A farewell message to the Islamosphere from Umar Lee
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abunoor
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johnpi
After reading Umar’s ‘Rise and Fall of the Salafi Dawah‘ I came away with a poor impression of the ‘Troid’ group as one of the more problematical ones, but this lecture seems very responsible (assuming this is the same group, which it may not be).
It may be that 9/11 and everything that has happened after has caused very unbalanced, immoderate groups to address distortions of extremism that were coming to dominate in the 1990s.
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johnpi
The flyer for the event being held at the East London Mosque on January 1st by Noor Pro Media, which will also be selling Anwar al Awlaki tapes there.
One of the contributors over at The Spittoon blog analyzes it. Anybody have a problem with this or care to rebut?
Grave Worship – Salafi-inspired Islamism has long accused both the Shi’a and Sufi of being “grave worshippers”.
The destruction of the tombs of Sufi shaykhs in Somalia by Islamist terrorists, the destruction of the tombs and shrines of the family of the Prophet in Medina and elsewhere by the Wahhabi in Saudi Arabia (together with repeated threats from such to destroy the tomb of the Prophet) remain an enormous loss not just to Muslim believers, but to the world.
New Age Islam – This is clearly targetting the new Sufi orders that have sprung up in the West, and more widely the emergence of Western Islam, with its criticism of Islamism and its support for liberal, progressive, reformatory interpretations of Islam – interpretations that stress the seperation of religion and state, secularism, tolerance and democratic norms.
Sihr – the traditional Arabic for witchcraft. For Salafi-inspired Sunni Islamism, sihr is not simply witchcraft, but any pre-Islamic or allegedly non-Islamic cultural practices that may be embedded in the various forms of Islam that have grown up over the centuries across the world. Equally, this is an assault on the dhikr of the Sufi and other non-Salafi groups. In contrast, the Islamists stress a monolithic and ultimately totalitarian brand of Islam that is completely intolerant of the rich plurality of traditions and practices that have historically marked Islam.
In all, the sinister flyer advertises the narrow-minded, ahistorical, authoritarian bigotry of the Salafi-inspired Islamism at the very heart of the “Islam” being promoted by ELM and its followers. -
johnpi
The Taliban movement in Afghanistan, when it controlled large parts of the north and west of that country in the 1990s, had a goal of “forced reIslamization” (Rashid’s phrase) toward the other ethnic peoples they gained control over in placed like Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif. The “correct” practice they sought to instill in local populations was – of course – Wahhabi-Salafism.
So can “forced reIslamization” work? the answer is ‘yes,’ and it’s been done before – in Saudi Arabia. But it comes with a price, and by looking at the Saudi-Wahhabi project we can estimate and make some projections.
Khalid Abou El Fadl writes about it in The Great Theft.
…the various Wahhabi rebellions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were very bloody, as the Wahhabis indiscriminately slaughtered Muslims especially those belonging to Sufi orders and the Shi’i sect. In 1802, for example, the Wahhabis executed a large number of Sunnis in Mecca and Medina, whom they considered for one reason or another heretical. The number of those executed or massacred by the Saudi-Wahhabi alliance has never been counted, but from historical accounts it is clear that it is in the tens of thousands if not more. In the course of the second conquest of the Arabian peninsula, for instance, acting under orders from Ibn Sa’ud, the Wahhabis carried out 40,000 public executions and 350,000 amputations.
So what would be the comparable figures for executions and amputations today in Afghanistan? I’m going to have to make a few assumptions here, but follow along.
The population of Afghanistan today is roughly equivalent to that of Saudi Arabia – around 28 million. The Saudi population was probably around 3 million in the 1800s. Assuming Afghanstan’s population has always been close to Saudi Arabia’s, we can set up simple equations:
40,000 is to 3 million as ? is to 28 million. And,
350,000 is to 3 million as ? is to 28 million.
Among today’s population in Afghanistan, if the Taliban executed an equivalent proportion of the population for heresy that number would be 373,333.
An equivalent proportion of amputations among the currently living Afghan population would be approximately 3.2 million.
El Fadl refers to these figures as only accounting for those slain in the “second conquest,” most likely the “heretical Sunnis.” So we should probably double these numbers (at least) to capture the slain and disfigured Sufi and Shia.
So there you have it: The price in lives would be over a half million, and the cost in amputations would be more than 6 million, following the historical Saudi model of ‘forced reIslamization.’
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johnpi
Pakistani magazine article: The Saudi-isation of Pakistan.
Soldiers, policemen, factory and hospital workers, mourners at funerals and ordinary people praying in mosques have all been reduced to globs of flesh and fragments of bones. But, perhaps paradoxically, in spite of the fact that the dead bodies and shattered lives are almost all Muslim ones, few Pakistanis speak out against these atrocities. Nor do they approve of the army operation against the cruel perpetrators of these acts because they believe that they are Islamic warriors fighting for Islam and against American occupation. Political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have no words of solace for those who have suffered at the hands of Islamic extremists. Their tears are reserved exclusively for the victims of Predator drones, even if they are those who committed grave crimes against their own people. Terrorism, by definition, is an act only the Americans can commit.
….Villages have changed drastically; this transformation has been driven, in part, by Pakistani workers returning from Arab countries. Many village mosques are now giant madrassas that propagate hard-line Salafi and Deobandi beliefs through oversized loudspeakers. They are bitterly opposed to Barelvis, Shias and other sects, who they do not regard as Muslims. The Punjabis, who were far more liberal towards women than the Pukhtuns, are now beginning to take a line resembling that of the Taliban. Hanafi law has begun to prevail over tradition and civil law, as is evident from the recent decisions of the Lahore High Court.
….Pakistan’s self-inflicted suffering comes from an education system that, like Saudi Arabia’s system, provides an ideological foundation for violence and future jihadists. It demands that Islam be understood as a complete code of life, and creates in the mind of a school-going child a sense of siege and embattlement by stressing that Islam is under threat everywhere.
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johnpi
…a closer look behind the doors of the mosque and inside the conversations between the engineer and the doctor reveal a more complex picture of a young first-generation American Muslim man living a life of dissonance between his identity as an American and his ideology as a Muslim who had accepted a literal, rigid interpretation of Islam, akin to the puritanical Wahhabi and Salafi interpretations of Islam that define the theology of militancy inside the Muslim world today, according to community members who knew Hasan.
Along the way of reporting and describing the two men’s conversations, Nomani has a critique of the common use of the word “ummah” among some in the Muslim world today.
It’s critical that we ditch the concept of the “ummah” with a capital “U” and recognize that we are an “ummah” with a small “u,” meaning our religious identity doesn’t have to supersede other loyalties and identities. This attempt to push an “Ummah” is the politics of ideologues of puritanical Islam who want to mollify dissent. Sadly, too many moderates have bought into it. We aren’t monolithic, and we shouldn’t try to be. Look at al Qaeda, the Taliban and Pakistani militant groups: They don’t have a problem with killing Muslims, slaying Muslims in attacks from Amman, Jordan, to Islamabad, Pakistan.
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johnpi
This is reportedly one of the pro-Islamist violence blog posts that caused the FBI and the military to become concerned about Nidal Malik Hasan:
There was a grenade thrown amongs a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that “IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE” and Allah (SWT) knows best.
It was posted on a blog/website called “Salafi Manhaj” (www.salafimanhaj.com). Anybody ever heard of it?
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johnpi
Somalia Sufi forces organize to fight the ‘existential threat’ of Shabaab Wahhabis.
Somalia’s main Sufi movement, Ahlu Sunna wal Jamaa, on Thursday wrapped up an unprecedented conference in Nairobi to strategize its response to the rise and radicalization of the Shabaab group.
Dozens of the usually quiet religious movement’s leaders have in recent days converged on Nairobi from Somalia and from Western exile to close ranks against what they see as an existential threat.
“The Shabaab are misguided people who have misunderstood the true values of Islam,” overall chairman Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Muhieddin told AFP before leaving Kenya Thursday.
Sufism is dominant in clannish Somalia, where Muslim saints are often also clan founders, but its leading clerics have voiced concern that hardline Islamist groups such as the Al Qaeda-inspired Shabaab were slowly eradicating it.
It emphasizes the mystical dimension of Islam and includes practices considered as idolatry by the followers of the Wahhabi sect adopted by the Shabaab.
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johnpi
Salafism: A new threat to Hamas.
On the streets of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, clusters of men wear long tunics over baggy trousers, a costume common in Pakistan but virtually unknown among Palestinians — until recently.
It is an emblem of Salafism, a branch of Islam that advocates restoring a Muslim empire across the Middle East and into Spain. Some Salafis preach violence, even killing Muslims deemed not pious enough. While historically a fringe group in the southeastern Mediterranean, Salafis have sought inroads in Lebanon and Jordan and are battling Hamas in Gaza.
While Al Qaeda, which shares its conservative religious views and promotion of holy war, has not gained a foothold in the region, Salafism may be the wave of the future. In Algeria and Morocco, similar movements have expanded in the past two decades to create havoc through civilian bombings and attacks on the police.
“This is the challenge we face in the world,” said Bilal Saab, a researcher in Middle East security at the University of Maryland in College Park. “We are getting better at dealing with insurgencies, though Afghanistan is proving to be an exception. It is much more difficult to combat the constant threat of underground urban terrorism.”
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johnpi
Interfax news service: ‘Wahabis promise to burn down the house of the baby with Koran sayings on his skin.’
Wahabis have repeatedly threatened to burn down the house of Shamil and Madina Yakubovs from the Dagestan village of Krasnooktyabrskoye, after phrases from the Koran began appearing on the body of their nine-month-old son.
“They found it only unnatural that Allah showed his signs through a boy born in a family of a police officer! Wahabis consider us kafirun (the unbelievers – IF),” Magomed-Kadyr, the boy’s grandfather said as quoted by Komsomolskaya Pravda daily on Monday.
According to him, their house was approached by a Gazel car in broad daylight, which brought a group of armed Wahabis. They demanded to show them the baby. Then they left threatening to come back. After that, Said Murtazaliyev, head of the district, provided them with a group of six security guards.
Ali’s mother says that the last “message of Allah” appeared on the baby’s body earlier that day. But when Wahabis were inspecting the baby, the saying disappeared to appear again after they left. The marks are said to disappear when an intoxicated neighbor dropped by and picked up the baby. The writings reappeared after he had left.
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johnpi
Asra Nomani pulls no punches in her opposition to Salafism:
But in the name of cultural relativism, many in the West have given the face veil a pass under principles of religious freedom. But it’s an edict of only the most hardcore of Muslims, typically those adhering to the rigid schools of interpretation called Wahhabism and Salafism. On many accounts, groups espousing these ideas essentially represent the KKK wing of Islam.
Nomani does something I always find useful and informative – she compares different translations of the Quran:
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johnpi
Al Qaeda-linked group claims responsibility for launching two rockets into Israel.
A militant group claiming links to al-Qaeda said on Monday it was behind the firing of rockets into northern Israel last week.
….The statement was signed by the Ziad al-Jarrah division of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades and the posting’s headline linked the group to Sunni Muslim militant network al-Qaeda.
Ziad al-Jarrah, a Lebanese militant, was one of the group of 19 who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001 in the United States. Abdullah Azzam was a preacher close to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Reminds me of a bit of analysis that Rob at Arabic Media Shack produced last Fall:
Some readers are probably thinking WTF are you talking about? Israel wants a strong Hezbollah? Yes, because if the Party of God’s military capabilities were to collapse, then Israel will be faced with an even more fanatical enemy who is literally dying to “get some.” Unlike Hezbollah who has to balance their desire to fight with other domestic political considerations, the Salafis answer to no one but God. They don’t care if half of Lebanon gets destroyed in the process because those people are all infidels anyway in the Salafi mindset.
And that’s why Lebanon wants a strong Hezbollah.
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johnpi
Report from the UK: Exposing the UK Salafi’s Part 1
What follows was originally published at Salafi Burnout’s blog, but was removed at the request of the anonymous author. Anything that is published on the Internet never really disappears, so I have republished the article here, taken from Salafi Burnout’s Google cache. If any individuals named in this article, or the people who make up Salafi Publications East London Wing want to answer the allegations, they can come here and do so.
If TI administration removes it here, I’ll post it at progressiveislam.info.
Inshallah, the author is still planning to write Part II. I’m especially interested in Salafi Publications, since it is one of the organizations cited in Umar Lee’s “Rise and Fall of the Salafi Dawah” that harmed a lot of people in the US.
Text of article:
AsalamuAlykum,
First of all I would like to thank you [Salafi Burnout] for exposing the criminals in our communities who take advantage of the people who are most loyal to them and are trying to follow the straight path laid down by the salaf. I’m young but have seen so much happen amongst the Salafi’s and it does make me sick, I still follow the Salafi understanding of Islam but I don’t wear the label and follow any of the Salafi cults.
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johnpi
Salafi extremist deviants earning their bad reputation.
Guerrillas set off bombs outside churches in Baghdad on Sunday, wounding 7 persons. Attacks on Christians are a hallmark of the extremist Salafi groups in Sunnism. About half of Iraq’s indigenous Christian community has fled the country since 2003, and there now may be as few as 400,000 left.
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johnpi
Umar has now reposted his complete series “The rise and fall of the Salafi Dawah [in the US].” For a long time, the only part of it accessible to the public was the last installment. He’s also written an epilogue, I guess you would call it.
It’s an excellent account from within that movement of what happened. It’s interesting now that other information sources are available about some of the people and organizations he writes about. For example, Umar writes of Dawud Adib being one of the early leaders. Adib makes the “rogues gallery” over at Salafi Burnout’s blog (his autobiographical account of the US Salafi movement’s fitnah here), where you can read about Adib’s profiligate marriages, or you can even go to the brutally satirical blog “Dawud Adib: A list of women Dawud Adib would Love to Marry” that has pictures of beautiful women with fake commentary from Adib.
Because of the ruling against marrying the mother in law forever, I have found that it is best to marry the mother first, divorce her, then marry the daughter. That way you get to have halal sex with them both!!! (Of course you will eventually divorce the daughter too).
Umm Ashanti has a nice rack!!!
Or this photo of an Indonesian beauty queen that references this report about Adib:
How would people feel about Dawud’s marriage lectures if they knew he married a virgin girl in Indonesia, deflowered her and divorced her on his way out of the country?
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johnpi
Salafi Burnout continues his tell-all on former Philly (and elsewhere) Imam Abu Usamah Ath-Thahabi, who is now loose in the UK.
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johnpi
Kuwait’s Salafis call voting for women a sin.
[Fuhaid al-Hailam, of the Islamic Salafi Alliance politburo] denied the fatwa, or religious ruling, is politically motivated to undermine women’s chances to win seats in the parliament.
