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GROUND ZERO AND THE SAUDI CONNECTION
By Stephen
Schwartz
Washington
The first thing
to do when trying to understand ‘Islamic suicide bombers’ is to forget the
clichés about the Muslim taste for martyrdom. It does exist, of course, but the
desire for paradise is not a safe guide to what motivated the appalling suicide
attacks on New York and Washington last week. Throughout history, political
extremists of all faiths have willingly given up their lives simply in the
belief that by doing so, whether in bombings or in other forms of terror, they
would change the course of history, or at least win an advantage for their
cause. Tamils are not Muslims, but they blow themselves up in their war on the
government of Sri Lanka; Japanese kamikaze pilots in the second world war were
not Muslims, but they flew their fighters into US aircraft carriers.
The Islamofascist
ideology of Osama bin Laden and those closest to him, such as the Egyptian and
Algerian ‘Islamic Groups’, is no more intrinsically linked to Islam or Islamic
civilisation than Pearl Harbor was to Buddhism, or Ulster terrorists — whatever
they may profess — are to Christianity. Serious Christians don’t go around
killing and maiming the innocent; devout Muslims do not prepare for paradise by
hanging out in strip bars and getting drunk, as one of last week’s terrorist
pilots was reported to have done.
The attacks of 11
September are simply not compatible with orthodox Muslim theology, which
cautions soldiers ‘in the way of Allah’ to fight their enemies face-to-face,
without harming non-combatants, women or children. Most Muslims, not only in
America and Britain, but in the world, are clearly law-abiding citizens of
their countries — a point stressed by President Bush and other American
leaders, much to their credit. Nobody on this side of the water wants a repeat
of the lamented 1941 internment of Japanese Americans.
Still, the
numerical preponderance of Muslims as perpetrators of these ghastly incidents
is no coincidence. So we have to ask ourselves what has made these men into the
monsters they are? What has so galvanised violent tendencies in the world’s
second-largest religion (and, in America, the fastest growing faith)? Can it
really flow from a quarrel over a bit of land in the Middle East?
For Westerners,
it seems natural to look for answers in the distant past, beginning with the
Crusades. But if you ask educated, pious, traditional but forward-looking
Muslims what has driven their umma, or global community, in this direction,
many of them will answer you with one word: Wahhabism. This is a strain of
Islam that emerged not at the time of the Crusades, nor even at the time of the
anti-Turkish wars of the 17th century, but less than two centuries ago. It is
violent, it is intolerant, and it is fanatical beyond measure. It originated in
Arabia, and it is the official theology of the Gulf states. Wahhabism is the
most extreme form of Islamic fundamentalism, and its followers are called
Wahhabis.
Not all Muslims
are suicide bombers, but all Muslim suicide bombers are Wahhabis — except,
perhaps, for some disciples of atheist leftists posing as Muslims in the
interests of personal power, such as Yasser Arafat or Saddam Hussein. Wahhabism
is the Islamic equivalent of the most extreme Protestant sectarianism. It is
puritan, demanding punishment for those who enjoy any form of music except the
drum, and severe punishment up to death for drinking or sexual transgressions.
It condemns as unbelievers those who do not pray, a view that never previously
existed in mainstream Islam.
It is
stripped-down Islam, calling for simple, short prayers, undecorated mosques,
and the uprooting of gravestones (since decorated mosques and graveyards lend
themselves to veneration, which is idolatry in the Wahhabi mind). Wahhabis do
not even permit the name of the Prophet Mohammed to be inscribed in mosques,
nor do they allow his birthday to be celebrated. Above all, they hate
ostentatious spirituality, much as Protestants detest the veneration of
miracles and saints in the Roman Church.
Ibn Abdul Wahhab
(1703–92), the founder of this totalitarian Islamism, was born in Uyaynah, in
the part of Arabia known as Nejd, where Riyadh is today, and which the Prophet
himself notably warned would be a source of corruption and confusion.
(Anti-Wahhabi Muslims refer to Wahhabism as fitna an Najdiyyah or ‘the trouble out
of Nejd’.) From the beginning of Wahhab’s dispensation, in the late 18th
century, his cult was associated with the mass murder of all who opposed it.
For example, the Wahhabis fell upon the city of Qarbala in 1801 and killed
2,000 ordinary citizens in the streets and markets.
In the 19th
century, Wahhabism took the form of Arab nationalism v. the Turks. The founder
of the Saudi kingdom, Ibn Saud, established Wahhabism as its official creed.
Much has been made of the role of the US in ‘creating’ Osama bin Laden through
subsidies to the Afghan mujahedin, but as much or more could be said in
reproach of Britain which, three generations before, supported the Wahhabi
Arabs in their revolt against the Ottomans. Arab hatred of the Turks fused with
Wahhabi ranting against the ‘decadence’ of Ottoman Islam. The truth is that the
Ottoman khalifa reigned over a multinational Islamic umma in which vast
differences in local culture and tradition were tolerated. No such tolerance
exists in Wahhabism, which is why the concept of US troops on Saudi soil so
inflames bin Laden.
Bin Laden is a
Wahhabi. So are the suicide bombers in Israel. So are his Egyptian allies, who
exulted as they stabbed foreign tourists to death at Luxor not many years ago,
bathing in blood up to their elbows and emitting blasphemous cries of ecstasy.
So are the Algerian Islamist terrorists whose contribution to the purification
of the world consisted of murdering people for such sins as running a movie
projector or reading secular newspapers. So are the Taleban-style guerrillas in
Kashmir who murder Hindus. The Iranians are not Wahhabis, which partially
explains their slow but undeniable movement towards moderation and normality
after a period of utopian and puritan revivalism. But the Taleban practise a
variant of Wahhabism. In the Wahhabi fashion they employ ancient punishments —
such as execution for moral offences — and they have a primitive and fearful
view of women. The same is true of Saudi Arabia’s rulers. None of this
extremism has been inspired by American fumblings in the world, and it has
little to do with the tragedies that have beset Israelis and Palestinians.
But the Wahhabis
have two weaknesses of which the West is largely unaware; an Achilles’ heel on
each foot, so to speak. The first is that the vast majority of Muslims in the
world are peaceful people who would prefer the installation of Western
democracy in their own countries. They loathe Wahhabism for the same reason any
patriarchal culture rejects a violent break with tradition. And that is the
point that must be understood: bin Laden and other Wahhabis are not defending
Islamic tradition; they represent an ultra-radical break in the direction of a
sectarian utopia. Thus, they are best described as Islamofascists, although they
have much in common with Bolsheviks.
The Bengali Sufi
writer Zeeshan Ali has described the situation touchingly: ‘Muslims from
Bangladesh in the US, just like any other place in the world, uphold the
traditional beliefs of Islam but, due to lack of instruction, keep quiet when
their beliefs are attacked by Wahhabis in the US who all of a sudden become
“better” Muslims than others. These Wahhabis go even further and accuse their
own fathers of heresy, sin and unbelief. And the young children of the immigrants,
when they grow up in this country, get exposed only to this one-sided version
of Islam and are led to think that this is the only Islam. Naturally a big gap
is being created every day that silence is only widening.’ The young, divided
between tradition and the call of the new, opt for ‘Islamic revolution’ and
commit themselves to their self-destruction, combined with mass murder.
The same
influences are brought to bear throughout the ten-million-strong Muslim
community in America, as well as those in Europe. In the US, 80 per cent of
mosques are estimated by the Sufi Hisham al-Kabbani, born in Lebanon and now
living in the US, to be under the control of Wahhabi imams, who preach
extremism, and this leads to the other point of vulnerability: Wahhabism is
subsidised by Saudi Arabia, even though bin Laden has sworn to destroy the
Saudi royal family. The Saudis have played a double game for years, more or
less as Stalin did with the West during the second world war. They pretended to
be allies in a common struggle against Saddam Hussein while they spread Wahhabi
ideology everywhere Muslims are to be found, just as Stalin promoted an
‘antifascist’ coalition with the US while carrying out espionage and subversion
on American territory. The motive was the same: the belief that the West was or
is decadent and doomed.
One major
question is never asked in American discussions of Arab terrorism: what is the
role of Saudi Arabia? The question cannot be asked because American companies
depend too much on the continued flow of Saudi oil, while American politicians
have become too cosy with the Saudi rulers.
Another reason it
is not asked is that to expose the extent of Saudi and Wahhabi influence on
American Muslims would deeply compromise many Islamic clerics in the US. But it
is the most significant question Americans should be asking themselves today.
If we get rid of bin Laden, who do we then have to deal with? The answer was
eloquently put by Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, professor of political science at the
University of California at San Diego, and author of an authoritative volume on
Islamic extremism in Pakistan, when he said: ‘If the US wants to do something
about radical Islam, it has to deal with Saudi Arabia. The “rogue states”
[Iraq, Libya, etc.] are less important in the radicalisation of Islam than
Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the single most important cause and supporter of
radicalisation, ideologisation, and the general fanaticisation of Islam.’
From what we now
know, it appears not a single one of the suicide pilots in New York and
Washington was Palestinian. They all seem to have been Saudis, citizens of the
Gulf states, Egyptian or Algerian. Two are reported to have been the sons of
the former second secretary of the Saudi embassy in Washington. They were
planted in America long before the outbreak of the latest Palestinian intifada;
in fact, they seem to have begun their conspiracy while the Middle East peace
process was in full, if short, bloom. Anti-terror experts and politicians in
the West must now consider the Saudi connection.
Stephen Schwartz
is the author of Intellectuals and Assassins, published by Anthem Press.
(c)2001 The
Spectator.co.uk