[Reader-list] for the fatwa-mongerers

[mahmood farooqui]

>From the FDR list-

Wahhabism in the Service of American Imperialism: The
Politics of a Fatwa

Yaqub Shah


This July, shortly after the Lebanese resistance
movement Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers, a
Saudi Wahhabi cleric, Sheikh Hamid al-Ali Jabreen,
issued a controversial  fatwa titled "The Sharia
Position On What Is Going On."  In it, the retired
member of the Saudi government's official fatwa
dispending committee condemned Hezbollah in no
uncertain terms. Aware that Hezbollah's persistent
opposition to Zionist and Western imperialism had
endeared it to vast numbers of Sunni Muslims across
the world, (in addition to a significant number of
Christians in Lebanon itself), Jabreen's denunciation
of the Hezbollah carefully ignored this most central
aspect of the resistance movement. Instead, in order
to counter the growing appeal of the movement among
many Sunnis, it castigated Hezbollah simply for being
Shia.

Rather than use the commonly accepted term 'Shia' (the
full form of which is Shiat-e Ali or the 'helpers of
Ali', Ali being the son-in-law of the Prophet
Muhammad), Jabreen referred to the Shias, and,
specifically Hezbollah, with the contemptuous term of
'Rafizis' or 'rejectors', a phrase often used for the
Shias by many hardliner Sunni ulama who consider that
Shias have 'rejected' Islam. Being allegedly
'rejectors' of Islam, Jabreen sought to argue, the
Shias, including the Hezbollah, were not Muslims at
all. Hence, he advised Sunnis 'to denounce them and
shun those who join them to show their hostility to
Islam and to the Muslims', adding that it wad
forbidden for Muslims to pray for Hezbollah's victory.

Jabreen's fatwa was soon followed by another one,
again much highlighted in the Western and Israeli
media, issued by another Saudi Wahhabi cleric, Shaikh
Safar al-Hawali, who is said to have been among the
sources of inspiration of Osama bin Laden. Al-Hawali
denounced Hezbollah as the 'party of the devil'.

In a number of articles posted on the web, Muslim
critics of the fatwas argued that they had been
probably issued at the instigation of the Saudi
authorities. They insisted, and rightly so, that these
fatwas would only further strengthen the forces of
Zionist and Western imperialist forces.

Although the authors of the fatwas sought to use
religious arguments to denounce Hezbollah, the
underlying political motives were clear. Hezbollah's
fierce resistance to Israeli and Western imperialism
is not favourably looked at by the Saudi rulers, whose
very survival depends on American protection. Further,
Hezbollah's links with Iran, which, since the Islamic
Revolution of 1979, has consistently opposed the Saudi
rulers both for the un-Islamic system of monarchy and
for its servitude to America, has won it the wrath of
the Saudi establishment. The fatwas thus come as no
surprise.

Meanwhile, the Western and Israeli press have been
highlighting Jabreen's fatwa, touting it about as a
major achievement. A search on the web reveals several
dozen Western and Israeli websites, including online
versions of newspapers, that have discussed the fatwa
in glowing terms. Jabreen is hardly famous, but that
does not stop these Western and Israeli papers from
presenting Jabreen as a 'leading' scholar, bestowing
on him the authority and following that he clearly
lacks outside the limited circle of hardcore Wahhabis.
 Thus, for instance, the British Broadcasting
Corporation refers to Jabreen as a 'well-known
sheikh'; the International Herald Tribune calls him a
'a prominent Saudi cleric' and the Jerusalem Post
piously proclaims him as 'a top Saudi Sunni cleric'.
Since 9/11, 'Wahhabism' has been projected by the
Western and Israeli media as the biggest danger to
'civilisation' and 'security', and so their
enthusiastic highlighting of the Wahhabi Jabreen and
his fatwa in order to lend weight to their campaign
against Hezbollah for its resistance to Western and
Israeli oppression is not just a little curious.

Jabreen's fatwa is also being bandied about in the
Western and Israeli media in order to promote
divisions between Sunnis and Shias and thereby weaken
the resistance to the American-backed Israeli
offensive against Lebanon as well as the American
occupation of Iraq. Thus, an article about the fatwa
that has been reproduced in dozens American and
Israeli newspapers quotes the little-known
'anti-terrorism expert', Rita Katz, the Jewish head of
the SITE Institute, a staunchly Zionist
'anti-terrorism' outfit in America, as saying, 'I
think that fatwas like Jebreen's are significant,
because the division between Sunnis and Shia is more
apparent than in the past". These newspapers refer to
Katz describing the obscure Jabren as 'one of the most
respected and more mainstream Wahhabi clerics in Saudi
Arabia'.

The attention that Jabreen and his fatwa have received
in the Western and Israeli press is hardly surprising.
It reflects the carefully selective and self-serving
policy that Western imperialist powers have for long
pursued vis-a-vis the Wahhabis. The Wahhabi movement
was funded and propped up by the British as part of a
broader strategy to dismember the Ottoman Empire. And,
with the discovery of oil in the sands of Arabia, the
Americans stepped in, funding the Saudi king to remain
firmly seated to his throne while American companies
pumped out cheap oil to the West and established huge
markets for their products, including weapons, in
Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism emerged as a powerful tool of
the Saudi monarchy, backed by the West, to counter
Leftist and nationalist movements all across the
Muslim world, these being branded as 'irreligious' and
'un-Islamic' by Wahhabi clerics in the pay of the
state. In the wake of the fiercely anti-Western,
anti-Saudi and anti-monarchical Islamic Revolution in
Iran, Saudi Wahhabism was, once again, pressed into
service by the Saudis and the Americans, seeking to
counter the influence of the Revolution among Sunnis
worldwide by denouncing it as an alleged Shia plot and
by branding Shias as non-Muslim apostates and 'enemies
of Islam'. Wahhabism received a further boost when it
was actively promoted by the Americans and the Saudis
in the wake of the war against the Soviets in
Afghanistan. All manner of right-wing Sunni Islamist
movements and outfits in large parts of the world
received generous Saudi funding, and in this the Saudi
were backed by the Americans as they saw Wahhabism as
a powerful counter to anti-imperialist forces.

But when a section of radicalized Wahhabis, irked by
the Saudi monarchy's blatant servitude to American
dictates, emerged in the form of Osama bin Laden and
vocally denounced the monarchy and America, Saudi and
American policies on the export of radical Wahhabism
underwent a sea-change. Wahhabism now transformed
itself in the Western media as the dangerous 'green
peril', being projected as the major cause of all that
was wrong in the Muslim world and in relations between
that world and the West. However, this denunciation of
Wahhabism was selective. While radical Wahhabis who
fiercely opposed the Saudi monarchy and Western
dominance were to be stiffly opposed,
pro-establishment Wahhabi scholars, paid servants of
the Saudi rulers, were to be projected in a somewhat
benign light, for they followed their masters in
denouncing their radical opponents, who accused them
of having sold their souls in return for their
patronage that the Saudis showered on them. This
explains the Western and Israeli media's enthusiastic
reception of Jabreen and his fatwa.

Jabreen is certainly not the first Wahhabi scholar to
denounce the Shias as apostates. Muhammad bin Abdul
Wahhab, the founder of the Wahhabi movement, was
himself fanatically opposed to the Shias, and when Ibn
Saud established the Saudi state he embarked on a
large-scale anti-Shia pogrom. The allegation that
Shias are not Muslims, that they revile the Prophet
and his companions, that they do not actually believe
in exactly the same Quran that the Sunnis do, that the
Shia faith was invented by a Jew who wanted to destroy
Islam from within, and so on, is tirelessly repeated
in writings and fatwas by numerous Saudi Wahhabi
clerics and is a central pillar of the Wahhabi version
of Islam. The late Abdul Aziz bin Baaz, chief mufti of
Saudi Arabia, who issued a controversial fatwa
allowing for American troops to be stationed in Saudi
Arabia, was said to have been so fanatically anti-Shia
that he refused to shake hands with them, considering
them to be impure.

Oil wealth has helped the export of Saudi-style
Wahhabism to other parts of the world, leading to
mounting intra-Muslim sectarian rivalries, including
anti-Shia sentiments. In India, sections of the Ahl-e
Hadith movement, in particular, have been the
favourite recipient of Saudi largesse. This is because
the Ahl-e Hadith are the closest to the Wahhabis in
terms of their understanding of Islam, this closeness
having led almost to identicalness because of the
Saudi financial connection. The Ahl-e Hadith, like the
Saudi Wahhabis, are stern literalist Sunnis and are
fiercely opposed to the Shias, besides to various
Sunni groups whom they do not see as authentically
Sunni at all. Saudi funds, from both official and
private sources, have gone into the setting up of a
number of mosques, madrasas and publishing houses by
certain individuals and organizations connected with
the Ahl-e Hadith. Not surprisingly, these institutions
have played a major role in fanning inter-Muslim
rivalries in the country. Numerous Indian Ahl-e Hadith
publishing houses have brought out volumes of
literature denouncing the Shias as heretics and
'enemies of Islam', besides also condemning other
Sunni groups, such as the Barelvis, Deobandis and the
Jamaat-e Islami, for having allegedly deviated from
the Sunni path. Often, this argument is based on minor
issues on which the other Muslim groups differ from
the Ahl-e Hadith and the Saudi Wahhabis, such as
praying in a slightly different manner.  Besides,
these publishing houses have brought out masses of
propaganda material in praise of the Saudi rulers,
parroting their claim of being the most committed
defenders of Islam and presenting the Saudi monarch as
the 'khadim al-harimayn al-sharifayn' or 'the
custodian of the two holy shrines', located in the
cities of Mecca and Medina.  In this way, these
institutions must be seen as playing a key role in
promoting the interests of the Saudi monarchy,
something that is also true in the case of similar
Saudi-funded institutions in other countries.

The Ahl-e Hadith have not been alone in promoting the
cause of Saudi Arabia's rulers by presenting them as
model Islamic rulers. Saudi funding, from private or
official sources, is also said to have benefited
certain institutions or individuals in India
associated with the Jamaat-e Islami and the Deobandi
tradition, although details of this are hard to come
by. Certain Muslim magazines published in the country
are also said to receive Saudi money. This sort of
Saudi funding has been repeated in almost every other
country with a sizeable Sunni population. In this way,
the Saudi rulers have sought to stamp out any vocal
criticism of their internal and external policies,
including the enormous corruption and untrammeled
despotism at home, Saudi Arabia's key role in
sustaining and promoting American imperialism and, of
course, the very un-Islamic institution of monarchy.
It is thus unlikely that institutions, in India and
elsewhere, that receive Saudi funding will openly
oppose Saudi Arabia's denunciations of the Hezbollah
and the sort of fatwas that the likes of Jabreen are
now issuing.
Meanwhile, as is evident from numerous Muslim
websites, many Sunnis have fiercely condemned Jabreen
and his fatwa, angered at the lengths to which Wahhabi
clerics aligned with the Saudi rulers are willing to
go to please their bosses. If at all this is any
indication, it appears that opposition to Wahhabi
sectarianism and its historical and continuing nexus
with Western imperialism is growing more vocal,
fuelled further by the Saudis'  opposition to
Hezbollah and their continued subservience to American
dictates.