ISLAMISM – A historical background: The Saudi Angle

ISLAMISM – A historical background: The Saudi Angle

By R. Upadhyay

A peep into the Arabian history during the time of Prophet Mohammad suggests that Mecca, the chief city of Hidjaz in Arabian Peninsula which was his birth place - was the assembly point of the caravans on the land route from southern Arabia and also the centre of annual pilgrimage to Kaba in a ritual called Hajj. Before the advent of Islam, Kaba was the sanctuary of over 300 idols representing the gods of various warring idolatrous Arab nomads who used to fight among themselves not only for their supremacy over each other but also for supremacy of their respective idol gods housed in Kaba which were supposed to be catering to every taste of pagan diversion. Thus, the warring Arabs used to fight for the custody of Kaba to prove the superiority of their respective gods. In fifth century AD, one Qosaiy belonging to the Hashimite sect of Quraysh tribe comprising of some scattered Bedouin clans in central Hizaz seized the Kaba and became its custodian. Qosaiy was said to be a descendent of Abraham and Ishmael the legendary forefathers of the Arabs.

Prophet Mohammad (570-632), belonging to the Hashim clan of Quraysh tribe was born in Mecca in 570 AD. Growing up in the chaotic social environment he developed a feeling to bring unity in Arab society. Accordingly, he used to meditate and felt that multiplicity of gods was the main reason behind such chaos. Since Allah was the main deity of the Qraysh tribe and his father’s name was also Abdallah conjugated from Abd Allah which translates as slave of Allah, Mohammad with a view to perpetuate his father’s memory chose this word from among the many pre-Islamic Arab deities and accepted it as the sole deity. It is said that nursing an imperialistic ambition to establish the domination of Arabian Quraysh over entire world he adopted a strategy to bring unity among the various tribes by uniting the concept of various gods into one. It is said that in course of meditation he began getting revelations from the year 610 AD at frequent intervals till his death in 632 AD.

In between a number of revelations to him was the war strategy for capturing Kaba in the city of Mecca. With first revelation – ‘La ilah ilallah Mohummadur Rasullah’(There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is his Prophet) in 610 AD, he made his journey by preaching among his own people in Mecca. However, he failed to convince the idolatrous Meccans, as the harsh and barren desert environment of Arab society which had not only shaped the temperament of its people but also of their mental make up by the dictum – “Kill or be killed”. Facing humiliation and danger he fled to Medina and turned into a ‘warrior priest’ by enticing some of the people around him under the banner of Islam. With a view to capture Kaba as his first target, he led his people by formulating the concept of Jihad (Literally meaning struggle) as “exertion on the path of Allah” and led them to invade the Meccan caravans. His first Jihad from Medina is known as the Battle of Badre when he lauded his followers against the army of opponents saying - “Fight and fear not, the gates of Paradise are under the shade of sword” (‘The Arabs’ by Anthony Nutting, Hollis & Carter, London, page 23). The defeat of Meccans in this war in 624 was the first victory of Islamic Jihad. In fact by using Islam as a violent political tool he led his followers to destroy the opponents who refused obeisance to it.

Encouraged with his first victory Mohammad made a tactical truce with the Omayyad sect of Quraysh tribe led by Abu Sufyan, the then custodian of Kaba and eventually succeeded in capturing Mecca in 630 AD. After the surrender of Abu Sufyan and obedience to Islam, Mohammad captured Kaba and demolished all the pre-Islamic idols except a black stone around which the Arabs were doing seven rounds, the customary pagan practice. As a part of his political strategy to establish the hegemony of Meccans, he also allowed the pre-Islamic pagan practice of circumambulation to continue as the focal point of Haz pilgrimage. Similarly, allowing the pre-Islamic Arab traditions like drinking water from the Zamzam well, throwing 21 stones at pillars representing evil spirits (Satan) on a holy mountain and sacrifice of camels and sheep, the Prophet prescribed these rituals as well as pilgrimage to this place once in a year for all the Muslims of world as the mandatory rites. Once he became the custodian of the Kaba he also became the temporal and spiritual head of both Mecca and Medina and allowed the old customs like slaves, concubines to continue.

In the last address to his companions before his death, Mohammad pronounced, “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘there is no god but Allah’. (Prophet Mohammad’s farewell address, March 632 – Islamic Imerialism – A History – Efraim Karsh, Yale University Press London, 2006, page 2). Since the Prophet adopted the path of violent war to establish Islam in his home town Mecca, his followers have no inhibition in taking the similar path. In fact the first battle of Badr and his last address became the perpetual advice and inspiring events for all the Muslims for any political conquest anywhere in the world.

Prophet Mohammad forbade the entry of non-Muslims to Mecca to complete its full Islamisation. His war strategy for imperial expansion of Islam with Medina as administrative centre of Islamic Empire was a novel form of socio-political communal concept of Ummah, a divinely ordained brotherhood bound by something stronger than geographical boundary. Perhaps tying up Islam with pagan reverence to the city of Mecca and a number of its pre-Islamic traditions and customs was not only political expediency of the time but also a strategy to make the Arabs as the super most power of the world. Such imperialistic political design which had nothing to do with the spiritual aspect of the faith latter turned into civilisational clash in different parts of the world.

After the occupation of Mecca, Mohammad declared it as the holiest city for the Muslims and fell ill. Although, the followers of Mohammad obeyed his writ till his death in 632 AD, political dispute over the superiority among the clans for succession began immediately. Fight for superiority which they had inherited from their pre-Islamic gene, divided the Ummah (Muslim community) into various sects. This was the first sign of deviation by the Islamists from the avowed objective of Mohammad to unite the various Arabian tribes. However, a truce was arrived at by establishing the institution of Caliphate headed by a Caliph who played a key role in inspiring the Arab Muslims to expand out of Arabia for territorial expansion of Islamist Empire. Armed with spiritual and temporal responsibility of the Ummah.

Abu Bakr belonging to Mohammad’s clan became the first Caliph with Medina as his headquarters. Medina remained the headquarter of the Caliphate till the fourth Caliph Ali. However, when Ali was forced to flee from Medina in 656 AD by his rival from Damascus who belonged to Ummyyad clan of Quraysh tribe, the Caliphate was shifted to different cities till the abolition of the Ottoman Empire, the last Caliph after the First Word War. In between an obscure group of Muslims from Arabian Peninsula moved out and conquered vast territories from Spain to India within a century. In fact with last address of Mohammad as ideological mascot of Islam and perpetual advice as well as holy duty for all the Muslims who are supposed to comply it till the people of entire world accept obeisance to their faith, they launched Jihad against Zoroastrians, Christians, Buddists, Hindus and followers of different faiths inhabiting in different geo-political regions like Persia, Baluchistan,, Afghanistan, Egypt, Sudan,, North Africa, Spain, France, China, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia,, Mangolia, Balkan, Indian Sub-continent, Malaysia and Poland (Chronology of Jihad in internets) and created ‘Paradise for the Arab rulers ‘under the shade of sword’. The aggressive expansion of Islamist Empire under the ‘shade of sword’ stretching from Iran to Egypt and from Yemen to northern Syria within a decade of Prophet’s death also suggests that the companions of Prophet instead of fulfilling the responsibility of a spiritual leader took the imperialist aspect of the advice of Mohammad as unique selling point of Islam and turned the trail to the bloodshed through Jihad to expand the geo-political territories as the sole ideology of Islamist expansionism.

The successive Arabian invaders also used Islam not as a spiritual path but as a tool for expanding their political powers in different territories of the world but never allowed any dilution of Arabian tradition in the cultural milieu of any of their conquered territories. This was due to their inherent imperialistic lust for domination over the world. Encouraged with success in destroying the great civilisational pasts of Persia (now known as Iran) and Egypt and turning the faith into a people building force with sole objective to expand their political power beyond the land of its origin, they marched towards Afghanistan, transformed this country to Arabian traditions under the shadow of sword and also conquered larger parts of Indian sub-continent.

Although, from the first Islamist Empire at Medina to the last Ottomans in Turkey has been the story of the rise and fall of Arabs, ideology of the singularity of Ummah as propagated by Mohammad began diminishing in eighteenth century. However, the barren desert land of Arabia reproduced a hardcore Islamist namely Maulana Mohammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab (1703-92) belonging to Bedouin tribe of Arabian Peninsula and rejuvenated the movement for restoration of the imperialistic supremacy of Ummah under the leadership of Arab. Deeply rooted to this ideology, he emerged as a hard core Islamist with a sole objective to restore the political glory of Arab born faith. With his worldview of extreme intolerance and belief in divine fiat of authoritarian state under the command of exclusively central Arabian power he took refuge in Ad’Dirjyyah near Riyadh then under the rule of Mohammad ibn Saud. Inspired with the aggressive propagation of Wahhab’s brand of Islamic orthodoxy, Ibn Saud, then a principal tribal leader of Arabian Peninsula forged an alliance with Wahhab in 1745 to fulfill his ambition, establish Saudi dynasty and secure political command of the region.

Adopting the preaching of Wahhab as a political strategy to expand his military with an ambition to establish the supremacy of his dynasty in Arabian Peninsula, the Saudi army fought for capturing the Mecca shrine from the Hashimites who used to be its Sharifs (Custodians). “For centuries Hashemites governed Mecca which was attacked and sacked by Ismaili Muslims in 930 CE and by the Wahhabis in 1803. In 1926, the Sharifs of Mecca were overthrown by the Saudis, and Mecca was incorporated into Saudi Arabia”.

The successors of Mohammad bin Saud over the next 150 years also saw their victory and defeat several times but after the end of First World War and abolition of the Caliphate under the Ottoman, the Saudi state was formally founded in 1932 by the late king Abdul Aziz Al-Saud also known as Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud. It is said that with an objective to consolidate the position of his dynastic kingdom he not only continued his recognition to the religious over-lordship of Wahhabism but also adopted matrimonial strategy to placate the different Arabian tribes. “Abd al Aziz married 135 virgins and 100 other women, choosing them from the great Bedouin tribes, the tribal reigning family of the descendents of Abd al Wahhab, the great sedentary families of Nazd or from more prosaically families of popular stock or even the slave population. In this way Abdl Aziz fathered as many as forty-three sons and more than fifty daughters”. (The Saudi Enigma by Pascal Menoret –Zed Book, London and New York, page 84). In fact the strategy was not so much of forging alliance but it was to strengthen his own dynasty and to extend it to all the tribes, all the prominent families and all the regions of Saudi Arabia. This imperialistic ambition of the Arabs therefore turned Islam into a political strategy which is known as Islamism.

The contemporary history of Saudi Arabia also suggests that its king being the custodian of the two holiest symbols of Islam is fully conscious of his responsibility to respond to the last address of Mohammad. Accordingly, being the richest oil producer in the world it is leading the Islamic revival movement with continuously liberal funding to various Islamist establishments for aggressive propagation of Wahhabi brand of Islamism which has turned the doctrine of Pan-Islam to Pan-Arabism.

People of India may be under the impression that Pakistan is the mother of Islamist terrorism but if we go deeply into the issue, Pakistan is only carrying forward the Wahhabi mission of Saudi Arabia which is providing huge fund to promote Jihadi war against India. “A report by terror analyst Jean-Charles Brisard, compiled for the UN Security Council in December 2002, stated that between 1992 and 2002, al-Qaeda received between $300 million and $500 million from Saudi businessmen and banks”. Ironically, a supposed ally of USA in the war on Jihadi terror Saudi Arabia is placed on a watch list of concerned US department for violation of the term of 1998 International Religious Freedom Act for liberal funding to various Islamic institutions for promoting this menace. Therefore, the trauma of modern history of India which began in eighteenth century is not likely to end so long Saudi funding to various Wahhabi institutions in South Asia, the root cause behind terrorism is not stopped.

Ironically, America, which is claiming of fighting a war against Islamic terrorism has not ever asked Saudi kingdom to stop funding of Islamic institutions which are responsible for producing Islamist. It may also be mentioned that both the United Kingdom and the United States also supported the Wahabbis, first against the Turks in the early 1900s, then against Nasserite Arab nationalists in the 1960s and 1970s and finally against the Soviets in the 1980s. In recent past the duo also adopted “a policy tailor-made to infuriate the Shiite, whether these be in Iran, Iraq or elsewhere”.

(The author can be reached at e-mail ramashray60@rediffmail.com)