Many Muslims know this. It is practically impossible to generalize or predict anything about the thoughts of 1.7 billion people; cultures, languages, geographies apart except the holy book they all share. But one country in particular, home to two of Islam’s holiest sites stands apart for its continuing egregious behavior of exporting its dangerous Wahhabi ideology, I have studied for decades to damage Muslim communities worldwide.
“Yalla, look!!” whatsapped my Saudi BFF Adham from Riyadh. What followed was a torrent of pictures of the Saudi’s menacing flag and our friendlier stars and the stripes flying in unison on every major Riyadh avenue.
Trump, Melania and most of his leaky and corrupt West Wing took to the skies yesterday to escape the Armageddon like events that have engulfed them. The 70-year old man-child we are still learning to call President began his first foreign trip as President stepping on the desert soil of Saudi Arabia. The same soil that Islam’s Prophet rode on horseback in the seventh century. Surely someone must have told Trump that centuries later a jobless cleric we shall call Wahhab (for the sake of brevity, since Saudi names can be very long) met a tribal leader called Saud and made a pact that stands to this day?
The puritanical Wahhabi clergy of Saudi Arabia and the House of Al Saud exist only because of that 18th century pact. In addition does Trump know, that this hypocritical kingdom has the densest twitter base in the entire middle-east and yet beheads people pretty much every week, leaving their torsos hanging, as if to dry? Our naïve POTUS is really stepping into treacherous territory, that has always lived behind a hypocritical façade.
In January, when he was busy plotting his ascension to what his supporters thought would be a snowflake free White House, that is now in leaky siege mode, the Saudis executed 47 people. Infact just in the last few years, Saudi executions, lashings, beheadings have increased dramatically. Will Trump visit Riyadh’s infamous chop-chop square, the sight of many a grizzly beheading? No. What he is going to find instead is a carefully, activity filled weekend which includes what the Saud’s hope is a carefully choreographed “Arab Islamic American Summit” with representatives from 50 Muslim nations. Donald J Trump has never been surrounded by so many Muslims in his entire life. And no amount of choreography can control the mouth or fingers of this man.
“Islam hates us,” he yelled at every single, mostly Caucasian rally he did last year. His supporters roared their approval. And then came hash tag Muslim ban. Does Trump know that the ailing King Salman derives a great deal of power by appending the title “Custodian of the two Holy Mosques” to his name? He basically fashions himself as the figure-head for the religion that “hates us.”
Billions in American weapons have been bought by the jittery Saudis over the years. And of course, we need their fast depleting oil, at least for now. But does Trump really understand the immense degree of the post ARAMCO (google it) BS the Saudis have sold us, even arguing they like the United States, share the strong desire for the elimination of Daesh?
This man, Donald Trump, a man whose very election remains contested, weeks ago welcomed the man who really ran Saudi Arabia, Deputy Crown Prince Salman, to the Oval Office—both men, members of the small club of the world’s most dangerous leaders. His Dad, the eighty-one year old and incapacitated King Salman will meet POTUS more than once weekend this, for the optics: I, Donald Trump am no Islamophobe, for example. It is also a horrific “reset” to this parasitic relationship, which had become icy toward the end of Obama’s second term.
Connecting the dots between the Saudis, the dead Osama, and the surging Daesh is pretty simple, at one level. The Sauds will never admit it, but they built an opaque and complex global network of bank accounts with links to Islamic charities, which in turn have links to terrorists. Post-9/11 the scion of the bin Laden family (the monarchy’s favorite contractors), Bakr, absolved his own vast clan of any responsibility because they had excommunicated Osama and cut off all financial links to him. Osama probably had withdrawn his share of the bin Laden annual dividends (millions) years ago, before he fled Sudan. It was comical. Post-9/11, Geneva was overrun by bin Ladens and Sauds trying to save their money. The latter reluctantly, in 1994, stripped Osama of his Saudi citizenship. They could get Osama out of Saudi Arabia, but they couldn’t ever get the Saudi out of Osama.
Days after 9/11, George W. Bush’s White House cleared the secret evacuation of twenty-four prominent bin Ladens present on US soil, engaged in pursuits ranging from academia, real estate, and lobbying the capitol to just Rodeo Drive or 5th Avenue shopping. This was a time when millions of civilians remained unable to fly. Allegedly, a frantic King Fahd called his embassy in DC saying there were “bin Laden children all over America.” It is logical to assume that a phone call between the Saudi king and George W. Bush made the entire bin Laden evacuation possible. The bin Ladens were no strangers to America and were, in fact,friends to the Bush White House.
After 9/11, Bush paid Saudi Arabia two visits, an obligatory, almost humiliating ritual of US presidential genuflecting at the feet of King Abdullah. Obama doubled that number, paying four. The now not redacted 28 pages of the 9/11 report have not really helped in putting the blame on Saudi shoulders, though it should. And worse; The problem is, if it were not for Saudi Wahhabi Islam (taught to fifteen of the hijackers) there would have not been an al Qaeda and a 9/11.
In public, neither Bush nor Obama ever questioned the absurdity of the kingdom’s being a member of the indolent United Nations Human Rights Council till 2016. To add insult to injury and unbelievably, this, the most misogynist society on the planet, which treats its women as chattel, was appointed to the UN Women’s Rights Commission, mere weeks ago. The hypocrisy of the UN could not be clearer. What does Ivanka think?
Even cursory knowledge of the Wahhabi curriculum taught to Saudi kids, makes it clear why the Saudi Wahhabi’s are so impervious to any form of rationality. The most successful export of the Saudi’s has not been oil. It has actually been Wahhabi ideology, now trending very high on an imaginary global “Muslim only” twitter.
I wonder if Trump has the knowledge that Daesh “soldiers” have no Quran-study time. They hang at a McDonald’s drive-through of Islam, where they pick and choose—an affront to fourteen centuries of learning. I was not surprised when I read reports that copies of Islam for Dummies was found in possessions belonging to one of the bombers in Paris and Brussels. For the ignorant, unemployed, semi-literate “radicals” of this imaginary caliphate, books such as these help cram basics like, “How do Muslims pray?” Replacing pray with prey, in this case, would induce the black humor Adham and I share. On their website, the Dummies people say, “Islam For Dummies helps you build bridges of understanding between you and your neighbors in the global village.” Destroying rather than building bridges is what Daesh clearly prefer. And their “global village” would be the delusory caliphate, built with Saudi-Wahhabi premise.
The self styled “Daesh Emir” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head-honcho of horror, notably said:
“Islam was never a religion of peace. Islam is the religion of fighting.No one should believe that the war that we are waging is the war of the Islamic State. It is the war of all Muslims, but the Islamic Stateis spearheading it. It is the war of Muslims against infidels. Muslims, go to war everywhere. It is the duty of every Muslim.”
Baghdadi just like his fellow savages would not exist without Saudi Wahhabi Islam. But there is more and it is not ancient. It is just very, very sad. As the secretive monarchy seems to get stronger: the Wahhabization of the planet is complete and Salman (junior) deceptively claims a great non-oil related economic future, a lie. Just like Trump, the Saudis have no problem lying shamelessly.
And here is the worst: In June 2016, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey met with a high-level Saudi prince visiting New York. It was hardly a courtesy visit. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the forty-first richest man in the world according to Forbes magazine, owns much more of Twitter than Dorsey does.
Talal is at 5.2 percent and Dorsey is a poor third at 3.2 percent. The latter was being obsequious out of necessity. Talal had been public about his desire to see the newly re-minted Dorsey replaced. And this cruel ironyhad brought one of America’s greatest innovators to his knees in front of a corrupt Saudi prince. He needed to keep his job.
Infact, the pompous and degenerate Talal is the second biggest twitter holder with approximately 35 million shares.“The Sauds will prob. run the damn thing soon” texted a Saudi friend when I told her.
Yes the corrupt Saudis own Dorsey’s world-changing innovation, which Trump uses recklessly. And yes, Trump is paying necessary obeisance to them.
And if twitter’s sad reality is not enough, Stephen Miller is drafting the speech POTUS gives to representatives of 50 “Muslim countries” on Sunday. Yes the same Miller, noted Islamophobe and alleged mastermind of #Muslimban. The fun never stops. Except the stakes have never been higher and their Prophet, a befuddled old man who is incapable of understanding why he is universally repellant and loathsome and now America’s lier-in-chief.