by B. R. GOWANI
On Monday, February 18, 2013, in the Pakistani city of Quetta, many Shia Muslims were murdered and wounded in a bombing carried out by terrorist Sunni Muslims. To draw government’s attention against constant deadly attacks and to force it to take action against the responsible persons, Shias refused to bury their dead victims. The writing on shrouds reads, ‘We are ready Hussain [son of Ali, the first Shia imam, and grandson of Prophet Muhammad].” PHOTO/Associated Press/Arshad Butt/ShiaPAC
Muslim enemy #1
The Muslims’ enemy #1 is not the Globo-criminal United States
but it is a Muslim country.
(Of course, looking at the violent US history
of covert and overt wars against foreign countries
and overthrow of their leaders,
the name that instantly occurs to most would be:
the UNITED STATES (1).
But it is not.)
That Muslim country is run by two families:
the Al Saud & Al ash-Sheikh
(the former, more powerful, handles the political side
whereas the latter spreads its fire-brand Wahhabi Islam). (2)
That country is Saudi Arabia –
the greatest enemy of historical Islamic sites, Muslims,
and also of non-Muslims.
Saudi crimes
A few of Saudi Arabia’s crimes are:
- Occupation of Mecca and Medina (3) (considered the most holy place for 1.8 billion Muslims: 24% of the world’s population) and using them as tools to control and blackmail leaders of Muslim countries.
- Spreading extreme philosophies of Wahhabism/Salafism all over the world through petrodollars while prohibiting non-Muslims and some branches of Shia Muslims residing in Saudi Arabia to openly practice their religion. (4)
- Not interested in justice for Palestine (5) which has almost disappeared from the world map. As the rulers of the most influential Muslim country, with petro-billions at their disposal and oil as their weapon, the Saudis could have played a major role in getting the Palestinian people their land back in a solution where both Jews and Palestinians could coexist as two nations (or one-state, as some have suggested) in a peaceful manner. Instead, the Saudis have discarded the Palestinian people and have joined hands with powers (covertly with Israel and overtly with the US) whose interest lies in perpetuating the conflict. To top it all, the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who is the de facto ruler due to his father’s dementia, has not shown much opposition to Trump’s announcement to move the US embassy to East Jerusalem. Also, MSB has unofficially given recognition to the state of Israel by stating that “the Israelis have the right to have their own land.”
- Saudi Arabia, like Trump (6), also opposed the United States/Iran nuclear deal. To save his ass, MSB has befriended President Donald Trump by buying hundreds of billions of weapons (7). Two others reasons are: to avoid criticism from Trump of his power grab; and to isolate Iran and create military friction between the US and Iran. Of course, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump want the same because they don’t want any state to become powerful enough in the Middle East to challenge Israel’s military and nuclear hegemony. Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East – it possesses about 200 nuclear weapons.
- Inciting hatred within the kingdom: Ninth and tenth graders in Saudi Arabia are taught Sharia laws and shown pictures of hands and feet explaining how to cut off hands and feet of thieves. (8)
- An eighth grade book teaches:
“The Apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews; and the Swine are the infidels of the communion of Jesus, the Christians.”
- A hadith book for ninth grade reads:
“The day of judgment will not arrive until Muslims fight Jews, and Muslim will kill Jews until the Jew hides behind a tree or a stone. Then the tree and the stone will say, ‘Oh Muslim, oh, servant of God, this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.’ Except one type of a tree, which is a Jew tree. That will not say that.” (9)
- Destroying holy historical structures: In Mecca and Medina, between 1992-2012,
95% of the 1,000-year-old buildings
have been bulldozed and destroyed.
The Kaaba now has a huge tall Tower complex as its neighbor
along with tall hotels & skyscraper buildings. (10) - The Prophet’s house was first used as a cattle market
then turned into a public library –
which, of course, is not open to the public.
His first wife Khadija’s house was turned into public toilets.
The first caliph Abu Bakr’s house is a Hilton hotel now,
and his mosque was demolished for accommodating ATMs.
The Prophet’s mother’s grave was bulldozed
and set alight doused in gasoline.
Many graves in Jannat Al Baqi were demolished, including
Fatima‘s (daughter of Prophet and wife of Ali, the first Shia imam). (11)
Fatima’s son Imam Hassan’s grave met the same fate. - For desecration of Koran, real or alleged, people get killed and life comes to a standstill; for defiling graves of Prophet and his relatives, nothing happens to the Saudi rulers! (12) One wonders what would the Prophet have thought of Hilton, public toilets, ATM, etc.?)
- Women (13) can’t apply for a passport or travel to another country (even for education – paradoxically, those with government scholarship are prohibited too), get married, or leave prison without permission from a male guardian (father, husband, brother, or son.)
- In March 2002, the Saudi religious police known as Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice stopped schoolgirls escaping a building on fire because their dressing was not Islamic i.e., Islamic dress: women should cover themselves in abayas (black robes) and headscarves. The religious police beat girls trying to leave. Fifteen girls died and more than 50 were injured.
- The Saudi-led coalition (14) war on Yemen supported by the West, began in March 2015 has claimed at least 10,000 lives, according to the United Nations report, 40,000 people have been wounded. Yemen, the poorest of the Arab countries, has been devastated; 80% of its population, 19 million, require humanitarian aid now and 3 million Yemenis have been displaced, the same report states. In three months after end of April 2017, economic blockade had resulted in the onset of cholera:
440,000 cases have been reported, with 1,900 deaths (it’s believed that there may be over a million cases of cholera, “the biggest outbreak of the disease in modern history”), and 55% of Yemen’s health care system had been destroyed. 4.5 million pregnant/lactating women and children are malnourished, and 18 million Yemenis are in need of emergency aid. - Since early June 2017, the rash and unwise new Crown Prince – who is almost the king because the present King is senile – picked a fight with Qatar, a co-member of the GCC or Gulf Cooperation Council, and renewed old hostilities by cutting off diplomatic relations and imposing an economic blockade. United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and a tiny South Asian island nation of Maldives also cutoff ties with Qatar. Saudis have accused Qatar of supporting Islamist groups. Its like the pot calling the kettle black. Saudis also dislike Qatar’s independent stand on several issues, including its relations with Iran and its international TV channel Al Jazeera.
- In December 2010, WikiLeaks released a 2009 memo signed by then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton which read:
- On January 2, 2016, Saudi Arabia executed 47 people in 12 different locations throughout the country, including the notable Shia (16) cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr. Sheikh Nimr who was liked by the young people and had demanded free elections and had condemned the Saudi government.
- In February 2017, the Saudi police arrested 35 transgender persons. Two of them, 26-year-old Meeno and 35-year-old Amna, (both Pakistanis) were put in a sack, tortured, and beaten to death. The nuclear power Pakistan didn’t register any protest; Pakistani leaders lick Saudi king’s ass and in return gets some pocket money. Beheading of people in public squares after Friday afternoon prayer is a frequent sordid spectacle in Saudi Arabia.
- Stampedes and accidents have become frequent during the Hajj. The 2015 pilgrimage witnessed a deadly stampede claiming the lives of 2,411 people, according to the Associated Press tally. From the government of “the custodian of the two holy mosques,” the figure of dead was 769 – initially it blamed the victims for not following the instructions and later imposed media blackout on the event. Saudis are neither accountable to the victims’ families nor to the governments of the countries the victims belonged to. 1,426 people got crushed in 1990. The number of killed in 2006 was 346. There have been several such mishaps since the 1970s resulting in deaths and injuries.
“More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba] and other terrorist groups.”
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com
End Notes
(1) Yes, the United States has caused and is causing havoc in several Muslim countries – as it has done in the past in Vietnam, Guatemala, Congo, Chile, Korea, Haiti, Iran, and many other non-Muslim countries. The US is the greatest criminal/imperial country the world has ever witnessed. But it is an imperial criminal, i.e., if you stay within the USpider web – let its corporations permeate your country; let them exploit your labor force; let it sell its arms to you; let yourself constrain from challenging its hegemony; etc. it will permit some freedom. Or else, it will destroy your country in such a manner that sometime you’ll need decades to return to the pre-war state.
Example: Libya had free medical and education for its citizens and was planning to introduce pan-African currency as an alternative to the French franc. Muammar Gaddafi was ruthlessly removed and brutally murdered. Since then, Libya is a big mess: is without a central authority; Muslim Jihadis are at large; there have been cases of slavery; the refugees pose an additional humanitarian problem.
(2) The relation between Al Saud and Al ash-Sheikh families have not always been friction free but that has not hindered them from spreading the hateful doctrine. The royal family also controls the purse strings and uses it to please and coerce the Al ash-Sheikh family to get the religious issues resolved to their liking, in most cases.
(3) Medina & Mecca were part of the Kingdom of Hejaz till 1925 when the Saud family conquered it.
(4) Saudi Kingdom has opened the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Inter-religious and Inter-cultural Dialogue in Vienna, Austria. One wonders why Austria, a country with a Christian majority, would allow such a sectarian country like Saudi Arabia to open the centre. Hypocrisy. The West worships its oil and petro-dollars.
(5) See the maps to understand how Israel was created by stealing the Palestinian land. Palestine itself is reduced to few dots and a tiny patch. Palestinians can’t expect anything from the US because most of the Congress members are under the powerful Israeli Lobby‘s influence. Some US presidents have expressed their desire to solve the Palestinian issue but have been helpless due to the Lobby’s power which has most of the Congress in their pockets. President Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, have openly sided with Israel. Since many decades, Israel has received billions of dollars in aid from the US.
(6) Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has jumped on the anti-Iran bandwagon as can be seen from her many pronouncements on Iran’s “terrorist acts.” Haley’s plan to contest 2020 presidential election and the power of the Israel Lobby to influence elections is one of the reasons behind such lies about Iran.
(7) The US government is well aware of how bigoted Saudi Arabia is but always looks the other way to continue its profitable businesses. The only thing one hears about is how Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Melania Trump didn’t cover their heads while visiting Saudi Arabia. Big deal. What these ladies should have demanded of the Saudi king and princes was that the number of Saudi men present when these ladies were there should have been reduced by at least half to make room for Saudi women.
Obama as an Illinois State Senator had in October 2002 shown quite an understanding of the Middle East when, criticizing George W. Bush’s preparations for a war against Iraq, he had asked Bush to fight a different kind of war against dissimilar opponents:
“Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.”
But once Obama was on the national stage as a Democratic presidential candidate, and later as president, his views on Iraq policies resembled those of Bush. However, as president, Obama annoyed Saudi royals by not starting a war against Syria and mending relations with Iran which had deteriorated since 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini’s arrival resulted in the departure of the US puppet Shah of Iran. Patrick Cockburn of Independent observes that Obama’s conspicuous characteristic is his ability to learn from “failures and mistakes.” However, Obama did visit Saudi Arabia four times, the welcome was not heartfelt. Obama administration sold over $200 billion worth of weapons.
Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s leaked email revealed:
“Anyway, Iranians can’t use one [a nuclear weapon] if they finally make one. The boys in Tehran know Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran, and we have thousands. As [President Mahmoud] Akmdinijad (sic) [2005-2013, said], “What would we do with one, polish it?” I have spoken publicly about both nK and Iran. We’ll blow up the only thing they care about – regime survival. Where, how would they even test one?”)
(8) To hide its own nepotism and corruption, the despotic Saudi ruling family opts for inhumane punishment for others. Instead of examining reasons for wrongs and crimes committed, the ruling class opts for the easy way out by turning thieves into disabled and dependent people; behead drug users/dealers; lash and flog others publicly; and so on. Meanwhile, corruption of millions of dollars in the ruling family remain beyond accountability.
(9) In early 2015, in Qatar’s Grand Mosque, a Saudi preacher Saad bin Ateeq al-Ateeq, closely associated with the Saudi ruling class, spewed the following hatred,
“Destroy the Jews and whoever made them Jews, and destroy the Christians and the Alawites and whoever made them Christian, and the Shiites and whoever made them Shiite.”
(10) Saudi Kingdom not only treats Saudi Arabia as its personal property, but also accords the same treatment to Mecca & Medina, 2 holiest cities to Muslims. It has no respect for history or archaeology.
(11) Twelver or Athna‘ashariyyah branch of Shia Islam considers Hasan as the second Imam and his brother Husayn as the third imam. However, Nizari Ismailis, another branch of Shias, claim they have a continuous line of imams.
(12) The Architect/founder of the Jeddah-based Hajj Research Centre, Sami Angawi lamented the tragic state of Mecca:
“They are turning the holy sanctuary into a machine, a city which has no identity, no heritage, no culture and no natural environment. They’ve even taken away the mountains.”
(People taking selfies during the Hajj “defy the wish of our Prophet,” said clerics who condemned such behavior.
Saudi activist, poet and photographer Nimah Ismail Nawwab to Time magazine:
“Everything happens at night.” “By the next day in the morning, the monument is gone [i.e., bulldozed].”
(13) Saudi Arabia was the only country in the world where women were not allowed to drive. Only recently the ban on their driving has been lifted. In the past, a Saudi writer/activist Wajeha al-Huwaider had released a video on Youtube of herself driving a car. It was her way of protesting the ban.
The height of hypocrisy is that in April 2017, Saudi Arabia was elected to the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women! It was supported by 47 members, three of them were from the European Union!
Al-Huwaider knows well Western hypocrisy:
“I have never expected any of the Western world leaders to talk about human rights violations in Saudi Arabia, and they’ve lived up to my expectations.”
Obama didn’t disappoint Al-Huwaider; he was uncomfortable with the Saudi treatment of 50% of its population as is evident from the following:
“A country cannot function in the modern world when it is repressing half of its population.” “You can gauge the success of a society by how it treats its women.”
But most of it was restricted to private conversations or interviews; Obama never took up the issue head-on with the Saudi rulers.
(14) Saudi headed coalition initially comprised of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan. Malaysia’s troops are there to train the Saudis. In their annual report, experts who monitor Yemeni conflict and sanctions, have drawn attention to the gruesome fact that 8 of 10 attacks between March and October 2016 by those coalition forces were on non-military targets.
(15) The UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar are other funders of Sunni terrorist groups listed in the memo.
(16) The Shias have faced frequent persecution at the hands of the Saudi rulers under pressure from Wahhabi ulama. In the late 1920s, Shia Muslims of Al-Hasa were forcefully converted to Islam and were coerced to forego visiting Shia holy places in Iraq. Many of their mosques were demolished and other mosques were taken control of to impart Wahhabi Islam to Shias.