is anyone else scratching there head about this Saudi-led action against Qatar .. the Saudi's are still promoting their extremest form of Islam .. right? .. big excerpt feels necessary here ..
- This week’s bombing in Manchester .. https://tinyurl.com/yctnlbbk , England, was another gruesome reminder that the threat from radical Islamist terrorism .. https://tinyurl.com/ychhb92r .. is ongoing. And President Trump’s journey to the Middle East .. https://tinyurl.com/y8nljmp9 .. illustrated yet again how the country central to the spread of this terrorism, Saudi Arabia, has managed to evade and deflect any responsibility for it. In fact, Trump has given Saudi Arabia a free pass and a free hand in the region.
The facts are well-known. For five decades, Saudi Arabia has spread its narrow, puritanical and intolerant version of Islam — originally practiced almost nowhere else — across the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden was Saudi, as were 15 of the 19?9/11 terrorists.
And we know, via a leaked email .. http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/12/06/wikileaks.terrorism.funding/ .. from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, in recent years the Saudi government, along with Qatar, has been “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to [the Islamic State] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” Saudi nationals make up the second-largest group .. http://time.com/4739488/isis-iraq-syria-tunisia-saudi-arabia-russia/ .. of foreign fighters in the Islamic State and, by some accounts, the largest in the terrorist group’s Iraqi operations. The kingdom is in a tacit alliance with al-Qaeda in Yemen.
The Islamic State draws its beliefs from Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi version of Islam. As the former imam of the kingdom’s Grand Mosque said last year ..
, the Islamic State “exploited our own principles, that can be found in our books. .?.?. We follow the same thought but apply it in a refined way.” Until the Islamic State could write its own textbooks for its schools, it adopted the Saudi curriculum as its own.
Saudi money is now transforming European Islam. Leaked German intelligence reports show that charities “closely connected with government offices” of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait are funding mosques, schools and imams to disseminate a fundamentalist, intolerant version of Islam .. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-islam.html .. throughout Germany.
[VIDEO] 1:25 President Trump did not use the phrase when he delivered a speech to leaders from Muslim countries in Saudi Arabia. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)
[Unlike his earlier rhetoric]
In Kosovo, the New York Times’ Carlotta Gall describes the process .. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/world/europe/how-the-saudis-turned-kosovo-into-fertile-ground-for-isis.html .. by which a 500-year-old tradition of moderate Islam is being destroyed. “From their bases, the Saudi-trained imams propagated Wahhabism’s tenets: the supremacy of Shariah law as well as ideas of violent jihad and takfirism, which authorizes the killing of Muslims considered heretics for not following its interpretation of Islam. .?.?. Charitable assistance often had conditions attached. Families were given monthly stipends on the condition that they attended sermons in the mosque and that women and girls wore the veil.”
Saudi Arabia’s government has begun to slow many of its most egregious practices. It is now being run, de facto, by a young, intelligent reformer, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman .. https://tinyurl.com/ycm3qsdn , who appears to be refreshingly pragmatic, in the style of Dubai’s visionary leader, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. But so far the Saudi reforms have mostly translated into better economic policy for the kingdom, not a break with its powerful religious establishment.
Trump’s speech on Islam .. http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/21/politics/trump-saudi-speech-transcript/ .. was nuanced and showed empathy for the Muslim victims of jihadist terrorism (who make up as much as 95 percent .. https://tinyurl.com/y7u8b85q .. of the total, by one estimate). He seemed to zero in on the problem when he said, “No discussion of stamping out this threat would be complete without mentioning the government that gives terrorists .?.?. safe harbor, financial backing and the social standing needed for recruitment.”
But Trump was talking not of his host, Saudi Arabia, but rather of Iran. Now, to be clear, Iran is a destabilizing force in the Middle East and supports some very bad actors. But it is wildly inaccurate to describe it as the source of jihadist terror. According to an analysis of the Global Terrorism Database by Leif Wenar of King’s College London, more than 94 percent of deaths caused by Islamic terrorism since 2001 were perpetrated by the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other Sunni jihadists. Iran is fighting those groups, not fueling them. Almost every terrorist attack in the West has had some connection to Saudi Arabia. Virtually none has been linked to Iran.
Opinion: Young princes in the Persian Gulf are playing with fire
Qatar stands isolated under accusations of sponsoring terrorism. But this diplomatic crisis is actually about young princes' unbridled quest for power - with the help of Donald Trump, says DW's Bachir Amroune.
IMAGE: The clouds over Doha now harbor a shadow of suspicion
It did not take long for the US president to react. Just hours after announcements of the diplomatic and geographic isolation of the tiny emirate of Qatar, Donald Trump pledged that his White House would seek to help de-escalate the situation in the Persian Gulf. If needed, he said, he would dispatch a high representative to the region to mediate.
[...]
...it is utterly grotesque that Saudi Arabia should now be accusing Qatar of supporting terrorism. For the last 60 years, Saudi Arabia has been the world's biggest exporter of extremist ideology and has helped destabilize many regions around the globe, reaching as far as the Caucasus, the Balkans and Western Europe. Whether Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Islamist groups in Syria, Iraq and in the Algerian civil war, or simply extremist mosques: Riyadh's petrodollars have fueled the dissemination of the Saudi doctrine of Wahhabism – a strain of Islam that is intolerant of those who think differently and is not afraid to use extreme violence should it feel the need to do so. The so-called Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which was passed by the US Congress to enable terror victims to sue state sponsors of terrorism, was based in large part on Saudi Arabia's role in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. http://www.dw.com/en/opinion-young-princes-in-the-persian-gulf-are-playing-with-fire/a-39137361
So the situation seems to be that while yet-again-Trump claims credit for the Saudi led so-called action against, basically ISIS', international terrorism, at the same time Trump's administration moves frantically behind the scenes to curtail that very same so-called anti-ISIS action.
Saudi Prince, Asserting Power, Brings Clerics to Heel
"How Saudi Arabia played Donald Trump "
By BEN HUBBARDNOV. 5, 2017
Men entering the Alrajhi Mosque, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for noon prayer. Credit Tasneem Alsultan for The New York Times
BURAIDA, Saudi Arabia — For decades, Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment wielded tremendous power, with bearded enforcers policing public behavior, prominent sheikhs defining right and wrong, and religious associations using the kingdom’s oil wealth to promote their intolerant interpretation of Islam around the world.
Now, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is curbing their power as part of his drive to impose his control on the kingdom and press for a more open brand of Islam.
Before the arrests on Saturday of his fellow royals and former ministers on corruption allegations, Prince Mohammed had stripped the religious police of their arrest powers and expanded the space for women in public life, including promising them the right to drive.
Dozens of hard-line clerics have been detained, while others were designated to speak publicly about respect for other religions, a topic once anathema to the kingdom’s religious apparatus.
If the changes take hold, they could mean a historic reordering of the Saudi state by diminishing the role of hard-line clerics in shaping policy. That shift could reverberate abroad by moderating the exportation of the kingdom’s uncompromising version of Islam, Wahhabism, which has been accused of fueling intolerance and terrorism.
Barrage of ballistic missiles target Saudi Arabia, killing 1 and wounding 2 others
"How Saudi Arabia played Donald Trump"
March 25, 2018, 10:25 PM
"Photo"
Last Updated Mar 25, 2018 10:51 PM EDT
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Yemen's Shiite rebels fired a barrage of ballistic missiles targeting Saudi Arabia late Sunday on the third anniversary of a kingdom-led war in Yemen, with fragments of one missile over Riyadh killing one person and wounding two. The casualties were the first in Saudi Arabia's capital since the Saudi-led war in Yemen began in March 2015, though previous rockets fired by the Yemeni rebels have caused deaths in other parts of the kingdom.
The rebels known as Houthis said they launched a missile attack targeting Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport and other sites, again showing their ability to strike deep into the neighboring kingdom amid the stalemated war in Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country.
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