The Roots of Terrorism in the Saudi Wahabi Doctrine and the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Organization
Was published in June 11, 2013
Written by: Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour
Edited by: Ahmed Fathy
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION:
This article was first published in Arabic in the May, 2007, and in English much later in June, 2013 , on our Quranism website: www.ahl-alquran.com, and this means that we have voiced the views that you will read below long before the Congress approves a bill to sue the KSA for its involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We, Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour, a Quranist Muslim, an American citizen of Egyptian origin, a Muslim history specialist, and the founder of the Quranist intellectual reformist trend, have been for more than 20 years advocating Quranism as true Islam and expressing in our writings the warning against the veritable danger of the KSA and its Wahabism that threatens international peace; the KSA has spread its Wahabi ideology, posing as 'only' and 'true' version of Islam, all over the globe, especially in the USA and the West countries, and this means that the terrorist Wahabi KSA is behind all religious strife, acts of violence, massacres, and terrorist crimes and atrocities before and after 9/11 terrorist attacks in many parts of the world, especially the USA and the West countries. We have proved this fact in countless articles in Arabic and in English published on our website and chiefly and in detail in our book titled "The Wahabi Opposition Movements in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the Twentieth Century", published in Arabic and in English on our website. We have authored this book between 2000 and 2001 A.D., and it is published now in English on our Quranism website on the following link:
http://www.ahl-alquran.com/arabic/book_main.php?main_id=85
Among our assertions in this important book is the fact that the members of the Wahabi fundamentalist opposition movements always declare themselves as more ''pious Wahabis'' than the KSA regime, thus making themselves more fanatical, bigoted, and extremist than the KSA itself, and such fundamentalist opposition movements begot Bin Laden and his likes. We hope that the Congress bill to sue the KSA for its involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks will mark the beginning of an era of peaceful confrontation and resistance against the Saudi Wahabi terrorism.
Below is our article which has been written in May 2007 in Arabic and in June 2013 in English:
In the late 1990s, the Arab and foreign journalists searching for new opinions and views on Islamic subjects used to call us and publish whatever we would tell them in our specialty field: the Noble Quran and history, traditions, and heritage of ''Muslims'' whom we call the Muhammadans. Some of the questions revolved around the contemporary religious extremism, Wahabism, and the Saudi State. In spite of the fact that we are a victim of the Saudi Wahabi influence in Egypt, that area is far from our scientific specialization, which spans the historical period of the second half of the Mameluke Era in Egypt and the beginning of the Ottoman conquest of Egypt and the Arab region about 921 A.H./1517 A.D. Our specialization is confined to the Sunnite and Sufi heritage and history of the Muhammadans in the Middle Ages until the modern and contemporary eras. As usual, we have stood in the crossroads between the Sunnite and Sufi history and heritage specialists. Historians believe that we are a veteran specialist in the study of the Quran and hadiths ancient traditional branches of knowledge and in Sunnite and Sufi heritage and interpretations of the Quran, and this idea has led our Sunnite opponents to attack us as "a man of history and civilization" at the Cairo-based Al-Azhar University in Egypt, and not a specialized theology and jurisprudence (i.e., fiqh) scholar in the full sense of the term. They have forgotten that researchers in the Muhammadans' history, like us in our specialization field, should be very familiar with deep knowledge of the tenets and facts of Islam and Muslims' heritage as well as the points of convergence or divergence between them and the real-life of the Muhammadans who lived during the era in question. For instance, those researching the history of the revolts of Al-Khawarij or the Shiites during the Umayyad Era must research conceptual framework of their political movements, although their ideological output had not been crystallized yet at that point in time. What about if researchers seek to research the history of other movements in the Abbasid Era (which is the era of establishment and completeness of confessional and doctrinal ideologies influencing those political movements)? Our Sunnite foes have also forgotten that as for researchers who tackle hadiths ancient traditional branches of knowledge, jurisprudence, and the so-called Quranic interpretations, it is inevitable that they research the biographies and backgrounds of the ancient scholars and all factors which influenced their mentalities before they attempt to discuss their stances and viewpoints in history, especially their intellectual schools of thought and their relations with rulers, caliphs, governors, scholars, and even commoners who were their contemporaries. Without such historical background, the research of jurisprudence, interpretations, or hadiths will come out short, filled with mistakes and errors, and away from the facts of the lived reality at the era in question.
Therefore, it is a must to have sufficient knowledge in history and doctrinal tenets, notions, and fundamentals in religious studies and researches to take a thorough look at all aspects of the subject in question and to cover all its dimensions. And this is what we have done in our Ph.D. thesis, which tackled the influence of Sufi ideology and creed in the Mameluke Era on all of its religious, political, social, ethical, physical, cultural, educational, literal, intellectual, artistic, and economical aspects. This is the methodology we have adopted in all our writings and researches that fall under the category called: Fundamental Historical Studies. Because of the deficiency and gaps in the field of historical fundamental religious studies within Muhammadans' history, most researchers suffer flagrant ignorance confirmed by the fact that they ignore the huge differences between Islam as a divine religion (exclusively found in the Quran) and the ''Muslims'' (or rather the Muhammadans) as individuals and human beings whose right and wrong actions, deeds, and decisions pertain to them and are not to be ascribed to Islam itself; they must bear their own burdens and Islam (the Quran alone) is not at all responsible for these burdens, because its commands, prohibitions, and higher values should be followed, but at the same time, the Quran gives people freedom of choice between obedience or disobedience and warns them beforehand about their having to bear responsibility for what they have chosen.
Since 1987, after we have tendered our resignation to the Dean of Al-Azhar University, leaving our post there as an Assistant Professor, we have freed ourselves from the Azharite intellectual chains and fetters, and we have resolved to surpass our Sunnite foes intellectually with our books in the history and heritage of the Muhammadans with all manifestations, phenomena, and schools of thought since after the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad to the end of the Mameluke Era. We have decided to be a harsh judge in this intellectual challenge, achieving intellectual success later on. Our published articles and books have made us gain a widespread renown so that researchers and journalists looking for renewal of religious thought have sought us to explore our innovative religious views that differ a great deal from the hackneyed, obsolete notions of traditional scholars. They wanted us to refute today's scholars' outdated fatwas (i.e., religious edicts or rulings) which were no longer fit for our modern age; as such fatwas relied on views of Middle-Ages scholars. Some of the journalists and researchers have thought that we would issue fatwas in everything, as Azharite and non-Azharite ignoramuses do, to cover all big and tiny items of life: from obligations of ablution and wash-up, hijab (veil) and niqab, dyeing beards, and shortening garments, to cyberspace chatting, organs transplantation, cloning, and fatwas on washing up on the surface of the moon! Unlike us, none of the Azharite scholars would like to say the phrase: ''I do not know'' to anyone posing questions to them to seek fatwa.
Repeatedly, we have been asked about Wahabism, the Muslim Brotherhood (the MB), and other similar Wahabi terrorist organizations, and to what extent their ideologies differ, vary, or conform to their roots in the Middle Ages. We would always apologize for not answering such queries because the history of the modern era was outside our specialty field. We used to feel ashamed of ourselves for repeated apologies at that time (early 1990s), and we have decided to engage into another challenge: the study of the historical and intellectual roots of today's Wahabi extremists. This was a big decision that consumed our time, but we have been rewarded by great results and findings.
At one point in the late 1990s, the Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences at Cairo University was preparing to hold a conference to discuss the phenomenon of political Islam and commissioned researchers to write about the different axes of the subject; most of them belong to the Salafist trend itself and represented the second generation of the terrorist the MB organization, the conference was the chance they seized to pass their ideology off as an 'Islamic' one without anyone arguing against their interpretation and vision of Islam, and that was the time when they were considered in Egypt as the so-called 'moderate' Islamists. A female researcher, with no religious-studies background, was assigned to write on the most important subject: "what are the traits and features of Islamist movements", and within short notice, the female researcher apologized for not having the time to participate in this conference. Dr. Saad Eddine Ibrahim was running the sessions of this conference, and he suggested to the participators that he would invite us to deliver a ten-minute speech to fill in this gap. Dr. Ibrahim contacted us, as we were working at that time with him in the Ibn Khaldoun Center, and asked us to prepare a ten-minute speech about the traits and features of contemporary Islamist movements. We told him that we disagree with him in describing such political movements as ''Islamist'' ones, as in fact, they contradict Islam (the Quran) and do not represent the vast majority of Muslims; they only represent Wahabism. Dr. Ibrahim urged us to seize the opportunity to declare to others our point of view. We told Dr. Ibrahim that we would not only deliver our speech, but also would bring along a written research on the subject that we would prepare overnight and would read it before everyone in the conference.
This was what happened; as we have faced the challenge poised at ourselves. And before the break of dawn, the research was completed. We headed toward the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, where the conference was held, and we had several copies of the research photocopied. The conference session was superb in the huge number of attendees and the quality of the debates run. Then we gave a copy of the search to Dr. Mohamed Sayed Selim, a Professor and supervisor of the conference, it aroused his admiration and this marked the beginning of our long-distance friendship which we cherish until now. We knew later on that that the Faculty had published the research or a summary of it, and later on, the Ibn Khaldoun Center published this research in its annual report, and it was also published by the quarterly magazine "Man and Evolution", given the title "Between Najdi religiosity and Egyptian religiosity”. The magazine is owned and managed by Dr. Yahiya Al-Rakhawy, a renowned Egyptian psychiatrist in the Middle East.
This has whetted our intellectual appetite to face the challenge further by writing a full book about the Sunnite Wahabi opposition movements in the KSA in the 20th century, tackling the subject within fundamental and historical viewpoints. The book starts with the opposition by the Najd Brothers, who at first helped King Abdul-Aziz to establish the third, current KSA, then rebelled against him and he had to crush their revolt, using the help of Britain. The book, which bears the title "The Wahabi Opposition Movements in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the Twentieth Century", tackles later on in another chapter the peaceful, intellectual opposition movement of the thinker Nasser Al-Saeed during the reign of King Saud, and in a later chapter the violent opposition movement of Juhayman Al-Otaybi during the reign of King Khaled. And within the final chapters, we tackle the contemporary London-based opposition fundamentalist movement of the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights, led by Dr. Al-Masaary and Dr. Al-Faqeeh; this is the fundamentalist movement that gave birth to Bin Laden and his terrorist Al-Qaeda organization.
Parts of this book giving an overview on the roots of terrorism in the Wahabi religion and how the Saudi royal family members have planted the tree of the terrorist MB organization in Egypt have been previously published within another book featuring a collection of articles and researches titled "The 9/11 Events Seen by Arab Writers and Intellectuals" prepared and submitted by Dr. Ahmed Matar who is a Norwegian citizen of Palestinian origin. Our excerpts fill 49 pages inside the book by Dr. Matar. It was published by Dar Al-Carmel for Publication and Distribution, in the Jordanian capital, Amman, and the whole book comprises 203 pages of medium size and includes studies by a number of distinguished Arab writers. Our contribution in this book has drawn the attention of many people worldwide; for instance, Professor Saad Al-Qirsh has written about it and about us in Reuters on May, 1st, 2007, and we quote him below.
(… While the KSA declares that Al-Qaeda terrorist organization poses still as a threat to its territories, the Egyptian thinker Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour stresses the fact that the source of danger lies at the roots of the Saudi Wahabism that is considered synonymous with religious fundamentalism. Dr. Mansour believes that veritable danger of the Wahabi trend is not confined to the KSA; as Egypt suffers a lot by Wahabism, after it has been undergone what he calls ''the Wahabi invasion" leading the Egyptian society into a coma after it aborted, in his opinion, the religious reformist movement which started at the beginning of the 20th century. The KSA authorities announced last Friday that they had foiled a plot to attack oil facilities, military bases, and public figures inside the KSA, arresting 172 people. Prince Nayef Ibn Abdul-Aziz, the Saudi Interior Minister, was quoted as saying that the arrest of 172 suspected militants did not put an end to the risk associated with Al-Qaeda terrorists in the country. Last February, Islamist militants killed four French nationals working and living in the KSA. The militants said they want to drive Western "infidels" from Arabia, the birthplace of Islam. Officials said that about 144 foreigners and Saudis, including members of the security forces, and 120 militants were killed in attacks and clashes with police forces since May 2003, when Al-Qaeda suicide bombers attacked three compounds of houses owned by Western and foreign people living in Riyadh. Dr. Mansour, an Azharite specialist in history, says that the risk does not lie in the practices alone, but in the motives, adding that Wahabism, in its theoretical and practical foundations, is "the most terrible ideology produced in Arabia and applied to non-Wahabi Muslims and non-Muslims", especially after it spread beyond the borders of Arabia to the Islamic world and the Western world. Dr. Mansour adds that the "puritanical" fundamentalist Wahabi trend found in the terrorist MB organization a fertile ground for its ideas and notions that put the Egyptian people, in a state of coma for decades, which in his opinion, a coma that undermines chances of applying democracy and human rights and allow room for discrimination against non-Muslims in Egypt. Dr. Mansour writes in a study titled "The Roots of Terrorism in the Wahabi Religion" that the founder of The Wahabi movement is Muhammad Ibn Abdul-Wahab (1703-1791), who is considered by the Saudis as a religious reformer who made declaring other Muslims as infidels/apostates (because they were non-Wahabis) a religious justification or pretext to invade, occupy, raid, loot, and destroy their cities and villages in Arabia. And thus, the very first KSA (1745-1818) came to existence. The very first KSA collapsed as it was crushed and defeated by the Egyptian army of Muhammad Ali Pacha, governor of Egypt at the time, led by his son Ibrahim Pacha, who destroyed its Saudi capital Al-Dariyya under orders of the sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Dr. Mansour (who was born in March, 1949, in Egypt) studied at the Al-Azhar University, and before in Azharite elementary and secondary schools, and upon graduation with honors, he worked as a teacher of history and civilization at the History Department of the Al-Azhar University, but he was subjected to harassment, inquisition-like interrogations, and accusations which considered by his opponents as apostasy, especially his rejection and denial of the so-called Sunna. Such harassments and restrictions drove Dr. Mansour to tender his resignation. Dr. Mansour has also published books that include the following titles: "Punishment for Apostasy: A fundamental Historical Study", "Prayers between the Noble Quran and Muslims", "Egypt in the Noble Quran", "Religious Beliefs in the Mameluke Era in Egypt between Islam and Sufism", and "Would The Disobedient Muslim Get out of Hell to Enter Paradise?”. Dr. Mansour currently studies the historical roots of Wahabism, seen by him now as the source of terrorism, by criticizing and analyzing events, movements, and transformations done shortly after the death of Prophet Muhammad, which resulted in the crime of Arab conquests, deemed 'Islamic' despite the fact that they contradicted Islam (i.e., the Quran alone) and which led the so-called Prophet’s companions to fight one another in a major civil war later on, resulting in political controversies that shaped differences in religiosity and stances until the splitting of ''Muslims'' (i.e., the Muhammadans) into the Shiite and Sunnite sects. To justify the aggressions, crimes, atrocities, and transgressions committed in the name of Islam, the so-called companions fabricated the so-called hadiths (sayings) and attributed them to Prophet Mohammed decades after his death; one of these famous falsehoods or hadiths goes as follows: “I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah”, such erroneous notion, along with similar faulty notions, made assaulting and massacring innocent, peaceful people as 'Islamic' jihad. Dr. Mansour asserts that in the 18th century, the scholar Ibn Abdul-Wahab formed an alliance pact with Muhammad Ibn Al-Saud, founder of the very first KSA, and Ibn Abdul-Wahab gave Ibn Al-Saud a religious permission to invade and raid other Arabian regions to occupy and annex them to his burgeoning Wahabi kingdom, and to make their inhabitants choose between being killed after being accused of blasphemy/apostasy and being coerced into converting to Wahabism as ''Islam''. Of course, until now, Wahabis in Arabia consider other non-Wahabis, including Shiites, as infidels/apostates or non-Muslims. Dr. Mansour quotes Othman Ibn Bishr Al-Najdi, historian of the very first KSA and the author of the book titled "The Title of Glory in Najd History", asserting that Ibn Al-Saud committed a massacre in Karbala in 1801 and the author, Ibn Bishr, as a Najdi Wahabi Bedouin, took pride in such massacre he documented in his book: "…We conquered Karbala and slaughtered many of its people while taking others who survived as slaves, then praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, and we do not apologize for that; as all disbelievers and infidels will certainly have the same treatment by us…". Dr. Mansour writes that Wahabism is now spread in public and private organizations in many Arab and Islamic countries and that the terrorist MB organization is "The Egyptian edition of the Wahabi Najd Brothers of King Abdul-Aziz in 1910s and 1920s in Arabia" pointing out that Ibn Abdul-Wahab incites in his writings the hatred of all non-Wahabis, as he declared Shiites to be infidels/apostates who rejected the 'true' faith and considered Shiites regions as the Camp of War. The fatwas of Ibn Abdul-Wahab were realized and achieved by ''fire, sword, and blood" at the beginning of the 20th century by King Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud and his Wahabi fighters: the Najd Brothers. Dr. Mansour describes the terrorist MB group in Egypt as established by Saudi Wahabis, asserting that the Saudi leaders in the 1920s realized the vital importance of spreading and propagating the Wahabi ideology slowly but steadily in Egypt to make it a strategic depth for the burgeoning kingdom in Arabia. The result was the success of the founder of the current KSA, Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud, in transforming Egyptian religious life, which is based on tolerance till the Middle Ages, into the radical Middle-Ages-mentality Wahabism in the era of human rights in the 20th century. Observers believe that the religious patterns and phenomena in Egypt, such as the spread of the so-called hijab and niqab in Egypt since the late 1970s, are directly linked to employment of Egyptians in the KSA, and this has been reflected in the Egyptian workers and employees returning to Egypt carrying Wahabi patterns of behavior and religiosity, which do not allow women to expose their faces in streets or allow women to drive cars. Egypt has witnessed a wave of terrorist crimes committed by Islamist militants in the 1990s. for instance, in 1992, the Egyptian thinker Farag Fouda (1946-1992) was assassinated in front of his home in Cairo at the hands of a young man who was instructed that Fouda was an apostate. Sheikh Muhammad Al-Ghazaly (1917-1996) who was classified within the stream of so-called 'moderate' Muslim sheikhs, asserted in his testimony before an Egyptian court that Fouda was an apostate that rightly deserved to be killed, in an explicit condemnation of the victim. In another accident, A young uneducated man attempted to assassinate the Egyptian novelist (Nobel Laureate) Naguib Mahfouz in 1994, driven by the fatwa that Mahfouz was deemed an apostate. Dr. Mansour writes that Sheikh Mohamed Abdou, Head of Al-Azhar who died in 1905, led a movement of religious reform in Egypt, and he did not know that after his death, his movement will be aborted by his disciple, the Syrian Sheikh Rasheed Reda, residing in Egypt at the time, in favor of the Saudis and their Salafist Wahabi ideology. The Egyptian Sunnite Sufi religious mainstream was transformed into an extremist Sunnite Wahabi mainstream in Egypt within decades, and Dr. Mansour describes what happened as a cultural Wahabi invasion. Dr. Mansour quotes notes by Dr. Mohamed Hussein Heikal that he knew Hassan Al-Banna (1906-1949), founder of the MB terrorist organization in 1928, during the pilgrimage season in 1936 and that the MB members have been "closely related to KSA". Dr. Heikal added that Al-Banna was controlling the MB budget with a firm grip, shrouding in secrecy all sources of funding. Dr. Heikal added that the younger brother of Hassan Al-Banna, thinker and writer Gamal Al-Banna, asserted in one of his books that Hassan Al-Banna was hiding sources of funding from other MB members. Dr. Heikal pointed out that with Saudi financial support, Hassan Al-Banna, who was working as a teacher, was able to create 50 thousand MB branches and headquarters all over Egypt through which Wahabism spread quickly in Egypt and later on to the Arab world. Dr. Mansour writes that thanks to the Saudi petrodollars, "Wahabi ideology spread while it is contrary to Islam under the name of Islam in the biggest deception suffered by Muslims throughout their history," blaming Wahabism for what he describes as the codification of spreading violence all over the world. Dr. Mansour accuses the MB members of plotting against the KSA itself, which hosted them during the rule of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser who quelled the MB members, saying that the Saudi authorities at the time stipulated that the MB members would not engage in covert activism inside the KSA, but the treacherous MB members revoked their promised and incited the creation of fundamentalist opposition movements against the KSA, and some of leaders of such movements fled the KSA. It is from the womb of the fundamentalist opposition movements against the KSA that Bin Laden sprang off, one of the biggest terrorists of our modern age …).
This has encouraged us to write another research supported with other articles about the terrorist MB organization, which will form a whole book within the books publishing project adopted by the International Quranic Center (IQC), headed by us, and the Quranism website that publish our books and articles online (in Arabic and in English): www.ahl-alquran.com. And God Almighty is the Omnipotent, Whose aid and help are always sought.
Signature:
Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour
Springfield, VA, USA
May 2007