Category Archives: Sectarianism

Arabian Peninsula, Caliphate, Death Penalty, Human Right, Saudi Arabia, Sectarianism, Shi'as, Uncategorized

The Body Snatchers of Arabia: It Is Not Just ISIS……

July 21, 2017 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“The families of 14 Saudi Arabian men sentenced to death fear that they are at risk of execution after they were transferred to Riyadh on 15 July. The men were sentenced to death on 1 June 2016 after a grossly unfair trial based on “confessions” they said were obtained under torture“

I have been reading Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and other reports that Saudi Arabia plans to execute 14 young Saudi (Shi’a) men by beheading and/or crucifixion. Any day now. The princes have accelerated the rate of executions of Shi’a men specifically as a political tool to stifle protests, and there is fear that other Persian Gulf states may follow their example.

Saudi Arabia has a peculiar way of dealing with those it executes. Especially if they are Shi’a. In fairness, others get executed as well, and not only for staging public protests. Some are considered sorcerers or users of magic and witchcraft. Some of them are even convicted killers, although the method of obtaining confessions is not considered up to acceptable humane standards.

Wahhabis who plan to join terrorist groups are often sent to re-education schools. They are allowed to pretend that they have reformed, given jobs, and even encouraged to take appropriate Wahhabi wives. Their weddings are financed by the regime. But not the Shi’as.

Execution for men is done in public squares, by beheading and/or crucifixion. Nobody knows when someone will be executed, they announce it after the fact. And the Shi’a bodies are never returned to their loved ones.
All civilized regimes announce the date of execution. Even not so-civilized regimes usually return the bodies of those executed to their families. That is a human right.

Saudi Arabia often returns most bodies of those executed, unless they are Shi’a. This has been a consistent policy. Shaikh Nimr Al Nimr, the Shi’a dissident cleric was executed by beheading in January 2016, but his body was never returned to his family. Other Shi’a, Saudi or foreigner, faced the same fate. Years ago about 16 Kuwait Shi’as were beheaded on charges of plotting. Their bodies were never returned to their country or to their families. There have been other cases. And I know the Saudis do not use these bodies as (practice) cadavers for their medical students.

They usually just announce that so many were executed, a day after the fact. The bodies are presumably thrown in some hole in the desert.

The Caliphate of ISIS also does that sort of body snatching…..

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arabian Peninsula, Caliphate, Donald Trump, GCC, Islam, MENA, Muslims, Saudi Arabia, Sectarianism, U.S. Foreign Policy, Wahhabi

Trump’s Jizya (جزية ترامب ) : First American Emperor of Arabia, First Orange Caliph of Sunni Muslims……..

May 21, 2017 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Tweet to https://twitter.com/

Jizya is a term used from the early days of Islam, more than 1400 years ago. It was a form of added tax that non-Muslims paid the Muslim ruler in ancient times. It also meant money paid by weaker neighboring infidel sovereigns to the Islamic Caliphate as a substitute for a ghazwa, or an invasion. A form of tax, or even ransom.

Yesterday, U.S. President Donald Trump got paid a huge Jizya by the Saudi monarchy. Some claim it is to the tune of $460 billion over a period of ten years. More than half the total current value of the Saudi Sovereign Fund which is supposed to make up for future depletion of oil reserves. Much of this money is for the purchase of more weapons and their service contracts, almost certainly including American technical operations and maybe even aiming and launching. So much weaponry for a country with about 16 million citizens (plus about 10 million imported temporary foreign laborers and housemaids and/or quasi-slaves).

No doubt, Mr. Trump (and his family) seem to have made out like a bandit, or should I say he made out like a Saudi prince? The devil, however, is in the details. Just what adventure, if any, has he committed the United States to undertaking. What new war in the Muslim lands, especially in the Persian Gulf have they talked him into promising?

If the Saudi princes are foolish enough to want to repeat their failed Yemeni adventure on a much larger scale in the Persian Gulf. They will no doubt fail again, and more spectacularly so: that has been their record. Then will Trump and his inexperienced foreign policy minions get into another Gulf War to save the princes from their own folly? Another endless war? As they seem to be planning for Yemen now?

Donald, Melania, and Ivanka seem to have conquered the elites of Riyadh, as well as the extremely controlled Saudi media. No wonder, the odds were in their favor, with no Saudi women within sight. They will come home laden with gifts that rightfully belong to the poor of Saudi Arabia (yes, there are many poor people and poor places, shockingly many, that the media cameras did not cover).

So the Arab world now has its first American emperor. The Sunni Muslim world now has its first orange non-Muslim Caliph. Congratulations to both.

FYI: Many religious Muslims, including many of the Wahhabi sect of Saudi Arabia (the same sect of Al Qaeda and ISIS) will treat this as a new Crusade by what they call infidels. Secular Arabs and Muslims will consider Trump’s new anointment as a return of the old European imperialism of past centuries.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arabian Peninsula, Donald Trump, Fatwa, GCC, Islam, MENA, Middle East, Muslim Wars, Saudi Arabia, Sectarianism, U.S. Foreign Policy, US Foreign Policy

Big White Father Does the Umrah: Imam Trump Preps for Saudi Trip by Immersing in Studies of Quran and Hadith……

May 17, 2017 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Tweet to https://twitter.com/

The Big White Father is heading to the Middle East to bless the natives this week. And the potentates are excited that finally they can deal with a man who “looks real American”, like a Good White Father should look. A man more willing to accommodate their sectarian agenda than the more clever dark one that preceded him. For a stiff nominal fee, of course.
President Donald Trump is flying to Saudi Arabia this weekend, as I posted earlier. His first official visit abroad since taking office, and it will cost his royal hosts dearly. They are already throwing many billions his way in gratitude for the honor of a visit.

But there may be a catch for Donald: the hosts just might want him to fight a couple of new regional sectarian wars on their behalf (something they tried with Barack Obama and failed). While American courts dismantle his first Executive Order banning Muslims from Muslim countries that are not absolute monarchies and/or big weapons buyers from the West.

Mr. Trump has made Islamophobia acceptable and even cool among a large sector of the U.S. population, especially in certain states that cleaved to him in the elections. He has brought it into the White House. Yet he is chairing a summit of many Muslim and Arab countries whose rulers tend to obey or listen to the Saudi royal commands. A coalition of the willing, the bribed, and the coerced. Now, hold onto your seats when you start the next paragraph.

Mr. Trump is reportedly going to make a speech about Islam!
I assume that means he will delve deep into Islamic Sharia, its evolution, the Five Pillars, and how the Quran and the Prophet’s Hadith form the Islamic Faith and its Culture. How it is also to some extent an extension of the Old and New Testaments. He may try to explain its evolution over the fifteen centuries, from the days of Halima Al-Saadiya and the Prophet Mohammed to the current Ottoman Caliph Erdogan the First (why do I feel that I have left out one or two recent Caliphs?).
Which means he will have to cram for it, and Donald doesn’t seem like a cram-able type of student.

He will no doubt focus on the Orthodox Sunni version of Islam, perhaps more specifically on the Wahhabi sub-sect that dominates in Saudi Arabia and all the mosques and Madrassas it builds to spread its ideology of love and freedom around the world. The same sub-sect that spawned the Taliban, Al Qaeda, AQAP, ISIS, and all the terrorist attacks in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.

As a gesture to his best client princes, those who spend hundreds of billions buying weapons, Mr. Trump might feel characteristically comfortable enough to issue his own Fatwa: that henceforth Wahhabism is the mainstream sect and that it is the closest Muslim faith to Christianity (be it the Las Vegas, New York, or Evangelical version of Christianity).

That in itself should get him more clients for his exports. No doubt his family, kids and in-laws, will make a bundle expanding into the Arabian Peninsula. We might even see a Trump Tower Hotel in the heart of Mecca, catering to faithful pilgrims during the Hajj and the Umrah. Being something of a practical joker, Mr. Trump may even don the Ihram white Toga of the pilgrims and circumambulate the holy Kaaba by special permission, to the serious approval of Their Highnesses the omnipotent Princes.

The Arab Islamic American Summit Comes Up With a Trump Motto: Holy Art of the Deal….

May 16, 2017 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Tweet to https://twitter.com/

The Saudi organizers of the so-called Sunni Arab Islamic American (Sectarian) Summit in Riyadh have come up with a website and a logo, sort of.

(My browser told me this website is not safe and would not open it. I’ll say.)

It says :

Historic Summit, Brighter Future
Together We Prevail

Which is rather cheeky, after what I have opined about this exclusively sectarian provocative summit. It will fail in most of the goals it has been set to achieve, whatever they be, except to milk the Persian Gulf Arabs, mainly the Saudis, for a few hundred billion more dollars for Mr. trump’s projects. Expensive weapons, toys that the potentates can’t even use properly: I repeat myself, but their failure against poor Yemen is one example. Maybe there will be more spectacular failures in the near future as they talk Donald Trump and the hawks around him into new wars in the Gulf and the wider Middle East.

I would have the thought the organizers, and their highly-paid American and British lobbyists that devised the logo would do a more accurate job. The logo could say, for example:

Wahhabism, Sectarianism, and Republican Corporate Values:
Together We can Exploit the Swamp and Make America Great Again!

It would also help if they distribute stacks of a new Holy Book of the Summit: free copies of “The Art Of The Deal“

I commented on this Sunni-Republican-Royal Summit yesterday in this post here. I will have more comments later….

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Politics, Elections, Kuwait, Salafi, Sectarianism

The Enemy Within? the Extremist Salafi Islamist Opposition Returns to Kuwait Politics……..

October 31, 2016 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Kuwait has the most free and open elections in all the Gulf GCC states. The others don’t really have any. She will have new parliamentary (National Assembly) elections in the last week of November. Much of the ultra-reactionary Islamic-Tribal alliance that boycotted the last election has given up and decided to run for office. That should be good news, but in this case it is truly bad news for the country, its social cohesion, and sectarian tranquility.

The Kuwaiti political opposition are a mix that is dominated by Salafis, Muslim Brothers, and reactionary tribal seekers of office. These have cleverly dominated the smaller Wahhabi-Liberal and pseudo-academic types who are nominally secular.

Last time the so-called Kuwaiti political opposition mustered a majority in parliament, their first act was to vote to convert the country into a Wahhabi-Salafi theocracy by instituting the Shari’a literally. Apparently their ideal of a democratic civil society. The proposal got a majority of votes: every member of that opposition group voted for it. Only the few urban members and the Shi’a members refused to support it. Luckily, the Emir thought correctly that it was a bad idea and refused to sign it. He vetoed it and saved the country from the ritual of beheading, crucifixion, public flogging, chopping hands, and other such Wahhabi-Salafi pleasures and pastimes that exist in a neighboring country.

Most of the opposition members had claimed they would not run again until the election laws were changed away from the new one-man-one-vote system, and until one of their leaders is released from prison. They made a lot of noise about ‘principles’ and about a ‘democracy’ that most of them never believed. Apparently four years on the outside have cured them. Basically they have surrendered and, in true Salafist fashion, betrayed their imprisoned ally Musallam Al Barrak.

The years of absence of any political influence and tribal pressures have caused most of them to announce they are running for the November 27 elections. That means that they will again apply pressures to move in the Wahhabi-Salafi direction. To interfere in the private social lives of people, and to start another book-burning episode. Some of them are already announcing their intention to try again to make the Shari’a the law of the land.

And to fan the flames of sectarian tensions that they introduced to the country. They will also start hounding the Shi’as and maybe the few Christians. Last time they were in parliament this Salafi-MB-Tribal alliance asked the government to start “monitoring” the Shi’a religious services. Meaning to spy and intimidate the minorities. Some, possibly many, of these members no doubt will get elected, and they will start making the country and society even duller that it is now.

We shall see soon enough how the post-Thanksgiving turkeys turn out. Certainly no better than the same turkeys looked last time around…..
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Indonesia, Islam, Malaysia, Muslims, Sectarianism, Terrorism

The March of Violent Fundamentalism in Southeast Asia………..

February 21, 2016 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“Islam in Malaysia, and Southeast Asia, is taking a more conservative turn. The Muslim faith, brought here by Arab traders hundreds of years ago, has coexisted for generations with Malay customs such as shamanism, other forms of traditional medicine and the country’s sizable Buddhist, Christian and Hindu communities. But more recently, conservative Wahhabi doctrines, often spread by Saudi-financed imams, are redefining the way Islam is practiced and, for some, eroding the tolerance for which the country has been known………. Politicians, meanwhile, are now competing with each other to show off their Islamist credentials. The opposition Pan-Islamic Party strict adherence to Shariah has helped build its support in rural areas. And a government investment fund—under the control of the Muslim-oriented ruling party…………”

In the West they/you talk of Islam and Muslims as if they/we are a monolithic thing. They/we are not. When they say Muslim and terrorism in the same sentence in the West they mean Wahhabi, a small but expanding puritan sect of Sunni Islam. These are the ones engaged in worldwide terrorism as represented by Al Qaeda, AQAP, and ISIS (DAESH).

But there is an even more violent campaign of terror among Muslims, a sectarian war, most of it committed by Al Qaeda and ISIS and their ilk against all Shi’a Muslims and against many Sunni Muslims as well. It now spans the globe.

For years Malaysia has banned the practices of Shi’ism, even as the regime and its clerics moved deeper into the realm of Wahhabi intolerance. Local Shi’as have to practice their rites in secret, otherwise they risk persecution and prosecution. As the article says, the Saudi Wahhabis have been spreading their intolerant sect for decades, by sending Imams and establishing and financing schools. Stoning of women and public flogging is more common now in Malaysia and a few other places than it ever was in the past.

The same applies to Indonesia, which also persecutes its non-Wahhabi Islamic minorities. But that has been the trend through all Sunni Islam: a Wahhabi-ization of the mainstream. Egypt is now quasi-Wahhabi, and that includes Al-Azhar. The trend toward Wahhabi-ization and intolerance among Muslims and toward other muslims, in both Arab and South Asian countries, has accelerated in the past decade. It is now sweeping North and West Africa. Even among European Muslims it is very common, much more common than you think.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Death Penalty, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sectarianism, Shi'as

Of Chopped Heads and a Stoned Embassy: the Iranians Help the Saudis………

January 5, 2016 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

The Iranians, some of the clerics and their followers, have a knack for shooting themselves in the foot. They did it again last week, in the aftermath of a gruesome Saudi festival of executions of 47 people by beheading in one day. Just as the world was building up outrage at the judiciously suspect mass killings, the Iranians misjudged and helped the Saudis change the subject.
The Iranians have done it again. They reminded the world, and especially the American people and media, of that “other” embassy attack in 1979. “Some” groups attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran last week, thus rightly creating outrage among the diplomatic classes across the world.
By allowing it to happen, the Iranians helped change the subject. World media, especially in the USA, have forgotten that 47 people were beheaded by the Saudis on New Year’s Day. They have focused, with a lot of help from Washington lobbyists and special interests, on the embassy in Tehran and on the execution of Sheikh Nimr Al Nimr.

A mass execution of 47 is now being headlined as the execution of one Shi’a cleric. As I said, some in Iran are quite good at helping their sectarian Wahhabi enemies change the subject.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Africa, Muslims, Sectarianism, Shi'as, Wahhabi

Muslims and the West: Nigeria’s Other Sectarian Terrorist Army……..

December 21, 2015 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Another mass atrocity was committed in Nigeria last week. But it did not get much world media coverage. No, it was not committed by Boko Haram gangs, but by the Nigerian Army. Hundreds of Muslim Shi’as were killed and wounded during a religious ceremony by the army. Two days later the Saudi King cabled the Nigerian regime expressing his support of its “war against terrorism”. Hard to believe the Wahhabi king was congratulating the Nigerian army on the massacre of civilians. So, it must have been a strange coincidence. Did I tell you I don’t believe in strange coincidences?

This no doubt means that the Wahhabi sectarian message has reached Nigeria in West Africa. That it is not only limited to bands of Salafi killers like the Boko Haram, but that it has infiltrated the corrupt and possibly Wahhabi-ized halls of government and army.

So, Wahhabis (who claim to be Muslims) are busy killing and massacring thousands of other Muslims in the Middle East and across the world. Wahhabis are also known to turn away other Muslims from mosques in Europe and America and to fight tooth and nail against the establishment of “other” mosques in Europe. Even as many Muslims demand understanding and equality in the West.
Shouldn’t the Muslim house be put in order first, before whining about the Western bigotry?
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Al-Azhar, Arab Revolutions, Egypt, Islam, Sectarianism, Shi'as

Muslim Wars: Shaikh of Al Azhar Starts Ramadan with a Sectarian Message………

June 19, 2015 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

With the advent of the month of Ramadan, Muslims are waging wars on each other. Saudis and their hired allies are bombing Yemen into rubble. Syrians and Libyans and Yemenis are killing each other. Egyptian kangaroo military courts are handing out unprecedented numbers of death sentences to political critics of the military regime. Sinai and parts of the Nile valley are becoming uncontrollable terrorist hubs. Wahhabi terrorists are busy committing massacres and reinstating (female) slavery in Iraq and Syria. And now the Mubarak-appointed Shaikh of Al Azhar (he now calls himself the Grand Imam but there is nothing Grand about him) has jumped again into the sectarian fray.

Shaikh Ahmad Al Tayeb, a former functionary of Hosni Mubarak’s Nationalist Party, opened Ramadan by warning of a “feverish” campaign to convert young Egyptians away from the Sunni sect to Shi’ism. The shaikh, apparently insecure about his own faith, has warned of an “organized” campaign of conversion that uses education, science, and media. He claimed that there are evil and sneaky attempts to destabilize Egypt through the conversion of its the youth. He warned that “they”, WTF they are, would sneak upon “us” through the Egyptian affection toward the family and descendents of the Prophet and use that to gradually convert people into Shi’ism.

Yes, “they” might be sneaky, and this Ahmad Al Tayeb is probably the most insecure and the silliest Shaikh in the history of the once venerable Al Azhar……….

King Abdullah Earns a Doctorate from Al Sisi University, Morsi Moves from Elba to Saint Helena………
Grand Ayatollah of Al Azhar Gets His Just Reward on the Gulf………
Marine Le Pen Meets Egyptian Islamic Hypocrisy at Al Azhar: J’Accuse au Caire……
Islamic Outer Space: Al Azhar Tackles a Communist Jewish Shi’a Magi Conspiracy……

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
[email protected]

Al-Azhar, Anti-Semitism, Arab Counterrevoltion, Communism, Egypt, Islam, Outer Space, Sectarianism, Shi'as

Islamic Outer Space: Al Azhar Tackles a Communist Jewish Shi’a Magi Conspiracy……..

June 12, 2015 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“Al Azhar has republished the book titled Broad Outlines of the Shi’a Religion. The first edition of the book was issued more than 60 years ago. In the introduction Dr. Mohammed Amara stresses that the Shi’as are not a (Muslim) sect but a religion. That the followers of that Shi’a religion allied with the Crusaders and Holagu (the Mongol) and American Imperialism and Zionist Christianity against Muslims……… The book compares Shiism and Communism and how the Shi’as have distorted the ~~unchangeable~~ history……. The book also details the history of the relationship between the Magis (he calls Zoroastrians ‘Magis’ but some extreme Wahhabis also use it for Shi’as) (Shi’as) and Jews and Communism…………..”

It reads almost like the fake Tsarist Okhrana-produced Protocols of the Elders of Zion (it would be Elders of Shi’as here). Many Salafis and their ilk as well as quite a few Arab quasi-liberals seriously believe in it. Most of them, especially some Al Azhar shaikhs, need to read some world history, especially the chronology of events.
Egyptian regime clerics are now much more outspoken about the sectarian divide than most other Sunni or Wahhabi clerics. They are now more extremely sectarian than even the Wahhabi clerics in Saudi Arabia. ‘More royal the the king‘ and his men, as the saying goes. The leadership of Saudi clergy are relatively more soft-spoken than many Egyptian clerics on this issue nowadays. At least publicly.

The Egyptians were supposedly allegedly once among the most tolerant of Muslims, but not anymore. Now many of them are deep into religious quasi-Nazi doctrine. It goes beyond the traditional wild groups like ISIS and Al Nusra and Army of Islamic Conquest and other militia cutthroats of all Muslim sects. Is it any wonder some Iraqis, especially Sunni Kurds, are reported in some Western media to be converting back to Zoroastrianism, to become Magi or Majus?
Years ago we used to joke on the shores of my Gulf that the USA and the Russians (Soviets) were exploring outer space for the sole purpose of leaving this Earth behind, abandoning it for us Muslims. That they just wanted to “get out of Dodge“, get away from us and our silliness and stupidity. Oh but it is a worthy cause………

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
[email protected]

Arabia Deserta: MENA Focus

Category Archives: Sectarianism

The Body Snatchers of Arabia: It Is Not Just ISIS……

Trump’s Jizya (جزية ترامب ) : First American Emperor of Arabia, First Orange Caliph of Sunni Muslims……..

Big White Father Does the Umrah: Imam Trump Preps for Saudi Trip by Immersing in Studies of Quran and Hadith……

The Arab Islamic American Summit Comes Up With a Trump Motto: Holy Art of the Deal….

The Enemy Within? the Extremist Salafi Islamist Opposition Returns to Kuwait Politics……..

The March of Violent Fundamentalism in Southeast Asia………..

Of Chopped Heads and a Stoned Embassy: the Iranians Help the Saudis………

Muslims and the West: Nigeria’s Other Sectarian Terrorist Army……..

Muslim Wars: Shaikh of Al Azhar Starts Ramadan with a Sectarian Message………

Islamic Outer Space: Al Azhar Tackles a Communist Jewish Shi’a Magi Conspiracy……..

Multidisciplinary: Middle East, North Africa, Gulf, GCC, World, Cosmos…..