Most people in the non-Muslim world as well as many ordinary Muslims all over the world may be tempted to think that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Saudi ruling family more or less represents the true face of Islam as preached by the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) and later taught and propagated by his faithful companions and followers. However, the truth of the matter is that there is a light year-gap between the Saudi “Islam” and the true Islam, as enshrined in the Holy Quran and Sunna or traditions of God’s final messenger to mankind.
By “Saudi Islam” I don’t mean in any way the honourable Hanbali school of Jurisprudence followed by most Saudis and numerous other Muslims around the world. What I do mean is the scandalous misuse and abuse of Islam by the decadent and unimaginably corrupt Saudi ruling family to perpetuate their virulent dictatorship and grip on power, mainly in the service of their parochial selfish interests and the interests of their foreign protectors, who are enemies of Islam.
Serious deviation from Islam
In this article, I will try to pinpoint some of the most scandalous contradictions between true Islam and the notoriously “sham Islam”, practised by the tribal Saudi dictatorship which claims rather shamelessly that its “legitimacy” is derived from its strict adherence to Sharia, a claim fraught with dishonesty and mendacity.
I don’t deny that the Saudi regime’s rule of the vast Arabian peninsula has always contained and continues to contain some superficial aspects of Islam such as the organization of the annual Haj pilgrimage to Macca and the maintenance of the holy places. However, if we examine the nature of the Saudi rule more meticulously, without resorting to complacency and sycophancy, we will be undoubtedly affronted with grave violations that are absolutely antithetical to the letter and spirit of Islam.
Medieval feudal dictatorship
To begin with, the ruling Saudi dynasty is a medieval kind of tyrannical dictatorships whereby the unelected king is viewed, de facto at least, as a sort of god, with absolute and unlimited authority. Thus the King, can, theoretically at least, kill any citizen, rape any woman, and arrogate any amount of money from the public treasury with total impunity and without any modicum of accountability. Needless to say, any gesture of dissatisfaction by the people, however faint or innocuous, is punishable by death or life imprisonment.
This contradicts rather sharply the clear principles of Islam which make it amply clear that a religous Muslim ruler must be chosen by the people, either directly or through their elected representatives, namely “Ahlul Hall wal’aqd“(literally, people who tie and untie). Moreover, Islam states unequivocally that obedience to the ruler is contingent upon and subject to his absolute dedication and commitment to the Sharia.
Kleptocracy: A government of thieves, run by thieves, for the benefit of thieves
As we all know, the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) said “By Allah, if Fatema, the daughter of Muhammed, stole, I would cut off her hand.”
However, we see that the Saudi rulers view the wealth of the entire country as their own wealth. Hence, it is no coincidence that all Saudi kings since King Faisal, who was assassinated by his nephew in 1975 arrogated tens of billions of dollars from the public treasury. This explains the fact that Saudi kings, Princess and hundreds of other members of the ruling family devour a large chunk of the Saudi treasury.
In 1988, Fortune Magazine estimated former King Fahd’s wealth to be around $18 billion (making him the second-richest person in the world at that time). Forbes estimated Fahd’s wealth to be $25 billion in 2002. In addition to residences in Saudi Arabia, he had a palace on Spain’s Costa del Sol which made Marbella a famous place. Current estimates of Crown Prince Muhammed Ibn Salman’s wealth are put at $23 billion. All in all, estimates of the Saudi ruling family’s wealth measure their net worth at $1.4 trillion. This figure includes the market capitalization of Saudi Aramco, the state oil and gas company, and its vast assets in fossil fuel reserves. In light, one can quite safely argue, without the slightest exaggeration, that the Saudi regime is actually a government of thieves, run by thieves, for the benefit of thieves.
Hence the question, what sort of Islam are these master hypocrites and liars talking about when they claim they are ruling the country in accordance with the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Prophet? Their malicious, pernicious lies are crying to the seventh heaven.!
The truth of the matter is that these depraved thieves are only using Islam as a pretext to hide their rapacity, corruption and criminality.
Indeed, One doesn’t go too far by arguing that the Saudi dynasty and Saudi ruling family is an incurable malignant cancer upon the conscience of Islam and Muslims as they constitute the ultimate antithesis of the religion of justice. This is because they knowingly commit grand treachery against Allah, His messenger and the religion of Islam while claiming that they rule according to Sharia! Islam is not an enigmatic religion. It is the Saudi ruling family that is corrupt beyond imagination.
Jamal Khashogji
The hair-raising murder of Jamal Khashogji at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018 epitomizes the un-Islamic Islam of the feudal Saudi regime. And as we all know, the murderous crown Prince and de facto king (MBS), who ordered the grisly murder, has eventually emerged unscathed from that eternal stigma.
Open-ended incarceration for God-fearing Ulema and rights activists
Today, MBS is incarcerating in shocking conditions thousands of Saudi intellectuals, Ulema, and activists for voicing non-conformist views. Some of them have died in their cells. Others are agonizing as a result of physical and psychological torture.
The draconian justice system in the Kingdom of fear and darkness sentenced two Saudi women for 35 and 45 years respectively for using the social media. This week, it was reported that a Saudi court sentenced Noura bint Said al-Kahtani to 45 years in prison for social media posts. The woman was convicted of “using the internet to tear the (Saudi) social fabric” and for “violating public order by using social media.” A few weeks earlier, the same court sentenced Salma al-Shehab, a mother of two and doctoral candidate at the University of Leeds in Britain, to 35 years in jail for following and retweeting dissidents and activists on Twitter.
Yes, a 45-year imprisonment sentence for writing a simple tweet! What sort of Islam is that? Would the Prophet of Islam and his companions have condoned this outrageous absurdity and preposterousness?
Eternal subservience to America
Ever since Britain withdrew from the region in the early 1960s, Saudi Arabia has been a de facto American protectorate. The unholy bond goes like this: The U.S, sustains the Saudi dynasty in power in exchange for Saudi Arabia serving and doggedly guarding American and Israeli interests in the entire Middle East.
In the last two decades, Saudi Arabia spent tens of billions of dollars to prop up dictatorial rulers in the region. It is widely believed that the Saudi monarchy paid more than 20 billion dollars to overthrow the first democratically-elected President of Egypt, Muhammed Mursi, in 2013. The advent of the visibly ignorant Egyptian dictator, Abdul Fattah Sissi, who is Israel’s No.1 lover in the Arab world, was preceded by huge massacres of pro-democracy activists, at the Rabaa and Nahda squares in Cairo where between 7000 -10,000 men, women and children were either slaughtered en mass by machinegun fire or incinerated alive by Egyptian forces.
Needless to say, The Saudis funded these hideous crimes and the concomitant bloody coup, which put a tragic end to Egypt’s brief democratic experiment. The King of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah, congratulated Sissi for his great victory over “the apostates.” Soon after these events, the Saudi government issued a plethora of laws and decrees criminalizing any individual calling for democracy, human rights and civil liberties in Saudi Arabia. Thus, anyone convicted of indulging in these “crimes” would be guilty of apostasy,” a grand felony punishable by death.! Yes, this is the Islam of Saudi Arabia. Does it look like the rule of Umar Ibn al Khattab and Abu Bakr and Ali ibn Abi Talib, let alone the rule of the Almighty’s final messenger to mankind?
Moral decadence
MBS is reportedly suffering from a host of personality defects including a clear mental disability which he often seeks to conceal by displaying exaggerated aggressiveness and intimidation. This is the reason why he always insists on receiving written questions by journalists and TV interviewers especially when visiting foreign countries.
He is also a lecherous hedonist par excellance. He is said to have arranged a promiscuous orgy in the Maldives in 2015 to celebrate his appointment by his father as Crown Prince. He reportedly paid 50 million US dollars for the party which was “attended” by 150 “women models” from several Western countries. A recently released book claimed that MBS arrived at the resort only after the models were tested and found safe from sexually transmitted diseases. The book, titled ‘Blood and Oil’ written by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck, exposes MBS’s scandalous lifestyle and ruthless quest for power. Predictably, the Saudi media wouldn’t report on this and similar scandals for obvious reasons.
Allah will not be deceived
As we all know, such filthy promiscuity, obscene extravagance and wanton squandering of the Muslim Umma resources are absolutely Haram (strictly prohibited) according to the Book of Allah and the Sunna of our beloved prophet. However, these cardinal vices are obviously Halal and perfectly acceptable according to the pseudo-Islam of the Saudi ruling family. But Allah will not be deceived and His punishment will be very sever, indeed.
Today, MBS is busy carrying out an aggressive campaign of de-Islamization in Saudi Arabia This campaign has permitted Saudi women to dress more or less like western women, effectively abandoning the Hijab, though gradually. The campaign also allowed inter-gender mixing with a clear prurient underpinning as well as a plethora of sex-oriented “recreational activities” which fly in the face of Sharia rules of modesty. One Saudi intellectual residing abroad intimated to this writer that “it is only a matter of time before MBS allows prostitution houses and bars serving hard liquor to operate openly in the kingdom, especially in the Red Sea resort town of Jeddah, not far from the Kaaba, the holiest Muslim place on earth.
Reacting to this combination of brutal dictatorship, rampant corruption and falsified Islam, some Saudi youngsters are leaving Islam altogether embracing other religions. Others have opted to embrace atheism. It is not exactly known how widespread is the phenomenon. However, unofficial estimates put the number of atheists in the kingdom at tens of thousands.
The sinful Love relationship with Israel
Saudi Arabia has displayed definitive signs indicating that the Kingdome is about to start a cordial relationship with the bellicose Zionist entity of Israel which is continuing to murder and savage fellow Palestinian Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on a daily basis. Signs of this sinful relationship included allowing Israeli passenger aircraft to fly over the kingdom, instructing social media bloggers as well as Friday Jumaa speakers and media in general to malign Palestinians and their enduring cause.
Officially, Saudi spokesmen claim the Kingdom’s traditional stance vis-à-vis the Palestinian issue has remained unchanged. However, the growing behind-the scene normalization between the kingdom and the evil apartheid Jewish entity suggests that the Saudis are effectively turning their backs on the Palestinian cause.
Needless to say, this treasonous abandonment of the Muslims’ No.1 cause shows that Saudi Arabia is not only betraying the Palestinians and the Aqsa sanctuary but is actually betraying the very soul of Islam itself. The Holy Quran warns Muslims repeatedly against taking hostile and belligerent enemies as allies. “Whoever embraces them amongst you is one of them, “the Quran warns.
Indeed, the looming alliance between Riyadh and Tel Aviv, should be viewed as a sign of apostasy, which ejects that horrible, primitive regime from the realm of Islam.
I don’t think that most Muslims hate ordinary Americans who believe in the general principle of “live and let live.” Moreover I don’t think that most Americans would unhesitatingly embrace Israeli Nazism if they had the chance to know the truth about Israel e.g. that it is a criminal state par excellence based on ethnic cleansing land theft and racist and religious discrimination.
Unfortunately most Americans are spoon-fed Jewish propaganda from early childhood. This creates a virtual reality in America’s collective mind about Israel a virtual reality that is nearly completely disconnected from the real reality in Israel-Palestine.
For example many Americans are made to think that Israel and America have much in common in terms of democracy. However the truth is that democracy in Israel is more or less confined to Jews while non-Jews are systematically discriminated against. Their land is confiscated their homes are demolished and their rights and dignity are trampled upon.
And when they seek redress at Jewish courts they discover that non-Jews can’t possibly hope for true justice and equality under Jewish rule. Ask non-Jewish Americans who have been living in Israel and you will hear a lot of hair-raising stories about the Israeli “democracy.”
Some Americans are so brainwashed that they are willing to claim that Muslims hate America for its freedoms. This is what Georg W. Bush probably the most ignorant President America has ever had once claimed.
The truth of the matter however is that most Muslims hate the US government for embracing tyrannical Arab and Muslim regimes that torment their own people by denying them natural freedoms and civil liberties as well as the right to freely elect their own governments. This is in addition of course to backing and supporting Israel’s Nazi-like policies including ethnic cleansing and settlement expansion at the expense of the native Palestinians.
It is really scandalous that while Americans boasts bout their First Amendment freedoms successive American governments have consistently embraced despotic regimes abroad. In many instances the US intervened either brazenly or behind the scenes to destabilize or overthrow democratically elected governments such as in Iran Chile and the occupied Palestinian territory.
Of courser America’s days of infamy are too numerous to be counted. For example we all tend to view Adolph Hitler as the ultimate embodiment of evil. However it is historically true that the US its allies Stalin Mao murdered more people than the Third Reich ever did.
America wanted to be looked upon as a moral example to be followed. But the beacon of light eventually turned into a ruthless beastly power where military might took priority over moral power.
Take for example America’s stand over Israel. For decades the United States enabled Israel to violate every international law and norm and commit every conceivable crime under the sun including murdering children by raining on them White phosphorus.
This is the same America that allows herself to judge the world for human rights violations while enabling Israel diplomatically politically and mainly militarily to pursue decidedly Nazi-like policies against the Peoples of the Middle East.
Watch the ongoing genocidal onslaught which against our helpless and unprotected people in the Gaza Strip. Some of you might be prompted to think that I am indulging in excessive exaggeration when I speak of a genocidal onslaught.
But I am not. Otherwise, how else can we describe a condition where hundreds of ultra-advanced war planes rain missiles and laser-guided bombs from high altitudes on apartment buildings, homes, and civilian neighborhoods packed with men, women and children? Yet, this is exactly what Israel has done¸ murdering , maiming and incinerating thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians and utterly destroying tens of thousands of buildings.
Israel effectively destroyed Gaza, murdering and maiming untold numbers of civilians. Gaza, more or less, became the Dresden of Palestine. And the whole world looked on rather passively as if the killing-field and the shockingly pornographic destruction of life and property were occurring on a distant galaxy. we are not really talking about war, even an asymmetrical war. We are actually talking about a real massacre, a massacre that is reminiscent of the time when the Nazis ganged up on European Jewry 70 years ago.
The macabre scenes of decapitated and badly-mutilated children were too shocking to be described in words. Reporters at the site of the carnage lost their composure and collapsed as they couldn’t cope with the gruesomeness of the pornographic bloodbath.
In 2006, the Nazi government of Israel dropped 2-3 million cluster bomblets over Lebanon enough to kill or maim 2-3 million Lebanese children. And instead of denouncing the manifestly nefarious act the US government declared that “Israel has the right to defend itself.”
Today there is an anti-Islamic hysteria in the United States. The main reason for this hysteria is the fact that the United States can’t live normally with itself without an external enemy. In short there has to be an enemy in order to keep the American psyche intact. There has to be an enemy in order to keep the military industrial complex functioning. In short capitalism can’t function without war.
In fact Muslims don’t view themselves as enemies of the United States as the vast bulk of Muslims are peaceable people who are mainly interested in the pursuance of their daily life enhancing their daily living improving their standard of living and making ends meet.
Yes there are violent groups here and there but these are tiny groups which in no way represent the Muslims of the world.
I think many Americans are ignorant of these facts. I also think that many other Americans would condemn Muslims right or wrong. I am talking about people who would burn the Muslim Holy scripture the Quran in order to highlight their hatred of Islam a religion with more than 1.6 billion people.
Well to those I say one thing: the dogs will keep barking and the caravan will keep going.
Besides if you have one reason to hate us we have a thousand reasons to hate you.
None the less unlike you we are not willing to allow our primitive impulses to decide our behaviors. Our religion the source of our morality and behavior doesn’t allow us to behave the way they do.
This is why we will not burn copies of the New Testament we will not attack churches and we will not call Christianity bad names.
It is often claimed that the religion Jesus founded is based on Love. But any fleeting view of your “religion” caricatures a hate-based cult that has very little to do with Jesus and the authentic messages he preached.
Did Jesus ever call children “murderers” as you did recently in Texas? In fact I dare say that you and people who subscribe to your cultist hatefulness are a cancer upon the conscience of Christ.
So you hate us because of the 9/11 events. Well 99% of Muslims condemned in the strongest terms these terrorist acts. And we are sorry for the umpteenth time for the death of dozens of hundreds of innocent Americans including Muslims in these terrorist attacks.
None the less your democratic elected government has been responsible for the death of millions of Muslims. In Iraq alone the United States has killed or caused the death of at least two million Muslims in the past two decades. Hundreds of thousands of other Muslims have been killed in Afghanistan. These are just two examples of America’s genocidal wars against the Muslim world.
Hence if you have the right to cite one 9/11 we can cite hundreds and thousands of 9/11s. And don’t you ever think that your lives are worth more than our lives. All human beings were created by the same God and are equal if only because there is no such a thing as a lesser God.
One day the oppressed will have their day and there will be no spin no hasbara and no propaganda. And the New York Times and Fox News and AIPAC and all other organs of lie will have been evaporated into nonexistence.
God is just.
Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and political commentator , we lost him on account of natural reasons on 12th of July last year in the Occupied Palestine
I realize that the title of this article might offend and provoke many people, especially those adhering to the Judaic faith. I do know that Jews, like everyone else, are not carbon copies of each other. There are many conscientious Jews who believe in fairness and basic human equality regardless of color, race and faith, and strongly reject racism and chauvinism in any form. Also, I will no longer be using euphemistic language in reference to Jewish Nazism especially in light of the latest Dresden-like bombing of Gaza by the Judeo-Nazi state also known as Israel.
These people I salute for their rectitude, humanity and morality. They are our natural partners for peace and a better tomorrow for our children and their children.
But there are numerous other Jews who don’t believe in human equality and justice for all. Indeed, there are many Jews, e.g. followers of the hateful Chabad sect, who don’t even ascribe full humanity to people who are not members of the Jewish faith.
Needless to say, the venomous ideology adopted by these racist fanatics has much in common with Aryan Nazism.
What else can be said to describe an ideology that teaches adherents that the life of a non-Jew has no sanctity and that goyem can be murdered without the slightest compunction or feeling of guilt?
The shocking reactions by the Israeli government, rabbis, and community leaders to the latest abduction, murder and subsequent burning of a Palestinian kids in Gaza are very telling.
In a certain sense, these reactions and attitudes can be compared to the reactions and attitudes of many Germans to the pogroms carried out against Jews by the Nazis prior to and during the Second World War.
The gleefully despicable embrace of the brashly hideous crime by the bulk of the Israeli Jewish society underscores the fact that millions of Jews in Israel and abroad do harbor certain Nazi tendencies, especially against the Palestinian people. These tendencies are too real and too tangible to be overstated.
However, we must call the spade a spade, even at the expense of upsetting the huge Zionist propaganda machine which habitually alters the black into white and the blatant big lie into a “truth” glorified by sheepish westerners who have long been brainwashed into believing that Israel is a modern, civilized and democratic state.
In the final analysis, when Jews (or anyone else) think, behave and act like the Nazis thought, behaved and acted, they simply become Nazis. Pure and simple.
Today, there are numerous Jews who openly call for the physical annihilation of Palestinians as retaliation for the abduction and killing of three Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
Saber-rattling rabbis speak menacingly of the need to adopt “the Biblical way” to combat the Palestinians.
For those not versed in Jewish phraseology, “Biblical way” is euphemism for genocide.
Today, the Israeli media reported that some army personnel openly appealed to the government to “give us the green light to annihilate them.”!!!
Just read what thousands of Jewish youths have been writing on their Facebook pages! It is outrageous, disgusting and sheer evil.
To put it in a nutshell, Nazism is being regurgitated and exuded all over Israel. This is happening in broad daylight while professional liars like Binyamin Netanyahu are filling the ether with all sorts of shameless lies about Israel being victimized by the Palestinians.
Seventy-six years have passed since Kristalnacht. Today Jewish settlers in the west Bank, in close cooperation and coordination, with the Israeli army could very well carry out a huge pogrom against an innocent and helpless community which really finds itself very much in the same precarious and vulnerable position that European Jewry experienced prior to WWII.
I am not a prophet of doom and gloom, but the signs are unmistakably bleak.
A final point, the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are surviving thanks to the good-will of the international public opinion. Should the international community go into a brief slumber, God forbid, Israel and its own Wehrmacht, SS, Gestapo and Hitler Youth might embark on the unthinkable. Don’t you ever say Jews can’t carry out a holocaust against their victims, the Palestinians?
Words can kill; words do kill.
Unfortunately, the chilling words we are hearing from many Israeli Jews these days leave no room for optimism.
Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and political commentator , we lost him on account of natural reasons on 12th of July last year in the Occupied Palestine
In-your-face brutality, unending genocide, unending atrocities, mass slaughter directed against one’s people, one’s brethren, causes the most strong and unimaginable reaction, in response to the oppressor’s horrendous and barbaric deeds. The autocratic, despotic, tyrannical Israeli-hand systematically and with pre-planned engineered precision, massacres, annihilates, eliminates the young and the old Palestinian alike – in the most inhumane and most despicable of ways. Slaughters men, women and children in broad daylight. Bares its blood-thirsty intentions, its monstrous objectives in the most unashamed of ways. Mercy to none – not to the living, not to the severely wounded and dying; no mercy even on the dead or their lifeless remains.
The constant fear of being bombed anytime, rained down with missiles and all manner of munitions from within the vast arsenal of the Israeli side; definitely stockpiled high, with enough buffer inventory of munitions, deadly and lethal stockpile, to blow the receiving side multiple times over; so as not to leave a “shred” of evidence of your original physical-self on the surface of the land, which your people, generations and generations of your ancestors, since time immemorial have dwelt on.
The inexplicable terror of seeing Israeli drones constantly “floating about” unopposed, in the skies above your unsheltered head. Drones with eyes like that of a greedy dog. Electronic pixels wanting to cast an evil eye, an evil-spell upon your very being. Eyeing upon your existence, wanting to blow-up, tear-up your physical being, seemingly wanting to devour your flesh and body; all by way of a few computer clicks / even the manual computer-clicks now, seemingly, are being replaced by more automated ways of executing these most evil deeds. Software, coded software, written programs to execute on the most Evil-intentions. Evil-intentions of the most evil amongst the human race.
Everybody knows, the Israelis have exterminated with their weaponry, uncountable numbers of Palestinians across a 40, 50km stretch of land, in front of the whole world, over the past so many weeks and months. And retain the capacity, the ability, the power, the means to slaughter, devour many, many more innocent ones, day in, day out.
The Israelis possess American technology, American weapons – the bedrock of their faith, the foundation stone of their belief in their never-ending invincibility. The Palestinians have their faith in Allah; that Allah will redeem his faithful people, from the clutches of these war-mongers, who rain down terror, day and night on the most innocent, the most vulnerable.
Most definitely, the Moslem spirit in me, the Palestinian spirit in me is not defeated; quite to the contrary, it’s rekindled, stronger than ever.
I’m definitely Palestinian, in every sense of the word, and Allah will save us, Allah will have mercy on us, Allah will guide us.
(Note: Azhaar Amayreh is a marketer stuck in war-ravaged Rafah with her child.)The following article is part of a campaign to raise money to help MZEMO contributor Azhaar Amayreh and her family leave Gaza. Please give what you can.