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Saudi clerics reportedly point terrorists toward Iraq

By: Farhan Zaidi

LONDON, Britain: Saudi dissidents who monitor theological edicts coming out of the kingdom said that fundamentalist leaders in Saudi Arabia are telling terrorists, who are using the name of Islam, to join the insurgency in Iraq instead of taking up Osama bin Laden's call to oust the Saudi royal family at home.

“If they preach that there ought to be absolutely no jihad, they would lose credibility and support among their followers. So what they do is preach jihad not in Saudi Arabia, but in Iraq,” AP reported Abdul Aziz Khamis, a Saudi human rights activist in London, as saying. “To them, Iraq is the answer to their dilemma.”

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 gave the Saudi government the opportunity to send men there to wage jihad against communism, supported by the US.

Today, Iraq, more than anywhere else in the world, is where the future of political Islam is being shaped. It has become a free-for-all for extremists and anti-American movements.

Although there are reports that Saudis are among suicide bombers in Iraq, the Al-Qaida group isn't heeding the clerics' advice to give up the fight against the kingdom.

The Al-Qaida branch operating in Saudi Arabia, known as the Jihadis, has been behind a string of bombings and shooting attacks in the kingdom.

Saudi dissidents say that following another series of attacks last May, several Saudi clerics promised the government not to wage jihad, or holy war, inside Saudi Arabia and to refrain from recruiting activists from the Jihadis group.

Saudi clerics such as Al-Odeh and Al-Hawali have issued several fatawa, or religious edicts, saying jihad is legitimate in Iraq. Al-Hawali also opposes beheading foreign hostages for political reasons, even though he supports it from a religious point of view, said Khamis. Al-Odeh was among 26 clerics who called for jihad in Iraq last year.

Khamis said that Saleh Al-Owfi, believed to be al-Qaida's leader in Saudi Arabia, claimed in a website statement that Al-Hawali had asked him not to fight at home but to go to Iraq, and that he would arrange for him to go there. But al-Owfi replied that everyone should fight on his own turf.

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