Nearly 800 Islamist Imams were arrested in a heavily criticized campaign by the west.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or in the Land of the Two Holy Mosques—is the Saudi branch of the global Jihad organization.

It was founded in the late 1990s by Suleiman Al-Awdah’s pupil, Youssef Al-Ayyari, known as “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula”, it was a byproduct of the “Awakening” movement in Saudi Arabia, the group launched its activities mainly focusing on recruiting youth.

The Group plotted against the Saudi Government under the pretext of objecting to the American and international role in the liberation of Kuwait from the Iraqi invasion and the subsequent American presence in the region. The leading figure behind it all was Abdullah AlHamid.

3️⃣The Group plotted against the Saudi Government under the pretext of objecting to the American and international role in the liberation of Kuwait from the Iraqi invasion and the subsequent American presence in the region.
The leading figure behind it all was Abdullah AlHamid pic.twitter.com/r0YzInB0B3

— Khaled Homoud Alshareef ?? Saudi? (@0khalodi0) April 26, 2020

The “peaceful” sit-ins, that AlHamid led with the political arm of the “Sahwa” movement did not resort to violence on the surface, but the movement’s takfiri speechs and their calls for armed Jihad through the mosques, audio cassettes and books.

The militant arm of the group at the time was Al-Qaeda. Young man from the awakening group Abdullah bin Abdul Rahman Al-Hudhaif is called by pouring an incendiary substance into a colonel in the General Investigation Department called Saud Al-Shibreen resulting in his death.

The Islamists received the news of the execution of Al-Hudhaif angrily and called him a martyr, and the guest became a symbol for the Islamists. The Islamists accused the Saudi government of opening the “door to bloodshed”.

A group of Al-Qaeda followers were: Riyadh Al-Hajri, Khaled Al-Saeed, Abdul Aziz Al-Mutam, and Musleh Al-Shamrani who stated that he said: “By God, we will not be men if we do not take revenge for (Sheikh Abdullah) .”

The retaliation came in the form of a cowardly terrorist attack on November 13, 1995 by a booby-trapped car weighing 100 kilograms that targeted a compound used by the American Army vinyl company working to train National Guard staff in Riyadh.

As a result of the attack, five Americans, an Indian were killed, and nearly 60 others were wounded. After the Riyadh bombing. In January 1998, the Security Forces arrested a group of armed men equipped with Sager anti-tank missiles in southern Saudi Arabia.

Al-Qaeda wanted to use the missile smuggled from Yemen to target the American consulate in Jeddah during the visit of the Vice President of the United States Al Gore to Saudi Arabia.

According to US and Saudi official sources, Osama bin Laden was behind the plan to target the American consulate in Jeddah, and directed Abdul Rahim Al-Nashiri to lead the operation .

Upon discovering the plot, the Saudi government responded with a swift arrest campaign targeting the Islamists leadership and Imams calling for violence. Nearly 800 Islamist Imams were arrested in a heavily criticized campaign by the west.

1️⃣2️⃣Upon discovering the plot, the Saudi government responded with a swift arrest campaign targeting the Islamists leadership and imams calling for violence . nearly 800 Islamists Imam were arrested in a heavily criticised campaign by the west. pic.twitter.com/wGW7nMNtod

— Khaled Homoud Alshareef ?? Saudi? (@0khalodi0) April 26, 2020

The Saudi government was determined to put an end to the extremist group and sent Chief of General Intelligence Prince Turki al-Faisal to Kandahar in Afghanistan to pressure Mullah Omar to hand over Osama bin Laden to the Saudi authorities.

Al-Qaeda admitted in the Voice of Jihad magazine in 2004 that many Islamists who had returned from “Jihad” in Bosnia and Herzegovina were arrested in relation of the missile smuggling case that occurred in January 1998.

A second attempt was made in 1998 to smuggle Strella-2 missiles by Egyptian Islamists via Yemen, they planned to transfer the missiles to Saudi Arabia to shoot down American and Egyptian aircrafts, the Saudi government responded to this plan by arresting 300 Islamists.

Osama bin Laden acknowledged at a press conference in Afghanistan in May 1998 that he had seized the missiles, but he boasted that the missiles that were found were much less than what had not been found.

The founder of the military council of Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, Ali Al-Faqsi Al-Ghamdi, blamed the leaders of the Sahwa “Islamic Awakening”.

Al-Faqsi said that “inciting them to violence and charging them with enthusiasm and passionate emotions towards conflict areas in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya, as well as the religious climate in society in the 90s, within a set of reasons, which led him to prison.”

An Iranian Revolutionary Guards official recently admitted that “since then, Iran has been present at the intersection and cooperation with Al-Qaeda in Bosnia, under the cover of the Iranian Red Crescent.”

During an exclusive interview with Iranian television on May 30, 2018, Iranian Judicial Aide Mohammad Javad Larijani revealed that “Iran has facilitated the passage of Al-Qaeda militants who carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York,” according to Al-Arabiya.

The preachers who remained avoided prison, because they were less influential or kept a low profile, kept the awakening soul alive in their minds of their followers when they restored to a less confrontational approach by rebranding themselves and the group.

The Sahwa movement has been renamed the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association abbreviated as Hasm; a Saudi non-governmental human rights association.

Abdullah AlHamid, Salman Alouda and other Sahwa leading figures started to distancing themselves from the usual process of instigation, recruitment and operations. But that’s a story for another day, where I will talk in depth about the Academy of Change—Qatar and Turkey.

Khaled Homoud Alshareef holds PhD in Business and he earned Masters in Philosophy. He often writes about Islamism, Islamist factions and modern Terrorism. He tweets under @0khalodi0.

King denied him again by: “We are all Muslim brothers” hinting to Al-Banna that he understood his motives…

The activity of the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia began clearly during the reign of King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, King of Saudi Arabia in the period between (1964 – 1975). At the time, the relations between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which was then chaired by the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser, were at their utmost tension, to Abdel Nasser’s Nationalist Socialist Pan Arabism agendas aiming to abolish monarchies.

Later, after the death of President Abdel Nasser, and a rapprochement occurred between his successor, President Anwar Sadat and King Faisal bin Abdulaziz. Faisal sought to create a rapprochement between the Brotherhood and Sadat.

The Muslim Brotherhood members dominated educational aspects in universities (Standard MB Practice), particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as on media platforms, charity organizations and aid agencies. The beginning of the real story is due to the desire of the founding King Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud to fight illiteracy and spread education.

Among those invited by the King’s advisor Hafez Wahbah and interviewed by the King was, Hassan Al-Banna, Al-Banna was denied , then on 1936, when Hassan al-Banna visited the kingdom to perform Hajj, he met King Abdulaziz and presented him with a request to establish a branch to organize the Brotherhood, but the King denied him again by: “We are all Muslim brothers” hinting to AlBanna that he understood his motives and firmly denying his wish while remaining courteous.

All attempts by the Muslim Brotherhood to venture into Saudi Arabia during the reign of King Abdulaziz were rejected, which led the group to other endeavors, which is spreading their literature through missionary missions to the Kingdom during the Hajj seasons, in an attempt to spread the ideology among Islamic delegations to Hajj through the speeches that Al-Banna delivered.

To present the principles of his call, and since then Saudi Arabia was covertly classified within the organizational structure of the international organization.

Upon the 1948 revolution in Yemen (the revolution of the constitution) took place, the Muslim Brotherhood relations with Saudi Arabia became stressed due to the support of MB members to the revolution that plunged Yemen into chaos and bloodshed.

These events completely foiled all the Brotherhood’s attempts to penetrate Saudi Arabia with their revolutionary ideas and their extremist whispers to call to Arms in Saudi Arabia during the reign of the founding King.

In 1953, the spiritual father of the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia arrived as a teacher to teach in the College of Sharia in Riyadh, then the College of Arabic Language, then director of postgraduate studies at Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University. In addition to his membership in the university council, and chaired the scientific committee of the Girls’ college as well as the educational policy committee in the Kingdom, and participated in the opening of the religious institute in Al-Ahsa and then moved to Al-Qassim.

The arrival of the Salafist Jihadists movement preacher Mohamed Sorour Zain El Abidine Sorouri Salafism, or Sorourism , also known as the Sahwi movement. It is a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot in Saudi Arabia.

Sorourism is considered the broadest intellectual, political and social Islamist branch of the Muslim Brotherhood . This Group was founded by the theorization of Muhammad Surur Zain Al-Abidin a Syrian from Horan a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

He was among the youth belonging to the so-called military vanguard movement or Marwan Hadid group by Sheikh Hamwi, a Qutobist extremist who founded the Muslim Brotherhood’s military organization in Syria and is the leader of armed action against the Baath regime in Syria.

He was later driven out from Saudi Arabia to Kuwait by Manna Khalil Al Qattan the MB top figure in Saudi Arabia, for disputes between the two personalities began, among which are the reasons for apprehension about the growing Sorori base among the youth of the MB and Sorouri’s endeavor to establish an independent movement organization “The Secret Organization”.

In Kuwait, Mohamed Sorour continued to work to strengthen his movement and organization, and he worked as editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti Brotherhood “Society Magazine”.

Sorour’s ambitions got the best of him yet again as he was involved political clash with the Kuwaiti government, he later on moved to live in Britain and remained in it for 30 years. And he issued the revolutionary “Yearly Magazine”.

Again his ambitious and extremist ways got the best of him yet again and his yearly Magazine was banned, he moved to Jordan in fear of being a subject of investigation and then fled to Qatar where he lived until he died in 2014, where Emir of Qatar and Father attend his funeral.

Muhammad Zain al-Abidin left behind many who embrace his extremist Islamist views, including symbols and celebrities carrying that mixture of Syed Qutob extremist dynamics and scientific Salafism, his students, symbols of the group’s teachings.

Among his students Salman al-Awda and others who carry with them his extremist ideology that they passed to their students since the late 90s.

In 1993 al-Ouda was one of the leaders and instigators of the dissident group Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR) that aimed to incite riots and chaos against the Saudi government.

Gilles Kepel has described CDLR and Al-Masari as “failing to raise any groundswell of support” within Saudi Arabia and “sadly lacking” in Islamic “doctrinal … ballast”, as became evident after he was confronted and debunked by fatwas issued by the Saudi scholars.

Al-Masari is also criticized for being two-faced, presenting himself as a fighter of human rights abuses and corruption to the western audiences, while regaining Arabic speakers with attacks on Saudi for its lack of shari’a law enforcement and even pronouncing “takfir against all Muslims who
obeyed the laws of Riyadh”.

In particular, it’s a standard practice these MB scholars adapt to gain western support while showing their true colors when addressing their followers.

Al-Ouda is known to the western audiences as a moderate for criticizing the September 11 attacks, and criticizing Osama bin Laden. Ironically that never happened until 2007, around the sixth anniversary of September 11.

And I quote al-Ouda: “My brother Osama, how much blood has been spilled? How many innocent people, children, elderly, and women have been killed … in the name of Al Qaeda? Will you be happy to meet God Almighty carrying the burden of these hundreds of thousands or millions of victims on your back?”

Side note: I am not buying it, what about you?

The 1990–1991 Gulf Crisis and War, in which an American-led coalition of forces aligned against the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, al-Ouda voiced his objections against the coalition.

Al-Ouda pushed the leadership of what was known as the “Awakening” movement in the 1980s, accompanied by a group of his friends, and signed a letter calling for legal, administrative, social and media reforms in Saudi Arabia in May 1991.

If we read in the biography of Youssef El-Eiry, and his letters, we will understand what motivated him to become the first leader of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, he was later killed in a confrontation with the Saudi Security forces.

El-Eiry praised by Osama bin Laden and one of his books we would have found this mentioned, quite frankly, impeccable, Al-Eiry was admitting that he was a member of the Saudi Islamic Awakening Movement which is linked to Salman al-Ouda.

Khaled Homoud Alshareef holds PhD in Business and he earned Masters in Philosophy. He often writes about Islamism, Islamist factions and modern Terrorism. He tweets under @0khalodi0.

People call it as a “test of God” for being on the path of God, but when you watch Dr. Naik’s loose statements, you won’t feel it to be a “test of God” rather his own stupidity.

I was of the opinion as the rest of the Muslims that “the enemies of Muslims” are after Dr. Zakir Naik and they want to confront his divine work with a brute force. And this gladiator is facing a test of God, but later I realized it was his own stupidity which landed him in the controversy.

Before you start calling me an RSS agent or an Israeli agent, please give yourself a break and start using your instincts. I am a Muslim who has a pain for the fellow Muslims, but I feel disturbed when a person goes arrogant and sticks to his own weird views and the harm has to be born by the rest of the community.

People call it as a “test of God” for being on the path of God, but when you watch Dr. Naik’s loose statements, you won’t feel it to be a “test of God” rather his own stupidity.

Dr. Naik during his speech in Kelantan Malaysia on August 8 was explaining how Islam peacefully came to Malaysia and Indonesia without the use of sword, then he explained how Chinese came and settled in Malaysia.

And I don’t know what happened to him suddenly, he started ranting—”some people calling me as a Guest”—and he said if a new guest (referring to himself) has to go out, then let the old guests (Chinese) should go before him.

Further, he said, Hindus in Malaysia are 6.4% and they enjoy more rights than Muslims in India—it was okay since he was praising Malaysian Government’s generosity. Then he made an adventurous remark by saying, “they support the Prime Minister of India, but not the Prime Minister of Malaysia.”

I wonder, how does he know that all Malay Hindus support Modi? Isn’t he jeopardizing their situation in Malaysia by making the 61% Malay Muslims suspicious about the 6.4% Malay Hindus?

Imagine, a Hindutva demagogue says, Muslims in India are enjoying more rights than Hindus in Pakistan, and still they support Pakistan and they aren’t loyal to the Indian soil. How will be your situation?

Think realistically and say, should the Government allow such a person to make public speeches or should he be restricted till he bridles his tongue?

I know and fully understand that Indian media blew his case out of proportion, but don’t you think his ardent behavior and his staunch views helped the media frame him to the maximum?

Yes, his staunch views—everytime he was asked about whether suicide bombings are permissible or prohibited. Instead of making a simple and straight-forward response, he would prevaricate saying, “some scholars call it prohibited, while some scholars like Shaykh Salman al-Audah and Shaykh Safar al-Hawali say it’s permissible during the war.”

I always wonder, what stops him from naming the scholars who prohibited it, and it’s the unanimously agreed opinion that suicide bombing is prohibited. Major Saudi scholars like Shaykh Bin Baaz and others of his league termed suicide bombing as “Haraam” or prohibited. But the extremist Muslim Brotherhood preachers like Audah and Hawali who are banned in Saudi Arabia, term it permissible during the war.

The terrorists of Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Ikhwanul-Muslimeen, ISIS, and other splinter groups, justify their actions to be “in the context of war”, so they deem it permissible in every situation.

Furthermore, everytime Dr. Naik was asked about Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, he makes ambiguous replies, like—”I don’t know if they are good or bad”, “I can’t rely on media and call them terrorists”.

While the Fatwas of Saudi scholars are blatant and evident that, Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were “Khawarij” – Renegades. But what makes him say such ambiguous stuff—only God knows.

If you are upon truth and if you are inflicted with trials, it’s a different case, but when you are upon arrogance and if you are inflicted with trials, it’s your own personal choice.

Currently his situation in Malaysia is, the Prime Minister has stated that Police is investigating his case, and he is not allowed to preach in seven Malaysian states of Melaka, Johor, Selangor, Penang, Kedah, Perlis and Sarawak.

My well-wishes and prayers are with those who are prosecuted for practicing and preaching their faith, but I feel sorry for those who enjoy jumping into the hot waters and cry foul.

Zahack Tanvir is a regular blogger and holds diploma in Journalism from London School of Journalism. He tweets under @zahacktanvir.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect The Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.