US dictating Saudi religious policy

Again we come BACK to the PURE Islamic foundation..THINK FOR YOURSELF!!..EDUCATE YOURSELF!!..DO NOT BE A SHEEP. There was ONLY certain people we follow blindly..which are the Prophets. Those are no more, so start walking on YOUR OWN FEET!!. The more i keep track of the international political situation the more it is heading QUICK..to a different scenario. I am shocked how quick things are going. The whole political international strategy was rather sunken in with a very firm foundation that certain groups only benefited. It was based on the so called international law (UN). Borders were borders, and if somebody would speak against injustice VETO-vote was being used to stop certain party speaking against injustice.

Now from Russia coming back very strong from the former USSR (Communist Russia) to Saudi Arabia king for the FIRST TIME visiting Russia in the history of Saudi Arabia (founded in 1932) while all those years had a firm relationship with US. Besides that whole Qatar problem (coming out of nowhere) and Iran and Turkey are being pushed to being allies (with dissatisfaction of Israel (and US is in their pocket off course) and Saudi Arabia). Kurds are now also using international law in their benefit but using it, the hypocrisy and lies of international law are being revealed. Internet shows also everything and nothing can be hidden anymore. Everything we ever knew that had a firm foundation as groups x, y, z are allies and groups a, b, c are allies are shifting. But the speed of this shifting goes soooo fast that within hours certain members of a group get in to a fight, while being allies for so many years. While if you look around everybody is a sleep..nobody is awake, but even if you try to wake them up by bringing up the subject they brush you off as being conspiracy-freak and being afraid for nothing. The whole Syria situation has shown me a bit of the understanding of how mountains can shift in a super fast pace. Just like the hadith that says the major signs of the last day will follow each other like the pearls following off a necklace when cut one following the other. I didn't knew or understand how such major signs could follow up each other, but just seeing the international political situation, the hadith that major signs follow up each other in a very fast pace also doesn't shock me anymore as i understand it that indeed is possible as i have seen in reality itself. If Allah wills, things will change within seconds. Sub'han'Allah.

North-Korea and allies of US are not really going towards peaceful solution, India and Pakistan (Kashmir) are not really heading towards peaceful solution, India and China (doklam) are not really heading towards peaceful solution (Do not forget South China sea chaos also), NATO and Russia are not really heading towards peaceful solution, EU is crumbling (unity is no more), all the currency's are dropping rapidly in value, Russia and China i believe have already started to dump the petro-dollar (end of the petro-dollar??). A barrel of oil will never go higher than that it is right now, because of US shale-oil. Russia is buying and buying gold (which indicates either step away from US dollar or knowing the fiat currencies are collapsing). Through democratic means the groups that lose just barely with for example being 49% against 51%..look at Brexit, look at Turkey, look at US. The loser-side is creating a lot of trouble because of it but also the more powerful side is creating trouble (look at Spain). The whole LGBT-agenda..or the transgenders came out of NOWHERE..just in like 2-3 years has became already mainstream and has been forced to be accepted and treated as normal through law. Marriage between homosexuality has already almost everywhere being applied as US also have it now. The amount of Christians have rapidly declined and is further more declining fast, the amount of pressure to stop religion has gone up dramatically.

I am not shocked that before 2030 things have changed so much that if you would be living in a forest for like 10 years is as if you have come to a different world. Technology is going with the speed of light. The amount of drugs use has gone up A LOT, Zina is widespread, nobody these days just sits somewhere without music, alcohol is being widespread, the amount of suicide has gone up insanely with every year being a new record. The temperatures are reaching new records. Yet if you say such things, people look at you as a conspiracy nut. I mean DUDE..look at what is going on..i am not speaking out of emotion or feelings, i look at facts...just look around you. I am NOT saying that we will be witnessing dajjal within our life-time, because Allah knows that only, but what i am saying is OPEN YOUR EYES..look at what is important. At least prepare AS IF dajjal is coming tomorrow.

Know that it is even a mercy of Allah that Rasullah(saws) told us about the minor signs especially. Because knowing of the minor signs should rather be a sign of ..stop fooling around..GET SERIOUS!!! The minor signs have never gotten so extreme as these days and as i said earlier since whole Syria issue things have gone in faster not only international political stuff, but also other day to day things (LGBT, value of currencies, dissatisfaction of people etc.)

https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/13/...te-intolerance

A comprehensive Human Rights Watch review of the Education Ministry-produced school religion books for the 2016-17 school year found that some of the content that first provoked widespread controversy for violent and intolerant teachings in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks remains in the texts today, despite Saudi officials’ promises to eliminate the intolerant language.
“As early as first grade, students in Saudi schools are being taught hatred toward all those perceived to be of a different faith or school of thought,” said Sarah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The lessons in hate are reinforced with each following year.”


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Comment: If you feel that this is extreme then Muslims are welcome to live in the West.

If you feel this is normal Islam then you are not welcome to live in the West.

format_quote Originally Posted by Logikon

https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/13/...te-intolerance
Comment: If you feel that this is extreme then Muslims are welcome to live in the West.

If you feel this is normal Islam then you are not welcome to live in the West.

I am a citizen of the West with constitutionally protected freedom of opinion and freedom of religion. Civis occidentus sum. I will not submit to let you dictate whether I'm "welcome", a formulation that implies you are the rightful owner of the West and I'm allowed or not allowed to exist as a sufferance granted by you.

Salaam

The globalists snap their fingers the Sauds obey.

I will return Saudi Arabia to moderate Islam, says crown prince

Mohammed bin Salman tells the Guardian that ultra-conservative state has been ‘not normal’ for past 30 years


Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has vowed to return the country to “moderate Islam” and asked for global support to transform the hardline kingdom into an open society that empowers citizens and lures investors.

In an interview with the Guardian, the powerful heir to the Saudi throne said the ultra-conservative state had been “not normal” for the past 30 years, blaming rigid doctrines that have governed society in a reaction to the Iranian revolution, which successive leaders “didn’t know how to deal with”.

Expanding on comments he made at an investment conference at which he announced the launch of an ambitious $500bn (£381bn) independent economic zone straddling Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, Prince Mohammed said: “We are a G20 country. One of the biggest world economies. We’re in the middle of three continents. Changing Saudi Arabia for the better means helping the region and changing the world. So this is what we are trying to do here. And we hope we get support from everyone.

“What happened in the last 30 years is not Saudi Arabia. What happened in the region in the last 30 years is not the Middle East. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, people wanted to copy this model in different countries, one of them is Saudi Arabia. We didn’t know how to deal with it. And the problem spread all over the world. Now is the time to get rid of it.

Earlier Prince Mohammed had said: “We are simply reverting to what we followed – a moderate Islam open to the world and all religions. 70% of the Saudis are younger than 30, honestly we won’t waste 30 years of our life combating extremist thoughts, we will destroy them now and immediately.”

The crown prince’s comments are the most emphatic he has made during a six-month reform programme that has tabled cultural reforms and economic incentives unimaginable during recent decades, during which the kingdom has been accused of promoting a brand of Islam that underwrote extremism.

The comments were made as the heir of the incumbent monarch moves to consolidate his authority, sidelining clerics whom he believes have failed to support him and demanding unquestioning loyalty from senior officials whom he has entrusted to drive a 15-year reform programme that aims to overhaul most aspects of life in Saudi Arabia.

Central to the reforms has been the breaking of an alliance between hardline clerics who have long defined the national character and the House of Saud, which has run affairs of state. The changes have tackled head-on societal taboos such as the recently rescinded ban on women driving, as well as scaling back guardianship laws that restrict women’s roles and establishing an Islamic centre tasked with certifying the sayings of the prophet Muhammed.

The scale and scope of the reforms has been unprecedented in the country’s modern history and concerns remain that a deeply conservative base will oppose what is effectively a cultural revolution – and that the kingdom lacks the capacity to follow through on its economic ambitions.

The new economic zone is to be established on 470km of the Red Sea coast, in a tourist area that has already been earmarked as a liberal hub akin to Dubai, where male and female bathers are free to mingle.

It has been unveiled as the centrepiece of efforts to turn the kingdom away from a near total dependence on oil and into a diverse open economy. Obstacles remain: an entrenched poor work ethic, a crippling regulatory environment and a general reluctance to change.

“Economic transformation is important but equally essential is social transformation,” said one of the country’s leading businessmen. “You cannot achieve one without the other. The speed of social transformation is key. It has to be manageable.”

Alcohol, cinemas and theatres are still banned in the kingdom and mingling between unrelated men and women remains frowned upon. However Saudi Arabia – an absolute monarchy – has clipped the wings of the once-feared religious police, who no longer have powers to arrest and are seen to be falling in line with the new regime.

Economically Saudi Arabia will need huge resources if it is to succeed in putting its economy on a new footing and its leadership believes it will fail to generate strategic investments if it does not also table broad social reforms.

Prince Mohammed had repeatedly insisted that without establishing a new social contract between citizen and state, economic rehabilitation would fail. “This is about giving kids a social life,” said a senior Saudi royal figure. “Entertainment needs to be an option for them. They are bored and resentful. A woman needs to be able to drive herself to work. Without that we are all doomed. Everyone knows that – except the people in small towns. But they will learn.”

In the next 10 years, at least five million Saudis are likely to enter the country’s workforce, posing a huge problem for officials who currently do not have jobs to offer them or tangible plans to generate employment.

The economic zone is due to be completed by 2025 – five years before the current cap on the reform programme – and is to be powered by wind and solar energy, according to its founders.

The country’s enormous sovereign wealth fund is intended to be a key backer of the independent zone. It currently has $230bn under management. The sale of 5% of the world’s largest company, Aramco, is expected to raise several hundred billion dollars more.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/24/i-will-return-saudi-arabia-moderate-islam-crown-prince

Salaam

format_quote Originally Posted by anatolian

This applies to entire west. West is powerful today but they just cant see the corruption coming from inside. This will eventually cause the fall of their civilization. Future will be of peoples who keep morals.

Yes, its in decline or at least its elite culture, not a new phenoma of course.

Salaam

Another update

Saudi crown prince rattles Turkish Islamists

Suporters of Turkeys Islamist government claim Mohammed bin Salmand aim to push for moderate Islam in Saudi Arabia is motivated by US imperial designs against Muslims

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s vow to turn Saudi Arabia into a moderate Islamic country may have been welcomed by the West, but it did not go down well in Turkey — especially among Islamists — and fueled long-standing suspicions about "imperial US designs against the Islamic world."

Ever since former US Secretary of State Colin Powell declared Turkey to be a “moderate Islamic republic” in 2004, the concept of moderate Islam has raised the hackles of Turkish secularists and Islamists alike.

Still smarting over 9/11, Washington was searching at the time for a model against radical Islam that reflected the kind of modernity it wanted to see in the Islamic world. Turkey — with its secular parliamentary system that had still not been tampered with by its Islamist government — was the only country that appeared to fit the bill.

Powell’s remark, however, coincided with the rise of political Islam in Turkey, with its clear antipathy toward secularism under the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which won a landslide electoral victory in November 2002.

With growing tensions between secularists and Islamists, that was hardly the right time for Powell to bring up his idea regarding Turkey. Doing so only reflected a serious lack of awareness in Washington about what was going on in this country.

Secularists objected to his designation of “moderate Islamic republic,” arguing that Washington was trying to “Islamize Turkey” to serve its security interests. Many secular Turks are still convinced that the AKP was a US project imposed on Turkey by Washington to turn it into a moderate Islamic republic.

Ahmet Necdet Sezer, Turkey’s staunchly secularist president at the time, reacted angrily, declaring, “Turkey is neither an Islamic republic nor an example of moderate Islam.”

Turkish Islamists, for their part, argued that Powell was attempting — with support from Israel — to undermine true Islam by imposing alien ideas on genuine Muslims to keep them at bay.

Mohammed unfolded his Vision 2023 for turning Saudi Arabia into a moderate Islamic state when he announced a massive project to invest $500 billion in a megacity along the Jordanian and Egyptian borders, which will be transformed into an economic hub aimed at reviving the country’s economy.

There were secularist columnists who gloated over the crown prince’s remarks in order to hit at the AKP and its Islamist supporters.

Ertugrul Ozkok, a popular columnist for the daily Hurriyet, for example, argued that “every reasonable Muslim carries Ataturk in his heart.” He was referring to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the secular Turkish Republic.

“The true spring in the Arab world will come when the bright path shown by Ataturk to the whole Islamic world is understood,” Ozkok wrote in his commentary on Mohammed’s remark.

The extreme Islamist view on Mohammed’s remarks, on the other hand, came from Ibrahim Karagul, the acerbic editor-in-chief of the government mouthpiece Yeni Safak.

“Saudi Arabia’s ‘We are switching to moderate Islam’ announcement contains a dangerous game. The US-Israel axis is forming a new regional front line,” Karagul contended in his column. He maintained that the aim was to “doom” the Sunni Arab world to this axis.

Claiming that a similar project involving Turkey had failed, Karagul said, “Saudi Arabia is being burdened with the same mission now” and warned that this would mean “suicide” for that country.

Burhanettin Duran, the general coordinator of the government-sponsored Political, Economic and Social Research Foundation in Ankara, also believes that Mohammed’s statement reflects a wider project for the Gulf region.

“The United States, Israel and Egypt are preparing the ideological groundwork for combating Shiite militias, who are the effective element of Iranian expansionism,” Duran argued in an article for government mouthpiece Sabah.

Duran added that Saudi Arabia would henceforth propagandize for an Islam that is in harmony with the world and the West, but underlined that Mohammed’s vision did not amount to “democratization.”

He said this was merely an attempt at social liberalization to the extent that the Saudi system would permit and pointed to the lifting of the ban on women driving as an example of what should be expected.

Maintaining that Mohammed was merely trying to blame the radicalization of Wahhabism — an extreme interpretation of Islam — in Saudi Arabia on Iran, Duran said, “Talk about ‘moderate Islam’ is only an ideological apparatus for containing Iran.”

Assistant professor Mehmet Ali Buyukkara, from the Faculty of Islamic Studies at Istanbul City University, also believes that the notion of “moderate Islam” is part of the United States' “Greater Middle East Project.”

He argued in an article for the semi-official Anatolia News Agency that the object was to serve Washington’s politically and economically motivated imperial aims in central and southern Asia as well as the Middle East.

Buyukkara added that Mohammed’s Vision 2023 aimed to establish a new Dubai or Abu Dhabi, which would require vast amounts of direct foreign investment.

“This investment will not come to a country whose religion and ideology is not normal. This is probably why Mohammed brought up the topic of moderate Islam during an economic congress,” Buyukkara said.

He went on to declare that the notion of moderate Islam is meaningless for Saudi Arabia, which, he underlined, has been guided by Wahhabism since 1744. Buyukkara said that it was the ideology of Wahhabism and not the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran that spawned radicalism in Saudi Arabia, contrary to what Mohammed was claiming.

Secularist historian and columnist Murat Bardakci also believes that the concept of moderate Islam for Saudi Arabia is a misnomer, and he derides those who argue that Arabs will one day reach out for their own Ataturk.

In an article for daily Haberturk, Bardakci said there was no love for either Ataturk or Turkey’s secular system in the Middle East, where Islam is an inseparable part of daily life. He said it was a joke to think that Saudi Arabia — the seat of Wahhabism and Salafism — could come in line with Ataturk’s thinking.

“Even a moderate version of Saudi Arabia whose society is Salafist will be harsher than the most extreme religious currents we have [in Turkey],” he added.

The government in Ankara remained silent on Mohammed’s remarks, but the ruling AKP’s view was expressed by Ravza Kavakci, a member of the parliamentary commission on foreign affairs.

Kavakci welcomed Mohammed’s statement if this meant Saudi Arabia, which she described as “Turkey’s ally,” will be more democratic and respectful of human rights, including women’s rights. “But I will never accept the term ‘moderate Islam’ because Islam does not need to be moderate,” Kavakci told reporters in parliament.

Clearly attempting to vilify the notion further in the eyes of her party’s supporters, she said that "moderate Islam” was a term also used by Fethullah Gulen and his supporters.

Gulen, who is in self-imposed exile in the United States, is accused by Ankara of masterminding last year’s failed coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Whatever the merits of these arguments, Turkish reactions to Mohammed — and the implication that he is only serving US and Israeli interests — show again that developments in the Middle East are still not likely to move in the simple and linear manner desired by Turkey’s predominantly Islamist administration.

Mohammed is not just anyone: He is the person slated to be Saudi Arabia’s new ruler soon. His remarks indicate that Ankara is likely to face more situations in the region it never expected.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/10/turkey-saudi-arabia-crown-prince-rattles-turkish-islamists.html#ixzz4xJUq7ZY3

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"I'm afraid of Americans! The West is the devil!" Yadda yadda yadda. Take responsibility for the Muslim world yourself.

--Dan Edge

An Arab Ataturk, eh?

The modern history of the Middle East is full of self-proclaimed wannabe Ataturks. They invariably turned out to either be corrupt dictators, murderous dictators or both.

Illuminati? Tu quoque, Anatolius?

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...ings-son?sc=tw


11 Saudi Princes Among Dozens Arrested In Apparent Move To Boost King's Son
November 4, 201710:26 PM ET
EMMA BOWMAN


King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud at the Grand Kremlin Palace last month, on a visit to Moscow, Russia.
Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
Saudi authorities arrested at least 11 princes, several current ministers and dozens of former ministers in a sweeping move reportedly designed to consolidate power for the son of King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud.


According to media reports citing Saudi-owned television network Al Arabiya, an anti-corruption committee ordered the arrests hours after King Salman directed the creation of the committee, headed by his favorite son and adviser, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.


The committee was established by the royal decree, The Associated Press reports, "due to the propensity of some people for abuse, putting their personal interest above public interest, and stealing public funds."


Billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is among those detained, The Wall Street Journal reports. Alwaleed holds stakes in some of the world's major companies, including Apple and Twitter.


The royal purge was foreshadowed by Saturday's evacuation of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, where the detainees are now housed, according to The New York Times.


The Times adds that Prince Alwaleed has made recent appearances in Western news, to weigh in on topics like cryptocurrencies and to discuss Saudi Arabia's plans to offer public shares of its lucrative oil company, Aramco. As recent as early Saturday, that impending decision sparked President Trump's interest. Hours before landing in Japan, the first stop of his 12-day Asia trip, the president tweeted his support for a U.S. stock listing for the world's largest oil company: "Would very much appreciate Saudi Arabia doing their IPO of Aramco with the New York Stock Exchange. Important to the United States!"


The arrests follow the king's dismissal of top ministers and a crackdown on dissidents. While many of the suspects were not named, Reuters reports, Prince Miteb bin Abdullah was ousted as minister of the National Guard and replaced by a lower-level prince who held a position with the guard, Khalid bin Ayyaf al-Muqrin. In addition, Economy Minister Adel Fakieh was unseated by his subordinate, Mohammed al-Tuwaijri, the wire service says, according to state-run media.

Salaam

Related

Secular despots - coming soon to an Arab state near you

From a recent article in the all mighty and wise Economist, we learn that a new crop of "secular" Arab despots are seizing on what it calls our "zeitgeist". They are pushing forward with a robust secularising agenda that will outmanoeuvre and bypass their Islamist opposition, appease their boisterous middle-class constituencies, and in the process solidify their iron fist of tyranny while allowing women without a veil to enjoy their shisha in public or any other such happy amenities.

"The region's authoritarians, who once tried to co-opt Islamists," we are told, "now view them as the biggest threat to their rule. By curbing the influence of clerics, they are also weakening checks on their own power. Still, many Arab leaders seem genuinely interested in moulding more secular and tolerant societies, even if their reforms do not extend to the political sphere."

The good tidings the Economist brings to its readers eager to exploit the economic opportunities such secular despotism promises to deliver to Europe and co., echo equally auspicious news that the Guardian had brought to its readers about a week earlier. The newspaper reported that "Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has vowed to return the country to "moderate Islam" and asked for global support to transform the hardline kingdom into an open society that empowers citizens and lures investors."

In a spirit of good brotherly love among Muslims, the Saudi prince, of course, blames Iran for the turn to the nasty old "radical Islam".

"What happened in the last 30 years is not Saudi Arabia," the prince declared, "What happened in the region in the last 30 years is not the Middle East. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, people wanted to copy this model in different countries, one of them is Saudi Arabia. We didn't know how to deal with it. And the problem spread all over the world. Now is the time to get rid of it."

This blaming of Iran and Iranians for all the ills of the world is, of course, an old cliche among many Arab princes and emirs and even some scholars too. There are scholars of gender and sexuality in Islam who blame polygamy on Iranians, while some thinkers have blamed Iranians for the rise of homosexuality among the Arabs.

Left to their own devices Arabs, according to this xenophobic fantasy, would have been happily monogamous, heterosexual, and above all moderate Muslims, bordering with the top choice of being "secular" too. These nasty old "Persians" have been an old plague to these puritanical princes and their learned advisors.

'Secular despots' and their 'moderate Islam'

Back to earth and among us mortals, however, we see a link between what our Saudi prince calls and considers "moderate Islam" and the "secular tyrants" of whom the Economist reports. As Madawi Al-Rasheed recently wrote: "The crown prince's understanding of moderate Islam is a project in which dissenting voices are silenced, activists are locked behind bars, and critics are forced into submission."

What is now being trumpeted as "moderate Islam" is an ideology of submission to the overpowering domination of neoliberal economics without any moral or imaginative resistance.

Accepting the Zionist theft of Palestine and competing to establish open diplomatic relations with Israel, systematic oppression of civil liberties at home, mobilisation of transnational Arab armies to bomb civilian targets in Yemen, turning ancient and historic cities to wet dreams of predatory capitalism, massive waste of national resources on advanced military equipment are some of the vintage doctrinal dimensions of this "moderate Islam" now being promoted by these "secular despots".

But under the smokescreen of these "secular despots" and hidden beneath their "moderate Islam," between the degenerate ideologies of fanaticism and ignorance that has informed the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the tribal despotism ruling supreme from one end of the Arab and Muslim world to another, stand tall masses of millions of people whose ancestral faith and political agency are not at the mercy of either Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his gang of murderers or General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi commanding a reactionary junta subverting the Egyptian revolution.

A fine example of such benevolent dictatorship that the Economist describes is the United Arab Emirates whose leaders have evidently "led the way in relaxing religious and social restrictions. While leading a regional campaign against Islamist movements, Muhammad bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and the UAE's de facto leader, has financed the construction of Western university branches and art galleries."

What this kind of outdated Orientalism betrays is the simple proposition that the more the world looks like a fictional Europe, the more it is "secular" and "moderate", the more they are to be trusted and welcomed. Left to their own non-western devices, these Muslims become nasty, brutish, and fanatical. If they cannot become secular and moderate Muslims by themselves, then (damn it, why not) let a tyrant do it for them.

Nations negating their states

Entirely outside the purview of such banal Eurocentric imagination, the fate of nations in the Arab and Muslim world is determined by the internal logic and rhetoric of an entirely different dynamic.

The beautiful struggles of Arabs and Muslims for justice and civil liberties can no longer be divided into the bogus, flawed, and outdated "secular" versus "religious" division or "moderate" versus "radical" Islam. These are US and European think tank mantras categorically irrelevant to the inner working of Muslim moral and historical imagination, of which neither the Economist nor the Saudi prince have a blasted clue.

European colonialism and American imperialism (both now gathered at the root of the Zionist theft of Palestine) framing the rise and persistence of nativist tyranny, are the chief catalysts of critical thinking in the Arab and Muslim world and thus map out the future of its collective national destinies. Without a simultaneous attention to these historical forces, any fly-by-night concept like "secular despots" or "moderate Islam" is highfalutin hogwash.

Ours is as much an age of post-Islamism, in the elegant phrasing of Asef Bayat, as it is of post-secularism, as Jurgen Habermas has theorised. The binary of secular/religious was of a European (Christian) vintage and had nothing to do with Islam, Judaism, or any other religion. "Secularism," as Gil Anidjar has persuasively argued, was and remains Western Christianity thinly disguised.

The inner dynamics of Islam in its encounter with Europeans colonial modernity and the effervescence of Muslim communities in their renewed global and cosmopolitan contexts are mapping out the contours of a vastly different world than the one imagined by the Saudi prince or the prognostications of the Economist.

Tribal monarchies, fake republics, military juntas, secular tyrants, and the militant fanaticism they have created, branded, and now fight are all made of the same cloth. The fate of 1.6 billion human beings who call and consider themselves, in one way or another, 'Muslim' is not and will never be determined by the juvenal delusions of any Arab prince or "secular tyrant" - nor indeed by their common nemesis in the frightful apparition of ISIL and its ilk.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." The Saudi prince must get his clues from the prince of Denmark, stop listening to his American and Israeli advisors and cease wasting his nation's resources on useless billion-dollar projects.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/secular-despots-coming-arab-state-171105142851556.html

- - - Updated - - -

Salaam

Heed the Warning.

"Great art can be made out of love for religion as well as rebellion against it. But a totally secularized society with contempt for religion sinks into materialism and self-absorption and gradually goes slack, without leaving an artistic legacy."

Camille Paglia

Salaam

Another perspective.

Salaam

Another update

Responding to Countries Accusing IUMS of Terrorism, Al Qaradawy: You Fight Moderation and Support Terrorism

Dr. Yusuf Al Qaradawy, the IUMS president, criticized the inclusion of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS) and the World Muslim Council in the banned terror lists by UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt.


Al-Qaradawy questioned on his Twitter account: "For decades, IUMS had taken on the responsibility to resist the tendency towards extremism that comes from their region, spreading chaos in the Muslim world, and today they accused us of terrorism!”

The four countries announced in a statement that they’re listing the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS) and the World Muslim Council as terrorist organization, accusing the two institutions of "working to promote terrorism through the exploitation of Islamic discourse.” However, as in Qatar case, none of the countries has provided any evidence to support their terrorism claims.

http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=32857