Category Archives: Salafi

Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Salafi, Terrorism

Post-Abbottabad: Salafi Blood-fest Continues in Pakistan and Iraq………

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“Gunmen in the southwestern province of Baluchistan attacked a bus carrying Shiite pilgrims to Iran on Tuesday, killing at least 25 people and wounding 6 more, local police officials said. The bus driver said that 8 to 10 attackers ordered the pilgrims off the bus and opened fire on them, the police said. Hours later, the extremist Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jangvi claimed responsibility for the attack. The group, which the authorities say carried out previous attacks against Shiites in Baluchistan, is believed to be affiliated with Al Qaeda. ……… Attacks on Shiite pilgrims traveling to Iran through Baluchistan have been frequent over the last decade. Two such attacks occurred last month. A year ago, 57 people at a Shiite rally in Quetta were killed by a suicide bomber. Shiites are a minority in mainly Sunni Pakistan. Most of the Shiites in Baluchistan belong to the Hazara ethnic group ….….”

I see that the Pakistani Salafis, like their Salafi brothers on my Gulf, are still busy spreading the message of brotherhood and love. Just like their imported virgin-inspired suicidal brothers are still doing in Iraq. If these horny fellows can’t get to their allotted ‘untouched’ virgins by killing Americans, then there are others, more vulnerable fellow Pakistanis or Iraqis or others. The execution of their shaikh of the hashasheen, the master terrorist in Abbottabad has not slowed this bunch down.
Cheers
mhg


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Corruption, Culture, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Arabian Peninsula: between Salafi Wahhabi Dogma and the Greed of Potentates…………..

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“However there is more at stake than a new interest in heritage or a desire to attract tourists as part of the kingdom’s bid to diversify its overwhelmingly oil-reliant economy. As elsewhere, controlling history is key to power. The House of al’Saud has only ever been able to rule its kingdom with the collaboration and support of the largely ultra-conservative clergy. Reforms can be pushed through – such as the introduction of women’s education, which provoked rioting in the towns of al-Qassem in the 1960s – but only with the consent of the majority of clerics. For religious conservatives in the kingdom, any physical traces of history, even that of the first Muslims, is a distraction from God and raises the spectre of polytheism. So for many years, all traces of early worship within the kingdom, let alone of anything that might be deemed un-Islamic, have been destroyed. Scores of shrines, religious places, cemeteries and historical sites have been razed, damaged or built over. This is true even, indeed especially, in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. There is thus religious – and therefore political – resistance to preserving anything that is left. Mammon as well as God plays a role in the new contest of the kingdom’s history. Most recently there has been a row between developers who hope to build apartments………….”

Nothing in all history has done as much damage to the monuments and artifacts of the Arabian Peninsula’s past as the expansion of Saudi rule to cover the Peninsula some eighty years ago. The theocratic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has done what centuries of time could not: destroyed monuments from before Islam and especially from the early years of Islam. Ancient houses where the Prophet Mohammed and his early companions were born, lived, and prayed, have been torn down by an alliance of Salafi Wahhabi stupidity and dogma and the greed of the potentates and princes and their developer partners. In their place, high rise hotels and apartment complexes and shopping malls have risen.

Cheers
mhg


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Ali Khamenei, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Salafi, Syria, Yemen

Khamenei on “Islamic” Arab Uprisings…………..

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“Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has said the great Islamic movements that have recently arisen in the Muslim world are a prelude to a greater development and the rule of Islam. The Leader made the remarks on Tuesday during a meeting with scholars and intellectuals who attended the fifth meeting of the Ahl al-Bayt World Assembly, which was held in Tehran on Sunday. He also said, “Our stance is to support and strengthen these movements, and we hope that these Islamic movements will bring an end to the hegemony of the main enemies, namely the Zionists and the United States.” In addition, the Leader advised Muslims to be vigilant about the enemies’ threats, especially their plots to create division between Shias and Sunnis. These plots are politically motivated, he said, adding, “The global arrogance (the forces of imperialism) are especially pursuing a policy of Shiaophobia in addition to the policy of Islamophobia………….” Mehr News Agency

Ayatollah Khamenei is wrong, of course, in labeling the Arab uprisings generally as Islamist, calling them “Islamic movements”. They started as quite secular movements in Tunisia and Egypt, and most Islamists like Salafis and many others either opposed or at least hesitated about them. The Islamists, ever opportunistic, especially the Salafis, have jumped on the bandwagon. Yet he has a point in that the Arab states undergoing uprisings are becoming more Islamist. Egypt will almost certainly become more “Islamist”, as will Libya although I suspect Libya is more susceptible to the threat of the Salafi movement. Syria will certainly become much more Islamist and much less secular than under the Baath, if Assad is overthrown, unless the military takes over again. Syria has had a long history of religious tolerance, even more so than Egypt in recent decades. Islamists have a leading role in both the Libyan and Syrian uprisings. Bahrain is already co-governed by the Salafis and Wahhabis who also fear a Shi’a resurgence if the Apartheid system is dismantled. As for Yemen? Who knows. Only Tunisia has some hope of blocking the ambitions of the Islamist parties.
Khamenei is quite right about the dangers of Shiaphobia and Islamophobia.
Cheers
mhg

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Al-Qaeda, Iraq, Salafi, Terrorism

Terrorism in Iraq: a Love-Hate Relationship with America, a Repossessed SOFA……..

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““The terrorists stopped the bus at gunpoint and killed 22 men,” said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Hadi Rizayig, the provincial police chief. The highway is protected by the Iraqi Army, he said. Shiite pilgrims have been a frequent target for Sunni insurgents who are trying to revive the sectarian violence that brought Iraq to the brink of civil war just a few years ago. The attack on Monday came less than four months before the remaining United States troops, who surged into Iraq in large numbers in 2007 to stem the sectarian violence, are scheduled to leave the country. In Anbar, a province with a heavily Sunni Muslim population, insurgents have launched many attacks while posing as soldiers or security guards. And on Monday, one of the women who was forced off the bus told officials that four gunmen dressed in military uniforms had stopped the bus at a fake checkpoint……………”

At some point a few years ago, Salafi (and perhaps Ba’athis remnant) terrorists in Iraq discovered the joys of leaving American forces alone. Possibly the fact that these terrorists, also called “insurgents” by more genteel Western people and some delusional Arabs, were defeated in almost every direct military confrontation had something to do with that. Or maybe it were the severe retaliations that ensued. Or maybe they discovered the ease with which to kill Shi’a (and often Sunni) civilians: getting more bang for their bucks donated by neighboring Arab Salafi potentates. Most likely it was a combination of both. And also the fact that many Iraqis stopped sheltering, feeding, and providing them with women.
Now their goal seems odd: on the verge of realizing one of their old ‘stated’ goals, getting rid of the Americans, they are escalating the violence. As the prospects of a renewal of SOFA fade, their attacks get fiercer and bloodier. It is as if they want the American forces to remain in Iraq. If it didn’t sound so ridiculous, I’d suggest that some uber-hawkish U.S senators like McCain, Lieberman (Joe not Avigdor, and wtf is he nowadays?) and Graham are behind these baboons.
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Egypt, Libya, North Africa, Qatar, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Muslim Brotherhood Colors: Qatari, Saudi, Iranian, Chinese……….

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“The Islamists seem to have the upper hand, enjoying the patronage of Qatar, the boiling-rich little Gulf emirate that hosts Yusuf Qaradawi, an influential mentor of the global Muslim Brotherhood, and Al Jazeera, the satellite-television channel that shapes perceptions across the Arab world. Qatar, some surmise, could yet play the part in nurturing Islamists in Libya that Pakistan played in Afghanistan. Mosques are already influencing the new order—often for the good. Within days of the rebel victory in Tripoli, imams broadcast calls for gunmen to stop firing in the air. They have used Friday prayers to tell looters to register their weapons with local offices answerable to the national council and have distributed reminders to be pinned to lampposts. In many districts the mosque is the seat of the new local council, receiving alms to subsidise its activities. Many have wells, and the national council has declared that supplying fresh water is a top priority. Tripoli’s new military commander, Abdel Hakim Bel Haj, once belonged to the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group, regarded as an affiliate of al-Qaeda, which he subsequently renounced. His deputy, Mehdi Herati, sailed with a fiercely Islamist Turkish group in last year’s flotilla to break the siege on Gaza. Ali al-Salabi, a Muslim Brotherhood scholar, has returned from Qatar. Assorted Islamists are suspected of killing Abdel Younis Fattah, the rebel commander who died outside Benghazi in late July in mysterious circumstances……………..”

I told you so about two weeks ago. All Arab uprisings (none are true revolutions yet) end up with more power for the Islamists. That is the natural order now, if only because the dictators and despots had made sure there is no real political life other than in exile or in prison. That leaves out the mosque, in most Arab countries the only place where people can gather without police violence being visited upon them. Unfortunately for the regimes, they could not close down the mosques (most Arab regimes are not nearly as good in controlling the mosques as, say, the Saudis are).
The Qataris have for years had their own favorite Islamists, and they usually tended to be the ones the Saudis disliked: branches of the Muslim Brothers in various places like Egypt and Gaza. The Saudis mistrusted the Egyptian MB, the “Mother of all Muslim Brothers”, especially, partly because they were against Mubarak and partly because they did not think much of the Saudi system as an example to follow (unlike the Salafis).
That is a far cry from some years ago, when Egyptian MB’s found refuge and support in Saudi Arabia against the secular leftist regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser. This is not to say the Saudis don’t have their own favored Muslim Brothers: they do, especially in the Gulf region and parts of Iraq and Syria. Hell, even the Iranian (Shi’a) mullahs have managed to have their own (Sunni) Muslim Brothers in Gaza. (No, I don’t think the Chinese have their favorite Muslim Brothers, not yet, although I suspect that the West does).
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Salafi, Terrorism, Women 100, WTF

Al-Shamikha of Al-Qaeda: Salafi Women Discover Victoria’s Secret………

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“The 31-page glossy, Al-Shamikha, which translates loosely as “The Majestic Woman”, features a niqab-clad woman posing with a sub-machine gun on its cover. Much like Elle or Cosmopolitan, it includes advice on finding the right man (“marrying a mujahideen”), how to achieve a perfect complexion (stay inside with your face covered), and provides tips on first aid and etiquette. Alongside sisterly advice such as “not [to] go out except when necessary” and to always wear a niqab for protection from the sun, the magazine runs interviews with martyr’s wives and praises those who give their lives in the name of the editors’ interpretation of Islam. “From martyrdom, the believer will gain security, safety and happiness,” it says. For those readers not quite ready for such a drastic step, it argues the pros and cons of honey facemasks and lobbies against “towelling too forcibly”.……”

Don’t knock it. Women are women (just as men are men). They probably have everything that others do, under that black Salafi tent. Victoria’s Secret included. (No, I probably draw the line at things like leather and S & M and bondage). I liked the part about “not [to] go out except when necessary”, I thought it means “go out” as in “going out”, a.k.a “dating”. For a moment there I thought I had missed a Salafi fatwa allowing “going out on dates” when necessary. I thought of all the poor saps al-Qaeda that were sent to certain death and mayhem with a promise of all those delayed pleasures in Paradise, how these frustrated young men went partly because they could not see all the beauty around them, all the Victoria’s Secrets hidden under the dark attire. The least the master terrorists could have done was send them out to do “God’s work” in couples, couples with matching “belts”. That would have been an explosive date, the date of a lifetime, going with a bang, the puns intended.
Dommage….
(al-Shamikha also means dignified or proud, which apparently applies only to Salafi women who cater to Salafi men).
Cheers
mhg


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Apartheid, Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Osama Bin Laden, Religion, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Salafis of the Gulf: Saudi Paymasters, and a Kosher Homey in Abbottabad……..

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“Note that these villages are not engaging in any criminal activities. They are unarmed civilians who are being wantonly attacked by state security forces simply on the basis that the people are Shia and therefore deemed by the Sunni elite rulers to be supportive of anti-government (pro-democracy) movement, which in itself is not illegal and is supposedly a right that is permitted by Bahrain’s signatory to international laws, that is, the right to have political opinions. Note also that, according to my contacts, the security personnel are mainly Saudi or from Yemen, Syria, Jordan. These personnel are predominantly Sunni and loyal to the regime. That is why they have been recruited by the regime. The police and army personnel are extremely hostile to Shia people out of deep sectarian phobia. This is especially true of the Saudis who are typically Wahhabis, the kind of extreme Islamism that Saudi rulers and Al Qaeda espouses. Wahhabis see it almost as a religious duty to crush Shias. We saw the same phobia in Iraq where Shia mosques were mostly attacked by bombers. The effective consent that the West has given the Bahraini rulers to crackdown on their people means the West is colluding with some of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East to crush pro-democracy people in Bahrain……”

Salafis have been the strongest supporters of the campaign to crush the uprising for equality and democracy in Bahrain. They are strong supporters of any campaign by regimes in the Gulf GCC, or other countries, against any true democratic movement that supports free speech. Even as they themselves are often used by their Saudi paymasters to disrupt other regimes in their home Gulf countries, like in my own hometown, under the pretense of demanding more democracy. Salafis never ever believe in democracy and free speech: sometimes they use the others’ demands for freedom but only to serve their and their masters’ purposes.
Salafis all across the Gulf and indeed across the Middle East, are coreligionists and ideological mates of al-Qaeda. They consider the al-Qaeda people basically ‘kosher’ homeys who may have erred and gone astray against the ruling al-Saud dynasty (apparently no too astray: they still get all the money they need for their terrorist activities). Some of these Salafis in the Gulf, including in my hometown, have penned articles beseeching Bin Laden to return to the fold, come in from the cold, enjoy the joys of the absolute tribal monarchy which spawned him and his movement. That was before Abbottabad (for some reason Abbottabad always reminds me of Lou Costello).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Egypt, Gulf states, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Possibly a New Egypt, Same Old Saudi Arabia……………….

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“In fact, it is not implausible that post-Mubarak governments will advocate causes and goals that undermine Saudi Arabia’s interests. For instance, a democratising Egypt could seek to promote freedom and liberty in the region, which is undoubtedly antithetical to Saudi interests. And down the road, a more nationalistic Egypt very well could try to challenge Saudi Arabia as the vanguard of Sunni dominance in the region. Some of this is conjecture, to be sure. But do not think Saudi rulers are unaware of these possibilities. And here is one more challenge in Saudi-Egyptian relations: Egypt’s revolutionaries and political activists, as well as various Shia and Copts, believe that Saudi Arabia is funding extremist political groups (specifically, the Salafis) so as to undermine the revolution. That is to say, in their eyes, Saudi Arabia is meddling in their country and in bed with, if not actually leading, the counter-revolutionaries. Not surprisingly, there have been protests at the Saudi Embassy in Cairo. Arguably, the more troubling part of this is that the accusations give the Saudis another reason to dislike the revolutionaries ……….”

Last January, an angry King Abdullah famously called the protesting people of Egypt “foreign infiltrators”. Egypt under Mr. Mubarak was a unique animal: a country that normally leads the Arab world was a sidekick for the Saudis for thirty years. That will probably never happen again, unless the Mubarak-appointed Field Marshal Tantawi and his generals keep control. Egypt is too large, has too much history and culture: it automatically poses a challenge to the al-Saud leadership (it always did until Hosni Mubarak took over). It is the same with Iraq: too rich (potentially has more petroleum than Saudi Arabia) with too much history and culture to play second fiddle to the al-Saud (even under someone like Allawi). Even in the so-called “moderate” camp, Egypt poses a challenge for the Saudi regime. In their hearts, the al-Saud would rather have Egypt, and Iraq, away from their sphere of influence around the Gulf and in Jordan.
(I have no doubt that the Saudis are financing the Salafis of Egypt, just as they are financing the Salafi groups and politicians of the Gulf region. These Salafis are their fifth column, their not very sleepy sleeping cells in the Arab states. But that is okay: every regime looks for its own interest).
Cheers
mhg


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Salafi, Saudi Arabia

A Salafi Education System, an Orphanage………….

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“Six orphan girls aged between 12 and 18 were flogged in Saudi Arabia after being convicted of attacking the head of their orphanage, an official said today. The girls received 10 lashes each under the country’s strict interpretation of Islamic law at a women’s prison in Medina, Islam’s second holiest city, in the west of the desert state. ‘The order against the six orphans is a legitimate court order,’ Mohammed al-Awadh, the public relations manager at the Ministry of Social Affairs, said. ‘The ministry does not have the right to interfere in a court order.’ The girls received 10 lashes each under the country’s strict interpretation of Islamic law at a women’s prison in the city of Medina, Saudi Arabia. He gave no details of the ruling but the Arabic-language newspaper Okaz said the girls had been convicted of ‘acts of mischief’ and attacking the director of the orphanage. The girls defended their actions, saying they were harassed by the director, Okaz reported. International human rights groups have criticised the Saudi justice system for applying corporal punishment for petty crimes, as well as limb amputations for thieves and beheadings for murderers under its strict interpretation of Islamic law…..In January 2010 a teenage girl was sentenced to 90 lashes and two months in prison for hitting her school principal on the head with a cup when she took away her mobile phone……..”

Notice these were girls, female students, who were flogged. Male students would not get flogged for such actions. I have never read of male students getting flogged for defiance. Salafi shaikhs have whole lectures about the when, how, and where of beating one’s wife. One can see some on YouTube . These were also orphan girls, which means they are easy prey for these animals.
Cheers
mhg


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Al-Qaeda, Iran, Salafi

Incomplete Iranian View of Bin Laden and his Genesis…………

     
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“The death of Osama bin Laden brought closure to many people around the world, especially those who lost loved ones in the September 11 attacks or other terrorist acts that were conducted or inspired by Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network. Bin Laden is associated with murder and terror. Bin Laden claimed that his war was against those he called “infidels” but the victims of his shadowy Al-Qaeda network were mostly Muslims, and thus he and his death machine did the greatest injustice and harm to Islam and Muslims. Thousands of children have been orphaned in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan just because Al-Qaeda decided to use these countries as battlefields for taking revenge against the United States. Despotic Arab rulers and Western countries, especially the United States, are responsible for the emergence of people like Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Bin Laden and his Arab comrades were supported by the United States and certain European and Arab countries in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. To counter the Soviets in Afghanistan, the CIA provoked the people’s religious sentiments and used religious fanaticism as the strongest tool against forces that the CIA and other intelligence agencies called kafirs (unbelievers), and thus planted the seeds of extremism in the region…….” Mehr News (Iran)

On the face of it, nothing seems new here: it is the usual Western view of the emergence of the Salafi terrorist group under Bin Laden. Yet oddly this Iranian view completely ignores the deeper genesis of Bin Ladenism and the al-Qaeda: the Salafi educational system and the Wahhabi religious teachings in Saudi Arabia. This Salafi teaching of the exclusion and hatred of the “other” has spread to other places, especially in poverty-stricken regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan and Indonesia through Saudi schools and clerics. I know firsthand that it has also spread to some GCC Gulf states through Saudi-trained Salafi clerics and activists.
An interesting reluctance on the part of the Iranians; even as senior state-sponsored Saudi clerics wage a vicious media and mosque and fatwa war against “other” Islamic sects, unjustly tying them to the Iranian mullahs.
Cheers
mhg

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