ROLE OF SAUDI ARABIA, AS CALIPHS OF ISLAM IN PROMOTING
ISLAMIC EXTREMISM AND JIHADISM By Nauman Sadiq
The Pakistani military establishment is rightfully blamed for creating
the Taliban; but the phenomena of religious extremism and terrorism is not
limited to Pakistan; this conflagration has engulfed the whole of Islamic world
from Iraq and Syria to Algeria and Indonesia and even the Muslim minorities in
China, Thailand and Philippines. Pakistani establishment does not has access to
all these regions, thus, aside from local actors, some regional and global
actors are also responsible for creating the menace of Islamic extremism and
terrorism. A more holistic understanding of the problem will identify three
actors responsible for creating this menace: Pakistani military establishment;
Saudi and Gulf petro-monarchies and last but not the least, the Western support
for the Afghan Jihad in the context of the Cold War.
A recent EU parliament report also
identified the Wahabi-Salafi roots of Global Terrorism; a laudable report which
ironically or rather expectedly doesn’t even makes a passing reference to the
role of Western powers in sponsoring Islamic terrorism during the 80s.
Plausible deniability in waging proxy wars is a clever Machiavellian tactic in
realpolitik but it is a form of “denial” which is always a part of the problem
and never a part of the solution. Truth is a sine qua non in any Truth and
Reconciliation approach. But this write-up is about the role of Saudi Arabia as
the proverbial Caliph of Islam in promoting extremism and terrorism in the
Muslim Ummah or Commonwealth; the role of Western powers in creating this hoax,
I have already discussed in my blogpost: Terrorism as pretext for intervention.
Essay:
Social selection plays the same role in the social sciences which the
natural selection plays in the biological sciences: it selects the traits,
norms and values which are most beneficial to the host culture. Seen from this
angle, social diversity is a desirable quality for social progress; because
when diverse customs and value-systems compete with each other, the culture
retains the beneficial customs and values and discards the deleterious customs
and values. A decentralized and unorganized religion, like Sufism, engenders
diverse strains of beliefs and thoughts which compete with one another in
gaining social acceptance and currency. A heavily centralized and tightly
organized religion, on the other hand, depends more on authority and dogma,
than value and utility. A centralized religion is also more ossified and less
adaptive compared to a decentralized religion.
When we look at religious extremism and the consequent militancy and
terrorism, in Pakistan in particular and the Islamic world in general, it is
not a natural evolution of religion, some deleterious mutation have occurred
somewhere which has infected the whole of Islamic world. Most Pakistani
political scientists blame the Pakistani military establishment for a
deliberate promotion of religious extremism to create a Jihadi narrative which
suits the institutional interests and strategic objectives of the Pakistani
military. There is no denying this obvious fact but it is only one factor in a
multifactorial equation. Like I said earlier, the phenomena of religious
extremism is not limited to Pakistan, the whole of Islamic world from Tunisia,
Morocco and Algeria to Indonesia, Malaysia and even the Muslim minorities of
Thailand, China and Philippines are witnessing this phenomena.
In my opinion, the real culprit for the rise of religious extremism and
terrorism in the Islamic world is Saudi Arabia. The Aal-e-Saud (descendants of
Saud) have no hereditary claim to the Throne of Mecca since they are not the
descendants of the prophet, nor even from the Quresh (there is a throne of
Mecca which I’ll explain later). They were the most primitive marauding nomadic
tribesmen of Najd who defeated the Sharifs of Mecca violently after the
collapse of the Ottomans in the first world war. Their title to the throne of
Saudi Arabia is only de facto, not de jure, since neither do they have a
hereditary claim nor do they hold elections to ascertain the will of the Saudi
people. Thus they are the illegitimate rulers of Saudi Arabia and they feel
insecure because of their illegitimacy; which explains their heavy-handed
tactics is dealing with any kind of dissent, opposition or movement for reform.
The phenomena of religious extremism all over the Islamic world is
directly linked to the Wahabi-Salafi madrassahs which are sponsored by the
Saudi and Gulf petrodollars. These madrassahs attract children from the most
poorest backgrounds in the third world Islamic countries because they offer the
kind of incentives and facilities which even the government-sponsored public
schools cannot provide: free boarding and lodging, no tuition fee at all, and
free of cost books and even stationery. Aside from madrassahs, another factor
that promotes Wahabi-Salafi ideology in the Islamic world is the ritual of Hajj
and Umrah (pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina). Every year millions of Muslim men
and women travel from all over the Islamic world to perform the ritual and wash
their sins. When they return to their native countries, after spending a month
or two in Saudi Arabia, along with clean hearts and souls, dates and zamzam,
they also bring along the tales of Saudi hospitality and their true puritanical
version of Islam, which some, especially the rural-tribal folks, find
attractive.
Authority plays an important role in any thought system; the educated
people accept the authority of the specialists in their respective fields of
specialty; the lay folks accept the authority of the theologians and clerics in
the interpretation of religion and scriptures. Aside from authority certain
other factors also play a part in the individuals’ psyche: loyalty, purity or
the concept of sacred, and originality and authenticity as in a concept of
being close to an ideal authentic model. Just like the modern naturalists who
prefer organic food and natural habits and lifestyles; because of their belief
in the goodness of nature, or their disillusionment from the man-made fuss; the
religious folks prefer a true version of Islam which is closer to the putative
authentic Islam as practiced in Mecca and Medina: the Gold Standard of
Petro-Islam.
Yet another factor which contributes to the rise of Salafism throughout
the Islamic world is the immigrants factor. Millions of Muslim men, women and
families from the third world Islamic countries live and work in Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, UAE, Kuwait and Oman. Some of them permanently reside there but mostly
they work on temporary work permits. Just like the pilgrims, when they come
back to their native villages and towns, they bring along an Ox-bridge degree
and an attractive English accent. Not literally but figuratively. Spending time
in Arab countries entitles one to pass authoritative judgments on religious
matters; and having a cursory understanding of the language of Quran makes you
an equivalent of a Qazi (judge) among the illiterate village people. And they
just reproduce the customs and attitudes of the Arabs as an authentic version
of Islam to their compatriots.
The Shia Muslims have their Imams and Marjahs (religious authorities)
but it is generally believed about the Sunni Islam that it discourages the
authority of the clergy. In this sense, Sunni Islam is closer to Protestantism,
theoretically, because it promotes an individual and personal interpretation of
scriptures and religion. It might be true about the Hanafis and other educated
schools of thought in Islam; but on a popular level, the House of Saud plays
the same role in Islam that the Pope plays in Catholicism. By virtue of their
physical possession of the holy places of Islam – Mecca and Medina – they are
the ex officio Caliphs of Islam. The title of the Saudi King,
Khadim-ul-Haramain-al-Shareefain (Servant of the House of God), makes him a
vice-regent of God on Earth. And the title of the Caliph of Islam is not
limited to a nation-state, he wields enormous influence and clout throughout
the Commonwealth of Islam: the Muslim Ummah.
Now, when we hear slogan like “No democracy, just Islam” on the streets
of third world Islamic countries, one wonders what kind of an imbecile would
forgo his right to choose his ruler through a democratic process? It is partly
due to the fact that the masses often conflate democracy with liberalism;
without realizing that democracy is only a political process of choosing one’s
representatives and legislators through an election process; while liberalism
is a cultural mindset which may or may not be suitable in a native third world
society depending on its existing level of social progress in an evolutionary
perspective; which prefers a bottom-up, gradual and incremental changes over a
top-down, sudden and radical approach. But one feels dumbfounded when even some
educated Muslims argue that democracy is un-Islamic and an ideal Islamic system
of governance is a Caliphate. Such an ideal Caliphate could be some
Umayyad/Abbasid model that they conjure up in their heads; but in practice the
only beneficiaries of such an anti-democratic approach are the illegitimate
tyrants of the Arab World who claim to be the Caliphs of Islam albeit
indirectly and in a nuanced manner: the Servants of the House of God and the
Keepers of the Holy places of Islam.
The illegitimate, hence insecure, tyrants adopt different strategies to
maintain their hold on power. They heed to the pragmatic advice of Machiavelli:
“Invent enemies and then slay them in order to control your subjects.” The
virulently anti-Shia rhetoric of the Salafis and Takfiris is such a
Machiavellian approach. They cannot construct a positive narrative which can
specify their achievements; that’s why they construct a negative narrative that
casts the Evil Other in a negative light. The Sunni-Shia conflict is
essentially a political and economic conflict which is presented to the lay
Muslim in a veneer of religiosity. Saudi Arabia produces 10 to 15 million
barrels of oil per day (equivalent to 15 to 20 % of the global oil production)
it can single-handedly bring down the oil price to $ 50 per barrel and it can
also single-handedly raise the oil price to $ 200 per barrel, a nightmare for
the global industrialized economies. 90 % of the Saudi oil installations are
situated along the Persian Gulf; but this sparsely populated region comprises
the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia which has a Shia majority. Any separatist
tendency in this Achilles heel is met with sternest possible reaction. Saudi
Arabia sent its own battalions to help Bahraini regime quell the Shia rebellion
in the Shia-majority Bahrain; which is also geographically very close to the
Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.
Al-Qaeda inspired terrorism is a threat to the Western countries; but
the Islamic countries are encountering a much bigger threat of inter-sectarian
terrorism. For centuries the Sunni and Shia Muslims lived peacefully side by
side; but now certain vested interests are provoking inter-sectarian strife to
distract attention away from the popular movements for democracy throughout the
Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The ultimate goal of the Arab
Spring is to overthrow the illegitimate House of Saud and this tide will not
subside until its objective is achieved. There are ebbs and flows in any
grass-roots political and social movement; it ebbed in Egypt but it will rise
again to flood the whole of MENA region. What’s unfortunate is the fact, that
the so-called champions of democracy can’t even lend a moral support, let alone
the material support; because their interests always outweigh their principles
and ideals.
Conclusion:
Islam is regarded as the fastest growing religion of the 20th and 21st
centuries. There are two factors responsible for this Islamic-resurgence
phenomena: one, Islam is a practical religion, it does not demands from its
followers to give up worldly pleasures but only to regulate them; two, Islam as
a religion and ideology has the world’s richest financiers. After the 1973
collective Arab oil embargo against the West, the price of oil quadrupled; the
Arabs sheikhs now have so much money that they don’t know where to spend it.
This is the reason why we see an exponential growth in Islamic charities and
madrassahs all over the world and especially in the Islamic world. Although the
Arab sheikhs of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and some emirates of UAE excluding
Dubai (which isn’t liberal per se but morally depraved) generally sponsor the
Wahabi-Salafi brand of Islam but the difference between numerous sects of Sunni
Islam are more nominal than substantive. The charities and madrassahs belonging
to all the Sunni sects get generous funding from the Gulf states as well as the
private donors. Therefore the genie of petro-Islamic extremism cannot be
contained until and unless the financial pipeline is cut off. And to do that we
need to promote the moderate democratic forces in the Arab world even if they
are ostensibly Islamic. The moderate democratic Islamism is different from the
monarcho-theocratic Islamism because the latter is an illegitimate and hence an
insecure regime; to maintain its hold on power it needs subterfuges and
external rivals to keep the oppositional internal threats to its survival under
check. Like Machiavelli famously said: “Invent enemies and then slay them in
order to control your subjects.” Takfirism (labeling others as infidels) and
Jihadism are a manifestation of this Machiavellian trend. In the nutshell,
Islam is only a religion, just like any other religion, no need to elevate it
to an ‘exceptional’ status; but it’s the petro-Islamic extremism and the
consequent Takfirism and Jihadism phenomena which is like a collision of the
continental tectonic plates which has engulfed the whole of Islamic world from
the Middle East and North Africa to Bangladesh and Indonesia and even the
Muslim minorities in China, Thailand and Philippines.
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