₦airaland Forum

Corrinthians:
Do constituency projects by "lawmakers"gulping 20% of the national budget also exist in "advanced democracies"?

When it suits the pockets of these criminals, they tarry not for a second to make reference to "advanced countries", but when it doesnt, Nigeria seems to become the only country on the planet.

I hate everything the legislature stands for.

Stop regurgitating another Sanusi lie.

Constituency projects bill for 2016 stood at 100bn.

Is 100bn even up to 2% of Buhari's 6trillion naira scam budget?

Meanwhile in downtown kano you go see one matured ab0ki complete with gaimu and 4 wives hawking slices of Cocoanuts at 10 naira a piece. Calculate the whole tray the market no pass 150.

Hustle is real

LaEvilIMiss:
it is rubbish really the same nass who sat there since the military left and you see the results and complain. democracy is a team sport but when failure happens, you blame the coach

When has the useless Nigerian Army been up to parr?


Idiots like you will usher in Supreme absolute dictatorship with your shallow reasoning

LaEvilIMiss:
..well we all know the problem of Nigeria.. we all know who the culprits are.. yet all we do is sigh, complain and sleep to wake up the next day to do the same thing year-in, year-out. We need to change our actions if they have not worked for so long.. how can lawmakers and senators who do not know the National Anthem or Pledge by heart be given such positions.. corrupt illiterates ruling the intelligent and hardworking ONLY IN NIGERIA

You are talking rubbish!

What concerns NASS here?

Are they the ones in charge of the army or war in the NE? Or have they ever cut military budget proposals?

You are blaming NASS while Buhari's feeding for 2016 stands at 1.7bn and his travel bill so far exceeds transportation costs for operation lafiya dole.

Use brain. The NASS is integral to our democracy and is not going anywhere. If you feel strongly against the NASS then start a petition to have your Senator and rep sits scrapped

Blue3k:
Also consider Americas economy is 32 times bigger. per capita 18 times bigger. Besides these solders get meals, free housing, clothes for their service. Active duty soldiers literally have no real expenses.

The boko idiots they were sent to kill, do they collect salary? Do they have a constant supply chain? Does boko haram not depend on the same Nigerian Army for weapons which the latter abandon for bokos? Even food boko haram have to raid markets and villages for.

Abeg, these useless Nigerian Army guys have no single excuse if it comes down to logistics.

If I should hear any complain it should be about strategy and not salaries as the reason why they are being killed off like flies.

Buruntai remains an illiterate General.

How much is your average boko recruit paid?

First these set of cowards blamed lack of sophisticated arms as if boko haram is not using the same weapons gotten from the same army armoury. Then they complained of a lack of heavy artillery and tanks and when they were supplied with those equipment we later saw Shekau posing with the same tanks.

These guys should just shut up and admit they are nothing but glorified armed thugs of the biggest political party in the world - the nigerian army.

Nonsense.

You have air superiority over an open area and yet you guys can't use that to your advantage.

Or does boko haram have an airforce?

Undisciplined charlatans claiming warriors!

AkinPhysicist:
If the Nobel Laureate is a fool...then your father MUST be an imb-ecile.

Soyinka remains a fraud and a fool

How Britain Carved Up the Middle East and Helped Create Saudi Arabia
November 2, 2016
This is an edited extract from Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam

by Mark Curtis

 

The British strategy of colonial divide and rule, and reliance on Muslim forces to promote imperial interests, reached its apogee in the Middle East during and after the First World War. The carving up of the region by British and French officials has been endlessly commented on – though less so as an illustration of the long-standing British ‘use’ of Islam, which then took on a new turn. The Middle East was seen by British planners as critical for both strategic and commercial reasons. Strategically, the Islamic territories were important buffers against Russian expansion into the imperial land route from British India to British-controlled Egypt. But oil had by now also entered the picture, with the founding of the Anglo–Iranian Oil Corporation in Persia in 1908, the discovery of oil in Iraq soon after, and its increasingly important role in powering the military during the First World War. British planners viewed control over Iraqi and Persian oil to be ‘a first class British war aim’, Sir Maurice Hankey, secretary of the War Cabinet, said towards the end of the conflict. By November 1918 the general staff in Baghdad wrote that ‘the future power in the world is oil’.

British foreign policy had, since the sixteenth century, supported the Ottoman empire of the Muslim Turks, the largest and most powerful Muslim entity in the world which, at its height in the seventeenth century, had spanned North Africa, southeast Europe and much of the Middle East. Britain was committed to defending ‘Ottoman integrity’ against Russian and French imperial designs, which involved de facto support for the Turkish Caliphate – the Ottoman sultan’s claim to be the leader of the ummah, the Muslim world community. After Britain captured India, the Ottoman empire was seen as a convenient buffer to keep out rivals along the military and trade route to the jewel in the crown. London often cast itself as the saviour of the Turkish sultan: in the Crimean War of 1854–6, one of the bloodiest conflicts in modern European history, Britain and France fought on behalf of the Ottomans against Russia. The ‘Eastern Question’ – the imperial struggle for control in the lands dominated by the decaying Ottoman empire – was a process in which Britain essentially tried to shore up the last great Muslim empire against its great power rivals. By the time Ottoman Turkey made the fateful choice of siding with Germany in the First World War, it was already a declining power but still controlled much of the Middle East, including present-day Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine, which it had ruled for 400 years. After its defeat, the European powers, led by the British, fell upon its carcass and divided it up between them.

During the First World War Britain appealed to the Arabs in the Middle East to join it in overthrowing Ottoman rule of their territories, in exchange for British guarantees of postwar independence. In its 1914 proclamation ‘to the natives of Arabia, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia’, the British government stated that:

‘One of [the government’s] fundamental traditions is to be a friend of Islam and Muslums [sic] and to defend the Islamic Khalifate even if it was a Khalifate of conquest and necessity as the Turkish Khalifate which England had defended with money and men and influence several times … There is no nation amongst Muslums who is now capable of upholding the Islamic Khalifate except the Arab nation and no country is more fitted for its seat than the Arab countries’.

In May 1915, Britain also proclaimed to the ‘people of Arabia’ that ‘the religion of Islam, as history proves, has always been most scrupulously respected by the English government’, and that, despite the sultan of Turkey having become an enemy, ‘our policy of respect and friendliness towards Islam remains unchanged’.

A huge amount has been written on the ‘Arab revolt’ against Turkish rule, including the romanticised heroics of Lawrence of Arabia and Britain’s subsequent betrayal of its guarantees of ‘independence’ for the Arabs; these guarantees, to the British, meant not granting Arabs national sovereignty but allowing the presence of exclusively British advisers to administrate Arab countries which would become British ‘protectorates’. One striking aspect of the call to Arabs was Britain’s appeal to Islam in its promises to the then ruler, or sherif, of the holy city of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali. Hussein, whose religious authority and position derived from his supposed descent from Muhammad, agreed to lead the Arab revolt in return for British recognition of him after the war as the ruler of a vast territory stretching from present-day Syria to Yemen, thus encompassing all of modern Saudi Arabia. The British government wrote to Hussein in November 1914, stating that:

‘If the Amir [ie, Hussein] … and Arabs in general assist Great Britain in this conflict that has been forced upon us by Turkey, Great Britain will promise not to intervene in any manner whatsoever whether in things religious or otherwise … Till now we have defended and befriended Islam in the person of the Turks: henceforward it shall be in that of the noble Arab. It may be that an Arab of true race will assume the Khalifate at Mecca or Medina, and so good may come by the help of God out of all the evil that is now occurring’.

This last momentous sentence was Britain promising to help restore the Islamic Caliphate to Arabia and for Sherif Hussein to be the new caliph, the successor to the Turkish sultan. It was Medina, in modern Saudi Arabia, which was the first capital of the Caliphate after the prophet Muhammed died in the seventh century, following which it had been claimed by a variety of dynasties, latterly the Ottomans. London promised to Hussein that Britain ‘will guarantee the Holy Places [at Mecca and Medina] against all external aggression and will recognise their inviolability.’ Lord Kitchener, the secretary of state for war, noted in March 1915 that ‘if the Khalifate were transferred to Arabia, it would remain to a great extent under our influence.’ The coastline of the Arabian peninsula could be easily controlled by the British navy. By championing an Arabian kingdom under British auspices, Britain was exerting its dominance over the spiritual leadership of the Muslim world. Indeed, Britain was helping Islam to reclaim its roots and return to its origins.

However, some British officials during and after the war also feared that the Caliphate could be used as a rallying point for anti-colonial movements, to undermine British rule in India and Egypt. In particular, they feared the prospect of a Muslim holy war against Britain, something the Turkish sultan had proclaimed on entering the First World War. In his analysis of the Middle East during and after the First World War, David Fromkin notes that British leaders believed that Islam could be manipulated by buying or capturing its religious leadership. They believed, in short, that whoever controlled the person of the caliph controlled Sunni Islam.

Sherif Hussein came out in revolt against the Ottoman empire in June 1916, recruiting a small Arab force of a few thousand men to fight in the Hijaz region, the western coastal area of Arabia containing the cities of Jeddah, Mecca and Medina. The writer, Gertrude Bell, who was to become an imperial architect of Iraq, noted that with the fighting at Mecca ‘the revolt of the Holy places is an immense moral and political asset’.

However, Hussein’s revolt achieved only minor victories over the Ottoman army and failed to mobilise people in any part of the Arab world, despite being subsidised by the British to the tune of £11 million (around $400 million in today’s money). British officers served as military advisers to Hussein’s revolt; one such was Colonel T.E. Lawrence ‘of Arabia’, an aide to Faisal, Sherif Hussein’s son, who was appointed to command the latter’s military forces.

One month before the Arab revolt broke out, Britain and France secretly agreed to divide the Middle East between their zones of influence, in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, named after their respective foreign ministers. This abandonment of the commitment to Ottoman territorial integrity – overturning a mainstay of British foreign policy – was frankly explained by British officials. Lawrence, supposedly the great ‘liberator’ of the Arab world, wrote an intelligence memo in January 1916 stating that the Arab revolt was:

‘beneficial to us because it marches with our immediate aims, the break up of the Islamic ‘bloc’ and the defeat and disruption of the Ottoman Empire, and because the states [Sherif Hussein] would set up to succeed the Turks would be … harmless to ourselves … The Arabs are even less stable than the Turks. If properly handled they would remain in a state of political mosaic, a tissue of small jealous principalities incapable of cohesion’.

After the war, Lawrence wrote a report for the British Cabinet entitled ‘Reconstruction of Arabia’, arguing that it was urgent for the British and their allies to find a Muslim leader who could counter the Ottoman empire’s attempted jihad against them in the name of the caliph:

‘When war broke out an urgent need to divide Islam was added, and we became reconciled to seek for allies rather than subjects … We hoped by the creation of a ring of client states, themselves insisting on our patronage, to turn the present and future flank of any foreign power with designs on the three rivers [Iraq]. The greatest obstacle, from a war standpoint, to any Arab movement, was its greatest virtue in peace-time – the lack of solidarity between the various Arab movements … The Sherif [Hussein] was ultimately chosen because of the rift he would create in Islam’.

The benefit of division in the Middle East – a key point in all these documents – was also recognised by the foreign department of the British government of India: ‘What we want’, it stated, ‘is not a United Arabia, but a weak and disunited Arabia, split up into little principalities so far as possible under our suzerainty – but incapable of coordinated action against us, forming a buffer against the Powers in the West.’

Birth of the British-Saudi alliance

Following the Arab revolt in 1916 and Britain’s defeat of the Turkish armies throughout the region, Hussein bin Ali, the ruler of the holy city of Mecca, proclaimed himself King of all the Arab countries, including the Hijaz in Arabia, but the British government was prepared to recognise only his control of the latter. Confrontation over the future of Arabia ensued between Hussein and another British protégé, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, an emir and rising power in central Arabia whose forces had captured the Nejd region with its capital at Riyadh. British officials had been split on who to champion as the leader of the revolt against the Turks – the British government of India had feared British sponsorship of an Arab caliph who would lead the entire Muslim world, and the effects this might have on Muslims in India, and had therefore favoured Ibn Saud, whose pretensions were limited to Arabia.

In contrast to Hussein’s orthodox Sunnism, the future founder of Saudi Arabia sat at the head of an ultra-conservative Sunni revivalist movement, now known as Wahhabism, which professed a strict adherence to the tenets of Islam, and which had developed in the eighteenth century based on the teaching of the theologian, Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, born in 1703. Ibn Saud’s military forces were the Ikhwani, or Brotherhood, a militia of Bedouin tribesmen instructed by religious teachers who were committed to the purification of Islam and the advancement of government based on strict Islamic law.

Britain had already provided arms and money to Ibn Saud during the First World War, signing a treaty with him in 1915 and recognising him as the ruler of the Nejd province under British protection. By the end of the war, he was receiving a British subsidy of £5,000 a month – considerably less than the £12,000 a month doled out to Hussein, whom the British government at first continued to favour. That some British officials were pinning their strategic hopes on Ibn Saud during the war is evidenced in a memorandum from one British soldier, a Captain Bray, on the ‘Mohammedan question’ in 1917:

‘At the present moment agitation is intense in all Mohammedan countries … The reports of agents and others confirm … the extreme vitality of the movement [pan-Islamism] … It is … essential that the country to whom Mohammedans look should not be Afghanistan. We should therefore create a state more convenient for ourselves, to whom the attention of Islam should be turned. We have an opportunity in Arabia’.

In 1919 London used aircraft in the Hijaz in support of Hussein’s confrontation with Ibn Saud. It was to little avail: after accepting a temporary ceasefire in 1920, Ibn Saud’s 150,000-strong Ikhwani advanced relentlessly, and by the mid-1920s had gained control of Arabia, including the Hijaz and the Holy Places, defeating Hussein for supremacy in the region. Ibn Saud established ‘Saudi’ Arabia in an Fun of murder. In his exposé of the corruption of the Saudi ruling family, Said Aburish describes Ibn Saud as ‘a lecher and a bloodthirsty autocrat … whose savagery wreaked havoc across Arabia’, terrorising and mercilessly slaughtering his enemies. The conquest of Arabia cost the lives of around 400,000 people, since Saud’s forces did not take prisoners; over a million people fled to neighbouring countries. Numerous rebellions against the House of Saud subsequently took place, each put down in ‘mass killings of mostly innocent victims, including women and children’. By the mid-1920s most of Arabia had been subdued, 40,000 people had been publicly executed and some 350,000 had had limbs amputated; the territory was divided into districts under the control of Saud’s relatives, a situation which largely prevails today.

The British recognised Ibn Saud’s control of Arabia, and by 1922 his subsidy was raised to £100,000 a year by Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill. At the same time, Churchill described Ibn Saud’s Wahhabis as akin to the present-day Taliban, telling the House of Commons in July 1921 that they were ‘austere, intolerant, well-armed and bloodthirsty’ and that ‘they hold it as an article of duty, as well as of faith, to kill all who do not share their opinions and to make slaves of their wives and children. Women have been put to death in Wahhabi villages for simply appearing in the streets. It is a penal offence to wear a silk garment. Men have been killed for smoking a cigarette.’ However, Churchill also later wrote that ‘my admiration for him [Ibn Saud] was deep, because of his unfailing loyalty to us’, and the British government set about consolidating its grip on this loyalty.

In 1917 London had dispatched Harry St John Philby – father of Kim, the later Soviet spy – to Saudi Arabia, where he remained until Ibn Saud’s death in 1953. Philby’s role was ‘to consult with the Foreign Office over ways to consolidate the rule and extend the influence’ of Ibn Saud. A 1927 treaty ceded control of the country’s foreign affairs to Britain. When elements of the Ikhwani, opposed to the British presence in the country, rebelled against the regime in 1929, Ibn Saud called for British support. The RAF and troops from the British-controlled army in neighbouring Iraq were dispatched, and the rebellion was put down the following year. Ibn Saud highly appreciated Britain’s support for him, especially during the rebellion, and this paved the way for the development of relations between the Saudi kingdom and the West that became the core of Saudi foreign policy.

Following the consolidation of the Saudi–British alliance, Ibn Saud relegated the Ikhwani’s role to that of educating and monitoring public morality. But the power of Wahhabism had already transformed Bedouins into mujahideen – holy warriors – for whom devotion to the ummah transcended tribal affiliations. In subsequent decades, the Ikhwani’s jihadi conquest of the Arabian peninsula by the sword and the Koran would be constantly invoked in Saudi Arabian teaching. Officially proclaimed in 1932, and to a large extent a British creation, Saudi Arabia would go on to act as the world’s main propagator of fundamentalist Islam, providing the ideological and financial centre of global jihadism. Indeed, Saudi Wahhabism has been described as the ‘founding ideology’ of modern jihad.

The new state of Saudi Arabia, its regional authority underpinned by a religious fundamentalism, gave Britain a foothold in the heart of the Islamic world, in Mecca and Medina. More broadly, Britain had succeeded in achieving its goal of a divided Middle East and a ‘ring of client states’ out of the ashes of the Ottoman empire. The Gulf states ringing Saudi Arabia, in Aden, Bahrain and Oman, were all feudal regimes underpinned by British military protection. Meanwhile, Britain continued to exploit its other potential clients: Faisal, who, with the Allies had captured Damascus in 1918, was made King of Iraq in 1921, and Abdullah, Sherif Hussein’s other son, was dubbed King of Transjordan, which became ‘independent’ under British ‘protection’ in 1923. Finally, there was Palestine, which had also been captured by British forces towards the end of the war. Here, however, Britain was committed to creating what Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour outlined in 1917 as a ‘national home’ for the Jews. In April 1920, at a conference in the Italian resort of San Remo, the newly formed League of Nations formally handed Britain a mandate to govern Palestine.

Balfour had also said that what Britain needed in the Middle East in the early years of the twentieth century was ‘supreme economic and political control to be exercised … in friendly and unostentatious cooperation with the Arabs, but nevertheless, in the last resort, to be exercised.’ The regimes that Britain had created were puppets, essentially law-and-order governments allied mainly with the traditional ruling classes of Islam. In turn, these favoured sultans, emirs or monarchs saw British rule as providing protection against the dangers of instability or emancipatory nationalist movements that had begun to stir, notably in Iraq.

Published in: Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Syria

nijascammers:
and you, who know an slowpoke? you're lucky we spared your ass during the war,start another war, we will show you who is a fool.

Soyinka remains a fool and a fraud

Lol.

The resident rodent has moved this unpalatable thread to foreign section.

nijascammers:
see a flat headed bigot, even if you reincarnated 100 times, you will never close to the Prof.
I hope these fake Jews start another war, this time we will smoulder their assess.

Soyinka remains a fraud and a fool

British foreign policy declassified
How Britain Carved Up the Middle East and Helped Create Saudi Arabia
November 2, 2016
This is an edited extract from Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam

by Mark Curtis

 

The British strategy of colonial divide and rule, and reliance on Muslim forces to promote imperial interests, reached its apogee in the Middle East during and after the First World War. The carving up of the region by British and French officials has been endlessly commented on – though less so as an illustration of the long-standing British ‘use’ of Islam, which then took on a new turn. The Middle East was seen by British planners as critical for both strategic and commercial reasons. Strategically, the Islamic territories were important buffers against Russian expansion into the imperial land route from British India to British-controlled Egypt. But oil had by now also entered the picture, with the founding of the Anglo–Iranian Oil Corporation in Persia in 1908, the discovery of oil in Iraq soon after, and its increasingly important role in powering the military during the First World War. British planners viewed control over Iraqi and Persian oil to be ‘a first class British war aim’, Sir Maurice Hankey, secretary of the War Cabinet, said towards the end of the conflict. By November 1918 the general staff in Baghdad wrote that ‘the future power in the world is oil’.

British foreign policy had, since the sixteenth century, supported the Ottoman empire of the Muslim Turks, the largest and most powerful Muslim entity in the world which, at its height in the seventeenth century, had spanned North Africa, southeast Europe and much of the Middle East. Britain was committed to defending ‘Ottoman integrity’ against Russian and French imperial designs, which involved de facto support for the Turkish Caliphate – the Ottoman sultan’s claim to be the leader of the ummah, the Muslim world community. After Britain captured India, the Ottoman empire was seen as a convenient buffer to keep out rivals along the military and trade route to the jewel in the crown. London often cast itself as the saviour of the Turkish sultan: in the Crimean War of 1854–6, one of the bloodiest conflicts in modern European history, Britain and France fought on behalf of the Ottomans against Russia. The ‘Eastern Question’ – the imperial struggle for control in the lands dominated by the decaying Ottoman empire – was a process in which Britain essentially tried to shore up the last great Muslim empire against its great power rivals. By the time Ottoman Turkey made the fateful choice of siding with Germany in the First World War, it was already a declining power but still controlled much of the Middle East, including present-day Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine, which it had ruled for 400 years. After its defeat, the European powers, led by the British, fell upon its carcass and divided it up between them.

During the First World War Britain appealed to the Arabs in the Middle East to join it in overthrowing Ottoman rule of their territories, in exchange for British guarantees of postwar independence. In its 1914 proclamation ‘to the natives of Arabia, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia’, the British government stated that:

‘One of [the government’s] fundamental traditions is to be a friend of Islam and Muslums [sic] and to defend the Islamic Khalifate even if it was a Khalifate of conquest and necessity as the Turkish Khalifate which England had defended with money and men and influence several times … There is no nation amongst Muslums who is now capable of upholding the Islamic Khalifate except the Arab nation and no country is more fitted for its seat than the Arab countries’.

In May 1915, Britain also proclaimed to the ‘people of Arabia’ that ‘the religion of Islam, as history proves, has always been most scrupulously respected by the English government’, and that, despite the sultan of Turkey having become an enemy, ‘our policy of respect and friendliness towards Islam remains unchanged’.

A huge amount has been written on the ‘Arab revolt’ against Turkish rule, including the romanticised heroics of Lawrence of Arabia and Britain’s subsequent betrayal of its guarantees of ‘independence’ for the Arabs; these guarantees, to the British, meant not granting Arabs national sovereignty but allowing the presence of exclusively British advisers to administrate Arab countries which would become British ‘protectorates’. One striking aspect of the call to Arabs was Britain’s appeal to Islam in its promises to the then ruler, or sherif, of the holy city of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali. Hussein, whose religious authority and position derived from his supposed descent from Muhammad, agreed to lead the Arab revolt in return for British recognition of him after the war as the ruler of a vast territory stretching from present-day Syria to Yemen, thus encompassing all of modern Saudi Arabia. The British government wrote to Hussein in November 1914, stating that:

‘If the Amir [ie, Hussein] … and Arabs in general assist Great Britain in this conflict that has been forced upon us by Turkey, Great Britain will promise not to intervene in any manner whatsoever whether in things religious or otherwise … Till now we have defended and befriended Islam in the person of the Turks: henceforward it shall be in that of the noble Arab. It may be that an Arab of true race will assume the Khalifate at Mecca or Medina, and so good may come by the help of God out of all the evil that is now occurring’.

This last momentous sentence was Britain promising to help restore the Islamic Caliphate to Arabia and for Sherif Hussein to be the new caliph, the successor to the Turkish sultan. It was Medina, in modern Saudi Arabia, which was the first capital of the Caliphate after the prophet Muhammed died in the seventh century, following which it had been claimed by a variety of dynasties, latterly the Ottomans. London promised to Hussein that Britain ‘will guarantee the Holy Places [at Mecca and Medina] against all external aggression and will recognise their inviolability.’ Lord Kitchener, the secretary of state for war, noted in March 1915 that ‘if the Khalifate were transferred to Arabia, it would remain to a great extent under our influence.’ The coastline of the Arabian peninsula could be easily controlled by the British navy. By championing an Arabian kingdom under British auspices, Britain was exerting its dominance over the spiritual leadership of the Muslim world. Indeed, Britain was helping Islam to reclaim its roots and return to its origins.

However, some British officials during and after the war also feared that the Caliphate could be used as a rallying point for anti-colonial movements, to undermine British rule in India and Egypt. In particular, they feared the prospect of a Muslim holy war against Britain, something the Turkish sultan had proclaimed on entering the First World War. In his analysis of the Middle East during and after the First World War, David Fromkin notes that British leaders believed that Islam could be manipulated by buying or capturing its religious leadership. They believed, in short, that whoever controlled the person of the caliph controlled Sunni Islam.

Sherif Hussein came out in revolt against the Ottoman empire in June 1916, recruiting a small Arab force of a few thousand men to fight in the Hijaz region, the western coastal area of Arabia containing the cities of Jeddah, Mecca and Medina. The writer, Gertrude Bell, who was to become an imperial architect of Iraq, noted that with the fighting at Mecca ‘the revolt of the Holy places is an immense moral and political asset’.

However, Hussein’s revolt achieved only minor victories over the Ottoman army and failed to mobilise people in any part of the Arab world, despite being subsidised by the British to the tune of £11 million (around $400 million in today’s money). British officers served as military advisers to Hussein’s revolt; one such was Colonel T.E. Lawrence ‘of Arabia’, an aide to Faisal, Sherif Hussein’s son, who was appointed to command the latter’s military forces.

One month before the Arab revolt broke out, Britain and France secretly agreed to divide the Middle East between their zones of influence, in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, named after their respective foreign ministers. This abandonment of the commitment to Ottoman territorial integrity – overturning a mainstay of British foreign policy – was frankly explained by British officials. Lawrence, supposedly the great ‘liberator’ of the Arab world, wrote an intelligence memo in January 1916 stating that the Arab revolt was:

‘beneficial to us because it marches with our immediate aims, the break up of the Islamic ‘bloc’ and the defeat and disruption of the Ottoman Empire, and because the states [Sherif Hussein] would set up to succeed the Turks would be … harmless to ourselves … The Arabs are even less stable than the Turks. If properly handled they would remain in a state of political mosaic, a tissue of small jealous principalities incapable of cohesion’.

After the war, Lawrence wrote a report for the British Cabinet entitled ‘Reconstruction of Arabia’, arguing that it was urgent for the British and their allies to find a Muslim leader who could counter the Ottoman empire’s attempted jihad against them in the name of the caliph:

‘When war broke out an urgent need to divide Islam was added, and we became reconciled to seek for allies rather than subjects … We hoped by the creation of a ring of client states, themselves insisting on our patronage, to turn the present and future flank of any foreign power with designs on the three rivers [Iraq]. The greatest obstacle, from a war standpoint, to any Arab movement, was its greatest virtue in peace-time – the lack of solidarity between the various Arab movements … The Sherif [Hussein] was ultimately chosen because of the rift he would create in Islam’.

The benefit of division in the Middle East – a key point in all these documents – was also recognised by the foreign department of the British government of India: ‘What we want’, it stated, ‘is not a United Arabia, but a weak and disunited Arabia, split up into little principalities so far as possible under our suzerainty – but incapable of coordinated action against us, forming a buffer against the Powers in the West.’

Birth of the British-Saudi alliance

Following the Arab revolt in 1916 and Britain’s defeat of the Turkish armies throughout the region, Hussein bin Ali, the ruler of the holy city of Mecca, proclaimed himself King of all the Arab countries, including the Hijaz in Arabia, but the British government was prepared to recognise only his control of the latter. Confrontation over the future of Arabia ensued between Hussein and another British protégé, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, an emir and rising power in central Arabia whose forces had captured the Nejd region with its capital at Riyadh. British officials had been split on who to champion as the leader of the revolt against the Turks – the British government of India had feared British sponsorship of an Arab caliph who would lead the entire Muslim world, and the effects this might have on Muslims in India, and had therefore favoured Ibn Saud, whose pretensions were limited to Arabia.

In contrast to Hussein’s orthodox Sunnism, the future founder of Saudi Arabia sat at the head of an ultra-conservative Sunni revivalist movement, now known as Wahhabism, which professed a strict adherence to the tenets of Islam, and which had developed in the eighteenth century based on the teaching of the theologian, Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, born in 1703. Ibn Saud’s military forces were the Ikhwani, or Brotherhood, a militia of Bedouin tribesmen instructed by religious teachers who were committed to the purification of Islam and the advancement of government based on strict Islamic law.

Britain had already provided arms and money to Ibn Saud during the First World War, signing a treaty with him in 1915 and recognising him as the ruler of the Nejd province under British protection. By the end of the war, he was receiving a British subsidy of £5,000 a month – considerably less than the £12,000 a month doled out to Hussein, whom the British government at first continued to favour. That some British officials were pinning their strategic hopes on Ibn Saud during the war is evidenced in a memorandum from one British soldier, a Captain Bray, on the ‘Mohammedan question’ in 1917:

‘At the present moment agitation is intense in all Mohammedan countries … The reports of agents and others confirm … the extreme vitality of the movement [pan-Islamism] … It is … essential that the country to whom Mohammedans look should not be Afghanistan. We should therefore create a state more convenient for ourselves, to whom the attention of Islam should be turned. We have an opportunity in Arabia’.

In 1919 London used aircraft in the Hijaz in support of Hussein’s confrontation with Ibn Saud. It was to little avail: after accepting a temporary ceasefire in 1920, Ibn Saud’s 150,000-strong Ikhwani advanced relentlessly, and by the mid-1920s had gained control of Arabia, including the Hijaz and the Holy Places, defeating Hussein for supremacy in the region. Ibn Saud established ‘Saudi’ Arabia in an orgy of murder. In his exposé of the corruption of the Saudi ruling family, Said Aburish describes Ibn Saud as ‘a lecher and a bloodthirsty autocrat … whose savagery wreaked havoc across Arabia’, terrorising and mercilessly slaughtering his enemies. The conquest of Arabia cost the lives of around 400,000 people, since Saud’s forces did not take prisoners; over a million people fled to neighbouring countries. Numerous rebellions against the House of Saud subsequently took place, each put down in ‘mass killings of mostly innocent victims, including women and children’. By the mid-1920s most of Arabia had been subdued, 40,000 people had been publicly executed and some 350,000 had had limbs amputated; the territory was divided into districts under the control of Saud’s relatives, a situation which largely prevails today.

The British recognised Ibn Saud’s control of Arabia, and by 1922 his subsidy was raised to £100,000 a year by Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill. At the same time, Churchill described Ibn Saud’s Wahhabis as akin to the present-day Taliban, telling the House of Commons in July 1921 that they were ‘austere, intolerant, well-armed and bloodthirsty’ and that ‘they hold it as an article of duty, as well as of faith, to kill all who do not share their opinions and to make slaves of their wives and children. Women have been put to death in Wahhabi villages for simply appearing in the streets. It is a penal offence to wear a silk garment. Men have been killed for smoking a cigarette.’ However, Churchill also later wrote that ‘my admiration for him [Ibn Saud] was deep, because of his unfailing loyalty to us’, and the British government set about consolidating its grip on this loyalty.

In 1917 London had dispatched Harry St John Philby – father of Kim, the later Soviet spy – to Saudi Arabia, where he remained until Ibn Saud’s death in 1953. Philby’s role was ‘to consult with the Foreign Office over ways to consolidate the rule and extend the influence’ of Ibn Saud. A 1927 treaty ceded control of the country’s foreign affairs to Britain. When elements of the Ikhwani, opposed to the British presence in the country, rebelled against the regime in 1929, Ibn Saud called for British support. The RAF and troops from the British-controlled army in neighbouring Iraq were dispatched, and the rebellion was put down the following year. Ibn Saud highly appreciated Britain’s support for him, especially during the rebellion, and this paved the way for the development of relations between the Saudi kingdom and the West that became the core of Saudi foreign policy.

Following the consolidation of the Saudi–British alliance, Ibn Saud relegated the Ikhwani’s role to that of educating and monitoring public morality. But the power of Wahhabism had already transformed Bedouins into mujahideen – holy warriors – for whom devotion to the ummah transcended tribal affiliations. In subsequent decades, the Ikhwani’s jihadi conquest of the Arabian peninsula by the sword and the Koran would be constantly invoked in Saudi Arabian teaching. Officially proclaimed in 1932, and to a large extent a British creation, Saudi Arabia would go on to act as the world’s main propagator of fundamentalist Islam, providing the ideological and financial centre of global jihadism. Indeed, Saudi Wahhabism has been described as the ‘founding ideology’ of modern jihad.

The new state of Saudi Arabia, its regional authority underpinned by a religious fundamentalism, gave Britain a foothold in the heart of the Islamic world, in Mecca and Medina. More broadly, Britain had succeeded in achieving its goal of a divided Middle East and a ‘ring of client states’ out of the ashes of the Ottoman empire. The Gulf states ringing Saudi Arabia, in Aden, Bahrain and Oman, were all feudal regimes underpinned by British military protection. Meanwhile, Britain continued to exploit its other potential clients: Faisal, who, with the Allies had captured Damascus in 1918, was made King of Iraq in 1921, and Abdullah, Sherif Hussein’s other son, was dubbed King of Transjordan, which became ‘independent’ under British ‘protection’ in 1923. Finally, there was Palestine, which had also been captured by British forces towards the end of the war. Here, however, Britain was committed to creating what Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour outlined in 1917 as a ‘national home’ for the Jews. In April 1920, at a conference in the Italian resort of San Remo, the newly formed League of Nations formally handed Britain a mandate to govern Palestine.

Balfour had also said that what Britain needed in the Middle East in the early years of the twentieth century was ‘supreme economic and political control to be exercised … in friendly and unostentatious cooperation with the Arabs, but nevertheless, in the last resort, to be exercised.’ The regimes that Britain had created were puppets, essentially law-and-order governments allied mainly with the traditional ruling classes of Islam. In turn, these favoured sultans, emirs or monarchs saw British rule as providing protection against the dangers of instability or emancipatory nationalist movements that had begun to stir, notably in Iraq.

Published in: Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Syria



Site by Borderleft
© 2016 Mark Curtis

Stormofsword:
How old are you again?

Soyinka remains a fool

Anytime soon...

Seems Saraki is most likely to be President come 2019.

Wonder which country Tinubu will run to

ekestic1976:
You call your father's peer fool?

gbomojomo:
EWU FOR CALIING UR GRANDPA THAT

NnaMEN1:
Only nonentities has no regard for intellectuals like Kongi.

[size=18pt]No Mr. Soyinka, you are the troll[/size]

I read Soyinka's latest rants "WOLEXIT" first published by Sahara Reporters in response to clamour from Nigerians online for him to stick to his earlier vow of destroying his American Green Card if Donald Trump won and I must say I was really appalled not with Wole Soyinka but for myself having held any respect for this man over the years.


In his self grandiose delusions, Soyinka took us on an unnecessary voyage down memory lane recalling all his travels and immigration brouhas since his student years detailing his dissatisfaction and self blacklisting of several other countries which out of both ongoing political and personal grieviances with their immigration services requirement (Australia) imposed a self ban on visiting those countries fortunate not to have the fraud arrive their shores.

It didn't just stop there. Wole Soyinka had the audacity to state that when he made that vow to destroy his American Green Card, he made it among civilized and fellow educated people in far away US and not for the pesky trolls of nigerian cyberspace. How pompous can this man be?

Wole will round up his rants directing those same dismissed Nigerian "Internet trolls" to get an education stating that people like myself who demanded that he keep his word major problems' was ignorance and lack of education.

Well Mr, Wole Soyinka, it appears that you pointless rants in WOLEXIT was actually directed to those same "uneducated Nigerian Internet trolls" who kept reminding you to do the honorable action of keeping to your words. Your civilized oyinbo compatriots in whose midst you made that vow, will not ask you to follow up on your promise to destroy your green card but you can bet they will be observing and taking notes on your lack of credibility on living up to your own words.

As a Nigerian, I expect some one of your age and (dubious) academic background to at least do the honorable thing instead of directing all your frustration on your fellow Nigerians who you have deemed trolls. And for your info, it is widely regarded on the Internet as a golden rule never to respond to trolls. But in your latest rants, you angst seem to be towards those trolls as you never bothered to even address the fundamental issue which was for you to keep to your vow.

For the accusation and generalization of all of us who demanded you keep to your own words, to which you described us as "uneducated", I believe the last election has proven who really the uneducated buffon is and that happens to be you because in your aproko cheerleading of Hilary Clinton you forgot to factor critical political indices other than useless MSM churned bullsh1t polls. The same MSMs which you based your confidence to vow to destroy your green card if the inevitable Trump presidency arises has since began apologizing for their bias and lack of objective reporting.


Also, you termed us "busybodies" who should mind our business as you never made that vow to we "uneducated trolls" in Nigeria, I wondered then Wetin come concern you with US election? Last I checked you are not an American citizen or even remotely a politician back in Nigeria so wetin come be your own? Who gave you the sole right to comment on American affairs? To even add to your level of aprokoism, you were the lone voice from Nigeria to make a self committing statement over the likelihood of the American elections? No be over aproko be that?

I also want to let you know Mr Soyinka that your fellow oyibos who vowed to do whatever demeaning act if Trump won have begun keeping up to their words. See the CNN pollster who vowed to eat bugs on live TV if Trump won. Well he has lived up to his own words.

https://matzav.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/IMG_3401-696x391.png


So instead of acting like a trolled old fool insulting young Nigerians who are young enough to be your grandkids kindly tear your green card or forever shut dah hell up.

If you like go and die in sambisa fighting boko lunatics funded by your same govt

Can you balance a weigh scale with an elephant and an ant?

It takes two elephants of the same size to balance the scale.

Go figure.

Has that old Fool Soyinka fulfilled his vow?

Another useless Muslim holiday that will give boko haram motivation to blow themselves up in public

The most serious damage to the sacred shrine of Imam al-Hussain (ﻉ) in Kerbala, Iraq, was inflicted by the Wahhabis, followers of Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab who invented an odd interpretation of Islam which does not respect the grave-sites of any holy person, including that of the Prophet of Islam (ص). Since the Wahhabis have proven to be the most antagonistic_ towards the followers of Ahl al-Bayt (ﻉ), it is not out of place here to introduce the reader to their man, Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab, while narrating the mischief he and his ignorant Bedouin zealots committed against the shrine of Imām Hussain (ﻉ) in Kerbalā’ and that of his father, Imām Ali (ﻉ), in Najaf.

Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab was born in 1115 A.H./1703 A.D. in the small town of Uyayna in Najd, the southern highland of Arabia’s interior, and died in 1206 A.H./1791-92 A.D. He belonged to the tribe of Tamim. His father was a lawyer and a pious Muslim adhering to the Hanbalite sect founded by Imām Ahmed ibn Hanbal who, with the most rigid consistency, had advocated the principle of the exclusive validity of the hadīth as against the inclination among the older sects to make concessions to reason and commonsense, especially since Islam is the religion of commonsense. In Baghdad, Muhammed learned the jurisprudence of the Hanbali Sunni sect which remains to be predominant among the people of Najd and Hijaz: Whabbis constitute no more than 8% of the entire population of today's Saudi Arabia, the only country in the world named after its ruling clan. The reader has already come to know how much distortion exists in hadīth and can appreciate the danger of believing in each and every hadīth as though it were the inviolable and irrefutable gospel truth. He also studied jurisprudence at Mecca and Medīna where his mentors were admirers of Ibn Taymiyyah who, in the 7th Century A.H./the 14th Century A.D., had revived the teachings of Imām Ahmed ibn Hanbal. The founder of the sect, the last in the series of the four Sunni sects, namely Ahmed ibn Hanbal, was a theologian born in and died in Baghdad; the year of his birth is 164 A.H./780 A.D. and that of his death is 241 A.H./855 A.D.

Since his childhood, Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab was influenced by the writings of Ibn Taymiyyah_ and, therefore, looked askance at many religious practices of the people of Najd (southern section of today’s kingdom of the Wahhabi Al Saud clan). Such an influence convinced him that the dominant form of contemporary Islam, particularly among the Turks of his time, was permeated with abuses. He, therefore, sought to restore the original purity of the doctrine and of life in its restricted milieus. The facts that the Wahhabis are the minority of all Muslim minorities, and that the people of Najd and Hijaz are still predominantly Hanbalites who do not subscribe to Wahhabism by choice, prove that he did not achieve his objective and, most likely, such an objective will never be achieved despite all Saudi Arabia’s petro-dollars and the abundance of those who solicit such dollars, the ruler-appointed preachers most of whom are Salafis.


Having joined his father, with whom he debated his personal views, Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab caused a seriously violent confrontation to erupt from such an exchange of opposite views, for his father’s views were consistent with mainstream Hanbali Muslim thought. He performed the pilgrimage for the first time, visiting Mecca and Medīna where he attended lectures on different branches of Islamic learning. His mentors included Abdullāh‎ ibn Ibrahim ibn Saif and Hayat as-Sindi, who both were admirers of Ibn Taymiyyah. They both rejected the principle of taqlid (imitation) which is commonly accepted by all four Sunni schools of jurisprudence as well as by Shī’a‎ Muslims. These men’s teachings had a great impact on Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab who began to take a more aggressive attitude in preaching his views and, hence, he publicly expressed his denunciation of the sanctification of the holy precincts of the Prophet’s shrine and of the shrines of any “saint.” Then he went back home and decided to go to Basra, Iraq, on his way to Damascus, Syria. During his stay in Basra, he expressed the same views, whereupon its people kicked him out of the city. He almost died of thirst once, due to exhaustion and to the intensity of the heat in the desert, when he was on his way from Basra to the city of Zubair but was saved by a Zubairi man. Finding his provisions insufficient to travel to Damascus, Muhammed had to change his travel plan and to go to the (Saudi) al-Ahsa (or al-Hasa) province then to Huraymala, one of the cities of Najd, to which his father and the entire family had to move because of the public’s denunciation of young Muhammed’s views, reaching it in 1139 A.H./1726-27 A.D. By then, Muhammed’s good and pious father had lost his job as qadi (judge) on account of his son’s radical preaching. The denunciation continued till his father’s death in 1153 A.H./1740 A.D.

His father’s death emboldened him to express his thoughts more freely and consolidate his movement. His preaching found an echo among some of the people of his town, and his fame started on the rise, so much so that he was welcomed by the ruler of his home town Uyayna, namely Othman ibn Muammar Al Hamad, who offered him protection and appointed him as his personal assistant. In order to cement his ties with Othman, Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab married Jawhara, Othman’s aunt. Othman ordered his townsmen to observe the Wahhabi teachings, and Muhammed now felt strong enough to demolish the monument erected on the burial site of Zaid ibn al-Khattab. But the new alliance between Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab and Othman ibn Muammar Al Hamad disturbed the scholars of Najd who complained against the first to the emir (provincial governor) of the al-Ahsa province. The emir wrote Othman reprimanding and warning him of dire consequences for encouraging Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab to revolt against the established authority and creed. Finding himself in a precarious situation and his job in jeopardy, Othman dismissed Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab from his service and asked him to leave the town.

In 1160 A.H./1746-47 A.D., having been expelled from Uyayna, Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab sought refuge in Dar'iyya, only six hours away from Uyayna, at the invitation of its ruler, Muhammed ibn Saud_, ancestor of the Al Saud dynasty now ruling Saudi Arabia. Muhammed ibn Saud lived in a fortified settlement as chief of the Unayza clan. Soon, an alliance was forged between both men, each promising the other glory, fame, and riches for his support. The people of that town lived at the time in utter destitution, and something was needed to bring them relief. Muhammed ibn Saud rejected any veneration of the Prophet (ﺹ) or of other men of piety. It was there that Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab stayed for more than two years. Both men felt that it was time to declare “jihad” against all those who rejected the new Wahhabi dogma, forming a small band of raiders mounted on horseback to invade various towns, kill and loot. The lives and property of all those who did not subscribe to the views of these two men were now in jeopardy for they were considered as guilty of being pagans fighting against whom is justified by the Qur’ān until they converted or extirpated. These raids extended far beyond Dar'iyya to include all of Najd and parts of Yemen, Hijaz, Syria and Iraq. In 1187 A.H./1773 A.D., the principality of Riyadh fell to them, marking a new era in the lucrative career of Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab.

During a short period of time, the destitutes of Dar'iyya found themselves wearing sumptuous clothes, carrying weapons decorated with gold and silver, eating meat, and baking wheat bread; in short, they found their dreams come true, going from rags to riches, thanks to those raids which continued till Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab died in 1206 A.H./1791-92 A.D., leaving his band to carry out more and more raids and his form of “Wahhabism” embraced by the Al Saud clansmen who eventually ascended to power, due to the support they received from the British who used them to undermine the last Islamic power, the Ottoman Sultanate. Al Saud became the sole rulers of Najd and Hijaz, promoting and publicizing for Wahhabism by any and all means, spending in the process funds which belong to the Muslim masses, not to them.

After the death of Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab, his band of raiders, under the leadership of the Al Saud dynasty, pursued their campaigns in the pretext of disseminating Wahhabism. In the years that followed Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab’s death, the Wahhabis gradually became burdensome to their neighbors. They pursued their northward advance; therefore, the Pasha of Baghdad found himself compelled to take defensive measures against them, having heard about their ruthlessness and disregard for the lives of all non-Wahhabis. He, therefore, led an army of about seven thousand Turks and twice did his army of mostly Arabs attacked them in their richest and most fertile oasis, that of al-Ahsa, in 1212 A.H./1797 A.D. but did not move on their capital, Dar'iyya, at once, as he should have, laying a siege for a month to the citadel of al-Ahsa. When Muhammed ibn Saud himself advanced against the Pasha, the latter did not dare to attack him but concluded a six-year peace treaty with him, a treaty for which the Wahhabis later demonstrated their disregard. By then, they had already set their eyes on plundering the shrine of Imām Hussain (ﻉ) and all the valuable relics it contained.

On the anniversary of the historic Ghadīr Khumm incident, that is, Thul-Hijja 18, 1216 A.H./April 21, 1801 A.D._, Prince Saud mobilized an army of twenty thousand strong and invaded the holy city of Kerbalā’. First they laid a siege of the city then entered the city and brutally massacred its defenders, visitors and inhabitants, looting, burning, demolishing and wreaking havoc ... The city [Kerbalā’] fell into their hands. The magnificent domed building over the grave of Hussain was destroyed and enormous booty dragged off._

More than five thousand Muslims were slaughtered. Then the Saudi prince turned to the Kerbalā’ shrine itself; he and his men pulled gold slabs out of their places, stole chandeliers and Persian rugs and historical relics, plundering anything of value. This tragedy is immortalized by eulogies composed by poets from Kerbalā’ and elsewhere. And the Wahhabis did not leave Kerbalā’ alone after this massacre; rather, they continued for the next twelve years invading it, killing and looting, taking advantage of the administrative weakness of the aging Ottoman Sultanate responsible for protecting it. During those twelve years, more and more Bedouin tribes joined them for a “piece of the action.” In 1218 A.H./1803 A.D., during the time of hajj (pilgrimage), the Wahhabis, led by Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, attacked Mecca, which surrendered to them after putting up a brief resistance. They looted whatever possessions the pilgrims had had. The governor of Mecca, Sharif Ghalib, fled to Jiddah which was shortly thereafter besieged, and the leader of the Syrian pilgrim caravan, Abd-Allāh Pasha of Damascus, had to leave Mecca, too. On Rajab 19, 1218 A.H./November 4, 1803, Abdul-Aziz Al Saud paid with his life for what he had committed; he was killed in Dar'iyya. His son, Saud ibn Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, lifted the siege of Jiddah and had Sharif Ghalib sent back to Mecca as his vassal in exchange for Jiddah’s customs revenue.

In 1220 A.H./1805 and 1221 A.H./1806 A.D., Mecca and Medīna fell to the Wahhabis_ respectively. The Wahhabis unleashed their wrath on both holy cities, committing untold atrocities and razing the cemetery, where many relatives and sahāba (companions) of the Prophet (ﺹ) were buried, to the ground_. Having spread their control over Riyadh, Jiddah, Mecca and Medīna, all of today’s Saudi Arabia became practically under their control.

The next major invasion of the holy city of Kerbalā’ by the Wahhabis took place on the 9th of the holy month of Ramadan of 1225 A.H., corresponding to October 8, 1810 A.D. It was then that both Kerbalā’ and Najaf (where the magnificent shrine of Imām Ali ibn Abū Talib (ﻉ) is located) were besieged. Roads were blocked, pilgrims were looted then massacred, and the shrines were attacked and damaged. The details of this second invasion were recorded by an eyewitness: Sayyid Muhammed Jawad al-Āmili, author of the famous book of jurisprudence titled Miftah al-Karama which was completed shortly after midnight on the very first day when the siege was laid. The writer recorded how terrified he and the other residents of Kerbalā’ felt at seeing their city receiving a major attack from the Wahhabis. A large number of pilgrims were killed. Their number varies from one account to another, and the most realistic figure seems to be the one provided by Sayyid Muhammed Jawad al-Āmili who puts it at one hundred and fifty.

The Wahhabis no longer attack and demolish Imām Hussain’s shrine, but they have been relentlessly attacking the creed of those who venerate him through a flood of books written and printed world-wide. They fund their writing, publication and circulation. They sometimes distribute them free of charge during the annual pilgrimage season while prohibiting all pilgrims from carrying or distributing any literature at all... During recent years, they have been beheading Shī’ite‎ scholars wherever they can find them, destroying Shī’ite‎ shrines, such as the famous 'Askari Shrine in Samarra, Iraq, which was bombed and destroyed in February of 2006 and in June of 2007; it houses the remains of both Imām Ali al-Hadi and Hassan al-'Askari, peace be with them, who descended from the immediate family of the Prophet of Islam, peace and blessings of the Almighty be with him and his progeny. Many other Shī’ite‎ mosques and Hussainiyyas were bombed by the Wahhabis and are still targets of their mischief, yet these rogues will never be able to destroy Shī’ite‎ Islam till the Resurrection Day. They have plenty of money, so they send their filthy money to Iraq to get the Muslims to kill each other, the Shī’ite‎ to kill the Sunni and vice versa, thus making Satan the happiest being on earth, for nothing pleases this damned creature more than seeing Muslims at each other's throats. Such is the desire of all the enemies of Islam and Muslims. Actually, due to the barbarism of these fundamentalist Wahhabis, more and more Muslims are getting to be curious about Shī’ite‎ Islam, so they study it and many of them end up eventually switching their sect from Sunni to Shī’ite‎ Islam. There is no harm in a Sunni becoming Shī’ite‎ or in a Shī’ite‎ becoming Sunni: Islam is one tree stalk having two major branches. After all, religions of the world have sects, and people change the sect they follow according to their personal convictions and satisfaction. It happens every day, and nobody fusses about it. Thus, the Wahhabis' mischief is actually having the opposite result of what these fundamentalist fanatics, who have ruined the reputation of Islam and Muslims world-wide, anticipate.

Rossikki:
Animal, pray his blood spillling with nuclear weapons doesn't bring radiation winds to choke you to death. Thoughtless pea brain.

The only place that will be rightly radiated will be that useless Saudi Arabia.

I want Trump and Putin to use Saudi Arabia as a nuclear dump site in the US-Russian de-nuclearization programme.

Nuke that evil pagan Kingdom to molten glass

Rucheen:
Maybe Smog

Correct

The Sunni establishment have tried in vain to demonize the Shia population and have used brute lethal force to clamp down on the group with Kaduna state govt under the midget, effectively banning the Shia sect of Islam.

My question is simple; if the Shias begin dumping Islam for say Christianity will the Sunni establishment enforce Apostacy laws which carry the death penalty as contained in sharia law?

I ask this because the same Sunni establishment in Northern Nigeria has declared the Shias as not Muslims. Will Apostacy laws still hold against any Shia who converts to Christianity?

seunny4lif:
The only problem is CIA
CIA rules not the president

Keep consoling yourself.

If you think Trump will allow his presidency and international relations dictated by a bunch of drug pushing, arms dealing, money laundring criminals then you are in for a long thing.

Pukkah:
Then you don't know Wole Soyinka.

Wole Soyinka is an old fool

E don tay when this man don begin crase

Threads like these will never smell FP courtesy of the hired thugs working for Lai Mohammed claiming to be Mods.

capatainrambo:
lollll these muslims

These Muslims only understand brute force.

You can't negotiate in a civil manner with them.

Any thought of jihad must be viciously put down with brute force.

The Saudis know Trump hates them with a passion and by just withdrawing US support to the house of Saud in less than a week, the house of saud will collapse and their Kingdom will come crashing.

https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2016/12/02/20161207_saudi.jpg

Saudi authorities banned journalist Jamal Khashoggi from writing in newspapers, appearing on TV and attending conferences, the Alkhalij Aljadid reported in Arabic.

This came after Khashoggi’s remarks during a presentation he made at a Washington think-tank on 10 November in which he was critical of Donald Trump’s ascension to the US presidency.

Two weeks ago, an official Saudi source was cited by the Saudi News Agency as saying that Khashoggi did not represent the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in his interviews or statements.


 




 

“The author Jamal Khashoggi does not represent the government of Saudi Arabia or its positions at any level, and … his opinions only represent his personal views not that of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” said a ministry source quoted by the Saudi Press Agency.
The official Saudi position on Trump’s election was perhaps more accurately reflected by a former Saudi diplomat in mid-November who told the Washington Post: “Certainly, we are not expecting Mr Trump to be worse than Mr Obama was,” said Abdullah al-Shamri. Most members of the royal family, he said, “are happy with the result. We are closer to Republicans psychologically.”

Khashoggi’s remarks last month at the Washington Institute, the Breaking Energy website reported, indicated that in his view Trump’s Middle East stances were often contradictory, especially regarding Iran. While Trump is vocally anti-Iranian, he supports President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian conflict, which ultimately bolsters Iranian regional control and rightfully makes Saudi Arabia nervous, Khashoggi was reported as saying.

Khashoggi said that Saudi Arabia should be ready for some surprises, and ought to create an alliance of Sunni countries to serve as a bulwark against a potentially anti-Sunni Trump, according to Breaking Energy.


In a Washington Post article on potential changes in the Middle East in light of Trump’s victory, Khashoggi described hopes for a broader regional reconciliation as “wishful thinking,” at odds with Trump’s apparent determination to ally more closely with Russia. He was quoted as saying: “When his advisers show him the map, will he realize supporting Putin means supporting the Iranian agenda? And this is what Saudi Arabia is concerned about, to stop Iranian hegemony.”

The Post went on to say that perhaps the biggest losers in the Middle East will be ordinary people who have been agitating for more democracy in the region. “For us, Trump’s election feels like a winter wind,” said Ahmed Saleh, an engineer who joined in the 2011 uprising in Egypt. “How can you hope for freedom when the most powerful man in the world doesn’t believe in our democracy?”

Khashoggi is a well-established Saudi writer and journalist. He has extensive political and media experience and held the position of editor in chief of a number of Saudi newspapers, including the Arab Times and Al-Watan.

Khashoggi has not commented on these reports, although Saudi sources close to him, based in the western Saudi city of Jedda, have said that he has been going through shock and is currently talking about writing a book, Alkhalij Aljadid reported.

Some media outlets said the ban extends to Saudi-funded Al-Arabiyah, Al-Hadath and Al-Ikhbariyah channels. Al Jazeera TV channel was also alerted to the ban, along with other Gulf channels.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-07/saudi-journalist-banned-media-after-criticizing-trump

QuotaSystem:
And I pray that God blesses you so abundantly that you're freed from this painful hatred

Pray for your desolate useless lawless north