““‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’” Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32)

“In the 13-minute-long recording, the speaker said Islamic State had ordered its followers everywhere to “kill enemies of Islam, especially Shi’ites”, according to SITE. “What then if they live with their disbelief in the Peninsula of Mohammad,” SITE quoted the speaker as saying, referring to the Arabian Peninsula, birthplace of Islam and where Saudi Arabia is located. “They are disbelievers and apostates, and their blood is permissible to be shed, and their money is permissible to be taken. It is a duty upon us to kill them … and even to purify the land from their filth,” he said…………”

The nom de guerre (nom de terrorisme) of the suicide bomber was Abu ‘Amer Al Najdi, indicating he came from the Najd region of Central Arabia. Home and birthplace and power center of the Wahhabi sect and the House of Saud.

These are not the old Al Qaeda, another Saudi prodigal son, many of whose members were forgiven, re-educated, and bribed with jobs and wives. A clever method: presumably a wife would dull the violent edge of fundamentalism by reducing their sexual frustration in the grim Wahhabi society. But that was/is the old Al Qaeda (or AQAP). ISIS or DAESH is a whole new animal, a mutation of the old Jihadism that is uncompromising, which is really the true Wahhabism.

This new prodigal son is coming home in a different fashion. Not hungry and starved and contrite like the Biblical one. This son is resurgent, seeking to destroy the Saudi father and supplant him. Returning to its birthplace and its geographical and ideological roots. Leaner and meaner than the Bin Laden-ites who were careful of committing violence in the Arabian Peninsula, their original home base.

They are opening a new home front for the Al Saud who are now multitasking, engaged in the destruction of Yemen and allying themselves with the old Al Qaeda (Al Nusra) in Syria, while also actively engaged in the politics and wars of Lebanon and western Iraq and the Gulf.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          
[email protected]