The roots of terrorism in Saudi Wahabi doctrine and the Muslim Brotherhood

Introduction

In the late nineties, the Arab and foreign journalists searching for new opinion on Islamic subjects, used to call me and publish whatever I’d tell them in my specialty topic “Glorious Quran and History and heritage of Muslims”.

 Some of the questions revolved around the contemporary religious extremism and Wahhabism and the Saudi state. In spite of the fact that I am a victim of the Saudi Wahhabi influence in Egypt, that area was far from my scientific specialization, which ends of the Mamluk era and the beginning of the Ottoman conquest of Egypt and the Arab region about 921 after the migration(Hijri) or 1517 Gregorian calendar.

I was limited in my specialization to the Sunni and Sufi heritage of Muslims and their history in the Middle Ages from the modern and contemporary eras. As usual, I stood in the middle of the road between the Sunni & Sufi history and heritage specialists. Historians believe that I am an Ancient Sheikh in the study of the Quran and Hadith Sciences and in Sunni and Sufi heritage interpretation, While being attacked by my Sunni opponents as "A man of history and civilization."

Everyone forgot that a researcher in Islamic history should be familiar with the realities of Islam and Muslim heritage and the extent of convergence or divergence between them and the reality of Muslims during the era in question.

For example, he who is researching the Khawarej or Shiites revolutions in the Umayyad era, must research conceptual framework and nodular of their political movement, although their ideological output had not crystallized yet at that time.

Then what about it if he researches the history of other movements in the Abbasid era (which is the era of establishment and completeness of ideologies confessionals influencing those political movements)?

Everyone also forgot that a researcher at the Sciences of Hadith, jurisprudence and interpretation it is inevitable that he researches the life of their Scholars and their historic background which influenced the mentalities before he attempts to discuss their personal history, their intellectual schools and their relationships with those around them of rulers, scholars and even commoners. Without historical background, the research of jurisprudence or interpretation or Hadith will come out short, hanging in space, away from the facts of lived reality.

Therefore, it was a must to have a mix between history and fundamentalism in Islamic studies and researches to expose all aspects of the subject and its dimensions. And this is how I did it in my doctoral thesis, which was searching the impact of ideological or religious Sufism in the Mamluk era in all of its aspects, religious, political, social, ethical, physical, cultural, educational, literal, intellectual, artistic and economical.  It is also what in conducted in all of my work, titled: "Fundamental Historical Study".

 Because of this lack of this systematic deficiency in historical fundamental Islamic studies, they still enjoy a flagrant ignorance confirmed by the fact that they ignore the fundamental difference between Islam as a Divine religion and Muslims as human beings making right and wrong actions and decisions. Muslims must bear their own burdens and Islam is not responsible for these burdens because it commands and prohibitions and higher values ​​which should be followed, while people are free in obedience or disobedience and responsible about what they are doing.

 Since 1987, after I left Al-Azher and was freed from their intellectual chains, I resolved to surpass them and everybody else with my books in the history of Muslims and in their heritage with all its manifestations and teams since the age of the Prophet (Pbuh) to the end of the Mamluk era. I took it upon myself to be a harsh judge in this challenge. And later I realized my success in this challenge.

My published articles and debates gave me a wide spread fame so researchers looking for renewal of Islamic thought came to me seeking a different  Islamic visions from the highly consumed and repeated formats of traditional scholars. They wanted me to reply to their mummified Fatwas which were no longer fit for human consumption.

 Some of them thought that I could speak and issue Fatwas in everything, as ignorant people do with their ignorance in everything, from invalidating ablution and obligations of washing and hijab and niqab and dying beard and shortening the robes to chatting on the Internet and organs transplantation, cloning and the legitimate ruling in personal purification on the surface of the moon! None of them would say: I do not know.

 Repeatedly I was asked about the Muslim Brother hood, Wahhabism and Wahhabi terrorist organizations, and to what extent do their ideologies differ or vary, and to which extent do they conform to their roots in the Middle Ages? I always apologized, not answering because the history of the modern era was outside my specialty. And I was ashamed of myself for repeating the apology and decided to enter into another challenge which is the study of the historical and intellectual roots of our times’ miserable extremists. This was a huge decision and I did not find the time to execute it, and   circumstances that prevented me from doing so.

 The Faculty of Economics and Political Science 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, and most of them belonged to the Salafi stream itself and represented the second generation of intellectuals of the Muslim Brotherhood, the conference was their chance to pass their ideology in the name of Islam without anyone  arguing their expression of Islam, and  that was the time when they were considered  "moderate Islamists."

 A lady researcher, with no Islamic studies background, was assigned to write on the most important subject which was "what is the Islamist movement and its characterization" At the last moment the professor apologized. Dr. Sa’ad El-Din Ibrahim was  running the meeting and he suggested to them that they invite me to speak ten minutes just to fill the time.

Dr. Sa’ad contacted me and I was working at that time with him in the Ibn Khaldun Center and said: Can you prepare yourself for a ten minutes talk about what the contemporary Islamic movement and its characterization? I told him: "I disagree with you in describing it as the Islamic movement. It contradicts Islam and does neither express it, nor the majority of Muslims, it only represent the Wahhabi movement ". He said: So You have the opportunity now to convince us your point of view. See you tomorrow at the podium. "I said," I will not only attend to speak, but with me will be a written research. I will prepare it tonight and read it before you tomorrow, God willing. "

This is what happened. I  Accepted the challenge, the challenge of myself, to myself. And before dawn the research was written with my own hand. After waking up the next day I went to the headquarters of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, where the conference venue was held, and I asked for several copies of the research to be made. The seminar was superb in the number of attendees and the quality of the debate. Then I gave a copy of the search to Dr. Mohamed Sayyed Selim college professor and supervisor of the conference, it aroused his admiration and our long distance friendship which I cherished since it began. I learned that the college published the research or a summary of it. Then the Ibn Khaldun Center published this research in its annual report, it was also published by the quarterly magazine "Man and Evolution" under the title "between Nejjdi religiosity and Egyptian religiosity”. The magazine is owned and managed by Dr. Yahia Al-Rakhawy, a senior psychiatrist in the Middle East.

This encouraged me to see this challenge through,  so I decided to write a full book about  the Sunni opposition in Saudi Arabia in the twentieth century Considering it fundamentally and historically: It would start with the opposition by the Muslim Brothers, those who have contributed with Abdul-Aziz in the establishment of the third Saudi state, then rebelled against him so he extinguished their rebellion, then the movement of peaceful opposition by Nasser E-Saied during the reign of King Saud, and the movement of Juhayman Al-Otaibi in the reign of King Khalid. And finally, the contemporary movement that was carried out by the Legal Committee and moved to London led by Al-Masa’ari and Al-Faqih before their separation. The movement that gave birth to Osama bin Laden.

I finished that book by the end of the year 2000. And it is still a manuscript.

From this manuscript I’ve chosen a bouquet of chapters of to give a hint about the roots of terrorism in the Wahhabi doctrine and how did the Saudis plant the tree of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

This bouquet of chapters was published in a book featuring a collection of articles and researches under the title (The events of September eleventh 2001, as seen by the Arab writers and intellectuals) prepared and submitted by   Dr. Ahmed Matar, who is a Norwegian of Palestinian origin.  This study occupies 49 page of the book. It was published by Dar Al-Carmel for publication and distribution in the Jordanian capital Amman ,it consists of 203 pages of medium size and includes studies by a number of Arab writers

My research gained the attention of many,   Professor Sa’ad Al-Qirsh wrote about it in Reuters on the first of May, 2007 what follows:

While Saudi Arabia declares that al-Qaida is still a threat to its territories, Egyptian writer Ahmad Subhy Mansour stresses that the source of danger lies at the root of the Wahhabi trend that is considered synonymous with religious fundamentalism.

Mansour believes that "The gravity" of the Wahhabi trend is not limited to Saudi Arabia alone but extends to Egypt, which has been exposed to "the Wahhabi Invasion" which has taken its people to the stage of being in a coma after it aborted, in his opinion, the t religious reform movement which started since the beginning of the twentieth century.

Saudi Arabia announced last Friday that they had foiled a plot to attack oil facilities and military bases and public figures in the kingdom and arrested 172 people, Prince Nayef bin 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-Qaida in the country.

Last February, Islamic militants killed four French nationals working and living in the Kingdom. The militants said they want to drive Western "infidels" from Saudi Arabia the birthplace of Islam

Officials say that about 144 foreigners and Saudis, including members of the security forces, and 120 militants were killed in attacks and clashes with police since May 2003, when Al Qaida suicide bombers hit three housing compounds of Western inhabitants in Riyadh.

Mansour,  an Al Azher history specialist, says that the risk does not lie in the practices alone, but in the motives, adding that Wahhabism in its theoretical and application foundations, is "the most terrible ideology produced by the Arabian Peninsula and applied to non-Wahhabi Muslims and non-Muslims," ​​after finding an extension for it beyond the limits of the Arabian Peninsula.

He adds that the "puritanical" Wahhabi trend found in the Muslim Brotherhood movement a fertile ground for its ideas that put the Egyptian people, in "that state of coma," which in his opinion threatens democracy and human rights and discriminates against non-Muslims.

Mansour says in a study entitled "The roots of terrorism in the Wahhabi doctrine" that the founder of The Wahhabi movement is Muhammad Ibn Abdul-Wahhab (1703-1791), who is considered by the Saudis, a religious reformer who made charging "other Muslims of being infidels a religious justification for the invasion and expansion, and thus the first Saudi state (1745-1818) came to existence" It was conquered by Muhammad Ali and he destroyed its capital Al-Der’eah on the behest of the Ottoman Empire.

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Mansour (58 years old) studied at the Al Azher since the elementary school and after graduation worked as a teacher of history and Islamic civilization at the University, but he was subjected to harassment and accusations which led to his dismissal for charges considered by his opponents as  denial of the Prophetic Sunnah. He  has also published books including "Apostasy Punishment, A fundamental historic study" and "Prayer between the Holy Quran and Muslims" and "Egypt in the Glorious Quran" and "religious beliefs in Mamluk Egypt between Islam and Sufism" and "The Disobedient Muslim, does he come out of the fire to enter Paradise”.

Mansour reviews historical roots of what he sees now as terrorism by criticizing the motives of Islamic tide after the death of  Prophet Muhammad(pbuh), which resulted in "what is known as Islamic conquests” which contradict Islam, and which led the Prophe’st companions to fight one another.  Political controversy resulted in differences in religiosity and the splitting of Muslims. To justify the aggression and to justify it in the name of Islam, they fabricated a Hadith and attributed it to  Prophet Mohammed(pbuh) which says:  “I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah”  and made assaulting others, a jihad ."

He reaches the eighteenth century, saying that Ibn Abdul-Wahhab in alliance with Muhammad Ibn Saud, founder of the first Saudi state, gave him an excuse to invade other countries "and kill its people after being accused of blasphemy and coerce them into accepting Wahhabism as Islam considers others including Shiites infidels."

He quotes Osman Ibn Bishr Najdi, historian of the first Saudi state and the author of "Title of glory in Najd history” that" Ibn Saud committed a massacre in Karbala in 1801 and as a Najdi he proudly documented that massacre, saying "we took Karbala and slaughtered and took its people(as slaves), then praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds and we do not apologize for that and say: and to the unbelievers the same treatment ".

Mansour says that Wahhabism now extends to public and private organizations in many countries and that the Muslim Brotherhood  is “The Egyptian edition of the Arab Najdi Wahhabism" pointing out that Ibn Abdul-Wahhab, " opined the hatred of the other and he decreed , the infidelity all of Shiites and considered their countries a land of war". The Fatwas of Ibn Abdul-Wahhab turned to "reality by fire and blood" at the end of the twentieth century.

He describes the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as Wahhabi -made saying that the Saudi leadership in the twenties of the last century, summed up its vision in "upholding Wahhabi ideology and sneaking it into Egypt to make it a strategic depth. The result was the success of the (founder of the current Kingdom) Abdul-Aziz Al Saud in converting Egyptian religiosity which is based on tolerance till the Middle Ages to the radical Wahhabi religiosity in the era of human rights. "

Observers believe that the forms of religion which they see as a formality in addition to the spread of the hijab and niqab in Egypt since the seventies of the twentieth century is directly related to employment in Saudi Arabia, reflected in the work force returning to the country bearing patterns of Saudi behavior, which do not allow women to expose their faces in the streets or driving cars.

Egypt witnessed terrorist operations carried out by Islamist militants. In 1992 writer Farag Foda (1946-1992) was assassinated in front of his home in Cairo at the hands of a young man who was instructed that Foda was an apostate. Sheikh Muhammad Al-Ghazali (1917-1996) who was classified within the stream of so-called moderate Muslim in his testimony before the court accused Farag Foda of being an apostate in an explicit condemnation of the victim.

A young uneducated man attempted to a assassinate novelist Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel Prize Winner) in 1994, driven by the fatwa that he is an apostate.

Mansour said that Sheikh Mohamed Abdu, who died in 1905, led a movement of religious reform in Egypt, "And did not know that his movement will suffer a miscarriage by his disciple (Muhammad Rashid Reda) in favor of the Saudis and their Salafi ideology.” The Egyptian Sunni Sufi religiosity was transformed into an Extreme Sunni Wahhabi religiosity " , describing what happened as an invasion.

He quotes notes by Dr. Mohamed Hussein Heikal  that he knew Hassan Al-Banna (1906-1949), founder of the Muslim Brotherhood fraternity  in 1928, during the pilgrimage season in 1936 and that it was "closely related to Saudi Arabia," he added  that he was holding the pecuniary budget with an iron hand. He also conveyed from his brother Gamal Al-Banna that he was hiding sources of funding for senior members of the Board of Guidance.

He points out that with Saudi financial support, it enabled Al-Banna, who was working as a teacher, to create 50 thousand Division of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt through which Wahhabism moved east and west, as he said.

He says that thanks to the petrodollars, Wahhabi ideology spread "contrary to Islam under the name of Islam in the biggest deception suffered by Muslims throughout their history," blaming Wahhabism with what he describes as the codification of violence and spreading it in the world.

Mansour accuses the Brothers Fraternity of plotting against Saudi Arabia, which hosted them during the rule of former President Gamal Abdul-Nasser, saying it was stipulated that they not engage in covert action inside the kingdom, but they have abandoned their promise and created an opposition movement to the Saudis, some of which fled the Kingdom. "It is from the womb of the Saudi opposition Osama bin Laden came out, the biggest terrorist in this day and age".

This has encouraged me to issue this small research supported with other articles about the Muslim Brotherhood, to be a complete book within the publishing project which is adopted by the International Center of the Glorious Quran, and Ahl-Alquran.com website.

And God Almighty is, whose Help is always sought.

Dr. Ahmed Sobhy Mansour

Virginia, United States

May 2007