 |
The Saudi Hate
Machine
Erick
Stakelbeck
In October, at a counter-terrorism conference hosted by
the Royal United Services Institute in London, Prince
Turki Al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to Great
Britain, announced that Saudi security forces had
recently “re-educated” 3,500 radical preachers.
While Al-Faisal’s claim was impressive, he failed to
address the specifics of this apparently sweeping
program, leaving one to wonder whether the Kingdom’s two
most notorious clerics, Safar Al-Hawali and Salman Al-‘Auda,
were targeted. Known as the “Awakening Sheikhs” due to
their powerful influence on young Arab Muslims, Al-Hawali
and Al-‘Auda have spent over a decade preaching death to
America and forging relationships with members of
Al-Qaeda. Their fatwas (religious decrees), which
reflect the Saudis’ totalitarian Wahhabi ideology at its
most extreme, have served as inspirations to Osama bin
Laden and several of the 9/11 hijackers. But the
Sheikhs’ influence isn’t limited to the Arabian
Peninsula. Thanks in large part to the Internet, as well
as the distribution of their writings and sermons at
Islamic conferences, the Awakening Sheikhs are revered
amongst Islamists worldwide—including in the United
States.
Al-Hawali presently serves as secretary general of the
Global Anti-Aggression Campaign, a militant,
anti-American entity established last April by more than
225 radical figures from across the Islamic world as a
response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. One of the
founders of the campaign was Al-Hawali’s fellow
Awakening Sheikh, Salman Al-‘Auda. The group’s initial
statement condemned, “the Zionists and the American
administration led by right-wing extremists, that are
working to expand their control over nations and
peoples, loot their resources, destroy their will, and
to change their educational curricula and social
system.”
Such rhetoric is commonplace for Al-Hawali—his numerous
writings display a fixation with what he views as the
inevitable downfall of the West. In one of his earlier
works, Kissinger’s Promise, Al-Hawali, much like
today’s anti-U.S. conspiracy theorists, framed American
involvement in the Middle East as a ploy to control the
region’s oil resources. More recently, his 2001 book,
The Day of Wrath, analyzed Biblical prophecy
from an Islamist perspective. In Al-Hawali’s version of
end-time events, Christians and Jews will be decisively
defeated in the year 2012, with Islam ruling supreme.
Similarly, in an “Open Letter to President Bush,” dated
October 15, 2001, Al-Hawali expressed delight at the
events of 9/11, which he viewed as a precursor to the
coming apocalyptic Holy War between Islam and the West:
In the midst of…continuous confusion and frustration,
the events of the 11th of September occurred.
I will not conceal from you that a tremendous wave of
joy accompanied the shock that was felt by the Muslim in
the street...America will eventually pay for its
enormities, because Muslims will never forget the wrongs
they have suffered…Mr. President, if you destroy every
country on your list of terrorists, will that be the end
or only the beginning?
While the 53-year-old Al-Hawali channels his extremism
largely through his writings, Al-‘Auda, 48, who,
interestingly enough, was described in a 2001 New
York Times profile as “courageous,” and “a voice for
the disempowered,” has focused his energies primarily on
preaching. In August 2002, Al-‘Auda was detained and
deported from Jordan prior to delivering a scheduled
speech there. Jordanian authorities were apparently
fearful that Al’Auda would incite the country’s Islamic
fundamentalists. Judging by Al-‘Auda’s background, the
Jordanians were on the right track.
Al-‘Auda and Al-Hawali—both products of the Saudis’
Wahhabist higher education system—rose to prominence
during the 1991 Gulf War, as they delivered a succession
of rousing oratories and fatwas skewering the U.S.,
Israel, and, especially, the Saudi Royal Family for its
allowing American troops to set foot on Saudi soil.
Audio cassettes of the two Sheikhs’ fiery sermons were
circulated throughout Saudi Arabia and served as
inspiration for two documents seminal to the cause of
dissident Saudi Islamists. The “Letter of Demands” and
“Memorandum for Advice,” presented to King Fahd in 1991
and 1992, respectively, called for the strict
enforcement of Islamic law within the Kingdom
(apparently, current Saudi practices like public
beheadings are insufficient). Many of the documents’
radical fundamentalist signatories were interrogated and
jailed, and Al-Hawali and Al-‘Auda both received
warnings to cease from criticizing the Saudi regime.
They refused, and were ultimately thrown into prison in
November 1994. Their arrest prompted a massive protest
in Al-‘Auda’s home city of Buraydah in central Saudi
Arabia, a notable development indeed considering the
country’s virtual absence of civil disobedience.
The Saudi Royal Family, despite a continuing stream of
anti-Western vitriol from the two Sheikhs, has given
them a wide berth since their release from prison in
1999. And after experiencing deadly terrorist attacks in
Riyadh twice in the last six months, it is unlikely that
the House of Saud will further inflame the murderous
passions of Al-Qaeda by incarcerating two of the
organization’s key spiritual advisors. “For the moment,
[the Saudi Royals] are not going to arrest people among
popular Saudi scholars,” says moderate cleric Sheikh
Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Imam of the Italian Islamic
Community. “They will try to maintain the situation as
it is.”
Nevertheless, the Awakening Sheikhs’ links to Al-Qaeda
are undeniable. When 9/11 hijacker Saeed Al-Ghamdi
videotaped his will in December 2000, he made sure to
give on-camera praise to both Al-Hawali and Al-‘Auda.
Likewise, phone records for Mounir el-Mottasedeq, a
Moroccan convicted in Germany last February of assisting
Mohammad Atta and other members of the "Hamburg cell"
that planned 9/11, show that, in the months prior to
9/11, he made repeated calls to Safar Al-Hawali’s Riyadh
offices. And in the Al-Qaeda propaganda video, “The
Martyrs of Bosnia,” Salman Al-‘Auda is described as one
of the “most important” supporters of the mujahideen
regiment in the Balkans led by Al-Qaeda member Abu Abdel
Aziz Barbaros.
As for Osama bin Laden, the Saudi government’s crackdown
on the Awakening Sheikhs only added to his resentment
for the House of Saud. His 1996 declaration of war on
the United States, for instance, “bemoaned” the two
Sheikhs’ arrests, as did an interview he conducted with
CNN’s Peter Arnett in 1997: “When the Saudi government
transgressed in oppressing all voices of the scholars
and the voices of those who call for Islam,” bin Laden
told Arnett. “I found myself forced, especially after
the government prevented Sheikh Salman Al-Awda and
Sheikh Safar Al-Hawali and some other scholars, to carry
out a small part of my duty of enjoining what is right
and forbidding what is wrong.” The Awakening Sheikhs
have played a significant role in shaping bin Laden’s
jihadist mindset, according to Mamoun Fandy’s 1999 book,
Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent:
Bin Laden is very supportive of the ideas of Safar Al-Hawali
and Salman al-‘Auda. He has devoted specific communiqués
to defending these young ‘ulama against the (Saudi)
state and its ‘ulama. Some of his statements are also
taken from either Hawali or al’Auda, especially on the
normalization of relations with Israel.
Like bin Laden, several of the 9/11 hijackers were
reportedly immersed in the teachings of Safar Al-Hawali.
It isn’t difficult for budding Islamists to gain quick
access to the Awakening Sheikhs’ world of hate—tapes of
their sermons can be found everywhere from the dusty
markets of Riyadh to the burgeoning mosques of Hamburg,
Amsterdam and London. Their influence also extends to
the U.S., courtesy of the Islamic Assembly of North
America (IANA), a radical, Ann Arbor, Michigan-based
organization. IANA co- founder Bassem Khafagi (also a
former Community Affairs Director for the U.S.-based
Islamist group, the Council on American-Islamic
Relations), recently pled guilty in a federal court in
Detroit to two counts of bank fraud and one count of
visa fraud. In addition, five men tied to an IANA
affiliate in Syracuse called Help the Needy have been
charged by federal authorities with sending money to
Iraq in violation of U.S. sanctions.
IANA has aided in the dissemination of Al-Hawali and
Al-‘Auda’s teachings in the U.S. by publishing the two
men’s Arabic-language books and showcasing their fatwas—which
glorify suicide bombings and call for the downfall of
the West—on IANA websites. According to an
indictment handed down by a grand jury in Idaho, the
webmaster for a number of these sites was Saudi native
and ex-University of Idaho graduate student Sami Al-Hussayen,
who was arrested by federal authorities last February on
charges of visa fraud and lying to federal agents. In
addition to posting radical material on IANA websites (a
June 2001 article on the IANA site, www.alasr.ws, was
titled “Provisions of Suicide Operations”), Al-Hussayen
allegedly kept in frequent contact with Safar Al-Hawali
and Salman Al-‘Auda via phone calls and e-mails,
consulting with them on their own inflammatory
Arabic-language sites. Coincidentally, Saudi Embassy
spokesman Nail Al-Jubeir told the Wall Street Journal
last May that Al-Hussayen’s
U.S.
education was paid for by the Saudi government, which
also provided him with a $2,700 monthly stipend. His
uncle, Saleh Al-Hussayen, is a minister of the Saudi
government who oversees the country’s two holy mosques
in Mecca and
Medina.
Can Saudi Arabia, the chief proponent and financier of
Wahhabi Islam worldwide, ever be truly serious about
cracking down on the kind of virulent fundamentalism
that, in turn, spawns terrorism? Despite the Saudi
government’s desire to pacify the United States over its
concerns about Saudi support for terrorism, the thought
of Wahhabists being “re-educated” by fellow Wahhabists
is not exactly comforting, especially when, according to
Sheikh Palazzi, “The young princes in the Royal Family
are very friendly to [Safar Al-Hawali and Salman Al-‘Auda].
They consider them as men of honor, men of courage.
Especially in the family of Prince Abdullah.”
Judging from recent accounts, it appears that the Saudi
government and Safar Al-Hawali may now even be working
together. On November 21, the Asia Times reported
that Al-Hawali was one of over 40 “Saudi scholars” who
recently gathered for a three-day conference in Mecca
with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. During the meeting,
Al-Hawali and his fellow clerics were said to have
offered to mediate between the House of Saud and the
terrorist elements presently operating within the
kingdom. As for the Saudi government’s continued blind
eye to Al-Hawali’s own Al-Qaeda links, Palazzi can only
sigh. “To a certain extent,” he says. “It is impossible
for someone who wants to realize it not to realize it.”
Erick
Stakelbeck is head writer for the Investigative Project,
a Washington DC-based counterterrorism research
institute.
|
 |
