.'' Abu Ja`far said that Ar-Rabi` bin Anas said that Abu Al-`Aliyah said that Allah's statement,
﴿وَإِذَا قِيلَ لَهُمْ لاَ تُفْسِدُواْ فِى الأَرْضِ﴾
(And when it is said to them: "Do not make mischief on the earth,''), means, "Do not commit acts of disobedience on the earth. Their mischief is disobeying Allah, because whoever disobeys Allah on the earth, or commands that Allah be disobeyed, he has committed mischief on the earth. Peace on both the earth and in the heavens is ensured (and earned) through obedience (to Allah).'' Ar-Rabi` bin Anas and Qatadah said similarly.
Sorry, there's no more sleeping here. It's too hard to sleep when you are seething.
everyone knows the the penalty for mischief right?
Amazing how thin tey can slice baloney,
"Brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocents among children, elderly, the weak and women have been killed and made homeless in the name of Al Qaida?" he said.
How many innocent among ???
""The ruin of an entire people, as is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, ... cannot make Muslims happy," he said, attacking Al Qaida's policy of revolt across the region."
....this is something the Christians, Jews and Non Muslims are aware of .....
"Brother Osama"
Pardon me? I smell a ruse.
"A leading Saudi cleric has publicly denounced Osama Bin Laden". How about something a little stronger than denouncing? Perhaps declaring him an apostate? Perhaps a fatwa calling for his death, like the one for Salman Rushdie, or some Scandanavian cartoonists? Perhaps rousing the masses after Friday prayers calling for "death to Osama" and burning him in effigy? After all, what he's doing is "against Islam" and a "hijacking of the religion of peace".
Sounder
You have it right. Condem him but call him your brother?
He’s angry, obl’s strategy has not worked out. Obl is giving islam a bad name. He forgets that the muslim brotherhood, scair, the oic, the un (islamist) human rights council, the paki flag burners, the pali’s who would behead Britney, thousands of attacks on ordinary strangers going about their lives, cartoon outrage, Pope outrage, made up outrage, the treatment of women, children, barbers, dogs, music vendors, employees and patrons in internet cafes, pizza parlors, taco bell’s and hundreds of other things help to give islam a bad name. This is an invitation to obl to go back to the peaceful jihad. He is saying, hey obl don’t spill the beans.
"....this is something the Christians, Jews and Non Muslims are aware of .....
Posted by: exsgtbrown "
that didnt sound right...I meant to say ....
"The ruin of an entire people, as is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, .....this is something the Christians , Jews and Non Muslims are aware of...
Thank God, Bin Laden is the biggest bad guy of them all. What a relief.
Maybe slightly OT, but i read recently an article in our press stating that the situation in Iraq is improving. The local sheiks are increasingly standing up to Al Qaida? The main reason? AQ is bad for business.
Why didn't he label Bin Laden an infidel and apostate for defaming Islam?
Where's the death Fatwa for Bin Ladens unIslamic activities?
"AQ is bad for business."
...AL-Qaeda has killed more Muslims than Infidels...
...The Muslims are finally getting around in doint the math....
Just another "I denounce bin laden, but..."
*yawn*
Your analysis, as usual, is bang on, Robert. But I'd like to mention a positive element in this cleric's words. It will be interesting if anything comes from it:
He apparently lays the blame square at the feet of Al Qaeda for the mess in Iraq, Afghanistan, Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. (I.e, by asking Osama to answer for the atrocities in these places.) Note there is no overt blaming of Americans, the west or the kuffar. This is a worthwhile departure. How many leftish western commentators are prepared to concede blame to Islamists and Jihadists rather than evil right-wing western leaders?
Perhaps this is a signal that some radical islamic clerics are waking up to the fact that Jihadism, far from advancing the goals of the Islamist movement, is putting the whole game into jeopardy for them. It's been years since the Ikhwan has done the same; they appear to be limiting their violent jihad to places like Palestine where they think they can sell it as a liberation movement.
This is a positive development in the sense that it may lead to less overt violence if Bin Laden and other jihadists are marginalized in Dar al Islam -- but it won't address the long-term question about what to do about political jihad. Indeed, if the violent jihad calms down, as Spencer's headline suggests, the West may go back to sleep -- and perhaps this is precisely the point.
Nobody here wants the jihadists to continue to rack up dozens, or hundreds of murders of innocents every day, but the silver lining, when they do, is that it makes is quite clear that the world cannot safely ignore the Islamist agenda. If they stop, our job gets much harder.
Sorry I Forgot...just out(September 17th, 2007)
AMERICA: This Is Your Wake Up Call ~ Don’t Hit The “Snooze Button”
Islam, The Marxism Of Our Times
City Journal:
From an Islamist point of view, the news from Europe looks good. The Times of London, relying on a police report, recently observed that the Deobandis, a fundamentalist sect, now run nearly half of the 1,350 mosques in Britain and train the vast majority of the Muslim clerics who get their training in the country. The man who might become the sect’s spiritual leader in Britain, Riyadh ul Haq, believes that friendship with a Christian or a Jew makes “a mockery of Allah’s religion.” At least no one could accuse him of a shallow multiculturalism.
According to Le Figaro, 70 percent of Muslims in France intend to keep the fast during Ramadan, up from 60 percent in 1989. Better still, from the Islamist point of view, non-practicing Muslims feel increasing social pressure to comply with the fast, whether they want to or not. The tide is thus running in the Islamists’ favor.
Best news of all for the Islamists, however, comes from Germany. Two of the men that the German police arrested in early September for plotting a series of huge explosions in the country were young German converts to Islam. It is impossible to know how many such German converts there are, but it is thought to run into tens of thousands, principally men; in the nature of things, it is also uncertain how many of them are attracted to extremism, but few people are so attracted by moderation that they are converted by it.
The man believed to be the leader of the little group, Fritz G., the son of a doctor and an engineer, was himself a student of engineering, of mediocre attainment. He grew up in Ulm, where a quarter of the population is now Muslim, and at the time of his parents’ divorce, when he was 15, he began to frequent the Islamic Information Center of Ulm, and also the comically named Multikultihaus in the neighboring town of Neu-Ulm, where young men of jihadist views, including Mohammed Atta, had long congregated. In 2004, he was spotted at the Ulm Islamic center, selling a journal called Think in the Islamic Way. In December of that year, the police found propaganda in favor of Osama bin Laden in his car. In 2006, he went to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.
His fellow conspirator, Daniel S., came from a well-off family and converted early in life to radical Islam. He traveled to Egypt to learn Arabic, and then returned to Germany, where he sometimes irritated his neighbors by praying loudly in Arabic three times a day.
All this suggests that Islam is fast becoming the Marxism of our times. Had Fritz G. and Daniel S. grown up a generation earlier, they would have become members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang rather than Islamic extremists. The dictatorship of the proletariat, it seems, has given way before the establishment of the Caliphate as the transcendent answer to some German youths’ personal angst.
This is good news indeed for Islamists, but not so good for the rest of us.
Peace!
Dan
The "moderate" Muslims wish to carry out a longer, quieter, more deceptive jihad. They see obl as screwing this up by alerting the world to the more fanatical elements of Islam. He's blowing their cover!
But whatever that is positive to taken from this pronouncement (and I do give the guy credit for at least saying SOMETHING), let's not forget that the violent murderous jihadis are every bit a part of Islam as the rest of them.
Terrorists are just a personification of the Fatal Gene of Islam, which will always instruct its followers to reject free will and insist on complete submission to "allah." That will not change until Islam is reformed, and if it is, there will be millions of still radical Islamists who will then target Protestant Muslims along with the rest of us.
Islamists: You own the terrorists. They come from your ranks.
People, people................Let's remember the catch phrase in the Movie "What about Bob?" (starring Richard Dreyfus and Bill Murray -"Baby steps, Baby steps".............
I suppose that we should give the sheik credit for not being as blood thirsty as he could be.
BUT - if members of my faith were involved in jihad against my neighbors, I wouldn't be writing statements.
I would be helping the police bring them to justice.
This tepid condemnation reminds me of something my stepmother, who is German, said. I was engaging in a bit of Godwin's Law and mentioned something about Nazis during the war, to which her response was, "Yea, those crummy Nazis."
"This issue is not open for debate. Islam, as the final religion, has supremacy over all faiths and over every aspect of life. There is no place for secularism in the lands of Islam or among the Muslims."
This sassy line is from one of this bozos e-books.
here
Sadly,I didn't have to dig too deep.
He probably sang Over the Rainbow after delivering this b*llsh!t.....
"This issue is not open for debate. Islam, as the final religion, has supremacy over all faiths and over every aspect of life. There is no place for secularism in the lands of Islam or among the Muslims."
This sassy line is from one of this bozos e-books.
here
Sadly,I didn't have to dig too deep.
He probably sang Over the Rainbow after delivering this b*llsh!t.....
What a grand fellow he is. Telling OBL to leave his fellow Muslims alone. It sounds like a call for OBL to direct his displeasure directly to the Infidel. Only without comming out and saying it directly.
What really matters is never spoken of out loud.
Very little, too late, as these retards come to realize the West is on to them.
To tell imams that they are not allowed to preach hate intolerance supremicism or sharia, and that they will be held accountable for their words - then we will have the chance at coexistance.
Until then, the best jihadi is a dead one, and that should go for their enablers as well.
The House of Saud should fall.
Because they (Islam) narrowly think they have truth when in fact they have the opposite they will fail. I base this observation on fact not myth or fiction. Words and ideas are under attack as never have been before. Right is wrong and wrong is right. Statements like 'that's your truth' or 'your can only read the koran in Arabic' are two sides of the same coin.
I have stated this before and I will state it again. We in a 'holy war' for lack of a better term. We are at war about what is true or truth. It is sinister and evil at its core. It represents everything anti-God even when it uses God words and ideas. Its main enemies are Jews and Christians because they have a theology and history of the true and living God. It's aim is to keep people from knowing the truth of Jesus Christ the Son of the true and living God.
The fact, I referred to earlier is the person and work of Jesus Christ. He (if you will study the stories) said and did some amazing things. He did not threaten to blow up or kill anyone. People loved him and followed him everywhere he went. He healed, fed and taught LOVE. He did condemn the religious leaders of his day because they were keeping people from God. The most amazing thing he did was predicting his death and raising from the dead three days later. He did this according to the scripture perfectly. You may not believe what I have written but in order win this war you need to understand the full scoop of the enemy and the battle.
Eph 6:12
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
أسر 6:12
لأننا لا تصارع ضد اللحم والدم ، بل ضد الحكام ضد السلطات ، ضد القوى الكونية الحالي حول هذا الظلام ، ضد قوى الشر الروحيه في الاماكن السماوية
"It is refreshing, then, that Al-Awdah apparently rejects the contention (explained by Anjem Chaudary here) that no non-Muslim is innocent."
Huh?
"Our Lord tells us: “Whosoever kills a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the Earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saves the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the lives of all mankind.” [Sûrah al-Mâ’idah: 32]"
Then who are the corrupters?
@veritas-emet
Then who are the corrupters?
I would venture to guess that we (non-muslim) are the corrupters. Maybe those that say Jesus is the Son of God (I will not use the name allah that is another god). Remember if they call us currupters they are the currupters. Islam has not brought anything new to the understanding of anything divine. And they have stolen most everything from Jewish and Christian teachings corrupting it.
Titus 1:16
Such people claim they know God, but they deny him by the way they live. They are despicable and disobedient, worthless for doing anything good.
تيتوس 1:16
مطالبة هؤلاء الناس انهم يعرفون الله ، ولكنها تنكر له طريقة عيشهم. فهي حقيره وعاصي ، لا قيمة لعمل اي شيء جيد
So, Bin Laden first, then this "cleric".
Brothers in aims, if not tactics.
Both need a dirt nap.
Since when do opposites call each other 'brother'; only when they're on the same side, right? "Something stinks in Denmark", as they say.
Bottom line...
only reason he denounced OBL was that he failed to attain his objective-downfall of the west.
That can only be done from within (5th column is doing a good job of that as we can see).
Still good for a *yawn*.
lol
"Who is responsible for Western governments pursuing every charitable project in the world, so that the orphans, the poor, and the needy throughout the globe are deprived of food, education, and other essential needs?"
We're so mean.
He needs to take this baloney a bit farther. Western governments only pursue "charities" whose money funds terrorism.
So who is responsible for money going to weapons for Islamic killers, thus depriving the poor? Not just "Brother Osama" but also "Brother Nasrallah" and all the terrorist-supporting "brothers" (and others) around the world.
Oh, brother.
Now, why oh why would they be upset that mohammed could be a name for a puss`...errr, ok, never mind!
LOL