SPEAKING
FREELY West blinks at Wahhabism's dark
side By Zubair Khan
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please
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In Saudi Arabia
there is no church, synagogue, Buddhist nor Hindu
temple allowed. Wahhabism (pseudo Salafism) is not
a religion of tolerance. Wahhabism provides the
fundamental base for jihadism which causes
unending strife and misery.
It is not Iran
that should be bombed. In Iran there are still
Jews living there and praying in their synagogues.
Muammar al-Gaddafi respected Christian and Jewish
religions and their churches, synagogues in Libya
but American, English, French, Saudi and
Qatari-financed
terrorists have destroyed churches and synagogues
recently. Buddhist temples including Bamiyan
Buddha statues have survived in Islamic countries
for centuries, but they would not survive under
the Wahhabism.
Washington and London are
protecting Wahhabi extremists. In Syria,
Christians and their churches were safe before the
Westerners began sending their Wahhabi fanatics to
kill innocent Syrian civilians.
In Bosnia
and Kosovo, under the guise of "reconstruction
aid", Saudi Arabia, Kuwaiti, and other Wahhabi
organizations have demolished and removed major
Islamic monuments which survived attacks by Serb
and Croat militias. These were created by Muslims
with an Islamic culture and tradition stretching
back to 14th century, long before Ibn Abd
al-Wahhab made his 18th century alliance with the
warlord Ibn Saud who founded the Saudi dynasty -
the House of Saud.
The Wahhabis, and the
British, supported the warlord Ibn Saud and
legitimized the Saudi dynasty and its struggle
against the Uthman Khillafath of Turkey. Since
then the House of Saud always supports Britain and
its allies, including the US and Israel. When the
House of Saud took control of the Holy Places in
Arabia from the Uthman Khillafath of Turkey with
British support, 15 centuries of Islamic heritage
was destroyed, including the desecration of the
tombs of the wives and companions of the Holy
Prophet, in the iconoclastic imposition of
Wahhabism. The iconoclastic Wahhabi House of Saud
gradually destroyed several holy shrines,
including historical places of Islam from the
Prophet's house in Mecca and companion Ayoob
Ansari's house in Medina and turned them into
apartments blocks and hotels. They also turned the
site of the Prophet's wives' houses into a parking
lot.
The Wahhabi-backed House of Saud took
full control of the Hijaz, Mecca and Medina, in
1924 and established the modern state of Saudi
Arabia, with Wahhabism as its official religion.
Since then the House of Saud has promoted
Wahhabism as normative Islam throughout the
Islamic world. The House of Saud was consolidated
on massive oil wealth and has spent huge sums of
money building Wahhabi mosques, publishing Wahhabi
literature and funding Wahhabi organizations
world-wide. Today, with Wahhabi control of the
Holy Places intact, virtually every aspect and
corner of modern Islam has been penetrated by
Wahhabi influence through the agency of the House
of Saud.
Through the control of the Hajj -
the beating heart of Islam - and through their
vigorous publication and propaganda means, the
Saudis have ensured that almost all Muslims are
infected with Wahhabism to some extent.
Present Zionist and Wahhabi doctrines
foresee the fall of Iran, Belarus, and, ultimately
Russia and China, after the fall of Damascus, to
the combined forces of NATO and the Saudi- and
Qatari-backed Wahhabis, who make up a large
portion of the anti-Syrian movement.
Sufism is an entirely indigenous Islamic
movement resistant to fundamentalism. Throughout
South Asia, including Sri Lanka for several
centuries, the spiritual tradition of Sufism has
been vigorously present. Across Pakistan, the
religious tenor has been correspondingly
radicalized: the tolerant, Sufi-minded Barelvi
form of Islam is now overtaken by the rise of the
more hardline and politicized Wahhabism. Remember
Sri Lankan cricketers were ambushed in Lahore by
armed Wahhabi jihadists.
Wahhabi ideology
of Islam reached Sri Lanka in the 1940s, but was
not accepted by Sri Lankan Muslims. Later,
oil-rich Saudi Arabia greatly began to penetrate
Sri Lanka's adherents to Islam in 1970s.
With funding from Saudi Arabia's petro
dollars, Wahhabi followers are now responsible for
the sectarian clashes that are slowly increasing
among Sri Lankan Muslims especially in the Eastern
Province. It is sadly true but there is a rising
trend of Wahhabi jihadism in Sri Lanka.
Wahhabis are trying to take the peaceful
Islamic community in Sri Lanka down the path of
extremism and violence. Wahhabi fundamentalism has
advanced so quickly in Sri Lanka partly because
the House of Saud has financed the building of so
many madrassas.
The Wahhabis have already
created deep divisions in among Sri Lankan Muslims
and have formed gangs to intimidate moderate
Muslims who speak out against Wahhabi fanatics.
Like the Christian fundamentalist groups using
NGOs to convert innocent poor families to
Christianity, Wahhabis help poor Muslim families
by providing cash and other material benefits to
convert them into their cult. By building churches
and madrassas all over the world to harvest the
poor souls is truly very clever idea. Wahhabis
even use Sri Lankan Government Cultural and
Religious Affairs Departments to continue their
nefarious activities.
Wahhabis claim that
moderate Sri Lankan Muslims do not know anything
of Islam and only themselves are the real scholars
of Islam. But Wahhabis preach only a dawah
of hatred, terror and murder. To understand
the deranged mentality of Wahhabis look at the
fitna the Wahhabis have caused in Pakistan.
The authorities must investigate every
Wahhabi school and propagandist in the eastern
province to make sure they are not preaching
things that are inimical to Sri Lanka. Saudi
Arabia remains a critical financial support base
for al-Qaeda, Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other
Wahhabi terrorist groups. Saudi Arabia spends $87
billion per year to spread Wahhabism world-wide.
Scholarships are offered to our Muslims youths to
go to Wahhabi institutions in Saudi Arabia and
Egypt. But those who completed their Wahhabi
studies return to Sri Lanka and propagate
Wahhabism.
The CIA introduced Wahhabism in
Sri Lanka through Saudi Arabia as a means of
countering the growing support for Iran and Sufism
among the Sri Lankan Muslims since the CIA had
calculated that Wahhabism would be an effective
rival theology to prevent the spread of Iranian
influence in Sri Lanka.
Clashes between
Sufis and Wahhabi Muslims in Kattankudi and in
Oddamavadi occured on a regular basis due to the
conflict of beliefs between both religious
theologies. In October 2004 similar clashes
occurred in Kattankudi and more than 200 homes of
Sufi followers were burnt down by Wahhabi
Jihadists.
One of the local Sufi leaders,
Abdul Payilvan, died in Colombo was buried at in
Kattankudi the next day. Wahhabi Muslims observed
a hartal and demanded the removal of the body from
the burial grounds. Wahhabi Muslims claim
Kattankudy soil is sacred and bodies belonging to
those who preach views contradictory to Wahhabism
should not be buried there. Wahhabis have demanded
that the body of l Payilvan, who is from
Maruthamunai in the Ampara district, should be
exhumed and buried elsewhere.
Wahhabis dug
up the buried body of another Sufi Muslim from
Mosque burial grounds and dumped the body on a
local road as an act of protest. Kattankudi Police
recovered the body, re-buried it in the original
burial ground and guarded burial ground for few
days.
In Kattankudi, the hatred between
Wahhabis and Sufis has widened in the last few
years and has grown in intensity, left many
injured, and caused damage to several houses and
vehicles.
A more recent 2009 clash in the
south-western Muslim coastal town of Beruwala
reflects similar religious tensions between a
popular Sufi sheikh and a nearby Wahhabi
congregation.
Saudi agents have
successfully penetrated Sri Lankan Muslims social
fabric and have managed to defeat the Sufism at
their own game. Due to the training afforded by
the House of Saud now the Wahhabis have prevailed
over the Sufis. The Muslims in Sri Lanka have been
subdued due to the Wahhabi influence while
Buddhists have been agitating for the release of
Rizana Naffek - a teenage housemaid from Muthur
who was sentenced to death by a Wahhabi Sharia
Court in Saudi Arabia.
The House of Saud,
pretending to be the leaders of the Islam, promote
their Wahhabi ideology world-wide. The result has
been the birth of al-Qaeda, the Taliban,
Lashkar-e-Taiba and other Wahhabi terrorist groups
which are killing Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims alike
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Wahhabism has been taking roots in
Maldives from the days of Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
Abandoning its tolerant, syncretic brand of Islam,
Maldives now moves towards an intolerant Wahhabi
society.
Al-Qaeda, Taliban,
Lashkar-e-Taiba are overseen by the CIA and Mossad
who want to destabilise countries that are not
friendly to them. Because the House of Saud
depends on the Americans for its security it
always obeys American orders. The constant
demonization of Iran and now the war against
Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad confirms a
perception that Western Countries have joined with
the Wahhabis in the Wahhabis' war on the Shia.
Wahhabi jihadism remains a long-term security risk
to the civilized world. In particular, through the
spread of Wahhabi education in tens of thousands
of religious schools world-wide, the practitioners
of Wahhabism are breeding tens of millions of
youth who are certain to remain outside the
productive economy, and as a consequence, seethe
with resentment and anger against the rest of
society.
Even the forced exodus of the
Hindu Pandit community from the Kashmir Valley in
India during the early 1990s, and the destruction
of several Hindu and Sikh temples by the Wahhabi
Jihadists in Kashmir, failed to slow down the
volume of laudatory coverage of what were
portrayed Wahhabi Jihadists as freedom fighters
battling cruel Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir
State by the Western media. The "Kashmir Model" of
using the language of democracy and human rights
to win Western support, even while adhering to a
contrary policy in practice was widely used to
topple Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. Wahhabis
hated Muammar al-Gaddafi for the fact that he
ruled Libya, with no quarter given to Wahhabi
demands as the imposition of Sharia law or the
banning of women's dress other than the abaya.
After Muammar al-Gaddafi was defeated and
killed, Wahhabi Jihadists who took over Libya as a
result of huge help from Nicholas Sarkozy and
David Cameron have lost no time in imposing a
Wahhabi version of Sharia law in Libya and in
killing and jailing those who disagree with their
extremist world-view. Fortunately for them,
Western media channels that were once filled with
news about Libya under Muammar Gaddafi are now
silent about the immense human rights violations
taking place in Libya after its "liberation" in
2011.
Seeing the success of such a pitch
in Libya, Wahhabi jihadists against the Syrian
leader Bashar al-Assad, have begun cultivating the
Western media and public opinion, the way the
Wahhabi Jihadists in Kashmir used to do in the
1990s.
So extreme has the identification
with such elements become, that even the largest
Western media outlets accept without question such
"facts" as that Syrian president bombed his own
troops and facilities in order "to blame it on the
insurgents". Since the armed uprising by Wahhabi
jihadists began in Syria, several thousand members
of the Syrian security forces and their family
members have been killed by the Wahhabi
insurgents, who themselves have lost thousands of
their own.
However, those relying on
Western media are told that every such death has
been caused by the Syrian security forces,
ignoring the deadly violence that is being
unleashed in Syria by groups of armed Wahhabi
mobs.
Today in Syria, women can dress as
they please. Were the Wahhabi jihadists to take
control, this freedom might soon be replaced with
the obligation to wear the full veil. Already in
Egypt and in Tunisia, the secular ethos of the
country is rapidly giving way to Wahhabism.
While Western countries are opposed to
Wahhabi jihadism and Sharia law in their own
countries, in the Arab countries they favor
Wahhabi jihadism over those who are secular. The
result is a galloping Wahhabism and its Sharia law
across the Arab countries.
Since the
Western countries' subterfuge to destabilize Sri
Lanka by surreptitiously supporting the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) failed, now the
Western countries will promote Wahhabi jihadism to
cause strife and trouble there.
Wahhabi
followers - al-Qaeda, Taliban,
Lashkar-e-TaibaTaliban and other Wahhabi terror
groups - have caused untold misery in several
countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan
and India. Sri Lanka appears to be their next
target.
The Sri Lankan government must
take immediate strict measures to control Wahhabi
organizations and ban them.
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
allow our readers to express their opinions and do
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