On Sir Ibn Whahhab, The 19 th Century, by David Livingston

(extracts):

Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab was born in 1703, in the small town in a barren wasteland called Najd, in the eastern part of what is now called Saudi Arabia. Ominously, Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, had already refused to confer blessings on the region, claiming that from it would emerge only ―disturbances, disorder and the horns of Satan‖. Abdul Wahhab‘s father was a chief judge, adhering to the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence, traditionally prevalent in the area. Yet, both he and Abdul Wahhab‘s brother, Sulayman, detected signs of doctrinal deviance in him from early on. It was Sulayman who would first come out with a lengthy denunciation of his brother.

Following his early education in Medina, Abdul Wahhab traveled outside of the peninsula, venturing first to Basra. He then went to Baghdad, where he married a wealthy bride and settled down for five years. According to Stephen Schwartz, in The Two Faces of Islam, ― some say that during this vagabondage Ibn Abdul Wahhab came into contact with certain Englishmen who encouraged him to personal ambition as well as to a critical attitude about Islam.‖ Specifically, Mir‘at al Harramin, a Turkish work by Ayyub Sabri Pasha, written between 1933 and 1938, states that in Basra, Abdul Wahhab had come into contact with a British spy by the name of Hempher, who ―inspired in him the tricks and lies that he had learned from the British Ministry of the Commonwealth.‖

What the book recommends corresponds closely with British and then American covert strategy in the Third World into the twentieth century.  It recommends, in order to undermine the Muslim’s strong points, to popularize their other shortcomings, according to the following methods: foment discord and publish literature to further incite controversies. Obstruct education, and encourage forms of other-worldliness like mystical Sufism. Encourage oppressiveness among emperors. Encourage secularism, or the need to separate religion from state affairs. Aggravate economic decline through sabotage. Accustom statesmen to such indulgences as sex, sports, alcohol, gambling, and interest banking. Then, in order to make the new generation hostile towards their rulers and scholars, expose them for their corruption.

In order to spread the misconception that Islam is chauvinistic towards women, they must encourage the misinterpretation of the verse in the Koran which state, ― Men are dominant over women, and the saying, ―The woman is altogether evil.‖  Most importantly, they ought to introduce fanaticism among Muslims, and then criticize Islam as a religion of terror. The means of popularizing these vices were determined as having spies appointed as aides to Islamic statesmen, or passed off as slaves and concubines to be sold to their close relatives. Missionary projects are to be carried out in order to penetrate into all social classes of the society, especially into such professions as medicine, engineering, and bookkeeping. The publication of propaganda was to be issued using as fronts churches, schools, hospitals, libraries and charitable institutions in the Islamic countries. Millions of Christian books were to be distributed free of charge. Spies were to be disguised as monks and nuns, and placed in churches and monasteries, and appointed leaders of Christian movements.

Eventually, the British Ministry of Commonwealth managed to acquire for Wahhab the support Mohammad Ibn Saud, the Amir of Dariyah. It was agreed between them that, from then on, power would be held among their descendants, with the Saudis maintaining political authority, and the Wahhabis administering the cult. The Saudis are an important Illuminati family, being secret Jews, like their Doenmeh counterparts in Turkey. According to Mohammad Sakher, who was apparently ordered killed for publishing his findings, Ibn Saud, though pretending to defend the reforms of Abdul Wahhab, was of Jewish origin. In the fifteenth century, Sakher maintains, a Jewish merchant from Basra, named Mordechai, immigrated to Arabia, settling in Dariyah, where he claimed to belong to the Arabian tribe of the Aniza, and there assumed the name of Markan bin Dariyah.

The Aniza tribe, to which the Saudis belong, as well as the ruling Sabah family of Kuwait, originally issued from Khaybar in Arabia, and there are well documented traditions about descendants of Jews from the region, who were supposedly forcibly converted to Islam. More specifically, according to modern occult legend, the Aniza are regarded as being the source of the European Witch Cult, through the person of Abu el-Atahiyya. These legends were popularized by Gerald Gardner, the founder of the modern cult of Wicca. Gardner was also a close associate of Aleister Crowley, as well as a Co-Freemason, the irregular branch of French masonry, co-founded by Annie Besant, which admits women to the 33^rd degree.

Gardner was also the friend and teacher of notorious charlatan Idries Shah, whose book on Sufism is disguised Luciferianism. Idries Shah described the ― Maskhara‖ Dervishes who were also known as the ―Revellers‖ and the ―Wise Ones‖, whose leader was Abu el -Atahiya. The name Aniza, he maintains, means goat and el-Atahiya was commemorated by the ―Revellers‖ with the symbol of a torch burning between the horns of a goat, in obvious allusion to the Baphomet  of the Templars. After Atahiya‘s death, a group of his followers migrated to Moorish
Spain.

In the early eighteenth century, the Aniza had entered the Syrian Desert where they established themselves as a powerful and influential tribe. German traveller Carlsten Niebuhr referred to them in 1761 as the strongest tribe in the Syrian Desert. Today the Aniza remain one of the largest Arabian tribes, having branches in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

The Saudi family was primarily engaged in banditry. This pitted them in conflict against the Ottoman state. This, however, notes Schwartz, ―also created a propensity for them to ally with the British, who were then taking control of the richer and more valuable parts of the Arabian Peninsula: the coastal emirates from Kuwait to Aden.‖

By declaring them all apostates, in 1746, the Wahhabi Saudi alliance made a formal proclamation of ―Jihad‖ against all who did not share their understanding of Islam, thus legalizing their former practice of pillaging.  Nevertheless, the following year, Abdul Wahhab declared himself leader of the Muslims of the world, in direct opposition to the authority of the Sultan in Istanbul, reinforced by a Fatwa ordering ―Jihad‖ against the Ottoman Empire. And,
significantly, in 1788, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud was joined by British forces in occupying Kuwait.

In 1792, Abdul Wahhab died, and Abdul Aziz assumed the leadership of the Wahhabi movement, and extended raids over the next three years into the city of Medina, and the regions of Syria and Iraq. In 1801, the Wahhabis attacked the Shiah holy city of Karbala, in Iraq, slaughtering thousands of its citizens. They ruined and looted the tomb of Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed. As a result, it seems that Abdul Aziz was murdered in 1803, most likely by a Shiah avenger. His son Saud ibn Abdul Aziz then succeeded him. After sacking Karbala, the Wahhabis moved against Mecca. The Ottoman governor of Mecca failed to negotiate a peace, and retreated into the fortress in the city of Ta‘if, where he was pursued by some 10,000 Wahhabis.

• In the taking of Ta‘if, the Wahhabis then set about destroying all the holy tombs and burial grounds, followed by the mosques and Islamic madrassas. It is even said that the leather and gilt bindings of the Islamic holy books they had destroyed were used by them to make sandals. Al Zahawi, an Islamic histori an of the time, recounted:

• They killed everyone in sight, slaughtering both child and adult, the ruler and the ruled, the lowly and the well-born. They began with a suckling child nursing at his mother‘s breast and moved on to a group studying Koran, slaying them, down to the last man. And when they wiped out the people in the houses, they went out into the streets, the shops, and the mosques, killing whoever happened to be there. They killed even men bowed in prayer until they had exterminated every Muslim who dwelt in Ta‘if and only a remnant, some twenty or more, remained.

• These were holed up in Bait al Fitni with ammunition, inaccessible to the Wahhabis‘ approach. There was another group at Bait al Far numbering 270, who fought them that day, then a second and third day, until the Wahhabis sent them a guarantee of clemency; only they tendered this proposal as a trick. For when the Wahhabis entered, they seized their weapons and slew them to a man. They induced others to surrender with a guarantee of mercy and took them to the valley of Waj where they abandoned them in the cold and snow, barefoot, naked and exposed in shame with their women, accustomed to the privacy afforded them by common decency and religious morality. They then plundered their possessions, wealth of any kind, household furnishings, and cash.

• They cast books into the streets, alleys, and byways to be blown to and fro by the wind, among which could be found copies of Koran, volumes of Bukhari, Muslim, other canonical collections of Hadith and books of Islamic jurisprudence, all mounting to the thousands. These books remained there for several days, trampled upon by the Wahhabis. None among them made the slightest attempt to remove even one page of Koran from underfoot to preserve it from the ignominy of this display of disrespect. Then, they razed the houses, and made what was once a town a barren waste.

Wahhabi perniciousness against the Ottoman Empire continued to serveBritish interests. During this period, Britain acquired as a client in southeast Arabia, the state of Oman, with sovereignty over Zanzibar in Africa and parts of the Iranian and neighboring coasts. Britain also expanded its influence northward into the area of the United Arab Emirates. The British also eventually seized control of Aden, on the southern coast of Yemen. Despite these encroachments into Muslim lands, by a hostile non-Muslim power, the Wahhabis would let nothing distract them from their ―Jihad‖ against Islam.

The Wahhabis persisted in their violence in Arabia until 1811, when Mohammed Ali Pasha, the viceroy of Egypt, was engaged by the Ottoman Sultan to address the Wahhabi nuisance. He appointed his son Tosun Pasha commander, but his forces were badly defeated. Ali Pasha then assumed command, and in 1812, swept through Arabia, eradicating the Wahhabi problem. Two of the worst Wahhabi fanatics, Uthman ul Mudayiqi and Mubarak ibn Maghyan, were sent to Istanbul, paraded through the streets, until they were executed.  Ali Pasha also sent troops under his second son, Ibrahim Pasha, to root the Wahhabis out of Syria, Iraq and Kuwait.

Those Arabs that had suffered at the hands of the Wahhabis rose in revolt, joining Ali Pasha‘s forces. In 1818, the Wahhabi stronghold of Dariyah was taken and destroyed, though some of the Saudis received protection from the British in Jeddah. Saud ibn Adbul Aziz had died of fever in 1814, but his heir, Abdullah ibn Saud, was sent to Istanbul, where he was executed along with other captured Wahhabis. The rest of the Wahhabi clan was held in captivity in Cairo.

Despite their initial defeat, the Wahhabis regrouped in Najd, establishing a new capital in Riyad. Within a few decades, the Wahhabis began a renewed expansion which, as noted by Hamid Al gar, ―was fortuitous in that it ultimately brought the Sauds into contact with the British who were not only seeking to consolidate their dominance of the Persian Gulf but also beginning to lay plans for the dismemberment of the Ottoman State.‖

NB: the business about the British Spy has since been soundly refuted as a forgery.  – oz