Turki Al-Hamad says preposterously: “Our religion has been hijacked by many and has been made savage, so to speak.” But when he says, “ISIS is an organization that only reaps what has previously been sown,” he is absolutely correct: the Saudis have spent billions to propagate around the world an understanding of Islam that corresponds exactly to that of the Islamic State. It presents itself as the true and authentic manifestation of Islam, and no Muslims who oppose it have successfully refuted this claim.
“Saudi Author Turki Al-Hamad: ISIS Reaps What We Have Sown,” MEMRI, November 13, 2015:
In a TV interview, Saudi author Turki Al-Hamad said that there was a need for “a real revolution in our education” and for the “humanization of religion,” because “our religion has been hijacked by many and has been made savage.” He further said that “ISIS is an organization that only reaps what has previously been sown.” Al-Hamad was speaking on Sky News Arabia on November 13, 2015.
Following are excerpts:
Host: “How can we fight ISIS ideologically?”
Turki Al-Hamad: “There is no magical solution. There is no magic wand that could change things. The deformation that our societies have undergone for the past three decades will need a long time [to repair]. It should be based on the reprograming of our cultural mentality. We should reprogram our culture in one way or another, and that can only be achieved through a real revolution in our education. The revolution in our education should be based on the humanization of religion.”
Host: “What do you mean by ‘the humanization of religion’?”
Turki Al-Hamad: “Religion is the cornerstone of our culture. But our religion has been hijacked by many and has been made savage, so to speak. Humanizing religion means to look for its humane aspects.”
[…]
Turki Al-Hamad: “The truth is that we need a kind of religious revolution – a religious revolution that would restore religion to our Lord.”
Host: “Some accuse you, along with others associated with the liberal current, of ‘provoking the sentiments of society,’ thus pushing the youth toward extremism. How do you respond to such accusations?”
Turki Al-Hamad: “If you asked these youths, they probably wouldn’t know who I am. This is not a matter of provocation. When you present a new idea, or warn of certain disease and offer treatment – of course it is painful. This is not a provocation. This is picking [at] the wound. It is time to stop ignoring our wounds and pains just so we won’t provoke anyone. You cannot go to a doctor, for example, and tell him not touch your wound because it hurts. Of course it hurts. It is a wound, and it was caused by many things. If you want to treat this wound, you must touch it and deal with it directly. Unfortunately, we have not yet acknowledged the fact that ISIS is an organization that only reaps what has previously been sown.”
[…]
Turki Al-Hamad: “When I have no solution…We see the entire world contributing to modern civilization, but we have nothing to show for it. So what do we do? We do not admit that we are incapable or that we have no solution. We resort to the past as an excuse for a strategy. But returning to the past is not a strategy. It is connected, one way or another, to conspiracy narratives, and to the claim that the others are plotting against us, and that we are being targeted, and so on. All these are self-defense mechanisms.”
[…]
Turki Al-Hamad: “Where does the Muslim refugee go? To Europe and America. Where does the Muslim enjoy liberties? In Britain. A Muslim there can demonstrate in the streets of London, declare that he is against the British state, and criticize the regime. A week ago, there was a demonstration of Islamists in Denmark. They all called for an Islamic Caliphate, from the heart of Denmark, and under the protection of the local police. If Western secularism was really against religion, would people there be allowed to build mosques – or churches, for that matter?”
[…]
Host: “Are you saying that secularism is the solution?”
Turki Al-Hamad: “In many cases, separating the religious institution [from the state]… I’m not calling to shut it down, but it cannot trump all other considerations. The religious institution is a mad-made [sic] institution. We must differentiate between the religious institution and religion itself. Only religion is sacred. The religious institution is a social institution, just like many others.”…
Aron says
ARAB CHILLS COMING SOON TO SAUDI ARABIA
BBC- Oil prices have plunged from a five-year high of $125 a barrel in March 2012 to just $37.18 now.
Saudi Arabia said that oil revenues, which make up 77% of the total revenue figure for 2015, are down 23% compared to last year.
It is the largest member of the Opec oil-producing cartel and has refused to cut output in order to raise prices in an attempt to put other producers – mainly US shale oil companies – out of business.
Saudi thinks it can withstand low oil prices for longer than US producers, many of which are small, heavily-indebted firms.
BUT…
Saudi Arabia budget deficit swells on oil price fall
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35188807
Saudi Arabia’s budget deficit soared to $98bn (£65.7bn) this year as the world’s biggest oil exporter counted the cost of falling crude prices.
In the first budget under King Salman, the kingdom said revenues reached 608bn riyals (£108.7bn; $162bn), down 15% on official expectations.
Spending for the year hit 975bn riyals, some 13% more than forecast.
To help make up the shortfall, the country’s finance ministry said it would cut subsidies for fuel.
Petrol prices could in some cases increase by as much as 50%, authorities said, although they will remain low by international standards.
Diesel, electricity and water prices will also increase.
AND A war spilling into kingdom from Yemen
THIS COULD MARK BEGINNING OF COLLAPSE OF THE WAHABI EMPIRE
If Civil Strife, terrorism and Civil war starts inside Saudi Arabia-
ISIS may relocate to Medina?
mortimer says
We should stop buying their oil and ban Islam as irreconcilable with modern human rights.
pdxnag says
You cannot ban Islam. You can only expel those who practice it and preach that it (and it’s calls for violent sedition) is a good thing. [Unless that is what you meant when you say ban Islam.]
mortimer says
pdxnag wrote: “You cannot ban Islam” … but we can ban Islam.
We can refuse to recognize Islam as registered religion with a tax number. We do not register other Death Cult religions…such as Aztec or head hunter human sacrifice cults.
Islam calls for human sacrifice and calls it ‘jihad’ or ‘executing blasphemers’.
Practicing Islam without a tax number would become illegal and chargeable. Muslims would have to leave and go elsewhere or re-write jihad out of Islam.
John Johness says
Medina: You can put money on it – Islamic State without Mecca and Medina is not a Caliphate. Iraq/Syria are just a sideshow for the real game. The recent fall of Ramadi ( actually more like its demolition) and the push to Raqqa, mean IS has lost a bit of appeal (their mojo – if I can be cross cultural here) – as defeat means that God is not behind them.
SO they will definitely mount multiple attacks in Europe/USA or Westerners somewhere within the next month. If you look at the early wars of Islam, there were setbacks, but the Islamic forces attacked on another front. They had to to keep their troops. This is the IS model. It can only be a ‘setback’ and not a ‘defeat’ if they mount a major terrorism action. The logic is inescapable and you can not stop people who are willing to die “I see paradise down the barrel of your gun”
mortimer says
Turki Al-Hamad said: “Our religion has been … made savage”.
Apparently, we should believe him because he says so…proof not needed.
Has Turki Al-Hamad even read the Sira, the hadiths, Sharia law and Islamic history?
The whole 1400 history of Islam is PSYCHOPATHIC … with friends murdering friends and family murdering family in an UNENDING river of blood flowing from the chief psychopath Mohammed.
Nothing good came from Mohammed.
Islam has many serious problems that are IRRECONCIABLE with modernity:
1 No Golden Rule 2 No free speech 3 No democracy 4 Jihad – holy war of world conquest 5 Honour killings 6 Taqiyya – sacred lying 7 Taqlid – group think 8 Misogyny – repression of women 9 Rape of kafirs as jihad prizes 10 Genocide 11 Ethnic cleansing 12 Anti-Semitism 13 Al-Walaa wal-Baraa – Islamic apartheid 14 Torture 15 Plundering 16 Cruel and unusual punishments 17 Backwardness – stagnation 18 Violence against women 19 Slavery 20 Discriminatory Sharia law 21 Hatred of the arts 22 Pedophilia disguised as child marriage 23 Fifty generations of cousin marriage and genetic defects 24 Cruelty to animals 25 Extortion tax to humiliate disbelievers 26 No historic basis 27 Anti-intellectual obscurantism 28 FGM 29 Arab racism 30 Theocratic totalitarianism 31 Vigilantism 32 Supremacism
nacazo says
but he’s right it was made savage from the start day one year -10 of the hijra by the founder himself: Mo the pedo, warlord, highway robber, slave trader, rapist, genocidal maniac, savage.
mortimer says
I personally believe the author(s) of the Koran rewrote Christian texts and added bits of the Talmud and Zoroastrianism for extra flavor. If there was an original Gnostic-Christian cult, it was re-written with savage, degrading elements from Bedouin culture. Over a period of 200 years, ‘Islam’ was developed by scheming politicians.
Westman says
Mortimer, that does seem the most logical and likely origin of Islam; Politicians and religious scholars in an era of zero-sum economy enabling the subjugation, slavery, taxation, and killing of non-Muslims to transfer wealth.
mortimer says
Turki Al-Hamad is careful in saying that the ‘religious institution’ of Islam is ‘man-made’, yet he fails to say that ‘Sharia law is man-made’…which it is…for that would get him killed.
Turki Al-Hamad has no solution…because there is no mechanism within Islam for reform. Islam is the only faith that SACRALIZES and CONDONES vigilante murder.
Islam is ultimately defended by VIGILANTES who are not punished if they murder an apostate or a blasphemer.
Vigilantism is the secret weapon of Islam and accounts for its impossibility to be reformed.
Michael Copeland says
The call for “a real revolution in our education” and the “humanization of religion” sounds very similar to what Al Sisi is saying in Egypt to the clerics at Al Azhar. Islam has a long track record, though, of total resistance to change – the product of its death penalty for doing so. No holding of breath.
mortimer says
Saudi author: The Islamic State “only reaps what has previously been sown” …
Agree…Saudi Arabia sowed its wild oats of jihad. The offspring is ISIS. ISIS is the true son of Islam…a monster.
ISIS is no different from any other Islamic state from the past…it just has more modern weapons and cellphones.
Same Bronze-Age barbarism, different century.
Singh the Sikh says
If you consider the context TUrki has said as much as he can wthout having a fatwa issued against him.
Kim Bruce says
I have one question…do you think his book will hit the NY Times Bestseller list?
SpiritOf1683 says
Islam has been savage for as long as it has existed.
vcragain says
“Islam has been savage for as long as it has existed” – you are forgetting conveniently that there was a period of incredible modernity during the Spanish occupation by Muslims. The culture was peaceful (once they had achieved their conquest of Spain) and which was a mirror of what was going on in Northern African states too, was civil with wonderful engineering and beautiful gardens and buildings. They were a cultivated, highly educated, smart people in a time when the rest of Europe was walking in it’s own feces in the streets ! So – we need to remember that these were not savages, their Islam was not the Islam of ISIS and their current savagery is not the whole of Islam’s history. That being said, there IS a problem now and we have to address it, but putting down a whole culture in the name of hate does nothing but rile up the ignorant – who do nothing but confirm in the world’s eyes that Americans are ignorant Fascists. You can do better America than show yourself up in that light ! .
Jack Diamond says
Oh really. It’s a wonder the Spanish were so ungrateful to their kindly and generous masters as to wage a Reconquista against them and drive them out. Life was so good if the dhimmis did nothing to oppose or offend Muslims wasn’t it? Is that not an example for us today, to follow the example of the dhimmis under an enlightened Muslim beneficence?
So what if churches were turned into mosques (with Jews & Christians used as slave labor for it) or so many Spanish became Muslims, often at the point of a sword. So what if Jews and Christians had to pay jizya, ransom for their lives. Did you know in the 9th century Jews had to wear a white patch with the image of an ape (and Christians the image of a pig)? Later the Jews wore a yellow badge– which the Nazis would copy. Then those cultivated Muslims could distinguish them. Oh but it turns out even this one historical romance of “tolerant” Islam (Andalusia), this one “success” which we are to fervently believe in and use as the model for the future, was not as depicted. Here some more “ignorance” for you:
“The records of the Muslim jurists, such as Ibn Abdun, confirm that the tolerance of Muslim Spain is a myth. In his opinion on the treatment of the Christians and Jews of Seville, Ibn Abdun insisted that “No…Jew or Christian may be allowed to wear the dress of an aristocrat, nor of a jurist, nor of a wealthy individual; on the contrary they must be detested and avoided. It is forbidden to accost them with the greeting, ‘Peace be upon you’…In effect, ‘Satan has gained possession of them, and caused them to forget God’s warning. They are the confederates of Satan’s path; Satan’s confederates will surely be the losers! (Quran 58:19). A distinct sign must be imposed upon them in order that they may be recognized and this will be for them a form of disgrace.”
A well-known jurist and poet of Muslim Spain may have helped to promote the Grenada massacres in his famous anti-Jewish poem:
“Bring them [the Jews] down to their place and Return them to the most abject station. They used to roam around us in tatters Covered with contempt, humiliation, and scorn. They used to rummage amongst the dungheaps for a bit of a filthy rag To serve as a shroud for a man to be buried in…Do not consider that killing them is treachery. Nay, it would be treachery to leave them scoffing.”
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/11/fitzgerald-the-persistent-myth-of-andalusia
And at more length, courtesy Bat Ye’or and Andrew Bostom:
“The humiliating status imposed on the dhimmis and the confiscation of their land provoked many revolts, punished by massacres, as in Toledo (761, 784-86, 797). After another Toledan revolt in 806, seven hundred inhabitants were executed. Insurrections erupted in Saragossa from 781 to 881, Cordova (805), Merida (805-813, 828 and the following year, and later in 868), and yet again in Toledo (811-819); the insurgents were crucified, as prescribed in Qur’an 5:33*.
The revolt in Cordova of 818 was crushed by three days of massacres and pillage, with 300 notables crucified and 20 000 families expelled. Feuding was endemic in the Andalusian cities between the different sectors of the population: Arab and Berber colonizers, Iberian Muslim converts (Muwalladun) and Christian dhimmis (Mozarabs). There were rarely periods of peace in the Amirate of Cordova (756-912), nor later.
Al-Andalus represented the land of jihad par excellence. Every year, sometimes twice a year, raiding expeditions were sent to ravage the Christian Spanish kingdoms to the north, the Basque regions, or France and the Rhone valley, bringing back booty and slaves. Andalusian corsairs attacked and invaded along the Sicilian and Italian coasts, even as far as the Aegean Islands, looting and burning as they went. Thousands of people were deported to slavery in Andalusia, where the caliph kept a militia of tens of thousand of Christian slaves brought from all parts of Christian Europe (the Saqaliba), and a harem filled with captured Christian women. Society was sharply divided along ethnic and religious lines, with the Arab tribes at the top of the hierarchy, followed by the Berbers who were never recognized as equals, despite their Islamization; lower in the scale came the mullawadun converts and, at the very bottom, the dhimmi Christians and Jews.
The Andalusian Maliki jurist Ibn Abdun (d. 1134) offered these telling legal opinions regarding Jews and Christians in Seville around 1100 C.E.: “No…Jew or Christian may be allowed to wear the dress of an aristocrat, nor of a jurist, nor of a wealthy individual; on the contrary they must be detested and avoided. It is forbidden to [greet] them with the [expression], ‘Peace be upon you’. In effect, ‘Satan has gained possession of them, and caused them to forget God’s warning. They are the confederates of Satan’s party; Satan’s confederates will surely be the losers!’ (Qur’an 58:19 [modern Dawood translation]). A distinctive sign must be imposed upon them in order that they may be recognized and this will be for them a form of disgrace.”
In Granada, the Jewish viziers Samuel Ibn Naghrela and his son Joseph, who protected the Jewish community, were both assassinated between 1056 to 1066, followed by the annihilation of the Jewish population by the local Muslims. It is estimated that up to five thousand Jews perished in the pogrom by Muslims that accompanied the 1066 assassination. This figure equals or exceeds the number of Jews reportedly killed by the Crusaders during their pillage of the Rhineland, some thirty years later, at the outset of the First Crusade.
Indeed, although Maimonides is frequently referred to as a paragon of Jewish achievement facilitated by the enlightened rule of Andalusia, his own words debunk this utopian view of the Islamic treatment of Jews: “..the Arabs have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us…Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they..”
A valid summary assessment of interfaith relationships in Muslim Spain, and the contemporary currents responsible for obfuscating that history, can be found in Richard Fletcher’s engaging Moorish Spain. Mr. Fletcher offers these sobering, unassailable observations:
“The witness of those who lived through the horrors of the Berber conquest, of the Andalusian fitnah in the early eleventh century, of the Almoravid invasion- to mention only a few disruptive episodes- must give it [i.e., the roseate view of Muslim Spain] the lie. The simple and verifiable historical truth is that Moorish Spain was more often a land of turmoil than it was of tranquility…Tolerance? Ask the Jews of Granada who were massacred in 1066, or the Christians who were deported by the Almoravids to Morocco in 1126 (like the Moriscos five centuries later)…In the second half of the twentieth century a new agent of obfuscation makes its appearance: the guilt of the liberal conscience, which sees the evils of colonialism- assumed rather than demonstrated-foreshadowed in the Christian conquest of al-Andalus and the persecution of the Moriscos (but not, oddly, in the Moorish conquest and colonization). Stir the mix well together and issue it free to credulous academics and media persons throughout the western world. Then pour it generously over the truth…in the cultural conditions that prevail in the west today the past has to be marketed, and to be successfully marketed it has to be attractively packaged. Medieval Spain in a state of nature lacks wide appeal. Self-indulgent fantasies of glamour…do wonders for sharpening up its image. But Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch.”
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2004/04/andalusian-myth-eurabian-reality
What Islam was “their” Islam again? What Islam is there but in the Qur’an and Sunnah, what Muhammad said and did?
mortimer says
Turki Al-Hamad has a clever ploy: ‘The Religion’ of Islam is up somewhere above human tampering pristine and pure, but those NASTY mullahs and terrorists twisted, perverted and HIGHJACKED Islam, turning it into an ‘institution’…I guess he never read about Mohammed making a ‘Constitution of Medina’, thus creating the ‘institution’ of the Islamic State.
I guess Al-Hamad thinks everyone of the ‘rightly-guided’ caliphs also ‘highjacked’ Islam…maybe Mohammed ‘highjacked’ Islam too.
In fact, everybody has ‘highjacked’ this pure, undefinable ideal that know what can describe because it is so ineffable! Allah just hasn’t been able to stop people from ‘highjacking’ Islam.
mortimer says
Corrected: “everybody has ‘highjacked’ this pure, undefinable, Olympean ideal that no one can describe because it is so ineffable!
Kanda .Elongi says
The truth, is islam is a political ideology with a veneer of religion .Reforming it will leave it stark naked, powerless and of no appeal..For the good of human kind however long it takes ,this ideology has to be broken down piece by piece.One day this monster will fall and it’s death will be celebrated by many ,that are in it’s clutch.
Baucent says
Turki Al-Hamad says preposterously: “Our religion has been hijacked by many and has been made savage, so to speak.”
I think Robert you may be a little uncharitable to this character. I have never heard of him before, but he may be a “reformer”, a muslim who would like Islam to go through a reformation, to remove all the supremacist and violent tendencies. If that is the case he needs to tread carefully. The reformer type always use phrases like “our religion has been hijacked”. This is a self defense tactic, as to call the religion “savage” in nature and teaching would leave him a target for assassination (another muslim tradition).
Karen says
I read this article with a certain amount of amazement; finally, a Muslim intellectual willing to publically admit the worst truths about Islam as practiced around much of the world today. My excitement was reined in by the many sensible comments following the article as I remembered, yet again, that it’s the texts that are the problem. So, unfortunately, the solution is not a going-back-to-basics as in the case of the Christian reformation.
I did find this statement interesting: “When you present a new idea, or warn of certain disease and offer treatment – of course it is painful. This is not a provocation.” Many fine people accused of ‘Islamophobia’ are thinking the same thing!
Even so, the overall sentiment of the article is refreshing; yes, we do reap what we sow, and Saudi Arabia is increasingly feeling the pain of the hate they are spreading around the world, and I’m rather happy about that.
Angemon says
Made savage by the people who invented it and hijacked by the people practicing it in the same fashion as the people who invented it.