“The United Arab Emirates has summoned Qatar’s ambassador to formally protest against criticism of the Gulf country by a prominent religious leader who has lived in Qatar for decades, the UAE’s official news agency has said. Fares al-Nuaimi, Qatar’s ambassador to the UAE, was summoned to the foreign ministry in Abu Dhabi and handed “an official letter of protest” over “insults” by Muslim leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi, WAM news agency reported on Sunday. In a sermon two weeks ago delivered at a mosque in the Qatari capital, Doha, and broadcast by state television, Qaradawi condemned the UAE as a country which was against Islamic rule, UAE media reported. His comments came just days after the UAE jailed a group of 30 Emiratis and Egyptians to terms ranging from three months to five years for forming a Muslim Brotherhood cell, AFP news agency reported. “We have waited for our neighbour to express a clear rejection of this insolence and to offer sufficient clarifications and assurances for this misrepresentation and incitement against the UAE,” WAM quoted UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash…………..”
The potentates of our Gulf region are at it again. Here is a summary of where they are and how some of them got there:
- Qatar’s regime is known to support the Muslim Brotherhood ( MB ). The Qataris were close to the Egyptian MB and its ruling classes; they even poured a few billion dollars in foreign aid into the country. They also aspired for a while in 2011-2012 to become the king-makers in a new Islamist Syria.
- The ruling Saudi princes favorite allies and their favorite proxies and fifth column are the Salafis who are basically Wahhabis. They profess that any Muslim ruler is sacrosanct, no matter how corrupt he is, as long as he remains “Muslim”: just what the princes love. The Al Saud are solidly against the Muslim Brotherhood although they were their close allies against the secular pan-Arab tide of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Many of the Muslim Brotherhood sought asylum with the Al Saud during the secular leftist Nasserist era in Egypt. Some of them converted from Sunni Islam to Wahhabism but most did not, and the Al Saud never forgave those. Yet a strain of Wahhabism has also seeped into and influenced the Egyptian Brotherhood.
- The ruling family of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Al-Nahayan brothers who own Abu Dhabi and its suburbs, have also started their own war against the Muslim Brotherhood/MB. It is related to the fact that elements of the MB have thrived in the UAE, especially in some of the emirates. Some of them have called for ‘reform’ and political participation. Those were promptly thrown in jail and their citizenship revoked by the ruling family, not necessarily in that order. The UAE, as well as the Saudi princes, were no doubt instrumental in the movement that led to the military coup by Generalisimo Al Sisi that overthrew the elected Morsi government in July of 2013. Yet the relentless campaign against the MB by the UAE officials and media has been surprising, perhaps because they had earlier underestimated the strength of the MB within their realm.
- Which brings us to Kuwait. Nobody underestimated the strength of the MB in Kuwait. From early on, from several decades ago, the Muslim Brotherhood were allowed freedoms that were denied any other group, except for the Salafis who also benefited. In exchange, both Islamist groups turned a blind eye to certain ‘irregularities’, be they constitutional or political or financial. Their influence even grew after the country was liberated by U.S. forces from the Iraqi occupation in 1991. Both the Salafis and MB formed strong political alliances with tribal elements which also have strong Wahhabi leanings. But the Islamists and their tribal allies overreached after they decided to jump ship and form the main political opposition, openly calling for what would be a Wahhabi theocracy. They dominated the ‘opposition’ in 2012, selectively calling for an elected government in Kuwait even as they strongly opposed any such calls for democracy in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Their political clout is weaker now than it was two years ago. This link here leads to other links and posts on this particular topic.
- Which brings us to Bahrain and its continuing uprising that is entering its fourth year. The official trend in Bahrain is toward Wahhabism, with both the Salafis and MB elements literally praying toward Riyadh. As do their potentates. It is almost correct to say that in the Manama of the rulers, the city of imported Asian and Arab mercenaries and complacent Western expatriates, it is cool to be Wahhabi, it is hip to be Wahhabi, it is chic to be Wahhabi. That is, if you disregard the majority of the people who beg to differ. Hell, given where the money comes from, I’d say it is smart to be Wahhabi. For now.
- Which still leaves Oman. But I have written before that the Omanis do not cotton up to their Wahhabi neighbors and resist their influence. They prefer to look away across the seas, not necessarily toward the frowning mullahs, but across the Gulf and the Indian Ocean; to face the seas and forget about their unsavory brotherly neighbors. That has been their history for centuries. And who can blame them?
Cheers
mhg
