PART III: The Fundamentalist Wahabi Opposition that Begot Osama Bin Laden: A Brief Historical Account

Overview of PART III:

1- This PART III analyzes the Wahabi opposition in the 1990s after the Gulf War, resulting in the emergence of the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights whose influence lingers until now, with the emergence of Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda fundamentalist terrorists. We call such persons of the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights and Al-Qaeda as ''fundamentalists'' to differentiate between them and ordinary Wahabi scholars serving both the KSA and its royal family members. In CHAPTER I of this PART III, we give a brief historical account of how the fundamentalist opposition movements emerged and developed and what the stance of the Saudi authorities and its scholars was, along with factors leading to such state of affairs: modernization, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, relations with Sudan, the human rights culture, the Salafist-secular conflict inside the KSA, and finally the natural accumulation of opposition movements. We tackle also the nature of the Wahabi Saudi Sunnite fundamentalism before and after the Gulf War and how it led to the emergence and development of fundamentalist Wahabi opposition movements. We discuss ''the letter of interests'' and ''the advice memo'', and then how the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights was established, along with the response of the Saudi State. We will discuss how the conflict grew fierce between the KSA and the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights as it moved to London. We will explain how the founder of the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights, Dr. Al-Masaary, had disputes with his coreligionist and friend in the committee, the opposition leader Dr. Saad Al-Faqeeh, and how the latter had to leave the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights. CHAPTER II and CHAPTER III tackle more analyses of the opposition movement led by the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights.     

2- In CHAPTER II, we analyze the political conflict between the KSA and the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights intellectually and in terms of Wahabi jurisprudence and creed, as the conflict revolved around to obey rulers as per Wahabi scholars subservient to the Saudi State or to obey sharia as presented by the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights as a motto to raise itself above the Saudi authorities and the Saudi people as well. 

3- In CHAPTER III, we analyze this conflict within the framework of the issue of ''promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice'' and how the call of the fundamentalist opposition movement of the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights changed its course from peaceful call to the call for violence and terrorism. We analyze the style of the discourse of the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights and what it condemned from the Saudi internal and external policies.

4- We end PART III with CHAPTER IV, an additional chapter that we have written to criticize the methodology and notions of the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights within the framework of the issue of ''promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice'' within a Quranic/Quranist point of view, and finally we analyze notions of the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights within a sociological point of view.