I can't, for the life of me, understand why people associate being a Salafi with the various terrorist groups.
I have never heard a Salafi scholar promote any acts terrorism. In fact, every single high-ranking scholar in Saudi Arabia (those who call themselves Salafi), are all opposed to groups like ISIS, Al Qaida, and Al Nusra. There are dozens of audio clips on Youtube from such scholars who clearly warn the Muslims from these types of groups.
There is also a great book that references many of the Islamic verdicts given by the contemporary Salafi Muslim scholars that dispels much of the "Wahhabi" myth:
Here is confirmation from Al Fawzan (the most-respected Saudi scholar now) regarding Ibn Baz's (and his own) position with respect to Bin Laden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-a65Og2uow
Here is a translated video that includes the speech of a late Yemeni scholar, Muqbil Al Wadi'ee, regarding Bin Laden. It's worth listening to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO7BcXTc4zw
My point is that anyone can call themselves or ascribe themselves to anything. However, that doesn't necessarily make it a reality (yeah, yeah, no true Scotsman).
Counterargument: "No true Christian" could ever kill an enemy - Jesus was clear in this: turn the other cheek, die on the cross if need be, forgive 70 times 7 times, etc. In my sect, Christianity is totally pacifist. All true Christians are pacifists.
So there's no reason for any Muslim to harbor any enmity against any Christians, because no Christians have ever once harmed a Muslim (by my definition of Christians).
...
And so we're back to square one, arguing over who's really a Scotsman....
It's very funny how this usually ends with apologetic excuses
Actions speak louder than words, and there's an awful amount of Salafists preaching for ISIS
Details of religious cults are not interesting to me and I don't care what some guy in the desert (any of them) wrote in a book thousands of years ago.
Salafism is a very complicated word to unpack. So yes, there are less radical elements who identify as Salafis, including the Muslim brotherhood.
But although the meaning of Salafism as a historical word would take quite a bit to unpack, it's clearly referring to a particularly fast-growing form of fundamentalist Islam today.
Now, as for the sermons... It is my experience that the Saudi's pray with one hand and dole out cash to terrorist groups with the other.
> It is my experience that the Saudi's pray with one hand and dole out cash to terrorist groups with the other.
That makes zero sense. Why would they fund the people calling for their destruction? What exactly is your "experience?" It's just more unfounded conjecture.
Good questions. First, Saudi Arabia's government is in favor of the United States, but their wealthy citizens often fund non-state actors to attack Western targets.
Second, my experience comes from studying International Relations at Princeton.
For sources, there are too many sources to count for the assertion that Saudi citizens continue to give money to Salafist (for lack of a better word) non-state actors that target civilians. I can look up the canonical sources for you later tonight.
However, it's so common that a quick Google search will turn up the overall gist.
> Saudi Arabia's government is in favor of the United States, but their wealthy citizens often fund non-state actors to attack Western targets.
Can someone please (perhaps you if you're willing, s_q_b) help me clear this up once and for all?
Is there sponsorship of terrorism and other anti-Western activities coming from the rulers of Saudi Arabia?
I don't mean distant members of the royal family who are given control of minor ministries to shut them up, I mean those with whom the power genuinely rests.
I can fully believe that private Saudi citizens fund any random thing that they want to, but it stretches my credulity to believe those that hold the reins of power directly fund terrorism. They know full well they rely completely on the US for their continued existence.
The summarize one piece of evidence, the 20th hijacker says he had support from the core Saudi Royal family, and listed specific individuals, along with a host of other financial evidence:
">Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted 9/11 co-conspirator, says members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family helped finance al Qaeda in the years just prior to the 2001 terrorist attacks..."
When facing deposition, Moussaoui named specific names:
"He said in the prison deposition that he was directed in 1998 or 1999 by Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan to create a digital database of donors to the group.
Among those he said he recalled listing in the database were Prince Turki al-Faisal, then the Saudi intelligence chief; Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States; Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, a prominent billionaire investor; and many of the country’s leading clerics.
“Sheikh Osama wanted to keep a record who give money,” he said in imperfect English — “who is to be listened to or who contributed to the jihad." [Factcheck.org]
Then of course there are the charity fronts:
"Former Sen. Bob Graham, chairman at the time of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, called for the release of the 28 pages on the day the report was made public, Dec. 11, 2002, and still holds that position.
Graham told ABC News last month that the U.S. government’s refusal to release the 28 pages is an effort to protect Saudi Arabia, which he said is “the most responsible for that network of support.”
“The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier,” Graham told ABC News.
The head of the House of Saud, the King, and much of the military believe that military integration, weapons sales, and mutual defense scenarios from the Americans will benefit Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia also has about ten trillion in oil reserves, and the United States needs oil.
Historically, Saudi Arabia was just the slice of the former Ottoman Empire the British and French let us rule. Hence Saudi Aramco's original name: "The Saudi-American Oil Company."
Lucky for us that Saudi Arabia turned out to have such large oil reserves. Of course, the area is also at a strategic naval point, both of which explain the number of United States' military bases in the region.
So some of the populace sees the Muslim world as being subjegated in their Holy Land, and some percentage of them are fans of violence and meyhem.
An analogous situation would be how rich Irish-Americans funded the IRA for decades, despite an official United States' government stance that they were a terrorist group.
Saudi is a feudal monarchy. How many times did we see, in Western history, brothers, cousins and relatives of a feudal monarch endorsing this or that "troublemaking" religion just to stick it to their in-charge relative? Plenty.
Nation-states are not consistent monoliths with predictable and precise objectives; they are aggregated magmas of competing and often conflicting interests. This is why it is important to have open debate among parties, so that such conflicts can be dealt with in the open, through constant compromises, not in the dark with daggers and suicide bombers.
I really have no idea what it means to be a Salafist, but there's something unsettling about an HN debate about whether a particular religion is or isn't fundamentally terroristic.
That's especially true if you are yourself somehow affiliated with the religion, in which case: I'm sorry you find yourself litigating this here.
Whether or not you are, and whether or not these are good faith comments, I think this is a pretty weird place for HN to go.
A lot of this gets into questions of what defines a religion, if a religion even has a definition, or if it's just a contentless cultural virus that people use to interpret their own preconceived notions and practices in a predefined rubric.
Salafism is an easy target because many of its famous adherents are the unsavory sort, and it's "obscure" enough that people can bash it without seeming Islamophobic and even manage to present themselves as a bit cosmopolitan and knowledgeable. But there are definitely many peaceful adherents of it, and many who oppose terrorism within its ranks. You can deduce calls to terrorism from its muddled mess of scriptures and thinkers, but you can also deduce calls to peacemaking. Same as any other religion.
In the end, though, in a world with limited resources, focusing counter-propaganda efforts on Salafist communities seems like a pretty good idea. On the flip side, that almost certainly involves not stigmatizing all Salafists as terrorists.
I've met very many peaceful Salafists. Saying that Salafism or Tablighi Jamaat is a gateway to terrorism is like calling marijuana a gateway drug - the overly literalist and gullible types might gather there but if they're trying harder stuff, that's on them.
Why is that weird? You don't think different religions can be more or less supportive of violence in their foundational texts? What would be weird is if that weren't possible for some reason.
> You don't think different religions can be more or less supportive of violence in their foundational texts?
I don't think that's relevant: 1) We can't read the texts except for translations; 2) Within every religion, among experts with great familiarity with the texts, there are a very wide variety of interpretations - so wide they sometimes fight wars over it (e.g., Protestants vs Catholics, Sunnis vs Shia, Jews vs. Christians vs. Muslims (all share the Old Testament; Muslims and Christians share the New Testament)), etc. 3) Adherents to religions are usually ignorant of and completely disregard the texts (lay Catholics didn't even read or hear them until the 20th century IIUC), except when convenient. For example, the Ten Commandments, the highest law, requires people to observe the Sabbath. I wonder if that includes posting on Hacker News?
salafi: Thanks for stopping by and contributing. Your comments are perfectly appropriate and shouldn't be downvoted, but unfortunately that happens on HN sometimes to comments that, regardless of their validity, make the angry minority unhappy. I hope you stick around!
I have never heard a Salafi scholar promote any acts terrorism. In fact, every single high-ranking scholar in Saudi Arabia (those who call themselves Salafi), are all opposed to groups like ISIS, Al Qaida, and Al Nusra. There are dozens of audio clips on Youtube from such scholars who clearly warn the Muslims from these types of groups.
Here is one such video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xAZLE6JiqE
And another: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNL9cwB-plY
And another (from arguably the most respected Saudi scholar): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J5s2PPwZcY
Here are two from a Muslim student of knowledge from the UK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05yw1IXM1k4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ocvexFXCo8
There is also a great book that references many of the Islamic verdicts given by the contemporary Salafi Muslim scholars that dispels much of the "Wahhabi" myth:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wahhabi-Myth-Dispelling-Fictitious...
I'm not here to preach; it just bothers me when people hijack words to push an agenda.