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.

Mohamed Morsi, the leader of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood or Ikhwanul-Muslimeen party died on Monday in court. After that there have been a lot of images being shared on the Social Media that Morsi was denied Quran when he had asked it to the officials.

The Social Media is viral with the message that late Morsi said, “They refused me to have a copy of the Quran in my cell, but what they don’t know is that I have memorized it for over 30 years. I just wanted to touch the Quran, nothing more.”

Interestingly, we then find the exact same wording was also used for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan when he was imprisoned, and the banned hate-preacher Salman al-Oudah.

Sources tell us that this has been the practice of Ikhwanul-Muslimeen or the Muslim Brotherhood that they have been known for spreading lies and creating mischiefs in the land, and this is also one of the lies they have used.

Muslims should be cautious not to spread such lies and they should return back to the scholars and consult them with regards to such issues.

Al-Odah is infamous for his 1990s sermons “Come for Jihad” and “The Industry of Death.” Circulated on clandestine audiotapes that were spread throughout Saudi Arabia and beyond, the sermons called for his followers to perform jihad in Afghanistan, Iraq and other occupied Muslim lands.

Although after his release from jail in 1999 he profusely refuted claims in TV interviews on MBC that he incited jihad, the audiotapes are still obtainable on his personal website.

Al-Odah capitalizes on his show of piety with softly spoken words, but is criticized for using this approach to incite terror and intolerance.

Born and raised in the Saudi city of Buraidah, he first rose to prominence as a lecturer at the local institute in the 1980s.

He then took a sharp turn at the end of the decade to become a voice of the Islamic Awakening (Al-Sahwa) movement.

For years, as the leader of that movement, Al-Odah and his associates preached anti-Semitic and anti-Western ideas to their followers.

It was halted in 1994 by the Saudi government as the movement took a more extremist approach to Islam, spreading a terror-related ideology among the region’s youth in opposition to the foreign military presence in the Kingdom during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.

In 1993, a joint commission spearheaded by the Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz found Al-Odah’s rhetoric a danger to Saudi society.

Al-Odah was ordered to attend a rehabilitation session, and was banned from conducting sermons and lectures.

But he disregarded the order, continued preaching disdain for the presence of American soldiers, and was sentenced in 1994 to five years in prison.

The charges included spreading hate rhetoric that jeopardized the sanctity and religious stability of Saudi society.

After his release from prison in 1999, Al-Odah came across as a reformed man, suggesting on talk shows that he had changed paths from his previous conservative and highly controversial views.

His first test came after the 9/11 attacks. His critics say he failed to condemn them clearly, but on the sixth anniversary, he said on a TV show: “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?”

While Al-Odah once deemed TV watching as evil, he began to build a major fan base via appearances on multiple Arab channels, such as Qatar’s Al Jazeera Arabic and the Saudi Almajd TV Network.

He even hosted his own show, “Al-Hayat Kalima” (“Life is a Word”), on the Saudi-owned MBC. The show was cancelled in 2011.

With the development of social media platforms, Al-Odah reached out to a much larger audience, gradually establishing himself on YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook and Telegram to speak directly to his followers. His messages on these platforms focused on philanthropy, religion and social issues.

“He achieved more prominence with his appearances on satellite channels and the media, and with the spread of the internet,” Hani Nasira, an Egyptian author and journalist who specializes in ideological movements, told Arab News.

Appearing nonchalant in numerous TV interviews, refusing to admit wrongdoing while dodging challenges with his elusive rhetoric, Al-Odah denied issuing his controversial fatwas (religious edicts), even though they are documented, distributed and available in Arabic on his personal website.

In one such fatwa, posted on his website in 2017, he prohibited women from wearing trousers in front of others because, he said, they show the size of women’s sexual organs, causing “sedition and excitement.”

Al-Odah is accused of developing affiliations with groups that have been regarded as terrorist organizations, notably the Muslim Brotherhood and the International Union of Islamic Scholars, of which he is a member of the board of trustees.

The union was listed as a terrorist organization by several Arab countries in November 2017 for its support and funding of acts of terrorism worldwide, specifically in the West.

It was founded in 2004 in Qatar under the leadership of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who was featured in the Arab News “Preachers of Hate” series and whose controversial views include the “justified” killing of Jews.

In a 2010 interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, Al-Qaradawi described Al-Odah as “one of my closest friends.”

In May 2017, Al-Odah was put on a blacklist of six preachers banned from entering Denmark for two years for preaching against the fundamental values of Danish society.

The list included Christian pastor Terry Jones, who was also included in the “Preachers of Hate” series.

In September 2017, Al-Odah was detained in Saudi Arabia, in a government crackdown on several of the most prominent preachers of hate. Al-Odah’s son Abdullah Alaoudh (he spells his name differently than his father), a Washington Post and New York Times (NYT) contributor, has been a vocal critic of his father’s arrest.

In an NYT op-ed, Alaoudh questioned the legitimacy of his father’s arrest and defended his subtler approach to Islam.

“For almost two decades, he (Al-Odah) has vocally led the campaign against terrorism in Saudi Arabia,” Alaoudh wrote. “He has called for renewing religious discourse and argues for moderate Islam.”

However, Alaoudh does not delve into what many critics believe is the devastating effect his father’s hate preaching has had on Muslim youth.

Nor does he explain his father’s contradictory points of view on serious topics such as non-Muslims, Western values and justification for taking lives.

In the view of critics, Al-Odah has developed a reputation for shifting like a chameleon to avoid censure, appearing as a soft-spoken spiritual cleric appealing to younger generations on social media, while masking his extremist views with elusive rhetoric or dismissing previous sermons as back in the past.

This despite him promoting his extremist views on his own website, and despite his extensive affiliations with terrorist organizations.

This tendency to shift positions “according to time and context” is common among “many clerics and preachers, especially those … who have ambitions for power, domination and religious tutelage,” said Nasira.

Article first published on Arab News.