Saudi Arabia's betrayal to the Islamic world
Saudi Arabia's betrayal to the Islamic world
Kourosh ZiabariThe corrupt king of Saudi Arabia Malek Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz whose clandestine connections with the families of Osama Bin Laden and George W. Bush have made him a notorious and unpopular figure in the Islamic world has recently made unbelievably controversial remarks which leaved no doubt that this tyrannical monarch is moving towards ushering himself as the new stooge of the United States in the Persian Gulf region.
The Saudi King who has seemingly started attempts to merge his country with the imperialist world told the French Defense Minister Hervé Morin in a meeting held after the Gaza Freedom Flotilla massacre that "two states in region do not deserve to exist: Israel and Iran."
Juxtaposed with the impolite and uncompromising mistreatment of the Iranian pilgrims by the Saudi police forces in Mecca and Medina, the bizarre and unprecedented remarks of the Saudi tyrant whose monarchy has been described as "head-chopping, hand-severing, anti-feminist, misogynist, feudal [and] anti-democratic" by Robert Fisk highlighted the Arab kingdom's decisiveness to distance itself from the union of Islamic nations and join the bloc of imperialist governments.
So, let's pose some vital questions. Does the Saudi king really deserve the title of the Custodian of Two Holy Mosques, which he has assigned to himself? Does this corrupt monarch really care about the Islamic solidarity?
In an article titled "The Kingdom of Corruption, the Saudi Connection", the British Pakistani author and historian Tariq Ali wrote about the undiscovered and unseen realities of Saudi Arabia intelligently: "In normal times the Saudi Kingdom is barely covered by the Western media. The Ambassadors report to their respective chanceries that all is well and the continuity of the regime is not threatened. It requires the imprisonment of an American or British citizen or for a British nurse to be chucked out of a window for attention to focus on the regime in Riyadh."
"Even less is known about the state religion, which is not an everyday version of Sunni or Shia Islam, but a peculiarly virulent, ultra-puritanical strain known as Wahhabism. This is the religion of the Saudi royals, the state bureaucracy, the army and air-force and, of course, Osama Bin Laden, the best-known Saudi citizen in the world, currently resident in Afghanistan" he adds.
Tariq Ali accurately pinpointed the root of Saudi extremism: Wahhabism, an artificially manufactured denomination of Islam which authorizes the killing of Shiite Muslims as a means of entering the heaven. The very fact that Shiite Muslims are subject to the most vicious and cruel mistreatments of fanatic Wahabis in Saudi Arabia is almost known to everyone.
Although the Shiites constitute a 15% minority of the Saudi Arabia's 20-million population, they're simply deprived of the most basic rudiments of a normal life and an equal right to practice their particular rites and rituals. The social situation is also the same for Shiite Saudis. According to Amir Taheri's National Review article, of the top 400 government officials in Saudi Arabia, only 1 person is Shiite. More regrettably, of the 120 members of the all-appointed Saudi parliament only two are Shiites.
While the international human rights organizations are accustomed to turning a blind eye to the inhuman discriminations imposed on the Saudi Shiites by the radical Wahabis, the pains and grieves of this subjugated minority are building up progressively.
In March 2009, a group of Shiite leaders threatened the Saudi government that they might pull out of the kingdom should the discriminatory measures against the Shiite minority remain in effect. Sheikh Nimr Baqer Al-Nimr had lashed out at the Saudi regime, calling on Shiites to "be ready to defend themselves" and brandishing the threat of secession from the oil-rich province of Qatif. The Saudi Interior Minister denied the Shiite leaders' statements while he was in New York.
Of the sporadic protests to the unjustifiable mistreatment of Shiites in Saudi Arabia, the most prominent one was the Human Rights Watch's warning to the Riyadh government to refrain from the further suppression of Shiites. In September 2009, the Human Rights Watch released a 32-page report in which the Saudi government was accused of "systemic state discrimination" against the Shiites in the areas of religion, education, justice and employment.
According to the report, "the Saudi government has long regarded its Shiite citizens through the prism of Wahhabi dogma or state stability, and brands them as unbelievers or suspects even their national loyalties"
"In employment, there are no Shi'a government ministers, senior diplomats or high-ranking military officers. And Shi'a students generally can't even get admission to military academies," the report says.
The corruption of Saudi government, however, is not limited to the extrajudicial and atrocious suppression of its Shiite citizens.
The longstanding, robust and unconcealed connections of the Saudi royal family with the terrorist gangs around the world, which was never challenged nor protested by the United States that considers itself a harbinger of war on terrorism, should be deemed another manifestation of Saudi's governmental corruption. With its close ties to the Bin Laden family, doesn't Saudi Arabia deserve to be listed in the U.S.-fabricated list of State Sponsors of Terrorism?
According to Michael Parenti, "throughout the eighties, when the United States assisted the Saudis in a giant military buildup of airfields, ports, and bases throughout the kingdom, many of the contracts were awarded to the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Binladen Group, founded by Osama bin Laden’s father."
In "Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for bin Laden", two French intelligence analysts, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, claim that the Clinton and Bush administrations impeded investigations of bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist group in order to maintain good relations with Saudi Arabia and to maintain the stability of the oil market.
Prior to 1980, George Bush Jr. is a failed oil man. Three times friends and investors have bailed him out to keep him from going bankrupt. But in this year, the same year his father becomes President, some Saudis buy a portion of his small company, Harken, which has never worked outside of Texas. Later in the year, Harken wins a contract in the Persian Gulf and starts doing well financially. These transactions seem so suspicious that the Wall Street Journal in 1991 states it "raises the question of ... an effort to cozy up to a presidential son." Two major investors in Bush's company during this time are Salem bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's oldest brother, and Khaled bin Mahfouz.
According to Paul Thompson's article in Amazon News, Mohammed al-Khilewi, the First Secretary at the Saudi Mission to the United Nations, defects and seeks political asylum in the US. He brings with him 14,000 internal government documents depicting the Saudi royal family's corruption, human-rights abuses, and financial support for terrorists. He meets with two FBI agents and an Assistant US Attorney. "We gave them a sampling of the documents and put them on the table," says his lawyer, "but the agents refused to accept them."
Anyway, Saudi Arabia's state corruption, its undeniable relations with the terrorist gangs and the family of Osama Bin Laden, its violation of human rights and its non-commitment to the principles of humanity is not hidden from the public opinions worldwide. King Abdullah had better do something about the black records of his support for the global terrorism and violation of human rights rather than issuing statements about the existence of countries on the world map. By putting Iran and Israel at the same level, King Abdullah revealed his impure nature to the world. Israel, a country that has been busy murdering, attacking and massacring for 60 years, and Iran that has been the most pacifist country in the region; are these two the same?
ENDS