Salafis, Shiites,Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Battle for Syria

The New York Times today, with a magnificent and disturbing set of photographs, reports on the rapid deterioration of sanity in Syria.

The crowd beating a suspected government agent.

The Times notes

In interviews last week, some residents of Homs, including several Christians and Alewives, expressed fears that hard-line Sunnis known as Salafis were forming armed groups and stoking violence.

My concern is that the Saudis are financing armed, jihadist rebellion in Syria, in opposition the interests of the majority of those who hope for a peaceful, nonsectarian transition of government.. The Times article notes

One prominent leftist activist in Homs, heeding the concerns, said he was pressing his fellow activists to renounce the armed movement and stick to peaceful protests.

If Wikipedia has it right,

Salafis often appeals to younger Muslims as a way to differentiate themselves from the beliefs of parents and grandparents because it is seen as a way to get weapons and militant training. 

A majority of Salafi scholars stand firmly with the present-day manifestations of jihad, particularly as it relates to terrorism and the killing of civilians and innocents. They hold their opinion against as:

"No individual has the right to take the law into his own hands on any account. Even the closest of Prophet Muhammad's companions never killed a single of his opponents even when invectives were hurled at him day and night in the first thirteen years of his Da'wah at Makkah. Nor did they kill anyone in retaliation when he was pelted with stones at Ta'if."

In recent years, Salafis have come to be associated with the jihad of Al-Qaeda and related groups that advocate the killing of civilians, which are opposed by most other Muslim groups and governments, including the Saudi government. Debate continues today over the appropriate methods of reform, ranging from violent "Qutubi jihadism" to lesser politicized proselytizing. 

Salafism differs from the earlier contemporary Islamic revival movements of the 1970s and 1980s commonly referred to as Islamism, in that (at least many) Salafis reject not only Western ideologies such as Socialism and Capitalism, but also common Western concepts like economics, constitutions, political parties and revolution. 

Salafis promote that the Sharia (Islamic law) takes precedence over civil or state law.

Egyptian scholar Tawfik Hamid says that Salafist Muslim fundamentalists believe that Saudi Arabia's petroleum-based wealth is a divine gift, and that Saudi influence is sanctioned by God. Thus this extreme brand of Sunni Islam that spread from the Saudi Arabia to the rest of the Islamic world is regarded not merely as one interpretation of the religion but the only genuine interpretation. The expansion of violent and regressive Islam, he continues, began in the late 1970s, and can be traced precisely to the growing financial clout of Saudi Arabia. He says "is puritanical, extreme and does, yes, mean that women can be beaten, apostates killed and Jews called pigs and monkeys."

It is, in the Sunni mind, the Shiites, mostly concentrated in Iran, who are the Apostates who should be killed.  Nasr, The Shia  Revival.  Iran is surrounded by a great sea of Sunni.

Mr. Assad, the dictator  of Syria, is an Alawite.  Many Muslims do not think of Alawites as Muslim., the the religion has a number of Christian celebrations; Easter, for example.  And though a majority of the Syrian population is Sunni, the population is mixed.  There are other important groups -- Christian, Druze, Kurdish, and others.


I fear that the Saudis, with their trillions of dollars and their evangelical, fundamentalist religion which they impose on all they can control, in their paranoia, wish to see Syria turn into a fundamentalist Salafi state because they fear and despise Shiites, Jews, and liberated women; and the Iranians wish to see Syria in Alawite hands and aligned with them, to protect it from the overwhelming mass of surrounding Sunni.

Iraq hangs in the balance.

Thee is a lot at stake.



Here are some images of Salafi, at work and play (their kind of play).

A mural for Somali Salafi

Salafi at the beach

An Egyptian Salafi goalie

Just kidding. Just kidding.

Tank-top Salafi in Lebanon, preparing for Syria

Teaching young Salafi to be, er, Men

A Salafi, er, Man

Respected women's fashions

Disrespected women's fashions

Miss Saudi Arabia