• Israel’s ex-intel chief : ‘Together, we can do a lot to make Middle East a better place’ - France 24
    http://www.france24.com/en/20160629-interview-israel-security-peace-turkey-saudi-arabia-syria-israeli

    The former head of Israel’s military intelligence [...] admits that Saudi and Israeli officials have been meeting “below the radar” and says such contacts could now become more official because both countries face a common enemy: Iran.

    Un passage sur la relation entre #Israël et les #Saoud commence à 2’45" : à 4’45" débute le passage où l’Israélien confirme clairement qu’en 2006 l’#Arabie_Saoudite a aidé #Israel (en lui fournissant des « renseignements stratégiques ») dans ses #crimes de guerre contre le #Liban.

    Via angry arab

  • L’Arabie saoudite sévit contre les coiffures fantaisistes des footballeurs - L’Orient-Le Jour
    http://www.lorientlejour.com/article/980088/larabie-saoudite-sevit-contre-les-coiffures-fantaisistes-des-football

    « Ce phénomène est contraire à l’islam et aux traditions du royaume », écrit un commentateur dans le quotidien saoudien Al-Jazirah, appelant la Fédération de football à « imposer des sanctions » aux joueurs récalcitrants dont « les coupes bizarres sont imitées par leurs fans dans les écoles ».

    #saoudie_ridicule #clichés_arabes

  • In China, rise of Salafism fosters suspicion and division among Muslims
    http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-saudi-arabia-20160201-story.html

    Meanwhile, Saudi preachers and organizations began traveling to China. Some of them bore gifts: training programs for clerics, Korans for distribution, funding for new “Islamic institutes” and mosques.

    “This exposure to Saudi discourses actually caused a momentary implosion within the Salafi community in the 1980s,” said Mohammed Al-Sudairi, a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong who spent years researching Salafi Muslims in China.

    “The new generation, which was much more engaged and influenced by Saudi Arabia, began to contest the knowledge of the older generation. You had a lot of excommunication within the [Muslim] community, people were saying to each other that they were not real Muslims.”

    (via Angry Arab)

  • Wahhabi religious nationalism turns ugly – POLITICO
    http://www.politico.eu/article/wahhabi-religious-nationalism-turns-ugly-mecca

    Par Madawi al-Rashid

    The contemporary wave of terrorism sweeping the world has its ideological roots in the revival of a militarized religious nationalism with Saudi Arabia at its heart. Unbounded by territory, it combines religion and politics to create a “pure” and godly community and brings together fragmented and culturally different people whose only common bond is Islam.

    In the Arab world, religious nationalism was invented early in the 20th century in Saudi Arabia, a kingdom whose goal was to unite dispersed people and purify their religious beliefs and practices under the #leadership of the Al-Saud. This unification took place as a result of a fringe Islamic revivalist tradition, commonly known as Wahhabiyya, which morphed into a military religious nationalist movement. With time, the project went beyond simple piety: Sharia law and conformity to Islamic teachings were rigorously applied. Under state patronage, this Wahhabiyya was turned into a quasi-nationalist project. Its ideology has proliferated and now inspires Muslims across the globe, fueled by #petrodollars and globalization.

    #wahhabisme #arabie_saoudite #saoud

  • Wave of TV Ads Opposing #Iran Deal Organized By Saudi Arabian Lobbyist
    https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/20/wave-anti-iran-deal-tv-ads-organized-saudi-arabian-lobbyist

    Television stations across the country are being flooded with $6 million of advertisements from a group called the “American Security Initiative” urging citizens to call their U.S. Senators and oppose the nuclear deal with Iran.

    Though the American Security Initiative does not reveal donor information, the president of the new group, former Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., is a registered lobbyist for Saudi Arabia. Coleman’s firm, Hogan Lovells, is on retainer to the Saudi Arabian monarchy for $60,000 a month. In July 2014, Coleman described his work as “providing legal services to the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia” on issues including “legal and policy developments involving Iran and limiting Iranian nuclear capability.”

    The co-chairs of the American Security Initiative include former Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., former Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and former Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga. Chambliss works at DLA Piper, another #lobbying firm retained to influence U.S. policy on behalf of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia.

    #Etats-Unis #Arabie_Saoudite #Saoud

  • WikiLeaks. Comment l’#Arabie_Saoudite promeut l’islamisme à l’échelle planétaire

    The New York Times a trié et vérifié 60 000 câbles diplomatiques saoudiens révélés par WikiLeaks. Conclusion : le royaume wahhabite a mis en place un redoutable système de #prosélytisme à échelle planétaire pour faire la promotion d’un #islamisme rigoriste.

    http://www.courrierinternational.com/article/wikileaks-comment-larabie-saoudite-promeut-lislamisme-lechell

  • Wikileaks: Saudi Arabia and #Azhar on the ’Shia encroachment’ in Egypt | Mada Masr
    http://www.madamasr.com/sections/politics/wikileaks-saudi-arabia-and-azhar-shia-encroachment-egypt

    Faisal sent another “secret and urgent” cable to the Saudi king and prime minister that said the Al-Azhar sheikh met the Saudi ambassador in August 2010, and told him that the Iranians were pushing for a meeting for rapprochement between different sects, and that the Al-Azhar sheikh “didn’t want to make a decision in this regard before coordinating with the [Saudi] Kingdom about it .”

    Then, in September 2011, newly appointed Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Ahmed #al-Tayyeb condemned “the attempts to propagate Shia beliefs in Sunni countries, especially Egypt, and next to the minaret of Al-Azhar, the bastion of the people of Sunna.”

    Amr Ezzat, a freedom of religion and belief officer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), says that Al-Azhar cannot be dealt with as one body with a unified intellectual reference. He considers it a jungle of diverse ideas and religious directions, with the Al-Azhar chiefdom at the top, which has the authority to coordinate with several political players, given that its main concern is maintaining stability.

    That’s why Al-Azhar continues to play an essential role as an institutional alternative in moments when the state needs to resist political religious movements and crack down on them, according to Ezzat.

    But in general, Ezzat thinks that the concept of “Shia encroachment” is highly exaggerated.

    He adds that the Saudi government is afraid of the increase of Iranian influence in the area because of the Shia population that lives in East Saudi, which is close to the Shia communities of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon, who are considered enemies of the Saudi regime.

    But he says that there’s an overestimation of the relation of Shia communities outside of Iran. For example, Ezzat says that a group of Egyptian Shia who decided to demand their rights to practice their beliefs and rituals after the 2011 revolution has a deep political disagreement with Iran.

    #Saoud

    • Pour replacer ces infos très intéressantes dans un contexte historique plus large de la politisation de la question chiite à al-Azhar et en Egypte, depuis l’époque de Nasser jusqu’à nos jours, voici un intéressant article d’al-Ahram. Les critiques sur les qualités de l’article - qui dépasse mes connaissances limitées - sont plus que bienvenues :
      Identity-politics , Egypt and the Shia / al-Ahram weekly 2013
      http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/News/2376/21/Identity-politics,-Egypt-and-the-Shia.aspx
      Sur la fatwa de Shaltoot en 1959 (grand imam d’al-Azhar) qui reconnaît la doctrine jaafarite (chiite duodécimaine), fatwa récusée en 2012 :

      In 1959, the sheikh of Al-Azhar Mahmoud Shaltout, who had established that office, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, sanctioning worship in accordance with the rights of the Jaafari school of religious jurisprudence, to which the majority of Shia subscribe. His fatwa stated, “It is legally permissible to worship in accordance with the Jaafari doctrine, which is known to be the doctrine of the Twelver Shiites, as is the case with the Sunni doctrines. The Muslim people should know this and shed unwarranted bigotry against certain creeds. The religion of God and His Sharia have never been affiliated with or restricted to any one doctrinal order. All who strive to perfect their faith are acceptable to Almighty God, and those who are not qualified to engage in the disciplines of theological and jurisprudential inquiry may emulate and follow the rulings of those that are. There is no difference[between Muslims] in the [basic tenets of] worship and interaction.”

      Une note dans wikipedia cite la biographie de Nasser par Said Aburish pour expliquer l’aspect politique de cette fatwa, Nasser espérait affaiblir l’alliance du général Qassem et des communistes en rendant la RAU et le nationalisme arabe plus atttractif pour les chiites irakiens :
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Azhar_Shia_Fatwa

      Aburish, Saïd K. (2004). Nasser: the last Arab (illustrated ed.). Duckworth. pp. 200–201. ISBN 9780715633007. “But perhaps the most far reaching change [initiated by Nasser’s guidance] was the fatwa commanding the readmission to mainstream Islam of the Shia, Alawis, and Druze. They had been considered heretics and idolaters for hundreds of years, but Nasser put an end to this for once and for all. While endearing himself to the majority Shia of Iraq and undermining Kassem [the communist ruler of Iraq at the time] might have played a part in that decision, there is no doubting the liberalism of the man in this regard.”

      Il me semble avoir lu (est-ce dans la biographie de Saddam Hussein par le même Aburish ?) que Saddam Hussein (alors réfugié en Egypte) avait joué un rôle pour l’édiction de cette fatwa. J’avais souvenir aussi que le grand mufti d’Arabie saoudite s’était opposé à cette fatwa. Si des seenthissiens éclairés ont des infos et des sources...
      A l’époque de Sadate et dans le cadre de son opposition à la révolution iranienne puis de son engagement auprès de l’Irak contre l’Iran :

      President Sadat, who had opposed the Iranian Revolution, hosted the deposed Shah in Egypt, initiating a decades-long rupture in relations between Cairo and Tehran. Yet, in that very year, he closed down the Society of the Ahl Al-Bayt (the House of the Prophet Mohamed), the main Shia institute in Egypt. Henceforward, the Egyptian-Iranian conflict would acquire a salient sectarian dimension. This development was aggravated by the Shia insularism that had begun to permeate Iran’s theocratic regime under the system of vilayet-e faqih (rule by clergy) and that rendered the Shia affiliation virtually synonymous with Iranian identity. When Egypt became involved on the Iraqi side of the Iraq-Iran war, Egyptian security services became acutely sensitive to this identity and began to clamp down on all forms of Shia associations in Egypt, regardless of the fact that this community exists on the margins of society which, in turn, was geographically and emotionally remote from that conflict. At the same time, the state had begun to allow the Salafist tide to penetrate society, giving rise to the spread of ultraconservative doctrinal rigidity and the onset of mounting sectarian tensions between Muslims and Copts.

      Après la victoire du Hezbollah en 2006 et l’enthousiasme qu’elle génère y compris dans les masses sunnites arabes, qui mettent en difficulté les alliances de Moubarak, les salafistes égyptiens relancent le discours sectaire sur le « danger » de la pénétration chiite en Egypte, tout cela en lien avec les pétromonarchies du Golfe :

      Although initially the Shia question had not featured strongly in Salafist rhetoric, it was not remote. When Egyptians rejoiced at the Hizbullah victory over the Israeli army in 2006, Salafi sheikhs moved to avert the perceived threat to Sunni Egypt from the admiration of the victory, and produced a battery of recordings and lectures warning of the looming Shia tide. This drive coincided with an official rhetoric on the part of the Egyptian government, which at the time was engaged in a war of strategic balances against Iran and its allies, in alliance with the governments of the Gulf that are the chief sponsors of the Salafist movements in the Arab world.

      Après la chute de Moubarak et dans le cadre de la rivalité FM/salafistes les FM et le pouvoir de Morsi ne sont pas en reste selon l’auteur - je me demande si ce passage ne manque pas un peu de nuance car l’attitude de Morsi face à l’Iran fut très ambivalente et versatile :

      The decision to restore relations with Iran was taken by the regime that the Muslim Brotherhood now controls. In view of its totalitarian nature and the fact that it is an expression of the religious characteristics of Egyptian society, the Muslim Brotherhood did not originally define itself on the basis of Muslim doctrinal divides. Nevertheless, since the 1970s when it found itself in competition with the Salafis over the apportionment of the Egyptian societal pie, it also began to veer toward Salafism. The sensitivity of the doctrinal conflict with the Shia was one of the reasons it had severed connections with the Iranian regime with which it had initially established ties immediately following the victory of the Iranian Revolution. The speech that Morsi delivered in Tehran last August and that alluded heavily to the Sunni-Shia divide was clearly intended to outbid the Salafis at home by playing on the mounting sectarian sensitivities in Egyptian society.

  • Saudi-led naval blockade leaves 20m Yemenis facing humanitarian disaster | World news | The Guardian
    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/05/saudi-led-naval-blockade-worsens-yemen-humanitarian-disaster

    Riad avait été remercié (sic) d’avance par l’ONU pour sa générosité (sic)

    Despite western and UN entreaties, Riyadh has also failed to disburse any of the $274m it promised in funding for humanitarian relief. According to UN estimates due to be released next week 78% of the population is in need of emergency aid, an increase of 4 million over the past three months.

    #mascarade #crimes_légalisés #Saoud #Yemen

    • Et voici pour les wahabites en Irak et au pays de Cham:
      “Isis use water as a weapon in Iraq, by shutting dam on the Euphrates River”
      http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-use-water-as-a-weapon-in-iraq-by-shutting-dam-on-the-euphrates-r

      Water has become the latest weapon in Isis’ arsenal, after militants closed the gates of a dam in western Iraq - allowing them easier access to government forces.
      In a move that could expose residents in southern provinces to drought, Isis fighters have redirected the flow of the Euphrates River, to give them better access to government fighters on the southern bank, according to local officials.
      The Euphrates has acted as a geographical barrier between Isis fighters who have seized the river’s northern bank, and pro-government forces who are attempting to move closer to Ramadi from the other side.

  • Les Inrocks - En Suède, la ministre des affaires étrangères est féministe, et ça a des conséquences

    http://www.lesinrocks.com/2015/04/17/actualite/en-suede-la-ministre-des-affaires-etrangeres-est-feministe-et-ca-a-des-c

    La ministre des affaires étrangères suédoise, Margot Wallström, prône une “politique étrangère féministe”. Loin d’être une coquille vide ou un effet d’annonce, sa démarche a des conséquences diplomatiques notables.

    Depuis octobre 2014, la Suède a une ministre des Affaires étrangères féministe : la social-démocrate Margot Wallström. En relations internationales, être féministe peut sembler a priori inconséquent. C’est pourtant loin d’être le cas. Le mois dernier l’Arabie saoudite a ainsi rapatrié son ambassadeur en Suède, et a annoncé qu’elle n’accorderait plus de visas aux commerçants suédois en voyage, suite aux propos de cette ministre décidée à lutter pour les droits des femmes, y compris au niveau international. Pour les mêmes raisons, elle a été privée de discours devant la Ligue arabe, le 9 mars dernier.

    #suède #féminisme #arabie #saoudite

  • Les #sionistes sont géniaux : l#'islam le plus « #modéré » est celui des #Saoud.
    http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/middleeast/2015/02/mossad-moderate-muslim-scorecard-spy-cables-israel-indoctrination-1502251

    Reporting approvingly on these efforts, Mossad’s spies give top marks to the Saudi Kingdom. “Most prominent is Saudi Arabia’s determination to conduct a comprehensive campaign against the global jihad ideology,” the Mossad’s spies write.

    #orwell

  • Moussaoui Calls Saudi Princes Patrons of #Al_Qaeda
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/us/zacarias-moussaoui-calls-saudi-princes-patrons-of-al-qaeda.html

    WASHINGTON — In highly unusual testimony inside the federal supermax prison, a former operative for Al Qaeda has described prominent members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family as major donors to the terrorist network in the late 1990s and claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

    The Qaeda member, Zacarias Moussaoui, wrote last year to Judge George B. Daniels of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who is presiding over a lawsuit filed against Saudi Arabia by relatives of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He said he wanted to testify in the case, and after lengthy negotiations with Justice Department officials and the federal Bureau of Prisons, a team of lawyers was permitted to enter the prison and question him for two days last October.

    #Saoud #Arabie_Saoudite

    • Claims Against Saudis Cast New Light on Secret Pages of 9/11 Report
      http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/us/claims-against-saudis-cast-new-light-on-secret-pages-of-9-11-report.html

      Saudi Princes’ Deep Ties to the West
      Three of the Saudi princes accused by Zacarias Moussaoui, a member of Al Qaeda, have strong diplomatic and business ties to the United States.

      Prince Bandar bin Sultan was known as “the toast of Washington” who had an “aura of charming roguishness” when he served as Saudi ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005. He is a nephew of King Salman and King Abdullah, who died last month. Prince Bandar, 65, had been close to President George Bush and his son, President George W. Bush, and helped deliver Saudi support for America’s crucial Middle East initiatives during three wars and the fight against terrorism.

      He was the head of Saudi intelligence from 2012 until last April, and had been the architect of Riyadh’s plan to remove President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and lobbied against an interim nuclear accord with Iran.

      Prince Turki al-Faisal, 69 , is another of the king’s nephews. He replaced Prince Bandar as the Saudi ambassador in Washington in 2005 and served in that post for two years. He was the head of Saudi intelligence from 1977 until Aug. 31, 2001, and managed Riyadh’s relations with Osama bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar of the Taliban.

      In an interview in 2005, he said the accusation contained in a lawsuit, later dismissed, that he provided support to Al Qaeda “was kind of a slap in the face.”

      Prince Alwaleed bin Talal , at 59 is a grandson of Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdulaziz, and is chairman of the Kingdom Holding Company and the wealthiest member of the royal family. (The rapper Busta Rhymes name-checks Prince Alwaleed in the 2008 song “Arab Money.”) He owns Rotana, the Arab world’s largest entertainment company, and holds significant investments in Citigroup, TimeWarner, Twitter and Apple, among other companies. He had a large stake in News Corporation until Tuesday, when his company sold $188 million worth of its shares, according to Financial Times.

      After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Prince Alwaleed offered Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani $10 million for the Twin Towers Fund, but Mr. Giuliani rejected it after the prince criticized American policy in the Middle East.

  • Crime and punishment in Saudi Arabia: The other beheaders | The Economist, 20/09/2014
    http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21618918-possible-reasons-mysterious-surge-executions-other-beheaders

    The condemned may request a painkiller. Their end is not televised, and comes with a swift sword stroke from a skilled executioner rather than from hacking with a kitchen knife by an untutored brute. Otherwise there is not much difference between a death sentence in the jihadists’ “Islamic State” and in Saudi Arabia, a country seen as a crucial Western ally in the fight against IS.

    Both follow Hanbali jurisprudence, the strictest of four schools of traditional Sunni Islamic law: when Egyptians chide someone for nitpicking, the expression is “Don’t be Hanbali”. Dissidents in Raqqa, the Syrian town that is IS’s proto-capital, say all 12 of the judges who now run its court system, adjudicating everything from property disputes to capital crimes, are Saudis. The group has also created a Saudi-style religious police, charged with rooting out vice and shooing the faithful to prayers. And as in IS-ruled zones, where churches and non-Sunni mosques have been blown up or converted to other uses, Saudi Arabia forbids non-Muslim religious practice. For instance, on September 5th Saudi police raided a house in Khafji, near the Kuwaiti border, and charged 27 Asian Christians with holding a church ceremony.

    #Arabie_saoudite #OEI #décapitation #peine_de_mort

  • U.S. embassy: What #Houthis are fighting for
    http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2015/01/us-embassy-what-houthis-are-fighting-for.html
    https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09SANAA2185_a.html

    “Over the past 20 years, #Zaydis -) who have historically made up the majority of the governorate’s population )- have felt increasingly threatened by the radical Sunni Salafism exported from Saudi Arabia (ref b).”

    U.S. embassy: How Houthis obtain their weapons
    http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2015/01/us-embassy-how-houthis-obtain-their.html
    https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09SANAA2186_a.html

    "Contrary to ROYG [Republic of #Yemen Government] claims that Iran is arming the Houthis, most local political analysts report that the Houthis obtain their weapons from the Yemeni black market and even from the ROYG military itself. According to a British diplomat, there are numerous credible reports that ROYG military commanders were selling weapons to the Houthis in the run-up to the Sixth War. An ICG report on the Sa’ada conflict from May 2009 quoted NSB [National Security Bureau] director Ali Mohammed al-Ansi saying, “Iranians are not arming the Houthis. The weapons they use are Yemeni. Most actually come from fighters who fought against the socialists during the 1994 war and then sold them.” Mohammed Azzan, presidential advisor for Sa’ada affairs, told PolOff on August 16 that the Houthis easily obtain weapons inside Yemen, either from battlefield captures or by buying them from corrupt military commanders and soldiers. Azzan said that the military “covers up its failure” by saying the weapons come from #Iran."

    #salafisme #salafistes #Saoud #Arabie_Saoudite

  • Saudi Blogger’s Flogging Should Outrage U.S. | Human Rights Watch
    http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/01/13/saudi-bloggers-flogging-should-outrage-us

    Where are some Muslims getting the idea that violence against journalists who offend them is OK? Why do they see beheadings as a fitting punishment?

    A good place to look for answers would be to examine Saudi Arabia’s policies of intolerance and extremism.

    (...)

    The West’s denunciations of ISIS abuses have less credibility when governments carrying out similar abuses, if much smaller in scale and magnitude, are good chums, strong allies, and important investors.

    #nos_valeurs” "#occident" #Saouds

  • Quand Jaurès parlait des « fanatiques de l’Islam »
    http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/jerome-pellissier/070115/quand-jaures-parlait-des-fanatiques-de-lislam

    Précision importante : le texte qui suit prend la forme d’une intervention de Jaurès à la Chambre des députés. Elle compile en réalité deux interventions différentes (l’une de 1908, l’autre de 1912) et quelques phrases extraites d’un discours de 1905 (à Limoges) et d’un article de 1912 (dans l’Humanité). Mais tous les propos que Jaurès y tient (1) sont bien de Jaurès !

    • Ce monde musulman que vous méconnaissez tant, messieurs, depuis quelques décennies prend conscience de son unité et de sa dignité. Deux mouvements, deux tendances inverses s’y trouvent : il y a les fanatiques, oui, il y a des fanatiques, qui veulent en finir par la crainte, le fer et le feu avec la civilisation européenne et chrétienne,

      VOIX : Vous voyez bien que ce sont des sauvages !

      JAURÈS : Alors, monsieur, précisez-le : des sauvages qui veulent porter le fer et le feu contre une civilisation sauvage qui est venue à eux, qui est venue contre eux en portant le fer et le feu...

      (Brouhaha très fort)

      JAURÈS : ... il y a des fanatiques, mais il y a les hommes modernes, les hommes nouveaux... Il y a toute une élite qui dit : l’Islam ne se sauvera qu’en se renouvelant, qu’en interprétant son vieux livre religieux selon un esprit nouveau de liberté, de fraternité, de paix.

      Et c’est à l’heure où ce mouvement se dessine que vous fournissez aux fanatiques de l’Islam l’occasion de dire : comment serait-il possible de se réconcilier avec cette Europe brutale ? Avec cette France, qui se dit de justice et de liberté, mais qui n’a contre nous d’autres gestes que les canons et les fusils ?
...

      Oui, messieurs, si les violences auxquelles se livre l’Europe en Afrique achèvent d’exaspérer la fibre blessée des musulmans, si l’Islam un jour répond par un fanatisme farouche et une vaste révolte à l’universelle agression, qui pourra s’étonner ? Qui aura le droit de s’indigner ?

  • Deux #Saoudiennes renvoyées devant un tribunal « antiterroriste » pour avoir conduit
    http://www.lemonde.fr/moyen-orient/article/2014/12/25/deux-saoudiennes-renvoyees-devant-un-tribunal-antiterroriste-pour-avoir-cond

    Deux militantes, détenues en #Arabie_saoudite pour avoir défendu le droit de conduire pour les femmes dans le royaume, ont été renvoyées devant un tribunal spécialisé dans les affaires de #terrorisme, ont indiqué jeudi 25 décembre des activistes. L’audience s’est tenue à Al-Ahsa, dans la province orientale du pays.

    Loujain Hathloul avait été arrêtée le 1er décembre après avoir tenté d’entrer en Arabie saoudite au volant de sa voiture en provenance des Emirats arabes unis. La journaliste saoudienne Maysaa Alamoudi, qui était allée à la frontière pour soutenir sa compatriote, avait également été interpellée. L’Arabie saoudite est le seul pays au monde qui interdit aux #femmes de conduire.

    UN PAYS « ENNEMI D’INTERNET »

    Les activistes, qui ont rapporté l’information jeudi sur la saisine d’un tribunal antiterroriste, n’ont pas été en mesure d’indiquer les charges susceptibles d’être retenues contre les deux Saoudiennes. Ils ont cependant expliqué que les investigations semblaient se concentrer autour de leurs activités sur les réseaux sociaux, plutôt qu’autour de leurs revendications pour le droit de conduire.

    Loujain Hathloul est suivie par 228 000 personnes sur Twitter et Maysaa Alamoudi par 131 000. Cette dernière a également animé un programme sur YouTube concernant l’interdiction faite aux femmes de conduire en Arabie saoudite.

    Le royaume fait partie des « ennemis d’Internet », selon Reporters sans frontières (RSF), qui ne cesse de dénoncer une « censure implacable », alors que, ces dernières années, « s’était développée une certaine forme de liberté d’expression ».

    En octobre, des dizaines de femmes avaient posté des images d’elles en train de conduire. Le ministère de l’intérieur avait alors annoncé qu’il appliquerait « strictement » toutes les mesures nécessaires à l’encontre de ceux qui mettent en péril « la cohésion sociale ».

    "#modéré" #Saoud

  • Turki Faysal compares ISIS to “Palestinian terrorist groups”.
    http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2014/12/turki-faysal-compares-isis-to.html

    "Quelles sont les racines de l’Etat islamique ?

    Turki Al-Faysal :
    Vous appelez ces gens Daech [acronyme arabe de l’Etat islamique], moi je les appelle Fahech [un jeu de mot qui fait référence à fahch, qui signifie « péché mortel »], c’est-à-dire le pire du pire. Je ne veux pas leur faire l’honneur de les appeler « Etat ». Ce n’est pas un phénomène nouveau. Avant il y a eu Al-Qaida et, encore avant, les groupes terroristes palestiniens." (thanks Raed)

    #modéré#Saoud

  • Islamic State sets sights on Saudi Arabia
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30061109

    Extraordinaire #BBC (#Frank_Gardner)

    Reaching out to IS’s growing number of Saudi followers, he sets out a target list for attack, starting with the Shia who make up a minority of Saudi nationals, living mostly in the oil-rich Eastern Province, and whom hardline Salafi radicals view as heretics.

    (...)

    ...security has deteriorated rapidly on the southern border with Yemen, where a number of Saudi extremists have joined al-Qaeda after being released from rehab programmes where they pledged to renounce violence.

    Saudi Arabia is unlikely to face a direct military invasion by IS.

    It has a well-marked and patrolled northern border with Iraq and a military equipped with billions of dollars’ worth of Western weapons.

    #Saoud #intègre et #fort

  • L’opposition à #Muhammad_bin_'Abdelwahhab commença dans la propre famille du réformateur : « Sulayman bin ’Abdelwahhab demanda un jour à son frère Muhammad : ’Combien sont les piliers de l’islam ?’ ’ Cinq’ répondit-il. Sulayman répliqua : ’ Non, tu en as ajouté un sixième, qui dit que ceux qui refusent de te suivre ne sont pas de vrais musulmans. Pour toi, c’est le sixieme pilier de l’islam’ » (Ibn Zaini Dahlan, historien nadjidi du XIXe siècle.)

    Pascal Ménoret : l’Arabie. Des routes de l’encens à l’ère du pétrole. (Découvertes Gallimard)

    #Saoud #wahhabisme

  • ISIS and the war of ideas
    http://www.al-bab.com/blog/2014/october/isis-and-the-war-of-ideas.htm#sthash.UYnfvJqM.STZEhSpn.dpbs

    Certes le #sectarisme est la plaie du monde arabe comme le dit Brian Whitaker, mais il n’est pas du tout sérieux de prendre à témoin un officiel occidental sans prise en compte de l’histoire récente (), et de préconiser une « bataille des idées » sans aborder le versant social et économique ni la pourriture des dirigeants arabes (également pris à témoin !) et leur soutien par les mêmes officiels occidentaux.

    () Quand l’#USAID finançait des livres scolaires afghans préconisant de zigouiller les athées au nom du Djihâd.

    En paywall sur le WaPo :
    From U.S., the ABC’s of Jihad ; Violent Soviet-Era Textbooks Complicate Afghan Education Efforts
    By Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
    Washington Post Staff Writers
    Saturday, March 23, 2002 ; Page A01
    http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/doc/409274513.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Mar%2023,%202

    Archivé ici :
    http://supportdanielboyd.wordpress.com/usa-printed-textbooks-support-jihad-in-afghanistan-and-

    In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.

    The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.

    As Afghan schools reopen today, the United States is back in the business of providing schoolbooks. But now it is wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism. What seemed like a good idea in the context of the Cold War is being criticized by humanitarian workers as a crude tool that steeped a generation in violence.

    Last month, a U.S. foreign aid official said, workers launched a “scrubbing” operation in neighboring Pakistan to purge from the books all references to rifles and killing. Many of the 4 million texts being trucked into Afghanistan, and millions more on the way, still feature Koranic verses and teach Muslim tenets.

    The White House defends the religious content, saying that Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture and that the books “are fully in compliance with U.S. law and policy.” Legal experts, however, question whether the books violate a constitutional ban on using tax dollars to promote religion.

    Organizations accepting funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development must certify that tax dollars will not be used to advance religion. The certification states that AID “will finance only programs that have a secular purpose. . . . AID-financed activities cannot result in religious indoctrination of the ultimate beneficiaries.”

    The issue of textbook content reflects growing concern among U.S. policymakers about school teachings in some Muslim countries in which Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism are on the rise. A number of government agencies are discussing what can be done to counter these trends.

    President Bush and first lady Laura Bush have repeatedly spotlighted the Afghan textbooks in recent weeks. Last Saturday, Bush announced during his weekly radio address that the 10 million U.S.-supplied books being trucked to Afghan schools would teach “respect for human dignity, instead of indoctrinating students with fanaticism and bigotry.”

    The first lady stood alongside Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai on Jan. 29 to announce that AID would give the University of Nebraska at Omaha $6.5 million to provide textbooks and teacher training kits.

    AID officials said in interviews that they left the Islamic materials intact because they feared Afghan educators would reject books lacking a strong dose of Muslim thought. The agency removed its logo and any mention of the U.S. government from the religious texts, AID spokeswoman Kathryn Stratos said.

    “It’s not AID’s policy to support religious instruction,” Stratos said. “But we went ahead with this project because the primary purpose . . . is to educate children, which is predominantly a secular activity.”

    Some legal experts disagreed. A 1991 federal appeals court ruling against AID’s former director established that taxpayers’ funds may not pay for religious instruction overseas, said Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law expert at American University, who litigated the case for the American Civil Liberties Union.

    Ayesha Khan, legal director of the nonprofit Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the White House has “not a legal leg to stand on” in distributing the books.

    “Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to supply materials that are religious,” she said.

    Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.

    During that time of Soviet occupation, regional military leaders in Afghanistan helped the U.S. smuggle books into the country. They demanded that the primers contain anti-Soviet passages. Children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines, agency officials said. They acknowledged that at the time it also suited U.S. interests to stoke hatred of foreign invaders.

    “I think we were perfectly happy to see these books trashing the Soviet Union,” said Chris Brown, head of book revision for AID’s Central Asia Task Force.

    AID dropped funding of Afghan programs in 1994. But the textbooks continued to circulate in various versions, even after the Taliban seized power in 1996.

    Officials said private humanitarian groups paid for continued reprintings during the Taliban years. Today, the books remain widely available in schools and shops, to the chagrin of international aid workers.

    “The pictures [in] the texts are horrendous to school students, but the texts are even much worse,” said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, an Afghan educator who is a program coordinator for Cooperation for Peace and Unity, a Pakistan-based nonprofit.

    An aid worker in the region reviewed an unrevised 100-page book and counted 43 pages containing violent images or passages.

    The military content was included to “stimulate resistance against invasion,” explained Yaquib Roshan of Nebraska’s Afghanistan center. “Even in January, the books were absolutely the same . . . pictures of bullets and Kalashnikovs and you name it.”

    During the Taliban era, censors purged human images from the books. One page from the texts of that period shows a resistance fighter with a bandolier and a Kalashnikov slung from his shoulder. The soldier’s head is missing.

    Above the soldier is a verse from the Koran. Below is a Pashtu tribute to the mujaheddin, who are described as obedient to Allah. Such men will sacrifice their wealth and life itself to impose Islamic law on the government, the text says.

    “We were quite shocked,” said Doug Pritchard, who reviewed the primers in December while visiting Pakistan on behalf of a Canada-based Christian nonprofit group. “The constant image of Afghans being natural warriors is wrong. Warriors are created. If you want a different kind of society, you have to create it.”

    After the United States launched a military campaign last year, the United Nations’ education agency, UNICEF, began preparing to reopen Afghanistan’s schools, using new books developed with 70 Afghan educators and 24 private aid groups. In early January, UNICEF began printing new texts for many subjects but arranged to supply copies of the old, unrevised U.S. books for other subjects, including Islamic instruction.

    Within days, the Afghan interim government announced that it would use the old AID-produced texts for its core school curriculum. UNICEF’s new texts could be used only as supplements.

    Earlier this year, the United States tapped into its $296 million aid package for rebuilding Afghanistan to reprint the old books, but decided to purge the violent references.

    About 18 of the 200 titles the United States is republishing are primarily Islamic instructional books, which agency officials refer to as “civics” courses. Some books teach how to live according to the Koran, Brown said, and “how to be a good Muslim.”

    UNICEF is left with 500,000 copies of the old “militarized” books, a $200,000 investment that it has decided to destroy, according to U.N. officials.

    On Feb. 4, Brown arrived in Peshawar, the Pakistani border town in which the textbooks were to be printed, to oversee hasty revisions to the printing plates. Ten Afghan educators labored night and day, scrambling to replace rough drawings of weapons with sketches of pomegranates and oranges, Brown said.

    “We turned it from a wartime curriculum to a peacetime curriculum,” he said

    • L’USAID restait droit dans ses bottes,
      http://www.equip123.net/docs/e1-RoleofNGOsAfghanistan.pdf

      The University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Education Sector Support Project (UNO-ESSP) funded by USAID made a significant contribution to the Afghan education system both in Afghanistan and in refugee camps in Pakistan by developing a curriculum for primary levels (1-12), and training 3,500 teachers (17% females). Though the curriculum was initially Jihad-oriented, a revised version without the war messages became the standard curriculum, which is used to this day.

    • Une partie de l’article du WaPo traduit ici,
      http://www.mondialisation.ca/de-lafghanistan-a-la-syrie-droits-des-femmes-propagande-de-guerre-et-cia/5331097?print=1

      « [D]ans le cadre d’une tentative clandestine visant à stimuler la résistance à l’occupation soviétique, les États-Unis ont dépensé des millions de dollars pour fournir aux élèves afghans des recueils remplis d’images violentes et d’enseignements islamiques militants.

      Les premiers livres, plein de discours djihadistes et de dessins d’armes à feu, de balles, de soldats et de mines servent depuis ce temps de programme de base du système scolaire afghan. Même les talibans ont utilisé les livres produits aux États-Unis.

      La Maison-Blanche défend le contexte religieux en disant que la culture afghane est imprégnée des principes islamiques et que les livres “sont entièrement conformes aux politiques et à la loi des États-Unis”. Des juristes se demandent toutefois si ces livres violent une loi constitutionnelle interdisant que l’argent des contribuables serve à promouvoir la religion.

      [D]es représentants de l’AID ont déclaré qu’ils avaient laissé le matériel islamique intact, craignant que les éducateurs afghans ne rejettent des livres ne contenant pas une forte dose de pensée islamique. L’agence a enlevé son logo et toute mention du gouvernement étasunien des textes religieux, a affirmé la porte-parole de l’AID Kathryn Stratos.

      “L’appui à une éducation religieuse ne fait pas partie des politique de l’AID, mais nous sommes allés de l’avant avec ce projet parce que l’objectif principal […] est d’éduquer les enfants, une tâche principalement laïque”, a déclaré Mme Stratos.

      [P]ublié dans les principales langues Afghanes, le dari et le pachtoune, les recueils ont été conçus au début des années 1980 grâce à une subvention de l’AID à l’Université du Nebraska à Omaha et son Centre d’études afghanes. L’agence a versé 51 millions de dollars aux programmes d’éducation de l’université en Afghanistan de 1984 à 1994. » (Washington Post, 23 mars 2002.)

    • Olivier Roy : « Ce qui se passe en Irak et en Syrie est le prolongement de l’Afghanistan »
      http://www.telerama.fr/monde/olivier-roy-ce-qui-se-passe-en-irak-et-en-syrie-est-le-prolongement-de-l-af

      En 1985, vous voyez arriver les premiers djihadistes algériens et turcs…

      Cette guerre les a fait exister, puisqu’ils étaient considérés par l’#Occident comme des #alliés. Pour les #Américains, s’ils tuaient des Russes, c’était bien, et s’ils se faisaient tuer par les Russes, c’était bien également. Moi, sur le terrain, je voyais qu’ils étaient soutenus par les #Saoudiens et les #Pakistanais, que ce n’était pas qu’une histoire de têtes brûlées, mais le résultat de #politiques_étatiques et religieuses. J’ai compris que cette guerre aurait des effets de long terme, que c’était l’acte de naissance d’un nouveau phénomène social : le #djihadisme.

    • Winning “Hearts and Minds” | Jacobin
      https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/terrorism-america-isis-obama

      Consider some of the terrorist groups Obama mentions in his op-ed. While much has already been written about the US role in the growth of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, the TTP in Pakistan also owes much of its success to US policy in the region (along with America’s unsavory ally, Saudi Arabia).

      Militant groups in Pakistan have long benefitted from state patronage and alliances with the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda. The former is perhaps the defining theme in mainstream media coverage of Pakistan’s ostensible “double game.” What is less often emphasized is the infrastructure established during the Afghan Jihad by the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, with US and Saudi funding, which produced thousands of militants.

      According to an estimate by US officials, some fifteen thousand fighters were trained in “bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla warfare” in Afghan camps that the CIA helped set up. As one American official told journalist Jason Burke in 1999, “we created a whole cadre of trained and motivated people who turned against us. It’s a classic Frankenstein’s monster situation.” The shared CIA and ISI strategy during the Afghan Jihad resulted in flooding the region “not only with all kinds of weapons but also with the most radical Islamist recruits.”

      Already well established by the time the US invaded Afghanistan, militant groups in Pakistan were jolted into action by the war and its subsequent spread into the country. The militant landscape changed significantly after the Pakistani government’s decision to support the US war in Afghanistan.