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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.
Revolution Muslim’s ‘imam and spiritual advisor’ deported from Kenya.
That would be Abdullah al-Faisal who was deported from the UK in 2007 after serving a prison sentence for preaching racial hatred and calling for the killing of Jews, Christians and other Westerners. He entered Kenya Dec. 24th on a “preaching tour.”
“The contacts he was maintaining, according to our intelligence, are not the best, are not in our national interests. The contacts were … in some neighbouring countries.”
….Some Kenyan Muslim clerics demonstrated against Faisal’s arrest on Sunday and said he was going to preach on greater autonomy for Muslims.
“Of course, he did not come here to appease the Kenyan government or the police, but to do his job,” said Sheikh Yahya Mohamed Atie, a retired army captain and a member of Nairobi’s Jamia Mosque.
“He was calling Muslims to have more freedom. Of course, he is against democracy.”
Back in the 1990s, al-Faisal called for the assassination of former Philly Imam Abu Usamah Ath-Thahabi, who more recently was reported to be a liar, swindler and womanizer on Salafi Burnout’s blog.
The Kenyan authorities are said to be “so annoyed” with him that they won’t even grant him a transit visa back to Jamaica.
The NEFA Foundation, a US anti-terrorism think tank, published a new backgrounder on him in October in which it says al-Faisal is described by ‘Revolution Muslim’ as its imam and spiritual advisor.
Abdullah al-Faisal has a loyal following that is dedicated to promoting his ideology to others via the Internet and through in-person delivery of compact disc recordings. Additionally, al-Faisal regularly generates new material by giving public lectures, which are then recorded and distributed electronically and on CDs. Thus, the pervasiveness of his influence is spread quickly and broadly.
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.
Abdulmutallab praised the 9/11 attacks as a teenager.
The bomber also praised the 9/11 terrorist attacks when he was a teenager, telling one schoolfriend they were “an act of war”. The unnamed friend said: “We were talking about 9/11. I was saying under no circumstances could it ever be OK to kill all those innocent people. He was much more equivocal.
“He called 9/11 an act of war – American troops were on Saudi soil and had humiliated Muslim countries so these actions might be necessary. That’s the only time I had an argument with him.”
US troops were invited into Saudi Arabia by the royal family. There is precedent for making military alliances with Western nations. No less an authority than Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (Mr. Wahhabism) and Ibn Saud entered into an offensive alliance with the English to help bring down the Ottoman empire, since it was unconscionable to them as ethnic supremacists that a Turk could be considered equal to an Arab, let alone govern Arabs. “Abd al-Wahhab was, in part reacting to the old ethnocentric belief tht only Arabs can represent the one true and authentic Islam.”
You can’t condemn one and not the other without being a hypocrite, but hypocrisy was never a problem for Wahhabis:
While consistently condemning non-Muslim influences and rejecting any form of cooperation with the West, in reality the Wahhabis were incited and supported by English colonialists to rebel against the Ottomans, which effectively meant that Wahhabis sided with non-Muslim Englishmen against their Muslim Ottoman enemies. Moreover, while condemning all forms of nationalism as an evil Western invention, in reality Wahhabism was a pro-Arab nationalistic movement that rejected Turkish dominance over Arabs under the guise of defending the one true Islam.
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.’
…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.
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?
Kadyrov, 33, was once a separatist but switched sides, recasting himself as an Islamic leader who is also loyal to Moscow.
At first, his injection of national pride along with lots of money from the central government in Moscow soothed war-weary Chechens.
And at first, the process of Islamization was voluntary. Any female student who wore a headscarf initially earned a prize of $1,000. Now all females, regardless of their religious convictions, must cover their heads in schools and government offices.
Kadyrov has banned the sale of European-style wedding dresses in the republic’s bridal salons. Polygamy is increasing. Members of the team around Kadyrov openly have several wives. Kadyrov has also supported honor killings.
Lipkhan Bazaeva, who runs a nongovernmental organization promoting women’s rights, says Chechnya is going back to the Middle Ages.
“Yes, we are a traditional, conservative society, with our own values, but the government has gone overboard, declaring unacceptable limits on women — that they should sit at home, they should obey their husbands,” she says. “As an individual, she has no rights even if her husband beats her, despite Russian laws to the contrary.”
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.”
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.
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.
Salafi Burnout continues his tell-all on former Philly (and elsewhere) Imam Abu Usamah Ath-Thahabi, who is now loose in the UK.
via Abu Aardvark, this editorial in Al Ahram Weekly argues that salafis are rising in the middle east because political organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood have left a religious vacuum:
Wherever you look in the Arab world, Islamist conservatism of the brand known as “Salafist” is gaining ground while moderates seem to be running out of steam. Even regional satellite television stations seem more interested in conservatives than in the mainstream or opposition moderates. Also, many social institutions have fallen into the hands of the Salafis.
[...]
The Muslim Brotherhood and other moderate groups are losing their appeal before the Arab public, perhaps because they are focussing on politics and neglecting religion. And mainstream religious organisations, such as Al-Azhar and Muslim youth societies, are not doing so well either. No wonder Salafis are sidling up to centre stage. If anything, this is a moment of truth for moderates. Either they connect once again with the public, or they embrace irrelevance.
More details about the draft law being prepared by Kuwaiti Islamists in parliament. Restricting women’s freedom tops their agenda, as usual:
The law will cover different aspects like enforcing the veil and Islamic dress on women, restricting women’s travel without the approval from father or husband.
[...]
It also aims at introducing gender segregation at universities, colleges, ministries and private institutions.