Robert Fisk writes:
The Saudis step deeper into
trouble almost by the week.
Swamped in their ridiculous war in Yemen,
they are now reeling from an extraordinary statement issued by around two
hundred Sunni Muslim clerics who effectively referred to the Wahhabi belief –
practised in Saudi Arabia – as “a dangerous deformation” of Sunni Islam.
The prelates included Egypt’s Grand Imam, Ahmed el-Tayeb of al-Azhar, the most
important centre of theological study in the Islamic world, who only a year ago
attacked “corrupt interpretations” of religious texts and who has now signed up
to “a return to the schools of great knowledge” outside Saudi Arabia.
This remarkable meeting took place in Grozny and was
unaccountably ignored by almost every media in the world – except for the
former senior associate at St Antony’s College, Sharmine Narwani, and Le
Monde’s Benjamin Barthe – but it may prove to be even more dramatic than
the terror of Syria’s civil war.
For the statement, obviously approved by Vladimir Putin,
is as close as Sunni clerics have got to excommunicating the Saudis.
Although they did not mention the
Kingdom by name, the declaration was a stunning affront to a country which
spends millions of dollars every year on thousands of Wahhabi mosques, schools
and clerics around the world.
Wahhabism’s most dangerous deviation, in the eyes of the
Sunnis who met in Chechenya, is that it sanctions violence against
non-believers, including Muslims who reject Wahhabi interpretation.
Isis, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are the principal foreign adherents to
this creed outside Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The Saudis, needless to say, repeatedly insist that they
are against all terrorism. Their reaction to the Grozny declaration has been
astonishing.
“The world is getting ready to burn us,” Adil Al-Kalbani
announced. And as Imam of the King Khaled Bin Abdulaziz mosque in the Saudi
capital of Riyadh, he should know.
As Narwani points out, the bad news kept on coming.
At
the start of the five-day Hajj pilgrimage, the Lebanese daily al-Akhbar published
online a database which it said came from the Saudi ministry of health,
claiming that up 90,000 pilgrims from around the world have died visiting the
Hajj capital of Mecca over a 14-year period.
Although this figure is officially
denied, it is believed in Shia Muslim Iran, which has lost hundreds of its
citizens on the Hajj.
Among them was Ghazanfar Roknabadi, a former ambassador
and intelligence officer in Lebanon.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has
just launched an unprecedented attack on the Saudis, accusing them of murder.
“The heartless and murderous Saudis locked up the injured with the dead in
containers...” he said in his own Hajj message.
A Saudi official said Khameni’s
accusations reflected a “new low”.
Abdulmohsen Alyas, the Saudi undersecretary
for international communications, said they were “unfounded, but also timed to
only serve their unethical failing propaganda”.
Yet the Iranians have boycotted the Hajj this year (not
surprisingly, one might add) after claiming that they have not received Saudi
assurances of basic security for pilgrims.
According to Khamenei, Saudi rulers
“have plunged the world of Islam into civil wars”.
However exaggerated his words,
one thing is clear: for the first time, ever, the Saudis have been assaulted by
both Sunni and Shia leaders at almost the same time.
The presence in Grozny of Grand
Imam al-Tayeb of Egypt was particularly infuriating for the Saudis who have
poured millions of dollars into the Egyptian economy since
Brigadier-General-President al-Sissi staged his doleful military coup more than
three years ago.
What, the Saudis must be asking
themselves, has happened to the fawning leaders who would normally grovel to
the Kingdom?
“In 2010, Saudi Arabia was crossing borders peacefully as
a power-broker, working with Iran, Syria, Turkey, Qatar and others to troubleshoot
in regional hotspots,” Narwani writes.
“By 2016, it had buried two kings,
shrugged off a measured approach to foreign policy, embraced ‘takfiri’ madness
and emptied its coffers.”
A “takfiri” is a Sunni who accuses another Muslim (or
Christian or Jew) of apostasy.
Kuwait, Libya, Jordan and Sudan
were present in Grozny, along with – you guessed it – Ahmed Hassoun, the grand
mufti of Syria and a loyal Assad man.
Intriguingly, Abu Dhabi played no
official role, although its policy of “deradicalisation” is well known
throughout the Arab world.
But there are close links between President (and
dictator) Ramzan Kadyrov of Chechenya, the official host of the recent
conference, and Mohamed Ben Zayed al-Nahyan, the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince.
The
conference itself was opened by Putin, which shows what he thinks of the Saudis
– although, typically, none of the Sunni delegates asked him to stop bombing
Syria.
But since the very meeting occurred against the backcloth of Isis and
its possible defeat, they wouldn’t, would they?
That Chechenya, a country of
monstrous bloodletting by Russia and its own Wahhabi rebels, should have been
chosen as a venue for such a remarkable conclave was an irony which could not
have been lost on the delegates.
But the real questions they were discussing
must have been equally apparent.
Who are the real representatives
of Sunni Muslims if the Saudis are to be shoved aside? And what is the future
of Saudi Arabia?
Of such questions are revolutions made.
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