By M D Nalapat
Removal of the Crown Prince from power would be a catastrophe for Saudi Arabia.
That hundreds of
thousands of innocents have died in wars launched by NATO during just
the present century is accepted as fact, as has been the rendition by
the US of several terror suspects to countries severely injurious to the
health of those sent there through such processes. However, once an
individual becomes a columnist for the Washington Post,
the DC Beltway assumes him or her to be an exemplar of liberal values,
and it reveals a gap in the planning of Al Qaeda that the organisation
did not seek to somehow get Osama bin Laden installed as a columnist for
that venerable (and it must be admitted, eminently readable) newspaper.
Had it done so, the ageing fanatic may have secured a tenured post on
the Harvard faculty as an expert on the sociopathology of violence,
rather than get his existence snuffed out by a frenetic bunch of SEALS
at Abbottabad, a location that the Al Qaeda chieftain clearly felt safe
in. The facts are that Jamal Khashoggi is (or was) a cold-blooded
Wahhabi ideologue. The followers of Abdul Wahhab inculcated a century
ago the conviction within substantial segments of the Arab population
that the Sufi Turks were infidels and therefore worthy not of respect,
but of instant annihilation. With the consolidation of power by
President Recep Erdogan, Wahhabism has replaced Sufism as the de facto
official theology of the Turkish state, a change that must have made
Khashoggi feel very much at ease in a context where his own country,
Saudi Arabia, is moving away from Wahhabism into the gentle and
compassionate creed revealed through the Prophet Muhammad more than
1,500 years ago. Prince Turki, the royal patron of the Saudi Washington
Post columnist, is known for his generous backing of groups across the
Middle East that regard the beheading of Christians and Shias as the
surest path to paradise. All such activities took place under the
approving guidance of Khashoggi, who called for retribution in Libya and
Syria to those regarded as apostates by Wahhabis (i.e. those who
sheltered rather than executed Shias and Christians). Ever since the oil
price hikes of the 1970s, the Wahhabi International has been gifted
hundreds of billions of dollars, especially by Al Sauds such as Prince
Turki. Some of that money went into the pockets of scholars, media
persons, politicians and officials in the more prominent member states
of NATO, principally the US and the UK. This extensive and well funded
network has now been activated to ensure that Crown Prince Muhammad bin
Salman (MbS) of Saudi Arabia get weakened enough to be removed from his
current job. The disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, after he was spotted
entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, has become the trigger for a
frenzy of lobbying from the many who have over the years fed at the
trough of Wahhabi generosity to seek the downfall of the Saudi Crown
Prince, who is the successor to King Salman.
Khashoggi was working along with some
members of the Saudi Royal Family to oust the Crown Prince, and was
active in the dissemination of lurid information about the Crown Prince,
who is the first member of the Al Saud family to recognise the
existential danger posed to his country by Wahhabis and work to
eliminate their influence in the way General Al Sisi (another target of
the Washington Post) has carried out against the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt. The Brotherhood makes little secret of the fact that it promotes
religious supremacy, the “right” of Wahhabis to impose their control and
preferences over the rest of society in any country run by them.
Khashoggi must have seethed at, among other actions, the granting of
permission by the UAE to set up a temple in that princely union. Were
any other Post columnist to suggest that a church be set up anywhere in
the Middle East, it is certain that the DC Beltway-certified Saudi
exemplar of liberal values would have been horrified, indeed angered, at
such effrontery. His passionate views on Israel are known to intimates,
including President Erdogan, and it is a sore point with such minds
that Crown Prince Muhammad has opened the door to normal relations
between the country that hosts the holiest of Islamic sites and the tiny
sliver of territory that is the only Jewish state in the world.
Certainly the circumstances surrounding the case of the vanishing
Wahhabi seem unsavoury. If Khashoggi was done in within the consulate,
the amateurishness of the operation must be generating derisive laughter
within the Russian FSB, Israel’s Mossad or the CIA. It would have been
child’s play for a “double” with Khashoggi’s build to have ambled out of
the consulate in a few hours’ time in his clothes, thereby providing
Saudi officials with an alibi. Instead, surveillance cameras that have
never malfunctioned in years suddenly went dark. All this is indeed an
outrage, and possibly a crime. However, success for those seeking the
removal of Crown Prince Muhammad from power would be a catastrophe for
Saudi Arabia.
The only way that country with its
youthful population can face a future in which Saudi oil will earn a
smaller and smaller premium would be to develop the Kingdom as a
knowledge and innovation hub, something possible given the natural
talent of the Arab mind. The fetters placed on Saudi society by Wahhabis
need to be taken off, and this is what the Crown Prince is doing at
considerable personal risk. Jamal Khashoggi was engaged in a coup
attempt against MbS, an effort covertly funded by a few members of the
Al Saud family, who seek thereby to ensure that Wahhabism remains
all-powerful in their very consequential country. This plan has not yet
succeeded, but the hubbub around the disappearance of the Wahhabi
columnist is being fuelled to ensure that public opinion in the US and
within the EU impels politicians there to work towards the ouster of the
Crown Prince. Any reversal of the MbS-led effort now taking place
within Saudi Arabia to de-Wahhabise the country would have harmful
consequences for global security. The Crown Prince is clearly no saint,
as some of the materials about him that have been passed around by
Khashoggi demonstrate. But Muhammad bin Salman’s continuance in his
present office and an avoidance of dilution of his internal authority
are needed for success in the ongoing effort within Saudi Arabia to end
that country’s role as a prime mover in the spread of the Wahhabi
International and the numerous side-effects of such growth. The “baby”
of de-Wahhabisation should not be thrown away with the “bathwater” of
longstanding and regrettable Saudi tactics against those openly working
to overthrow a Saudi King or Crown Prince.
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