You Can't Understand ISIS If You Don't Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia

[dogknob]

Excerpt from part 1: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-wahhabism-saudi-arabia_b_5717157.html

Abd al-Wahhab demanded conformity -- a conformity that was to be demonstrated in physical and tangible ways. He argued that all Muslims must individually pledge their allegiance to a single Muslim leader (a Caliph, if there were one). Those who would not conform to this view should be killed, their wives and daughters violated, and their possessions confiscated, he wrote. The list of apostates meriting death included the Shiite, Sufis and other Muslim denominations, whom Abd al-Wahhab did not consider to be Muslim at all.

There is nothing here that separates Wahhabism from ISIS. The rift would emerge only later: from the subsequent institutionalization of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab's doctrine of "One Ruler, One Authority, One Mosque" -- these three pillars being taken respectively to refer to the Saudi king, the absolute authority of official Wahhabism, and its control of "the word" (i.e. the mosque).

It is this rift -- the ISIS denial of these three pillars on which the whole of Sunni authority presently rests -- makes ISIS, which in all other respects conforms to Wahhabism, a deep threat to Saudi Arabia.

Excerpt from part 2: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-aim-saudi-arabia_b_5748744.html

In a sense, Philby may be said to be "godfather" to this momentous pact by which the Saudi leadership would use its clout to "manage" Sunni Islam on behalf of western objectives (containing socialism, Ba'athism, Nasserism, Soviet influence, Iran, etc.) -- and in return, the West would acquiesce to Saudi Arabia's soft-power Wahhabisation of the Islamic ummah (with its concomitant destruction of Islam's intellectual traditions and diversity and its sowing of deep divisions within the Muslim world).

As a result -- from then until now -- British and American policy has been bound to Saudi aims (as tightly as to their own ones), and has been heavily dependent on Saudi Arabia for direction in pursuing its course in the Middle East.

In political and financial terms, the Saud-Philby strategy has been an astonishing success (if taken on its own, cynical, self-serving terms). But it was always rooted in British and American intellectual obtuseness: the refusal to see the dangerous "gene" within the Wahhabist project, its latent potential to mutate, at any time, back into its original a bloody, puritan strain. In any event, this has just happened: ISIS is it.

[underpants]

1. Excellent

Marking for later read.

[FlatBaroque]

2. What ISIS Really Wants

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/?utm_source=SFTwitter

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

[dogknob]

3. Thanks! Good article. n/t

[dogknob]

4. Saudi Wahhabi dilemma in spotlight after Paris attack

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's harsh religious tradition is seen by many outsiders - and some Saudi liberals - as a root cause of the international jihadist threat that has inflamed the Middle East for years and struck in Paris last week.

However, while Riyadh has cracked down hard on jihadists at home, jailing thousands, stopping hundreds from traveling to fight abroad and cutting militant finance streams, its approach to religion has raised a dilemma.

It assails the ideology of militants who proclaim jihad against those they regard as heretics or infidels, while allying with a clerical establishment that preaches intolerance, although not violence, against exactly those same groups.

Wahhabism, the kingdom's official ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim school, regards Shi'ism as heretical, lauds the concept of jihad and urges hatred of infidels. Its clerics run the Saudi justice system and have funds to spread their influence abroad.

http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-wahhabi-dilemma-spotlight-paris-attack-131951900.html

[arendt]

5. Thanks for the great informational resource.

This is worth more than 1000 useless, predictable diaries about the Paris assault.

[dogknob]

6. Yeah... kinda surprised to see it in HuffPo.

Even a stopped clock...