1/20/2015, "How Saudi Wahhabism Is the Fountainhead of Islamist Terrorism," Huffington Post, Dr. Yousaf Butt, London. updated,
4/7/16, image caption: "Saudi King Salman speaks with US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. (SPA)"
Saudi headslicers welcome Paul Ryan who proved his cred as a national embarrassment on the global stage in Sept. 2012 vs Laughing Joe Biden.
4/7/16, "Saudi King receives US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan," Al Arabiya "Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud received Speaker of the US House of Representatives Paul Ryan at Al-Yamama Palace in Riyadh on Wednesday.
"The delegation from the United States included a number of House members, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, member of the House from Texas Panhandle William Mac Thornberry, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from California Devin Nunes, member of the House of Representatives from Ohio Michael Turner, member of the House of Representatives from New York Gregory Meeks, member of the House of Representatives from South Dakota Kristi Noem, member of the House of Representatives from Wisconsin Ron Kind, member of the House of Representatives from Texas’s 23rd congressional district Will Hurd, and the chief aide to House speaker Jonathan Perks.
The visit comes on the same week where US Secretary of State John Kerry visits Bahrain to hold talks with GCC foreign ministers on regional security issues.
The visit also ahead of a scheduled visit by US President Barack Obama, who is attending a GCC summit in Riyadh on April 21, where Washington’s policies towards the Middle East are likely to come under the microscope.
A version of this article first appeared in the Saudi Gazette on Apr. 07, 2016."
4/6/16, "King receives speaker, members of US House of Representatives," Saudi Gazette
"Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman receives Speaker of the US House of Representatives Paul Ryan at Al-Yamama Palace in Riyadh on Wednesday. The delegation included a number of House members, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, member of the House from Texas Panhandle William Mac Thornberry, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from California Devin Nunes, member of the House of Representatives from Ohio Michael Turner, member of the House of Representatives from New York Gregory Meeks, member of the House of Representatives from South Dakota Kristi Noem, member of the House of Representatives from Wisconsin Ron Kind, member of the House of Representatives from Texas’s 23rd congressional district Will Hurd, and the chief aide to House speaker Jonathan Perks." from Saudi Gazette
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Black
Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off
hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology,
women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does
the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia. In its struggle
against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the
other. This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving
the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of
forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious
clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends
Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.
Wahhabism,
a messianic radicalism that arose in the 18th century, hopes to restore
a fantasized caliphate centered on a desert, a sacred book, and two
holy sites, Mecca and Medina. Born in massacre and blood, it manifests
itself in a surreal relationship with women, a prohibition against
non-Muslims treading on sacred territory, and ferocious religious laws.
That translates into an obsessive hatred of imagery and representation
and therefore art, but also of the body, nakedness and freedom. Saudi
Arabia is a Daesh that has made it.
The
West’s denial regarding Saudi Arabia is striking: It salutes the
theocracy as its ally but pretends not to notice that it is the world’s
chief ideological sponsor of Islamist culture. The younger generations
of radicals in the so-called Arab world were not born jihadists. They
were suckled in the bosom of Fatwa Valley, a kind of Islamist Vatican
with a vast industry that produces theologians, religious laws, books,
and aggressive editorial policies and media campaigns.
One
might counter: Isn’t Saudi Arabia itself a possible target of Daesh?
Yes, but to focus on that would be to overlook the strength of the ties
between the reigning family and the clergy that accounts for its
stability — and also, increasingly, for its precariousness. The Saudi
royals are caught in a perfect trap: Weakened by succession laws that
encourage turnover, they cling to ancestral ties between king and
preacher. The Saudi clergy produces Islamism, which both threatens the
country and gives legitimacy to the regime.
One
has to live in the Muslim world to understand the immense
transformative influence of religious television channels on society by
accessing its weak links: households, women, rural areas. Islamist
culture is widespread in many countries— Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia,
Libya, Egypt, Mali, Mauritania. There are thousands of Islamist
newspapers and clergies that impose a unitary vision of the world,
tradition and clothing on the public space, on the wording of the
government’s laws and on the rituals of a society they deem to be
contaminated.
It
is worth reading certain Islamist newspapers to see their reactions to
the attacks in Paris. The West is cast as a land of “infidels.” The
attacks were the result of the onslaught against Islam. Muslims and
Arabs have become the enemies of the secular and the Jews. The
Palestinian question is invoked along with the rape of Iraq and the
memory of colonial trauma, and packaged into a messianic discourse meant
to seduce the masses. Such talk spreads in the social spaces below,
while up above, political leaders send their condolences to France and
denounce a crime against humanity.
This totally schizophrenic situation
parallels the West’s denial regarding Saudi Arabia.
All
of which leaves one skeptical of Western democracies’ thunderous
declarations regarding the necessity of fighting terrorism. Their war
can only be myopic, for it targets the effect rather than the cause.
Since ISIS is first and foremost a culture, not a militia, how do you
prevent future generations from turning to jihadism when the influence
of Fatwa Valley and its clerics and its culture and its immense
editorial industry remains intact?"...
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1/20/2015, "How Saudi Wahhabism Is the Fountainhead of Islamist Terrorism," Huffington Post, Dr. Yousaf Butt, London. updated,
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