Yemeni columnist: International Islamic terrorism is as Saudi as crude oil

Hassan Al-Haifi speaks here of "the Wahhabi misguided rendition of Islam," but the only indication he provides of what exactly he thinks is misguided about it is that the Wahhabis fought and are fighting their fellow Muslims. Meanwhile, he takes our friends and allies the Saudis to task for pretending that they are not responsible for the global spread of the jihad ideology.

"'Libya and Iran financing Al-Qaeda in Yemen': The Saudi Gazette Really Knows Better," by Hassan Al-Haifi in the Yemen Times, August 28:

One cannot help but read with awe the gross misrepresentations of the facts by the Saudi press, as it seeks to whitewash the evil doings of the Saudi religious establishment throughout the world. It is not just by trying to disassociate themselves from all terrorist (and safe to say, absolutely non-Islamic, in deed and in concept) activities.

Like last Thursday's (August 21, 2008) article of the Saudi Gazette (link: www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2008082114998), and of course acting under directions from their bosses in the Saudi regime, these paid pens of the Saudi regime wish to convince the reader that anyone to their dislike is the torchbearer of all the evil they have unleashed throughout the world over the last three decades. Thus the Saudi Gazette wishes to mislead the world that the Saudis are as innocent of Al-Qaeda and all its doings as the Prophet Joseph was of the seductress that was infatuated with him and demanded that he relieve her from the fire of temptation that had come to overtake her, because of this infatuation.

That is a reference not to the Bible but to the Qur'an's Sura 12, about which you can read here.

The fact of the matter is that the international so called "Islamic" terrorism, which has engulfed the Islamic world and brought havoc to the rest of the non-Islamic world, is as Saudi as the light crude oil that provides the source of financing for the propagation of the Wahhabi misguided rendition of Islam. The fact of the matter is that the Wahhabi Establishment, itself a hereditary clerical order (although Islam forbids the existence of a clergy) under the tight control of the descendants of Mohammed Abdul-Wahhab. This establishment is the mentor and financial backer of all these prominent so called "Salafi" movements. Mohammed Abdul Wahhab presumably concocted the divergent and deviant "Wahhabi" creed of Islam over two hundred years ago. One is puzzled why the followers of this gross misrepresentation of Islam in so many ways do not even like to be called Wahhabis, and try to cloud this association by taking on names that associate them with genuine ideological and seminarian associations (such as "Salafi", Moslem "Brotherhood", "Jihadists", "Fundamentalist"). The answer is obvious, as the Wahhabis are viewed by most mainstream Moslems, even the majority of Sunnis, as unorthodox, bloodthirsty highway robbers, as their early history was drowned with the blood of thousands of fellow Moslems, who were the victims of their lust for loot from pilgrims to Mecca and from those who dare dispute their misguided interpretations of Islam.

So the "mainstream Moslems" view the Wahhabis as "unorthodox, bloodthirsty highway robbers" because "their early history was drowned with the blood of thousands of fellow Moslems." Not, you see, because they make war against unbelievers. On that the Wahhabis and other Islamic sects and schools do not disagree.

You will never see, in their revelations of the history of their movement, the hundreds of raids, especially in the earlier part of the past two and a half centuries, which these bandits inflicted on their brethren of the faith, who they actually labeled as "non-believers" or infidels, which makes their blood and their assets sanctified for them.

Not that the writer is against Wahhabism as such:

One is not here trying to smear the glorious bloody past of the Wahhabi Movement. Not that their past should be ignored, but one can state for certain that intra-sectarian bloody conflict between Moslems is virtually non-existent since the Prophet Mohammed's days until the Wahhabis came into being. Sure there was politically related Moslem bloodshed, but never was this fuelled by how long your beard is, or where you place your hands while standing in prayer and some of the other very secondary issues, in which Moslems might differ, which to the Wahhabis can be ground for war or for repression, if you are living in a Wahhabi regime. There have only been two countries that have succumbed to Wahhabi regimes (Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan under the Taliban), and in both cases it was by the use of repressive force. Ironically, there is a suspicious historical collusion between the Wahhabi movement and the British Crown (see Wahhabi Past), but that is a long story and there are enough sources in the internet and elsewhere that covers it.

The point to be made here is that the Saudis are not at all acting responsibly when they seek to disassociate themselves from an evil they have been rearing now for over two hundred years whether with British support or collusion with Masonic or Zionist [ed.: Boo!] forces, as so many historical chroniclers wish to point out on many occasions. The obvious incongruity of the accusation that Al-Qaeda is funded by the Iranians, with whom there is a big rift with the Al-Qaeda from a sectarian point of view is somewhat unbelievable and the same is true with the Libyans. On the latter one cannot help but remember how Washington tried to mislead the world into believing that Saddam Hussein was associated with Al-Qaeda (Actually Saddam had his own means of terror, which was more straightforward and down to earth and discernible than the wishy washy form Saudi Arabia has been nurturing and with which the Saudis could never disclaim any sectarian, ideological and even congenial association, as most of the Al-Qaeda elements that have been killed or arrested are actually Saudi citizens (Yemen has just submitted eight of them to the Saudis last week as well).. So it is not hard to tell, who is the real backer of world terrorism, morally and materially?