Saudi Interference with Muslims During the Hajj

by Dr. Irfan Al-Alawi

The hajj pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the five pillars of Islam - every adult Muslim who is physically able and can afford it is required to make the journey once before dying. For about two million people each year, the hajj is a supreme moment of devotion to the religion of the Prophet Muhammad.

For the Wahhabi clerics who direct the official state sect in Saudi Arabia, however, the hajj is more an ideological than a spiritual observance.

The small number of Muslims allowed to make the journey - 2 million out of at least 1.3 billion Muslims around the world - is a giveaway: The Wahhabis carefully vet hajj pilgrims, to exclude those of whom they disapprove.

Saudi-Wahhabi adherents prohibit and interfere with honours offered by hajjis to Muhammad, his family, his companions, his successors, and other Muslim holy people. In the perverse Wahhabi system - shared with the Deobandi sect in South Asia that leads the Taliban - expressing love for the Prophet and other distinguished Muslims is polytheism, setting up ‘partners’ alongside the creator.

Today, Wahhabis and Deobandis condemn celebrating the Prophet’s birthday (mawlid) as an imitation of Christians, even though mawlid continues to be held wherever Muslims live - even, privately, in the Saudi kingdom. By contrast, traditional Islamic theologians praised the Christians for their love of their Prophet - as he is seen in Islam, although Muslims do not believe Jesus was the son of God. Traditional Muslims reply to the extremists that a religion that does not esteem its Prophet cannot bring fulfillment to its followers.

Wahhabis also despise the preservation of historic religious architecture, including shrines, graves, tombs, and notable mosques and madrassas. To them, Muslim prayer at any such sites is, again, polytheism - making a gravestone or a house into an idol.

During the nearly 150-year long effort, beginning in the 18th century, to establish the Saudi-Wahhabi regime, the fanatics banned any construction, visiting, or prayer at shrines, graves, and tombs. Today they remain especially avid to wipe out the structures in which Muhammad and his family lived, lest Muslims visit and pray at them. Since their seizure of Mecca in 1924, the Wahhabi mentors of the Saudi royal family have schemed to extirpate the very building in which Muhammad was born - it was first turned into a cattle market, then into a library, but remains under threat of replacement by a car park.

They have demolished or otherwise covered over the grave of the Prophet’s mother, and the house in which Muhammad lived with his wife Khadijah and their children. They also destroyed the first Islamic school in which the Prophet taught.

The Wahhabi mutawwa, or morals patrols (often miscalled a ‘religious police’) harass hajjis who visit the Prophet’s Shrine in Medina if pilgrims face the direction of Muhammad’s sarcophagus and utter blessings. But the intersection of naked vandalism and Wahhabi proscriptions against long-established Muslim customs is nowhere more dramatic than at Jannat-al-Baqi, the Medina cemetery of the Prophet’s family and companions. Jannat al-Baqi once included numerous domed shrines. But the Wahhabis tore down the monuments, turned the cemetery into a garbage dump, and prevented identification of any of the graves there.

Recent Western media coverage has noted that Shia Muslims continue to visit the site of Jannat al-Baqi and to pray, recite blessings, and express their emotions at the sanctity of those buried there.

The mutawwa - including Arabs, Afghans, and Bangladeshis who understand the hajjis’ speech - not only tell them to lower their voices, but also confiscate their religious literature, and frequently detain and abuse them. The controversy over Jannat al-Baqi has been interpreted by some non-Muslim commentators as an expression of geopolitical rivalry between the Saudi kingdom, which proclaims its adherence to Sunnism, and Shia Iran. Iran, it is said, is using the issue of cultural devastation in Arabia to gain support for its political position among the world’s Muslims.

To believe such a claim is a serious error. Sunnis, especially followers of Sufi spirituality, are no less outraged by the wanton destruction of Islamic heritage, as symbolized by the transformation of Jannat al-Baqi into a waste ground, than are Shias.

The rescue of Islamic heritage is not a political issue between states but a serious challenge to Muslims of any and all partisan views. Sunni Sufis who visit Jannat al-Baqi to express their affection for the Muslims interred there also suffer at the hands of the mutawwa: they are also pushed around and told how to pray, they see their religious books seized and torn up, and they have been arrested and beaten. In doctrinal terms, Sunni Sufis and Shias differ on many issues, but they are united in seeking to protect Islam’s physical legacy.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that officially rejects the concept of cultural preservation.

While some archeological work goes on, it is typically hidden from the public or downgraded to minor facilities. Saudi King Abdullah has commenced various efforts to normalize his country, which is the sole state in the world to prevent women from driving, among other Wahhabi stupidities.

A bold step in the right direction would be the dissolution of the mutawwa and an end to interference with the spiritual habits of hajj pilgrims, Sunni and Shia, Sufi and non-Sufi, alike.

If anybody believes the contention over cultural vandalism in Arabia favors Iran, an end to such irresponsible Saudi policies would certainly deprive the Iranians of a basis for their complaints.

Hudson New York

Islamists wage war against cricket, 'the other religion'

Amanda Hodge, South Asia correspondent March 06

CRICKET is akin to a religion in Pakistan, which might explain why it is so loathed by Islamic extremists there.

While few believe Tuesday's terror strike on the Sri Lankan team was designed as a specific attack on the sport of cricket, the ambush has highlighted one of the more peculiar preoccupations of Islamic extremists.

Following the Indian cricket tour of Pakistan in 2004 -- the first in a decade -- the Lashkar-e-Toiba terror group in Pakistan issued what amounted to a fatwa against the sport.

"The British gave Muslims the bat, snatched the sword and said to them: 'You take this bat and play cricket. Give us your sword. With its help we will kill you and rape your women'," the LET magazine Zarb-e-Toiba said in its April 2004 edition.

The magazine article commented: "It is sad that Pakistanis are committing suicide after losing cricket matches to India. But they are not sacrificing their lives to protect the honour of the raped Kashmiri women. To watch a cricket match we would take a day off work. But for jihad, we have not time!"

More fitting for a mujahid (or holy fighter), the magazine said, were the sports of archery, horseriding and swimming.

"The above are not just sports but exercises for jihad," Zarb-e-Toiba told its readers.

"Cricket is an evil and sinful sport. Under the intoxication of cricket, Pakistanis have forgotten that these Hindu players come from the same nation that raped our mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and daughters-in-law."

The Punjab-based LET is a prime suspect for the Lahore attack, with analysts suggesting it could be motivated by a desire to retaliate for the recent arrests of six top operatives linked to November's Mumbai terror strike.

The other major suspect for the ambush, the Tehrik-e-Taliban -- which has waged a bloody campaign for control of the northwestern tribal areas and Swat Valley -- has also made clear its distaste for flannelled fools.

Just days before Tuesday's attack, Sufi Mohammad, the Taliban-linked cleric who brokered the dubious peace deal between militants in the Swat Valley and the Islamabad Government in return for the imposition of sharia law, condemned cricket as a distraction that needed to be curbed.

But cricket is not universally condemned among Islamists. During its years in power, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan applied -- unsuccessfully -- for membership of the International Cricket Council. The sport was played in Afghanistan during that time, although with a distinct Talibani flavour. Players were forbidden from wearing short-sleeved shirts, and crowd participation of any sort was banned, as were women spectators.

Several of Pakistan's national cricket team are devout Muslims.

But there is a growing movement against the sport among Pakistan's increasingly powerful Islamist militants now waging war within Pakistan for the overthrow of the civilian Government.

The Hindu newspaper noted yesterday that the weekly radical Islamist magazine al-Qalam last year attacked Pakistan's plans to reform its religious schools, or madrassas, which included plans for an inter-schools cricket tournament it branded as "evil".

"We, the ulema (arbiters of sharia law) of the Deoband school, will have nothing to do with this tournament," al-Qalam's editors wrote in April last year, saying the West was "promoting obscenity" in Pakistan's schools.

Source: The Australian

The Jihadist Movements' Dual Nature and U.S. Policy after U.S. Elections

By Dr. Walid Phares

In order to explain better the possible evolution of United States' policy vis-à-vis Jihadist movements following the American presidential election, Dr. Walid Phares dedicated the first part of his speech to analyzing the dual nature of the Jihadist movements worldwide. The term "Jihadist" is another - mostly American- equivalent of Islamism, a term used in Europe and in the Middle East to define radical Islamic Fundamentalists.

Academically, the "Jihadist movements" can be explained through a two trees metaphor. The first tree is the Salafist one. We can not write it off to a "violent activist movement"; it is a global movement that has a common ideological vision of the world. This ideology, which emerged in the 1920s, has been metastasizing since the beginning of the cold war. Its long term objective is the establishment of a caliphate mainly through an indoctrination process and the spread of the ideology throughout societies and governments. These Global Salafists - Wahhabis in Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Deobandis in the sub Indian continent - opposed the rise of modern and secular Arab and Muslim states and aimed at transforming them back into what was a Caliphate.

In early 1990s, Dr. Phares observed a clash between two schools within the Global Jihadi Salafists; he coined it the "Khartoum debate." Many Salafist activists -including those Jihadists returning from the War in Afghanistan - claimed that the long term process of indoctrination and penetration of societies was not efficient enough. As a consequence, they chose to engage themselves in "direct Jihad" or warfare against their perceived global enemies. Al Qaeda is the most visible example of a movement that follows this doctrine. This warfare occurs in such lands as Chechnya, Sudan or Algeria, but it is also targeted against the United States and other democracies. The other Islamists continued to follow a long term strategy of indoctrination and the spreading of their ideology. Read more ...

Source: Family Security Matters