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CONTENT

INTRODUCTION 4

CHAPTER 1: 7

INSTITUTIONAL DIMENSIONS OF THE UAE’s SUFI NETWORK

Charging Political Sufism 8

Confronting Islamic Movements With Political Sufism 12

United Arab Emirates: Security And Balance 15

The Establishment Of The “Council Of Elders”: 18 Strengthening Civil Peace Or Fuelling Political Disagreement?

‘The Muslim Council Of Elders’ – Objectives And Contradictions 23

The Formation Of The Muslim Council Of Elders 27 And Challenges Of Representation

Will The Council Of Muslim Elders Succeed In Establishing 30 A New Religious Authority?

The Sufi Political Network And How It Operates 34

“Mominoun Without Borders” – The Islamic Left And Political Sufism 39

The Future Of Political Sufism 43

CHAPTER 2: 47

THE POLITICAL ROLE OF THE ‘NEW DERVISHES’

Dr. Ahmed Al-Tayeb: Dreams Of A Global Religious Authority 48

Abdullah Bin Bayyah: The Sufi Faqih 53

Ali Al Jafri: Political Sufism, Reality And Ambition 57

Ali Gomaa: Grand Military Mufti Of Egypt? 61

Hamza Yusuf: Intersections – The Naqshbandi Network And 64 New Allies

Jihad Hashim Brown: Tabah Reach And Vision 68

Zaid Shakir: Identity, Reason, And Political Sufism 71

Abdul Hakim Murad: The European Wing Of Political Sufism 74

Muhammad Hisham Kabbani: Confronting Hate With Hate 77

Musa Furber’s Spiritual Journey And The Winds Of Tabah 80

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CHAPTER 3: 82

IMPLICATIONS OF ABU DHABI’S SUFI NETWORK ON SAUDI SECURITY

Describing The Wahhabi Movement As Jewish: 83 A Slip Of The Tongue Or A Formal Attitude?

US-Iranian Alliance Of Convenience 86

Identity Challenges In Saudi Arabia 89

Wahhabism: From the perspective of the former British intelligence officer 93 Alastair Crooke and Hassan Nasrallah

The Religious Establishment In Saudi Arabia In The Absence Of 97 A Coherent Regional Role

The Scramble For Religious Authority 102

What Is The Secret Behind Saudi’s Uneasy Attitude Towards 106 Islamist Movements?

Saudi Arabia: Towards A Rational Dialogue 112

CONCLUSION 114

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INTRODUCTION

The UAE has witnessed major changes since the death of its founder, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan in 2004.

Sources have attributed the modern transformation of the state to the efforts of his son, Mohammed bin Zayed, Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and Chairman of Abu Dhabi Executive Council.

One of the most important positions Mohammed bin Zayed has occupied is his role as the advisor to the Head of State for National Security. Over the past ten years (2004-2014), he has worked on incorporating religious affairs with national security as part of a joint policy approach, considering the Sunni Maliki Madhhab and Sufism as integral parts of the national identity of all the UAE.

It is difficult to separate his personal sentiments from his official handling of the religious file. Mohammed bin Zayed was 13 years old when the Jeddah Agreement was signed in August 1974 to resolve the border dispute (1971-1974) between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Under that agreement, Abu Dhabi retained six villages in the al Buraimi area including al-Ain, the base of al Buraimi Oasis and most of al-Zafra desert. In return, Riyadh got a 25 km of shoreline which is home to about 80% of the Sheba oil wells containing about 15 billion barrels of petrol and 650 million cubic meters of gas in fields that have yet to be exploited.

Close associates of Mohammed bin Zayed talked about his conviction that the ratification of the Jeddah Agreement was a kind of injustice, that it was signed in a different geopolitical reality today when the Union sorely needed Saudi formal recognition in the aftermath of its inception in 1971. He has also expressed an interest in writing a historical account proving the legitimacy of the UAE’s territorial claims in the region and documenting the perceived prejudice against Abu Dhabi as a result of this convention.

A French news agency reported that Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed raised the issue of the border dispute with Riyadh during his first visit abroad after assuming office in 2004, to which Saudi response was that the Jeddah Agreement had his father’s fingerprint on it, and a refusal to put the Agreement up for discussion.

In early 2006, the UAE issued its annual book “New Maps” showing some Saudi areas in UAE waters, triggering a diplomatic crisis in relations between the two Gulf States.

In August 2009, Saudi Arabia stopped UAE nationals from entering the country using only identity cards (as was usually permitted) in protest to the alterations made by UAE authorities to the geographical map on the identity cards of its

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citizens outlining revised national borders. By March 2010, the crisis between the two countries had reached a critical stage when UAE border patrol boats opened fire on a Saudi boat and detained two members of the Saudi border guard.

Despite the apparent calm ever since, sources have revealed that the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi is actively seeking to integrate religion and politics and to consolidate the Sufi religious current in the face of the “Wahhabi invasions”, as he puts it.

In fact, relations between the two states experienced a downward spiral after 2004, when the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to host the regional headquarters for the U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). Based in Abu Dhabi, the initiative has implemented 205 projects in 8 countries at a cost of more than $11.5 million.

The MEPI office conducted several unauthorised activities inside Saudi Arabia between 2006 and 2011, with these security breaches causing intense embarrassment for the UAE. However, on the 9th October 2014, Stephen McInerney, the executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), highlighted that this crisis led to the activities of the program being curtailed.

Yet Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and the Foreign Minister stand firmly behind the American project, launched in 2004, to establish a global Sufi political alliance. Emirati Sufi institutions continue to spearhead this project, whose religious figures openly target Saudi Arabia and its religious traditions.

Abu Dhabi founded the Tabah Foundation in 2005 as a vehicle to realise the strategic goals of this project. It brought together political Sufi leaders from Syria, Morocco, Yemen and Egypt in an adversarial enterprise against “the Hanbali neighbours who follow Imam Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab”.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed’s friends occasionally leaked information about him personally feeling the strained climate between the two Gulf neighbours, while the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research inflamed tensions further after it published research papers challenging Saudi Arabia’s Salafist religious traditions, accusing the Kingdom of supporting extremist movements in the region.

Some sources in the US Congress have previously spoken about the UAE’s desire to adopt a project establishing an “axis of Islamic moderation”. This project has brought on board Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Sufi Sunni groups, and Sufi Shiite scholars such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Sayed Hassan Qazwini, who both enjoy close relations with the California-based Zaytuna Institute, headed up by Sufi scholar Hamza Yusuf, as well as the Tabah Foundation and other Sufi research institutes in Abu Dhabi.

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Statements published by UAE newspapers covering the establishment of the Muslim Council of Elders earlier this year in Abu Dhabi expressed hostility towards Saudi Arabia. They attacked the Salafist approach, supported by quotes from Emirati officials on the new role of their council to “correct the path of some of the other established traditions”.

It is unfortunate that there is such an official sanction for this hostile tone, but more importantly we should be extremely cautious of the implied security risks in using history to incite sectarian conflict and divisions. The GCC countries face common dangers that can only be addressed through comprehensive dialogue and a sense of responsibility that transcends personal ambitions.

This book will attempt to explain the different dimensions of political Sufism as adopted by the ruling bodies in Abu Dhabi. The first chapter discusses the regional and international dimensions of the Emirati Sufi network and addresses its actions and associations with an American project to counter hard-line Islamic currents, especially in Saudi Arabia.

The second chapter sheds light on the most active figures in this network, their educational backgrounds and work frames. It discusses the projects to revive traditional Sufi ways and schools in various Arab countries, and explains how the West plays a pivotal role in enhancing and promoting this Sufi project.

Chapter three deals with the security threats tied to this project, and the perpetual harm it has caused in deliberately undermining long-established religious authorities in the kingdom. There is also an attempt to guide decision-making centres in Riyadh to adopt a more astutely calibrated, judicious policy when dealing with religious affairs, with a warning of the dangers of poor management of this file on both regional and international levels.

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CHAPTER 1: INSTITUTIONAL DIMENSIONS OF

EMIRATE’S SUFI NETWORK

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CHARGING POLITICAL SUFISM

In October 2003, the Nixon Centre’s International Security Program hosted a conference in Washington to explore the potential role of Sufism in promoting American foreign policy objectives in the Middle East, and to familiarize policy-makers with the Sufi spiritual orders that could form the pillars of such a strategy.

The conference focused on the largest Sufi orders in the Middle East and Central Asia, yet this was not the only topic on the agenda. Conversation also turned to discuss ways in which the Wahhabi-Salafi current of religious thought prevalent in Saudi Arabia, which has been rather simplistically castigated as the prime factor behind the proliferation of extremism and terrorist movements in the Islamic world, could be challenged through reviving Sufi movements as an oppositional force.

Zaki Saritoprak, a lecturer in the Department of Theology at the University of John Carroll, has diagnosed the present malaise in the Islamic world as the

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product of an ongoing conflict between Wahhabism and Sufism, suggesting that it is necessary for Western policymakers to forge alliances with Sufi orders to counter extremist and terrorist movements.

Saritoprak has been greatly influenced by Sufism’s guiding philosophy, which calls on its followers to seek out an inner, esoteric spiritual truth, placing less importance on the teachings of other traditional scholars who study the science of applying Sharia to everyday life. Sufism is therefore

seen to offer a broadly inclusive spiritual approach which allows for a greater intersection of ideas between Islam and the Western world.

Within Islam, Saritoprak believes that the revered status of the fourth Islamic Caliph and the Prophet’s son-in-law, Ali bin Abu Talib, in the Naqshbandiya order helps to sustain a close connection between the Shia’s and Sufis as “the figure of Ali is so important for Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, it can serve as a type of common ground between the two traditions…”.

Dr. Hedieh Mirahmadi, Executive Director of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, accused “Wahhabi-Salafis” of rallying Muslims for a cultural battle against the West by deconstructing culture and replacing the concept of personal spirituality with radical political theories. She added that: “This massive Wahhabi deconstruction effort has brought blood and violence to nearly every corner of the Muslim world. Parents and children turned against each other and families were torn apart as the new generation was educated in Salafi thought”.

To improve the relationship between Muslims and the West, Mirahmadi suggested that it was necessary for the American administration to help recapture lost Islamic heritage through the reconstruction of the shrines of saints, financing the religious Centre’s of Sufism and helping young people to free their minds from the aggressive Wahhabi ideology.

Another scholar, Dr. Mohammad Faroughy at the Department of Religion in George Washington University, contributed to the debate by encouraging American policymakers to support political Sufism in order to restrain “Wahhabism”, highlighting ways in which Sufism can facilitate the democratisation of Islamic political systems.

Alex Alexiev, a former Senior Fellow at the Centre for Security Policy, argues that what distinguishes Sufism from Islamic extremism is its vision of jihad as an inner spiritual struggle to improve the condition of one’s soul whilst Wahhabis define it as a global fight to spread Islam in the world. In his opinion, the key stimulus behind the spread of extreme Wahhabism is the alleged funding of terrorist movements from Saudi Arabia. He has claimed that Saudi Arabia spent more than $80 billion since the 70’s to support Islamic activities in the

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world, and has established about 160 “Wahhabi” mosques and radical Centre’s in areas that were classified as moderate. Alexiev’s analysis seems to imply that Riyadh is the source of all extremism in the region.

“Scholarly Sufism” versus “Saudi Wahhabism”

Taking part in the same debate, Professor Bernard Lewis and Hisham Kabbani – deputy leader of the Naqshbandiya Sufi order which has a following of over two million from across the globe. Kabbani was grandiosely introduced as a moderate sheikh standing up to the threat of terrorism and as “the first Muslim leader to warn the United States about the imminent threat posed by Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terrorist network”.

In his speech, Bernard Lewis suggested that the Wahhabi movement was akin to the Ku Klux Klan, the controversial Christian fundamentalist movement in the United States. The comparison between a radical Christian movement that has almost disappeared in America, and a religious current dominant in Saudi Arabia, a strong state which hosts Islam’s two holiest sites at Mecca and Medina and a healthy source of income from enormous oil revenues, is deeply and dangerously flawed.

Hisham Kabbani joined in by stressing that Salafism does not exist in Islam, and that it is merely an umbrella term coined by the late King Fahd bin Abdulaziz in the 80’s encompassing all extremist movements in the Islamic world. He criticised Saudi Arabia for sending its supporters worldwide to demolish shrines and tombs, and asked the question: “Are we as Americans going to support the Sufis, or work with the Wahhabis?”

In reply, he advised that “If we do the latter, we run the risk that we work with terrorists, whereas there is no such risk with Sufis. It is very simple: the United States must reach out to non-Wahhabi Muslims if it wants to succeed in this battle. It’s a no-lose proposition”.

(The meeting report can be found in full: Zeyno Baran (2004) “Understanding Sufism and its Potential Role in US Policy” Nixon Centre Conference Report, March 2004)

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Turning Myths into a Political Programme

The politically biased and unsound recommendations of this conference have been adopted as policy in the United States over the last decade. There are numerous examples of how the American administration has used political Sufism in this polarising religious battle. To counter some critical misconceptions presented at the conference, a number of inaccuracies should be clarified.

Wahhabism is not an independent doctrine in Islam, and there is no Wahhabi movement in the intellectual or organisational sense in the Islamic world. It is regrettable that this reformist movement is encountering such fierce hostility, and that the practice of labeling Wahhabism as an odious peripheral movement is being employed in the West in order to isolate Saudi Muslims from the rest of the Islamic world.

Leading Western observers often overlook the role played by Riyadh in fighting extremism and terrorist movements, taking innumerable positive steps to enhance regional and global security, and the facts supporting this are often cynically and conveniently omitted.

It is also very prejudicial to deny the political role played by some Salafi movements in strengthening contemporary Arab democracies, including their participation in council and parliamentary elections in the Arab monarchies and their contribution to the political stabilisation of the republics affected by the Arab Spring.

It is hard to imagine how positive relations and peaceful coexistence between various currents and Islamic movements can be founded on antagonising a group against another or by waging campaigns inciting bias and distorting reality. Instead, there is a dire need for renewed and sincere efforts to forge transparent and constructive relationships, building bridges that span across the religious spectrum, promoting tolerance and maintaining the culture of dialogue. Only then can a united, durable and enlightened Islamic coalition truly emerge to tackle toxic and violent religious doctrines.

The tendency of many research institutions to link Takfiri movements to Saudi Arabia by labelling them as Salafist or Wahhabis is deeply divisive and critically counterproductive. All this only serves to further undermine efforts in reaching the proposed just and balanced objective.

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CONFRONTING ISLAMIC MOVEMENTS WITH POLITICAL SUFISM

The events of 9/11 changed western attitudes towards Sufism and its political role in Islamic communities, as western researchers began to call for the revival of Sufism to counter the influence of “Political Islam”. British-American historian Bernard Lewis and American political commentator Daniel Pipes were among the first to rally Sufi movements and build on ideological grounds of separation of religion and state.

The American researcher Stephen Schwartz took up the torch and encouraged the American government “to learn more about Sufism and interact with its leaders and followers and get to know its basic values”. He further added that “American diplomats – in Islamic cities from Pristina (in Kosovo) to Kashgar (in western China), and from Fez in Morocco to the Indonesian capital Jakarta – must include local Sufis in their lists of people to meet during their periodic visits”.

In the summer of 2002 the Rand Corporation, an American-based global policy think tank, called for a strategic alliance with Sufi movements to counter religious extremism in the Islamic world. Subsequently, the Nixon Centre’s International Security Program held a conference in Washington DC which explored the role that Sufism could play in achieving American foreign policy objectives in the Middle East.

These developments marked a watershed moment, as international political Sufi

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movements set about forging alliances with policymakers in the region. In April 2003, an International Conference of the Shazli Tariqa was held in collaboration with the UNESCO. Then, in Iraq, the formation of the Higher Committee for Council, Teaching and Research of Islamic Sufism was announced in January 2004, followed by the first conference of the International Sidi Shikhar Group of Sufis under the sponsorship of Moroccan King Muhammad VI in September that same year. Shortly after in December, the “First International Conference of Sufism in Western Africa” took place, and nine months later, an international conference was held in Libya entitled “Sufism in Africa: Present and Future”.

It was no accident that at the time the American Ambassadors to Morocco and Egypt, Thomas Riley and Francis Ricciardone, agreed to approach regional Sufi movements in 2006. On one occasion Ricciardone celebrated the birth anniversary of Al-Sayyid Al-Badawy, who founded the Badawiyyah Sufi order in the 13th century, with the locals in Tanta city. Riley has previously attended celebrations of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad held by the Qadiriya-Boutchichiya Sufi movement which has also recently attracted a large following from amongst members of Moroccan high society.

Sources indicate that since the appointment of Ahmed Tawfik (an adherent of the Qadiriya-Boutchichiya order who is very close to its leader) as the Minister of Awqaf in Morocco, the promotion of political Sufism has continued. Support for these movements has intensified as the Moroccan state adopted a “Religious Reformation” policy with political Sufism as one of its pillars.

In Algeria, President Abdulaziz Bouteflika highlighted during elections ways in which Sufism could offer an alternative vision of state-society relations than that of political Islam in the Arab world. These efforts culminated in the foundation of the Algerian Council of Sufi Culture in December 2013, which aims “to revive the essence of religious and cultural Sufism”.

These developments encouraged the Muslim French philosopher and expert in Sufism, Eric Geoffroy, to assert that the future Islamic world will inevitably be dominated by Sufism, and to declare that Arab regimes had worked to infuse Sufism into government policy to resist Islamic extremism. He highlighted the appointment of notable Sufi scholars to high-ranking religious positions, referring specifically to the Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs in Morocco, Ahmed Tawfik, and the Head of Al-Azhar in Egypt, Ahmed El-Tayeb.

In October 2013, the International Sufism Organisation was established in France, consisting of prominent Sufi scholars from Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya. Ahmed Al-Tasquiani, a member of the Higher Committee of Sufism, said that: “The Organisation will play a pivotal role in the fight against extremist ideas propagated by Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood, to help lift the Islamic youth from the ignorance pervasive today.”

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Ill-advisedly the responsibility for bringing these various Sufi organisations together to create a central Sufi political project fell upon a Gulf state, inexperienced in handling ideological contentions of the magnitude at hand. Added to which there was a lack of local personalities capable of managing the complex intellectual debates. Hence it relied heavily on outside religious leaders known for their hostility towards other neighbouring Gulf countries and their religious traditions. This in turn fostered a detrimental ripple effect on regional security and unity, in the midst of a critical period of political and social change in the region.

The question remains, can these networks of political Sufism, imported from Egypt, Yemen and the US be successfully deployed in this strategy, and deliver on security for member states of the Gulf Co-operation Council, contributing to a stable and lasting political settlement between them?

Answering this requires deep and honest reflection on the part of all regional actors.

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UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: SECURITY AND BALANCE

Prominent Emirati researcher Abdul Khaliq Abdullah criticised the foreign policy of the United Arab Emirates, when he revealed that: “There is real fear that Abu Dhabi has misused its political capital, and inadvertently invested in the return of the security state”.

Abdullah wrote: “It is no secret that Abu Dhabi has invested greatly in Egypt, and is betting on the return of stability. But the question is, is this tenuous bet in the right place?”

Abdullah’s writing and tweets are part of a broader chorus of complaints spreading amongst Emirati officials about the implications of the UAE’s involvement in foreign adventures with unpredictable and often undesirable

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consequences under the leadership of Mohammed bin Zayed and his brother Abdullah. Troublingly, the UAE has thrown its support behind retired General Khalifa Haftar in Libya, the Houthis in Yemen, and some prominent figures in Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria, all of whom envisage deeply militarised and coercive states as their preferred model of political organisation in the Arab world.

Abdullah is close to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. He questioned whether the Emirates had sufficiently examined its decision to participate in the new US military alliance in Iraq, and whether it fully understood the risks of taking America’s side when it is difficult to read America’s strategic intentions as it wages a long-term war in the region. Abdullah’s main contention is the high price paid for these operations, stressing that “it could be catastrophic” if his country did not have clear answers to these concerns.

There is much unease amongst a number of officials and researchers in the Emirates concerned with UAE’s current foreign policy stance. One official warned of the erosion to UAE’s image as a successful model of economic development, active financial exchange and free trade, if certain elite circles were determined to set the country on a wrong path whereupon its international reputation could be severely tarnished. In financing poorly conceived strategic campaigns the UAE has unwisely stepped out of its usual operational comfort zone.

Abu Dhabi regularly criticises the exploitation of religion for political expediency by regional Islamic movements. Surely, this entitles the rulers of the other emirates in the Union to express their concerns over bin Zayed’s initiative to import a political Sufi network in a polarising battle for Islamic authority in the region? None of the scholars in this network are Emirati, so they are more

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inclined to drive their own political agendas in sync with those pursued in their home countries.

Some Gulf countries also questioned Abu Dhabi’s venture to create a global Sufi Centre of Islamic reference and raised concerns about the rationality behind countering radical Islamist movements with a divisive Sufi movement led by the Tabah Foundation’s Sufi theologians. Abu Dhabi’s ill fated intrusions in Istanbul as well, by supporting US-based scholar Fethullah Gulen and his Sufi network in opposition to President Erdogan, has also raised many eyebrows.

Referring to the level of support the Gulenist network receives from the UAE, a correspondent of Today’s Zaman newspaper (which is owned by the group) wrote on the 21st October 2014 an article detailing possible avenues for closer cooperation between Turkey and Abu Dhabi, including coordinated efforts to support “modern Islam” and the possibility of forming a united front against Wahhabism. Writing about Wahhabism, he controversially argued that “this ideology poses a grave threat to the Middle East, the Gulf and beyond” (Today’s Zaman, Abdullah Bozkurt “The Gulf’s UAE is a good match for Turkey”, 21 October 2014). The author then went on to praise Abu Dhabi for its courage in challenging Riyadh and overcoming traditional Gulf fears of criticising this school of religious thought.

Such fragile alliances are regionally flawed. Western security sources indicated that the Gulen movement is a non-coherent network of institutions that vary in performance and funding, and which are under the sway of local officials who often have divergent strategies and organisational perspectives.

Due to the relative inexperience of these elders in the political sphere, they ultimately proved ineffectual in mounting a political challenge to the Erdogan government. The movement has suffered from serious setbacks both in Turkey and in many Western countries, who are wary of its religious educational institutions.

Abu Dhabi has missed an opportunity to be at the forefront of a highly calibrated Islamic project, drawing upon its strengths as an open, tolerant society and as an important historical actor in promoting dialogue and dispute mediation, which can unite rather than divide.

There is no doubt that such a gamble will damage the UAE’s ability to manage religious affairs in a way that delivers stability and security, contributing to the creation of a united front against extreme groups.

Does Abu Dhabi recognise the risks of such folly?

A tweet by Dr. Abdul Khaliq Abdullah may provide some food for thought: “There will be a devastating disaster if the United Arab Emirates does not have clear answers.”

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THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE “COUNCIL OF ELDERS”: STRENGTHENING CIVIL PEACE OR FUELING

POLITICAL DISAGREEMENT

On 10th March, a forum for the promotion of peace in Muslim communities was held in Abu Dhabi, which resulted in the issue of a set of recommendations. The most prominent of these was to work towards “the establishment of an Islamic Council to promote peace in Muslim communities, whereby a group of well-known Muslim scholars and experts would by ‘word and deed’ counter the spread of extremism.”

The official media in the UAE, which hosted the forum, belatedly directed criticism against extremist groups and called them ‘advocates of sedition’. In his opening speech, foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed described them as “quasi-scientists who helped to create websites and platforms that occupy various social media”.

Dr. Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi, the Chairman of the University of the United Arab Emirates also launched an attack on the extremist groups and affirmed his support for the recommendations of the forum, particularly the establishment of a Council of Elders that would provide an alternative to current religious institutional structures.

The tone of the attacks on the Islamic groups was not surprising. The surprise was the criticism of neighbouring Gulf States, particularly Saudi Arabia, which

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were accused of being responsible for the emergence of extremism and for the promotion of the idea that anyone who opposes their worldview is an apostate.

UAE newspapers also quoted Al-Nuaimi’s criticism of the Kingdom in which he said: “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had been the incubator of the Muslim Brotherhood and all the repercussions and crises.” He added that “the challenge was not the kingdom’s classification of the members of the group as terrorists, but their failure to act on the ground to root out the group deeply embedded in education Centre’s, Islamic religious associations, and other bodies”.

On the other hand, Ahmed Abdul Karim, a scientist and professor at Al-Azhar University, stressed that the “Saudi Government had supported the Egyptian people in the face of violence by the Muslim Brotherhood” but called upon the Kingdom to exert more pressure on the Muslim Brotherhood and those who stand behind them with support and funding.

In addition to these statements the organisers of the conference increased pressure on regional religious institutions. Sheikh Abdullah Bin Beah attacked one in particular in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. This institution was accused of promoting deviations that feed extremism through the “misinterpretation of the meaning of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which is claimed as license to intervene and impose physical violence and inhumane behaviour”. He further criticised the Saudi regulatory authority of being ignorant of “conditions and disciplines” and mentioned that it “lacked the necessary qualifications required under Islamic law to issue reliable religious opinions.”

By the same token the official press attacked the Salafis and published reports from the forum including the following extract outlining its stated goal to “confront the flood of puritanical religious Salafi excommunications, which have been pouring on us since the end of the fifties, and which attracted many uneducated young Arab and Muslim followers who were not aware of science and the development of a new world based on tolerance and harmony and cross-fertilization.” The statement further added that “they were like uncared for desert plants abandoned until clerics, with minds closed on the past, and striving to return nations to the days of shaving on the sidewalk, stoning adulterers, and the banning of poetry, painting , sculpture , music, and the abolition of the view that the Earth revolves around the sun .”

The media’s response was to challenge the assessments and declarations of the forum, with one piece in particular retorting that “If we take this hostile statement into account, urgent questions arise about the credibility of the call made by the forum for civil peace, openness, and effective communication between communities against the climate of exclusion and the attack by extremists against official view”.

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This further begs the question: Can Abu Dhabi feasibly become a new base for a religious authority?

Despite the large attendance at the forum, estimated at about 250 participants from different countries and with almost 30 contributing papers, no major personalities of note were present. The allocation of representation to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was disappointing because their delegation was confined to individual figures sympathetic to the aims of the organizers.

Some participants were prevailed on not to speak even though a source close to Al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb told the Sunrise newspaper (March 12, 2014) that “the role of the Council of Elders of the Muslims is the correct path of some of the major entities and would be an alternative way for them to complete the journey to enlightenment for Muslims.”

Hostile statements made by the organizers of the Forum have undermined its credibility as a vehicle for promoting civil peace and the principle of openness to all Islamic currents of thought.

Notably, the forum’s final statement was problematic, emphasizing “the importance of re- establishing the authority of the nation”.

Is it accurate to say that a nation has lost its authority, and is it feasible or right to grant the responsibility of restoring it to religious delegates?

Does the State have the political power to establish a new religious harmony and to exclude authorities that do not comply with its directions?

These are difficult questions to answer when the final conference statement is taken into account, referring “to developing a theory of the nation which will serve as a basis for steady and unwavering future international relations”.

Have delegates concluded that the nation is going through an “age of ignorance”, resigning themselves to its collapse in the hope that it the Elders Forum may be empowered to shape international relations for the Islamic nation as whole?

Has the “Islamic nation” lost its senses already? Or have the Elders Forum misread the complexities and realities of the political landscape?

According to the Imam Muslim in his “Sahih”, the guidance of the Prophet (PBUH) to the nation is clear: “Whomsoever says people should destroyed will himself be destroyed”. Perhaps in this there is cause for reflection amongst the Council of Elders, after the proclamations of its first session.

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Council disintegration in its early stages of existence:

Once the unusual arrangement for the Council was announced; a new phase of rivalry began between the two presidents. Bin Bayyah left to New York to promote the Emirati project to face extremism, in a meeting organised by the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee-UN Security Council on 30 September 2014. His glorification in the media was further enhanced when the US President Barack Obama quoted him, in one of his interviews with “CNN”, with the words “I call to life. I do not call to death”.

Whilst the “Grand Imam” Al-Tayeb basked in the global atmosphere during the World Cup in Brazil, when he sent a message on behalf of all Muslims. He also venerated the late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz with an honorary doctorate: “for his courageous position with Egypt”. This initiative was blessed by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in a presidential decree on Thursday 28 August 2014.

In the shadow of this race between bin Bayyah and Al-Tayeb to head the Council, some members of the constituent body of the Council withdrew from it. While others disappeared, despite the events that shook the Muslim world, especially the bitter attack on Gaza.

Sheikh Abdul Razzaq Qassoum, head of Algerian Muslim Scholars Association, waited for four months to announce to the Algerians that he “was tricked” when he was invited to the Muslim Council of Elders. While the nonattendance of each of Abdul Hakim Sherman Jackson, Abdullah Nassif, Prince Ghazi bin Talal, and Judge Mohammad Taqi Usmani of the Council’s first meeting, held in Cairo on 30 October 2014, raised more questions.

Some observers felt that the absence of Council members from Saudi Arabia, United States, Pakistan, Jordan, and Algeria in its first meeting; added to the numerous failures and severely hindered its work. It had also been boycotted by the Moroccan clerics who preferred to retain their influence among Muslims in South Africa, especially as they were already ahead in discerning local specificities.

Most unfortunate for the Abu Dhabi Sufis is that Naqshbandi leaders in the countries of “Eurasia” rejected the project of “Tabah”. So, Dr. Mehmet Görmez, President of the Turkish Religious Foundation, hastened to gather them in a similar Turkish project that was announced two days after Abu Dhabi Council’s announcement.

But the biggest decline came about after a meeting that put “Grand Imam” Al-Tayeb at the helm and bin Bayyah’s withdrawal. By then, bin Bayyah had been a co-president with Al-Tayeb for three months. Initially, the statements of the meeting were full of Shanqeeti marks, the initiator and architect of the Muslim Council of Elders. Now the presidency unanimously went to Al-Tayeb

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who was congratulated by his men and helpers starting: with Dr. Shawki Allam Mufti of Egypt held, and Dr. Mohamed Mukhtar Gomaa, the Egyptian Minister of Religious Endowments, Dr. Abdul Hai Azab, head of Al-Azhar University. While, the voices of the founders in Abu Dhabi faded away. The Egyptian media reflected Al-Azhar’s happiness upon its possession of cleric’s presidency, which might help restore its image. In the meantime, they were renovating Al-Azhar Mosque using Saudi funds.

As observers anticipate Al-Tayeb’s list of new members for the Council, to make up for the shortfall, many questions are being raised about the credibility of the nine remaining members with respect to their personal political agendas and bias. Together with Al-Tayeb’s determination to impose his own print on Islamic referencing and the UAE’s efforts to consolidate their foreign policy ambitions as the alternative to challenge other established references in the Muslim world.

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‘THE MUSLIM COUNCIL OF ELDERS’ – OBJECTIVES AND CONTRADICTIONS

On the 19th of July, the creation of an independent international body called ‘The Muslim Council of Elders’ to promote civil peace in the region, was announced in Abu Dhabi. The statement said that the Council is the “first body to bring together Muslim Elders to achieve the recommendations of last March from the Forum for Promoting Peace”. It confirmed that the aim of the Council is to co-ordinate efforts to reunite the Islamic nation and extinguish fires that are sweeping the region as a result of extremist ideologies that are contrary to human values and principles of Islam.

But behind the scenes an early disagreement was revealed in conflicting media announcements stating that Mauritanian Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah was appointed as the president of the Council, while others claimed it was Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Sheikh of Al-Azhar. To add to the confusion, some official newspapers reported that the Council was chaired jointly by both of them.

The appointment of members to the constituent body appears to be an improvisedand haphazard process. Representation of numerous established religiousinstitutions was distinctly absent with membership selection proving to be biased towards certain individuals. The selection process seems to have been rushed, as evidenced by a resolution which identified a number of members before specifying later that there would be now be no more than 40 members in the body.

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Notably, scholars from the Levant, Iraq, the Gulf States, Yemen and the Kingdom of Morocco were excluded, as well as the founders of the Forum of Civil Peace such as the Moroccan Minister of Awqaf, the Chairman of the University of Qarween and members of the Association of Muhammadiyah who had a prominent role in the drafting of the final statement of the Forum.

In addition, the appointment of a Mauritanian as president of the Council seemed to disregard the sensitivities of Morocco, which was allocated no representation on the Council and which has a historically tense relationship with its southern neighbour. It also comes at a time when the Moroccan leadership of Sufism in North Africa is being challenged.

When Mauritania launched its public celebrations at the presidential palace for Ramadan this year, the opening speech delivered by Ahmed Waled Daoud, adviser to the President of the Republic, focused on Sufism as a cultural and intellectual reference for the city of Chinguetti, in connection to Nouakchott’s plan to call for African countries to restore cultural freedom for scholars in Chinguetti.

It is not surprising that the inauguration ceremony of the Council of Elders coincided with the arrival of the Mauritanian President Mohamed Waled Abdel Aziz, who was part of a delegation headed by fellow countryman, Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah, even though the Council had stressed its independence from regional political powers.

Can these tensions be resolved?

Sheikh bin Bayyah seeks to consolidate his influence over the conflicting members of the Forum on Civil Peace, while the rumour in Egyptian circles is that Al Azhar has dominated the make-up of the Council and has excluded all influential figures that might compete with its leading scholar, Ahmed Al Tayeb.

It is worth noting that 7 of the 14 Board members are graduates of Al Azhar University, and they all occupy leadership roles of Sufism in the various countries of the Islamic world. These include Nigerian Ibrahim al-Husseini and Abu Lubaabah, well known in Sufi circles in Africa as well Hassan El-Shafei, famous for his writings about Al-Ghazali, theology and Sufism. Other board members are Abdul Razzaq Qassoum, who received a Master’s degree in philos-ophy from al-Azhar in 1975, Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq and Ahmed Al-Haddad.

Fuelling the battle to control the Council, Egyptian newspapers proceeded to emphasize and elevate the role of Al Tayeb as its perceived founder, when Al-Ahram newspaper headlined the news of the launch of the Council (June 21st 2014) stating “Sheikh Al-Azhar launches the Council of Elders of Muslims in the United Arab Emirates”. Following suit, Al-Arab (June 19th 2014) declared

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that “the Sheikh of Al Azhar was appointed to honorary presidency”, while Al-Wady was much more tactful, reporting on June 20th that “Al-Azhar Sheikh presides over the first meeting of the Council of Elders of the Muslims in the UAE,” without delving into the apparent complexities of the dual presidency.

Al Tayeb has succeeded in placing members of the Islamic Research Academy of Al Azhar in the Council of Elders under his presidency. In April this year he granted Abdullah bin Bayyah, Abu Lubabah, Al Tahir, and Abdul Razzaq Qassoum membership of the body and subsequently pushed for their inclusion in the Council of Elders two months later.

Political affiliation: denial and confirmation

Though the Council of Elders have stressed that they would remain impartial and would not be party to any political conflict, religious or ethnic, it has been criticised for making public statements praising the host country, the UAE, without making mention of the contribution of other Arab states.

At the inauguration of the Council, Sheikh Al Azhar thanked the UAE for its initiative and vision in launching the Council of Elders, and for being alert to both internal and external threats and the potentially devastating effects that could arise.

If divine providence was the inspiration for the establishment of the Council, then support and funding is a blessing to the Islamic nation as a whole, according to a statement by Ahmed Al-Haddad, who proclaimed that “The choice of Abu Dhabi as the headquarters of the Council of Elders is a blessing to the Islamic nation, created under the auspices of the UAE and the wise leadership of His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, may God protect him, and indicates that the Council will be effective with 2 factors provided to it -the headquarters in the UAE and the financial and other support for it to expand.”

The disparities between the statements of the Council of Elders and what is published by the official press represents the most pressing dilemma and threat to the credibility of the Council. On Middle East Online (19th July 2014) Abdel Fattah Almniei, a researcher at the Almezmaah Studies and Research Center in Dubai, reported that “The importance of establishing this Council stems from its functions, which will result in a number of important achievements for both the UAE and the Arab nation at the intellectual, political and strategic levels”.

However, the official and semi-official press published comments by two Emirati researchers stating that the Council “will pull the rug from under the feet of Political Islam, especially the Muslim Brotherhood and similar movements, exposing their true objectives and scientific shallowness to all

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Muslims” (Middle East Online 19th July 2014). This surely calls into question the declared independence of the Council of Elders, which was trumpeted as a core founding principle.

In the same vein, Almniei further remarked that indeed the most important function of the Council was “to pull the rug from under these movements, parties and organizations which politicize Islam”. He added that the Council will “implicitly expose through its work, in a moderate way, the so-called Union of Muslim Scholars, formed by the Muslim Brotherhood with party elements under the supervision of the President of the Federation, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and supported by the Government of Qatar to serve the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood through the issuance of fatwas, readily supporting their point of view.”

Is the Council promoting peace or is it in fact fuelling polarization?

There is no doubt that a contradiction exists between the Council’s proclamation of “total impartiality, with no internal, ulterior motives which could point to members of the Council being party to any political or religious strife,” and what has been published in the official press. This apparent paradox needs urgent clarification, as do all the various statements concerning the unmasking of Islamist movements and their objectives that have circulated within the UAE.

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THE FORMATION OF THE MUSLIM COUNCIL OF ELDERS

AND CHALLENGES OF REPRESENTATION

Following the announcement of the establishment of the Muslim Council of Elders in Abu Dhabi on the 19th July, many questions were raised about its founders’ intentions to form an alternative body of religious leadership in the region. This compelled the head of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb and the President of the Forum for Civil Peace, Abdullah bin Bayyah, to reply that the council “does not represent an alternative to Al-Azhar”, in response to those objecting to the creation of an entity that competes with the traditional religious authorities in the Islamic world.

Despite such assurances, some voices have continued to doubt the foundation of the Council, led by Sufi religious scholars from Al-Azhar and which seeks to position itself as a “moderate Islamic” front to counter Salafist ideology.

Abdel Fattah Almaniei, a researcher at the Almezmaah Studies and Research Centre in Dubai, was quoted by Middle East Online (July 19, 2014), for stating that the Council will be “a natural substitute of the extreme Salafist movements, whose ideas are not acceptable by most Muslims. It is presenting itself as an alternative to the Sunnis’ doctrines, in an attempt to control them, despite the fact that they do represent the overwhelming majority of Muslims”.

The launch of the Muslim Council of Elders has sparked hostility in the media,

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mirroring reactions that came in the wake of the unveiling of the Forum for Civil Peace. Articles in the official media attacking Salafist thinkers and ideology have frequently been published, carrying statements about the teachings of Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, accusing him of inciting extremism and contributing to the rise of radical movements.

Following the recent flurry of activity by the Council’s host country, the UAE, in facilitating the body’s creation, some voices have expressed their uneasiness with its attempts to hail Al-Azhar as the main point of reference of “moderate tolerant Islam”, as it is often described by leaders in the Emirates.

Some sources have pointed out that this new dispute and the highly charged political climate is a result of hostile statements published in newspapers in the UAE. They highlighted that Saudi Arabia’s reservations have been relayed to Abu Dhabi, specifically its concerns over Emirati media campaigns organised to promote Al-Azhar as the sole Islamic point of reference and marginalise the religious role of Saudi Arabia, undermining the foundations of Salafism upon which the political system in the Kingdom rests.

They also revealed that Riyadh has expressed concerns over Abu Dhabi’s backing of iconic Sufi scholars associated with Al-Azhar such as Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the former Egyptian Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, and the Yemeni religious scholar, Habib Jafri. Recently, such religious figures have been presented in the Emirati media as the vanguard of a unique model of religious tolerance to challenge Salafist ideology, to which all extreme movements in the Muslim world are perceived to be attributed. In response to this, prominent clerics in Saudi Arabia have strongly voiced their dissatisfaction with this narrative in numerous tweets on Twitter.

In an editorial on June 17th, Emirati newspaper, Al-Khaleej, called on its readers to accept Al-Azhar as the only religious reference in Islam, declaring that it “is everyone’s responsibility to update the religious discourse to the tolerant moderate one that accepts the others including: systems, governments, institutions and religious Centre’s. But, it is primarily the responsibility of Al-Azhar, the icon of encouraging and intellectual and cultural Islam, to create a unified moderate Islamic discourse and put an end to the hindrance of religion”.

It is conspicuous that none of the members of the Muslim Council of Elders is outside of the Sufi-Azhar nexus. Al-Muthaqqaf website pointed out (25th July) that Abu Dhabi excluded leading Saudi scholars from the body because the Salafist fatwa related to peace was not acceptable to them. Abu Dhabi views the Salafi clerical establishment as being radical and considers it to be hijacking Islam. Consequentially, the official position of the Council of Elders reflects a general policy of opposition to Salafism in sync with the posture of al-Azhar.

However, Salafists are not alone in their exclusion. Religious scholars from

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Morocco, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the Gulf states (except the UAE) and other countries with renowned Muslim clerics and respectful religious institutions are also unrepresented. There is no doubt that by including only one contingent of the broad and diverse Islamic spectrum and by identifying itself as a “wise” council of enlightened scholars whilst marginalising numerous other respected religious figures, the Council cannot live up to its hype as the heralded theological focal point of universal Islamic reference.

The Council was established at a critical stage, when the Muslim community needed a committed and concerted effort by religious leaders to build strong foundations of openness and transparency, and to develop the instruments needed to bridge divisions and foster mutual understanding. However, the announcement of such a closed constituent assembly and the media campaigns inciting hatred that have accompanied its launch were disappointing, damaging the credibility of the Council from its inception.

Has the Council of Elders forgotten that exclusion, marginalisation and imposition of agendas by narrowly represented institutions often lead to conflict and disunity?

Can a closed group truly speak the language of openness?

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WILL THE COUNCIL OF MUSLIM ELDERS SUCCEED IN ESTABLISHING A NEW RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY?

The July launch of the Muslim Council of Elders in Abu Dhabi was the result of a set of recommendations by the Forum for Civil Peace to “re-establish, across Muslim communities, authority, leadership and scholarship, promoting the right path and distancing themselves from political and theological disputes -hence gaining a much needed, respected upper-hand in the affairs of Muslims.”

The statement declared that the Council would be “the first of its kind in the Islamic nation.” It also envisaged that members of the Council would be “objective and not connected to any political, religious or ethnic conflict”, and that it would aim “to strengthen the resistance of the nation, especially its youth, against violence and hate speech.”

These announcements unveiled the core features of the project, revolving around the central concept of a new religious authority and institutional Centre of gravity for the Islamic nation. Yet, official statements seem to indicate a divergence in reality from the stated vision, aims and founding spirit of the nascent Council of Elders.

Recently, UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed has attacked those opposing the creation of the Council, describing them as “quasi-scholars who promote other media channels and fatwa platforms, which are followed blindly by those without sense or knowledge.” He concluded his speech by mentioning

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the need to bring the “nation to its senses”.

Elaborating further on the planned functions and purpose of the Council, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, stated that its primary task was to “counter advocates and instigators of sedition”. Similarly the official press emphasised that the “role of the Council of Elders is to promote the correct and enlightened path that Muslims and major organisations should

follow.” An influential UAE figure was quoted in the press as saying, “the importance of establishing this Council stems from its functions, which will determine a number of very important objectives for the UAE,” and stressed that the Council of Elders: “will undermine political Islam and the Muslim Brother-hood.”

Following these stirring comments, Council members in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere scrambled to dispel fears over the Council’s agenda, with founding member Sheikh Abdallah bin Bayyah making statements to the Egyptian press in which he confirmed that the aim of the Council is not to be a substitute to any existing religious authority, and that it does not intend to undermine any other Fatwa or religious council in the Muslim world.

However, these statements were not sufficient to ease the increasingly audible chorus of concern in various Muslim countries catalysed by the comments made in the UAE, with anxieties being aired that the “Council of Elders” was a pretext for re-establishing the Sufi-leaning Al Azhar as the primary religious authority and substitute to other honoured religious institutions in the Islamic world.

The truth is that the membership of the Council did not develop in a vacuum but is in fact a product of an Azhari-Sufi nexus with active support from Abu Dhabi, working to promote the institution and carefully manage its political orientation in the context of the current politically-polarised climate in the region.

In April 2014, Sheikh Al-Azhar was honoured as the UAE cultural personality of the year, and was assured by the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, that “the State is keen to support the Al-Azhar Mosque as a global cultural and religious Centre.”

Mohammed Khalaf Al Mazrouei of the Board of Trustees explained that the awarding of the Zayed Prize to Sheikh Al Azhar, the highest UAE award for culture, was in recognition for his standing as a “devout Muslim who represents moderate Islam, which calls for tolerance and dialogue”.

Sheikh Al-Azhar was also honoured with the Dubai International Award for the Holy Qur’an, when Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, congratulated Al Tayeb for his role in spreading the culture of moderate Islam, the policy and approach of Al-Azhar since its inception a thousand years ago.”

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But, critically, the campaign to enhance the Council’s prestige came at the expense and exclusion of other religious figures such as the sheikhs of the Kingdom of Morocco, who contributed much to the Forum of Civil Peace and were surprised by their omission from membership of the Council of Elders.

Some attribute the lack of representation of Morocco in the Council to criticism in the UAE press of its membership in the Forum of Civil Peace, particularly because the kingdom had pursued policies designed to gain regional leadership of religious affairs in sub-Saharan Africa, angering Al Azhar at a time when it was promoting itself as the primary authority in the Sunni world. Morocco historically does not see itself as subject to the authority of Al Azhar.

At the same time, there has been much chatter in the media about the dispute between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi triggered by hostile statements published in Emirati newspapers against religious authorities in Saudi Arabia, attacking the legacy and impact of religious ideas expounded by Imam Muhammad bin Abdul Wahab in the Muslim world.

In Algeria, Islamic scholar Dr Abdul Razzaq Qassoum faced criticism in the local press as a result of his participation in the Council of Elders. Reports questioned whether he had taken the controversial decision in his personal capacity or if he had decided to involve the Association of

Muslim Scholars for political reasons. He was accused by local sources of having “subordinated the Algerian Muslim Scholars Association to Sheikh Al-Azhar” (Shorouk News July 23rd, 2014).

Meanwhile in Turkey, the relationship between the official religious establishment and al-Azhar exhibited signs of strain after the President of Religious Affairs, Mohammed Gurmz, wrote to Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb on April 11th stating that, “We are deeply saddened by the Al Minya court’s decision to execute 528 people, especially at a time when the Egyptian people are experiencing such upheavals and pain in view of the calamities experienced in the Islamic world, at a time when foreign powers have intensified their interventions, and when Muslim countries are fighting each other and are divided…we hope that your Excellency and the scholars of Al Azhar university will re-establish unity, solidarity and brotherhood amongst Egyptians and pursue your duty with justice and compassion.”

Furthermore, the office of public relations of the head of the Islamic sheikhdom in Bosnia and Herzegovina issued a statement in August 2013 in which it condemns what it described as “brutal violence against the Egyptian people.”

In Russia, Sheikh al-Islam, Talat Tajuddin, on March 26th was even more candid in his criticism, stating that Russia did not trust the graduates of Al-Azhar and that it prohibited scholarships to Al-Azhar.

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The truth is that the deteriorating position of Al Azhar due to its active political involvement in the region cannot be ignored. In a direct challenge to Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Al Azhar has called for an alliance of Egyptian Sufi intellectual forces and their counterparts in Turkey to exercise pressure on Erdogan to resign, as well as seeking to rally followers of the Naqshbandi order to demonstrate in Taksim Square against his AKP government. Compounding tensions between Al Azhar and Turkey, the World Federation of Azhar Youth and other Sufi groups on July 29th demanded that ties with Turkey be completely severed.

The long political shadow of Al Azhar and its resultant relegated standing as an independent religious authority prompted the Head of Religious Affairs in Turkey to convene a global conference on July 17th this year, two days before the declaration of the establishment of the Muslim Council of Elders in Abu Dhabi, in order to establish an alternative religious authority as part of its “initiative for Muslim scholars to embrace peace and moderation”. The conference included scholars and thinkers from 32 countries, called for the formation of a delegation and for initiatives to proactively promote peace to end religious conflict in Islamic countries.

The stark parallels between the official mission statements of the Forum of Civil Peace and the Muslim Council of Elders in Abu Dhabi on the one hand, and the draft for the presidency of the World Conference of Religious Affairs in Turkey, cannot be ignored. It begs the question of whether Al Azhar, claiming the mantle of leadership, will be accepted as the primary religious authority for the entire Islamic world.

It is worth reminding the Council of Elders that they cannot achieve total authority over Muslims through a closed Council which excludes different views and does not enjoy political independence in its country of origin or its native land. If the Council is truly to emerge as a beacon of wisdom in the Muslim world and if the institution is to succeed, it should not exclude or marginalise any religious groups and individuals for merely expressing dissenting opinions. Crucially, it must also openly dissociate itself from all political and regional conflicts that have shed innocent blood.

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THE SUFI POLITICAL NETWORK ANDHOW IT OPERATES

After considerable preparation, the Muslim Council of Elders was launched in Abu Dhabi earlier this year. A politically charged Sufi project run by a network of scholars aiming to promote the influence of the Council and forming a media unit to produce audio, visual and printed material (including an academic magazine), the creation of an annual award, and most importantly, the formation of a world youth organisation.

Its success although not immediate, has come about through the advance of this effective Sufi network, asserting to represent “Traditional Islam” and promoted

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through branching organisations and various institutes in the region functioning as pillars of this strategy.

The Tabah Foundation

The first of these is the UAE-based Tabah Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded by Ali Al Jifri in 2005. Tabah was built on the preset that it will conduct research to inform policymakers and leaders, to improve governance and to assist them in decision-making.

The Foundation’s activities are also focused on expanding its network of influence, particularly through other institutions such as the Zayed House for Islamic culture in Al Ain, UAE, Dar Al Mustafa in Tarim, Yemen, Dar Al Hikma in Brussels, the College of Islamic Studies in Sanaa, the Madina Satellite channel, Educational programmes in East Africa, and the Tabah Foundation’s Program for Development Skills.

It is important to highlight the origins of this network and how it progressed under Al Jifri’s leadership over the past 8 years. Various events act as signposts for its development.

One such event was a lecture entitled “Islam in the West” by Hamza Yusuf, the Dean of the Zaytuna Institute, which was organised by the Tabah Foundation. It was attended by Ali Al Jifri, Farouk Hamada, the advisor to the heir apparent of the UAE, and some of the royal family of the UAE.

Another highlight event was the conference in the Moroccan city of Fez, jointly organised by the Moroccan Minister of Awqaf and the Middle Way Association

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(a Sufi association registered in London with strong connections to Ali Al Jifri). The Tabah Foundation’s participants at the conference included its Director of Cultural and Educational Projects, members of its Advisory Council including Abdullah Bin Bayyah and Habib Umar Bin Hafiz, as well as the Cambridge-based scholar, Abdul Hakim Murad. The event hoped to raise the profile of the Tabah Foundation in Morocco and garnered the support and co-operation of the Moroccan Minster of Awqaf.

Another conference was held by “Al Raed Academy for Sufism Studies” in Egypt, entitled “Sufism is the Right Method for Reform” was also attended by Ali Al Jifri; and Ali Goma, an advisory member of Tabah. The conference was headed by Sheikh Al Azhar Ahmed Al Tayeb and was attended by many national leaders and religious scholars. A remarkable feature of this conference was the repeated assertions by participants of Tabah’s perceived position as a leading and legitimate religious authority in Islam.

Furthermore, a study concerned by the demolition of tombs in Libya was conducted and published by Jihad Brown, a Tabah researcher and member of its Advisory Council, and was republished by Ali Goma on his website in what was an interesting demonstration of how the Foundation’s intellectual material is recycled amongst its network.

A programme of visits to the UK was organised for Ali Al Jifri in June 2012. He gave a lecture at London University (in participation with Dr. Abdul Hakim Murad). Al Jifri also visited the Cambridge Muslim College set up by Abdul Hakim Murad, who has strong links to the Tabah Foundation and the Zaytuna Institute and who is often seen at the same venues as Al Jifri.

Members of the Tabah Foundation also attended the sixth meeting of preachers in Yemen with Ali Jafri giving a joint speech with Omar Bin Hussein.

There is no adequate space here to list the many other activities and conferences that have been arranged by the Foundation, in which its members make regular visits to countries associated with the Foundation or its affiliates to continuously promote its own concept of religious authority without reference to any other programmes and currents of religious thought, including traditional Islam.

The Global Centre for Renewal and Guidance

Forming the second pillar of the Sufi political project, the Centre was established by Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah in London in December 2007. Its objective is to: “Support the renaissance of the Islamic ummah and study new proposals offering solutions in accordance with traditional theory, and jurisprudence based on modern human needs.”

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Rather than explore the foundation’s organisation and funding, it will perhaps be more illuminating to explain the basis on which Bin Bayyah established its activities and functions. The Foundation’s official website mentions that events are arranged by the Middle Way Association, which often works with Al Jifri to organise Tabah symposiums.

Islamic scholars involved in the Centre’s activities frequently attend the Tabah Foundation’s conferences, such as Dr. Abdul Hakim Murad and Hamza Yusuf, a regular guest at all events of the Centre including the workshops on “Striving to achieve the aims of minority communities” in London as well as the one on “Thought and Rational Behavior” in Nouakchott, Mauritania. The latter event was held July 2012 and was hosted by Hamza Yusuf.

Hamza Yusuf ensures that his mentor Abdullah Bin Bayyah, is invited to attend events sponsored by the Zaytuna College in California including, the graduation ceremony of the first cohort of MA graduates in June 2014. It is also evident that Bin Bayyah and Hamza Yusuf, together with Seyyed Hossein Nasr, move in the same circles as the Iranian lobby in Washington.

Dar Al-Mustafa madrasah for Islamic Studies

A third major institutional component in the Sufi political machine, this academy was established by Habib Umar bin Hafiz in Tarim, Hadramaut in Yemen in 1993. Due to the strong relationship between Umar bin Hafiz and his student Ali Al Jifri, developed during the latter’s studies at the institute, Al Jifri appointed his teacher to Tabah`s Advisory Council in Abu Dhabi and has accompanied him to many of the Foundation’s events.

The Tabah Foundation has helped Dar Al-Mustafa to improve its administrative organisation by restructuring its finance department, re-organising its management structure, Human Resources, and accounts – in accordance with international standards.

The official Tabah website states that the Dar Al-Mustafa renewal program also includes plans to increase services provided to students, raise its portfolio and fundraising and to establish an endowment in order to obtain official certification that its systems meet required quality standards, within a 5 year period.

As part of the support plan, Ali Al Jifri, retaining his role as the head of Tabah, was also appointed as the Vice President of Dar Al-Mustafa, underthe supervision of Omar Abdul Hafiz (also a member of Tabah Advisory Council).

In efforts to expand this network to North Africa, the UAE has spent a great deal of money supporting the activities of the Tabah Foundation and its affiliates,

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hoping by extension to propel Al Azhar into the sole religious seat of authority in the region and as an umbrella organisation for all other Islamic theological institutions. The UAE has provided significant funding to Al Azhar educational projects both inside and outside Egypt, financially supporting the specialised hospital in Al Azhar University along with a number of academic faculties. It has established the new Sheikh Zayed Centre for Teaching Arabic to Non-Natives on campus as well as founding an international library and supporting the International Chapter of Al Azhar Alumni, which serves as a human reservoirfor the Muslim Council of Elders as it strives to position itself as the new “authority” on Islamic religious thought and doctrine.

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“MOMINOUN WITHOUT BORDERS” – THE ISLAMIC LEFT AND POLITICAL SUFISM

The “Islamic leftist” failed to progress in the last decade of the 20th century for a number of reasons, primarily because of the popular Islamic movements which spread throughout the Islamic world, and partly because it borrowed heavily from other intellectual traditions but failed to influence the political culture. Moreover, its interpretation of the Quran failed to provide modern alternatives to traditional Islamic texts.

One of the pioneers of the Islamic left is Hasan Hanafi. He adopted Spinoza’s method of studying the Torah in order to understand the Holy Quran and its sciences. He defined the movement as “a historical, cultural, social, political mass movement based on three fundamentals: ancient heritage, Western heritage, and the Holy Quran.”

Progressive Islamists such as Hassan Hanafi in Egypt and Ahmidah Ennifar, Salahuddin Al Jourachi, Mohammed Arkoun, Abdul Majid Asharfi, Hisham Djait and Abdul Salam Messadi, adopted a religious path based on the premise that “extensive use of reason, especially in the religious field, is legitimate since religious and social awareness can only be complete with it.”

Some members of the movement believed that Sufism offered an innovative

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intellectual foundation upon which Islamic heritage could be developed to build a modern perspective more suitable for Muslims in the 21st century. Outlining this concept, Hassan Hanafi wrote a book entitled “From Decline to Permanence”, in which he defined “Sufi reform” and determined that its text is not historical or eternal, leading him to conclude that in actual fact there is no static eternal text and that the Quran in turn is open to modernisation.

Hassan Hanafi’s ideas about the pivotal position of Sufism in Islamic heritage and the possibility of developing a new religious discourse has become, since the Arab Spring, a theme around which intellectuals of the movement and modernists have rallied in order to counter the spread of political Islam. Hence, political Sufis and the Islamic left have found common ground with UAE support in their opposition to political Islam.

As the Tabah Foundation pushed ahead with forging a global alliance of scholars from the Muslim world and the West, resulting in the formation of the Muslim Council of Elders led by Abdullah Bin Bayyah and Ahmed Al-Tayeb, Mominoun Without Borders (founded in 2013) gathered remnants of the Islamic left and their modernist peers together in order to play a new role in the wake of the Arab Spring.

With Tabah demonising political Islam and constructing a Sufi-Azhari nexus of authority, so the Mominoun Without Borders foundation aimed to demonise the Islamist ideology itself and devoted most its efforts towards cultivating the culture of the region, to search out the embodiment of the region’s quintessential cultural characteristics. In that review it openly declared rigorous support for social, intellectual and religious research on a scientific and rational basis, coordinating and supporting communication and collaboration amongst researchers, intellectuals and institutions who share common concerns.

Mominoun Without Borders and the political Sufi movement represented by the Tabah Foundation and its brainchild, the Muslim Council of Elders, all actively work to present a positive image of Islam and their agenda, specifically to the West. While the jurist Bin Bayyah argues that peace is a necessary “compromise ” and seeks to invalidate the fatwa of Ibn Taymiyyah for defensive Jihad, Mohamed Al-Ani, the General Manager of Mominoun Without Borders declared that his organisation is not interested in politics, adding that “there is a need for an alternative intellectual and political framework to traditional Islam” and that “the relationship between science and religion, morality and politics must be honest and independent”.

Nevertheless, the relationship between Mominoun Without Borders and Emirati institutions is strong, and the revival of Islamic leftist ideology is apparent. Mominoun Without Borders strives to reproduce the ideologies of those it considers to have instructive insights including Sudanese author

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Mohammed Abul Kassim Haj Hamad, who wrote “The Governorship” and “Roots of Fundamentalist Stalemate”, as well as Hassan Hanafi who applied the ideas of the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza to the Quran and who was honoured for his work at a conference held in Marrakech (17-18th January 2014) entitled “Religious discourse: problems and challenges of renewal”. Hanafi also revived Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid’s writings, which were the focus of controversy during the 1990s.

The foundation is associated with figures well-known for their hostility to political Islam, and especially Salafists such as Muntasir Hamada, a follower of the Qadiriyya Boutchichiyya Sufi path and author of “Maghreb Islamists and the Political Game”, in the critique of Islamic movements, Muslims and the Al-Qaida question”, “We, and Al-Qaida, We and Sufism”, “Critique of Al-Qaida: A contribution to refute the thesis of Islamist Jihadism”, “Era of conflict against Islam”, and “Wahhabism in the Maghreb”.

The foundation also opened its doors to writers known for their extensive examination of Islamic culture such as Abdelmajid Charfi, as well as Lebanese scholar Radwan Assayed, who participated in the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies and who has declared more than once that “the failure of political Islam was evident, both in the experience of Ikhwan and Salafist movements and in the claims of Al-Faqih governance”. Assayed has also called on many occasions for traditional religious institutions such as Al-Azhar in Egypt, Zaytouna in Tunisia, Qarwin in

Morocco and other religious establishments in Saudi Arabia “to rehabilitate and liberate Islam from the influence of Islamists and dictatorship”.

As part of its project to make religion more appealing, western friendly, civilised, the Foundation was labeled with promoting the idea of unity of religions, an idea that was popular among Sufis like Ibn ‘Arabi Al Mursi, Ibn Al Farid and Jalaluddin Rumi, who supported the idea of limiting the role of religion in the realm of the civil state, considering religion to be a purely personal matter.

Supporters of Sufism have also used this concept as a guide to interpret texts outside the rules of Sharia. Ennifar Saden, a Mominoun Without Borders researcher and his proponents referred to reasoned rational thinking and found no difficulty in finding mechanisms to consider ideas borrowed from other religions and cultures.

It should be noted that the foundation established a field operations Centre in Morocco to counter the rise of revolutionary ideology in Tunisia. The location was well chosen in order to facilitate co-operation with its Sufi ally Maliki Al-ash’ari Junaidi. The foundation enjoys a close relationship with the UAE which funds the Sufi network that links Abu Dhabi, Cairo and Rabat, presenting itself as the central actor in a moderate axis against extremism and

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radicalism, and dialogue with the West.

Both Tabah and Mominoun without Borders claim to share these values and their rejection of political Islam and Salafist extremism – and in discrediting other religious authorities in the region.

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THE FUTURE OF POLITICAL SUFISM

A Zero-Sum Game

Following the outbreak of national protests in the Arab world, the promotion of Sufi movements has constituted a core element of the national security agendas of the region’s regimes. Their intelligence agencies worked to bolster Sufi orders and empower their cadres to exercise a more active political role.

At first, this campaign attracted the support of leading personalities and scholars such as Bernard Lewis and Hisham Kabbani, who met American officials to discuss the role of Sufism in achieving Washington’s security interests in 2003. This discourse tended to focus on what the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair called “mainstream Islam”.

Under this label, Western theorists advocated the deployment of Sufi orders in opposition to Islamic movements and delivered them as the primary representatives of the majority of the world’s Muslims. At that time, figures indicated that the Sufi orders of the world numbered around 280, of which 76 were in Egypt, 40 in Sudan and 13 in Libya. Algeria was home to 30 orders with four million followers spread in 9000 locations around the country, whereas in Yemen 20 orders were based in the Hadramout province, Tehama on the western coast, Aden in the south, as well as Ebb, Taiz and Al-Bayda’ in the central regions.

In addition to the various local orders from different countries, transnational

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Sufi orders were also viewed as valuable assets for Western policymakers in the battle against extremism, especially al-Qadiriya, al-Rifai, al-Shadhili, al-Naqshbandi and other movements that transcended national boundaries.

The considerable number of Sufis worldwide and the willingness of leaders of Sufi orders to ally with political authorities in Arab countries made the birth of a “political Sufi” movement a reality. The Tabah Foundation based in the UAE is considered the hub of this movement in the Arab world. It defines itself as “a non-profit organisation that strives to impart recommendations to decision makers” and declares its mission is “to bring about solutions to global and regional crises, one step at a time. Tabah’s projects seek to meet its goals via best practices of management methodologies informed by the highest Islamic ethical principles, whereby a new standard for Islamic development projects can be forged”. Emirati authorities have provided significant financial resources to the foundation to develop a network infrastructure of cross-border Sufi institutions and to reposition Al-Azhar as the institutional Centre of gravity in Sunni Islam.

Dilemmas posed by the political role of Sufism

Analysts in Western research Centre’s have identified serious obstacles that pose a challenge to the political Sufism project. Perhaps the most notable is the absence of a mature political theory underpinning these orders, who have not developed a coherent concept of political participation through the course of their history.

The article “Muslim Networks and Movements in Western Europe”, published by the American Pew Institute in September 2010, noted that Western governmental support for Sufi movements was ultimately unsuccessful due to reservations held by many Muslims of meddling funded by Western governments.

In December 2011, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published a lengthy paper entitled “Salafis and Sufis in Egypt”, written by the researcher Jonathan Brown. The author believed that the scope for taking political advantage of the Sufi orders was very limited, due to their historic association with the ruling National Democratic Party in Egypt at that time, and their inability to articulate a clear political vision. He predicted that they would have no real impact on politics in the near future.

Najeh Ibrahim investigated the role of Sufi movements in Egypt in his study “Will Sunni Sufism inherit political Islam in Egypt”, published in Al Youm Al Sabi Journal (July 11, 2014). He drew attention to the cooperation between Sufis and the ruling regime in Egypt. The most prominent proponents of this partnership included Sheikh Al-Azhar Ahmed Al-Tayeb, Mohammad Mahmoud

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Abu-Hashem, former President of Al-Azhar Ahmed Omar Hashem, the former Grand Mufti of Egypt Ali Gomaa, Mohamed Abdel-Baith al-Kettani, Usama al-Azhari as well as Habib al-Jifri who has enjoyed official support from institutions who have granted him a media platform to address young Egyptians. This coalition has worked to exclude and isolate its competitors and assume a more active role in politics, but has faced many obstacles. Amongst these is the lack of a clearly defined administrative entity, the tendency of its leaders to seek out fame, prestige and status rather than spiritual self-elevation and improvement, an excessive emphasis on popular religion at the expense of education in the Sharia sciences, a distinct inability to correct errors, and poor communication between Sufi elders and their followers.

In a similar study entitled “The dilemma of the political role of Sufi movements after the Arab Spring”, researcher Abulfazl Al Asnawi argued that the Arab Spring exposed the marginal independent political role played by Sufi orders in the Arab region. He deduced that this was a crisis of Sufi thought, including a host of unorthodox popular practices and their almost absolute obedience to local regimes rather than operating as independent actors within their social environment. He added: “The ruling regimes used Sufi orders, locally and internationally, whenever they needed them to achieve social balances and political actions”. Al Asnawi highlighted that divergent Sufi political practices have caused severe divisions within Sufi ranks which have

prevented them from performing the active political role some governments had hoped for. He also pointed out that they have missed an important opportunity to generate real political influence in the Arab world due to the absence of a centralised administrative apparatus and a shortage in public reach.

There is no doubt that these academic findings raise serious questions about the political future of Sufism in the Arab world and its ability to support government institutions. The failure of the leaders of the Sufi orders to exercise an active political role will inevitably cause Western financial help to dry up and limit their ability to build and sustain influential networks. It may push the Arab governments that are presently generously subsidising Sufi institutions to look for other alternatives in this politically-polarising battle for Muslim hearts and minds.

Al Asnawi further warned that Sufi movements do not fully appreciate the detrimental impact of the policies, statements and behaviour of their leaders on regional security. In addition to the convergence between the Tabah Foundation and similar institutions on one side and the Iranian lobby represented by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and his son Vali Nasr on the other, there has emerged a union in Syria between government supported Sufis such as Ahmad Hassoun and al-Bouti (who chaired the Advisory Board of the Tabah Foundation until his death) and Iran. This Sufi-regime alliance upset regional

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sensitivities and alienated the majority of the Syrian people. It underestimated popular feelings of resentment towards Iran and its sectarian militias in the region who are committing crimes against these populations.

In Egypt, the visit to Tehran in March 2013 of the Front for Sufi Reform, headed by Sheikh Alaa Abul Azayem and representatives of fourteen Egyptian Sufi orders, raised serious questions about the credibility of these orders and their ability to understand the security risks associated with lobbying for funding from Tehran in order to establish a higher council for Sufism in Paris.

Egyptian newspapers published a swathe of information about the meetings between the leaders of the Egyptian orders with Iranian officials. Following the meetings, the Sufi orders announced that they would put aside their conflicts and unite in their efforts to bring Sufi and Shia sects together to fight other Islamic theological currents. This development signified a critical break in the policy of co-operation between the Egyptian Sufi orders and the government in dealing with the unfolding crises in the region.

But the biggest challenge to political Sufism lie in the mentality of its financiers and leadership, who fight religious hatred with hatred rather than true engagement with opponents of other pervasive Islamic movements, and in so doing forge alliances that pose a threat to the region’s security. Whilst claiming that they want to deliver civil peace, in reality they have produced divisive and harmful policies inciting yet more extremism and exclusion.

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CHAPTER 2:THE POLITICAL ROLE

OF THE ‘NEW DERVISHES’

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DR. AHMED AL-TAYEB: DREAMS OF A GLOBAL RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY

It was never envisaged that Dr Ahmed Al-Tayeb, the grandson of the leader of the Alkhlutiah sect, would become a competing religious authority in the Islamic world.

A simple farmer from Al Murashada village, he left to study theology at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. He then went to France to complete his graduate studies where he received a doctorate in 1977. Al Tayeb studied philosophy in French, including Marxist political thought focusing on class, identity, and cause and effect. He was strongly influenced by the ideas of Muhyiddin bin Arabi, particularly his theories and visions concerning the State and Prophecy.

Following his return to Egypt, he struggled to find job opportunities due to economic recession, so he went to teach at universities in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Pakistan, eventually returning to Al-Azhar to work in the Department of Religion and Philosophy.

The political arena proved more attractive to the young Al Tayeb than the world of philosophy and so he joined the National Party, working within the Policy Committee to explore ways in which the religious establishment could be reformed through teaching and fatwas.

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Tasked with rallying followers in the ‘battle for the party’ against Islamist factions, he exercised the duties of his role enthusiastically. Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak identified him as a strong personal leader with absolute loyalty to the National Party and hastened his appointment as Mufti of the Republic in 2002. He was subsequently appointed as the chairman of the Al-Azhar University (2003-2010), then as Sheikh Al-Azhar as the successor to Dr. Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, who died in the March 19, 2010.

Al Tayeb’s mission within the National Party was to draw upon Sufi doctrine to persuade the religious establishment to favour the National Party in preference to Islamist groups.

Despite his promotions, Al Tayeb retained his membership of the National Party, remaining in his position in the policy committee until 2010 when he was pressurised by public opinion to resign only a month after taking over as Sheikh Al-Azhar.

Notwithstanding his resignation, Al Tayeb did not find it difficult to reconcile his loyalty to the State with the management of religious affairs that proved to be partisan in style. In the wake of his resignation, he said that the “institution of Al-Azhar does not carry out the government’s agenda, but it should not go against the government, because it is part of the State.” Al Tayeb remained loyal to the State and even in the midst of events that rocked Egypt, he issued fatwas forbidding demonstrations and called upon citizens to return to their homes and “cease sedition”.

Al Tayeb incurred the wrath of the protest movement after Mubarak’s second national address when he declared that demonstrations by the opposition were, in accordance to Sharia, “Haram” and an invitation to chaos. After Mubarak announced the transfer of power to Vice President Omar Suleiman, he remarked to Al Tayeb that the continuation of demonstrations “had become unnecessary” because the protestors’ demands had been met and that he had resigned in order to save the National Party from collapse.

‘Wahhabism’ and the deployment of Sufism to counter it

During his chairmanship of Al-Azhar University (2003-2010), Al Tayeb sought to purge the ranks of the teaching staff and graduate students, declaring that “the doctrine of Al-Azhar is the doctrine of al-Ash’ari and Almetridi, and the jurisprudence of the four, and the Sufiism of Imam Junaid”. He had no difficulty in identifying his ‘neo-Salafi’ opponents.

In a series of meetings televised at the end of 2009, he launched a relentless campaign against what he called the “Salafist -Wahhabis”, who he claimed were deviant “outsiders” straying from the correct path, and were a threat to the unity

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of the Islamic nation.

Al Tayeb warned of the danger of the Wahhabi claim to represent the Islamic nation, commenting that they ‘pretend’ and are not followers of ‘good’ Salafism.

Sheikh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah and Imam Muhammad bin Abdul Wahab did not escape Al Tayeb’s criticism, stating that the elders of their school “are only followed by the uneducated” and echoing comments recently made by Sheikh Ahmad Qubaisi in Abu Dhabi, who has argued that the doctrine of Wahhabism has misled Muslims.

To justify the campaign against opponents in Al-Azhar University, Al Tayeb warned of a conspiracy to ‘hijack the thought and approach’ of Al Azhari moderates, a current of thought with a history of more than a thousand years. He stressed that Al-Azhar “would preserve the Ash’ari doctrine on Sufi thought” which has been cultivated by dozens of Al-Azhar sheikhs throughout history. Hence he launched a purge of faculty members, especially those who were accused of being Salafist or members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The newspaper Al Fajir reported that the committee set up by Al Tayeb under the chairmanship of Dr Abdullah Hilal al-Husseini made recommendations to remove faculty members who he described as “mercenaries and hackers in this great Institution, especially those following the thought and beliefs of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis.”

The dismissal of opponents by Al Tayeb sparked mass demonstrations at the prestigious university in which professors, sheikhs and imams of mosques demanded his dismissal on the grounds that he was a “leftover” from the Mubarak regime.

The demonstrators denounced what they called the “outrageous and deeply disappointing actions of Sheikh Al-Azhar”, after he issued official fatwas to stop Friday prayers and for people to pray at home instead. The demonstrators accused him of harbouring loyalties to the former regime, and berated him for trying to thwart the demands of the millions of demonstrators. They also accused him of arbitrariness towards the workers and staff at the Al Azhar.

In the response to this direct challenge, Al Tayeb urged followers of the Alkhlutiah way to counter-demonstrate and to chant the slogan: “with our blood we will redeem you imam.”

Will al-Azhar become a global religious authority of Sufism?

After a period of decline, Al-Azhar returned to prominence in the wake of the removal of President Mohamed Morsi with the support of the military, who needed religious authority to legitimize the rule of his successor.

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The reality is that the initial appointment of Al-Tayeb to high station, the subsequent rehabilitation of his character, and the continual support for his authority are all developments resulting from political calculations and not religious considerations.

Al Tayeb’s known support for countries supporting military action is pivotal. He follows Sufism and does not hide his hostility towards Islamist groups and Salafists. He has demonstrated his willingness to mobilise the religious authority of Al-Azhar against the opponents of the Sufi order.

Furthermore, Al Tayeb is building alliances with Sufi institutions in the UAE, as he seeks to broaden the front in the fight against opponents to his vision beyond the borders of Egypt. This is evidenced by his key role in establishing the ‘World Association of Al-Azhar Graduates’, an association that can provide a source of support for the ‘Council of Elders of the Muslims’ project in Abu Dhabi.

Al Tayeb has achieved rapid success and recognition for his regional role, with honours and rewards from around the Gulf being lavished upon him. He was granted the Sheikh Zayed Award for ‘Cultural Personality of the Year’ in April 2013 as well as the 2014 Dubai Holy Quran ‘Islamic Personality of the Year Award’. In addition he was appointed chairman of the ‘Board of the Elders of Muslims’ in Abu Dhabi, and was honoured in the Saudi city of Riyadh.

As a result, the Egyptian writer Fahmi Howeidi questioned the relationship between Al-Azhar and Salafis in Saudi Arabia “which historically has been estranged and violent; moreover Al-Tayeb is a fundamental Sufi, which distances him even farther from the Salafist movement”. He then went on to query “the real reason for the call by Sheikh Al-Azhar and its scholars to visit the Kingdom at the present time”.

It is also worth mentioning that in the past few months, the UAE has significantly increased its level of funding to Al-Azhar in what is perceived to be an effort to expand its influence and bolster its role as a religious authority of the Muslim world. Such schemes include funding education projects both inside and outside Egypt, support for the Specialty Hospital of the University of Al-Azhar, the establishment of a group of colleges within the University of Al-Azhar, the construction of the Sheikh Zayed Centre for teaching Arabic to non-native speakers and the construction of an international library with the latest technology.

In explaining the surge in UAE funding, the adviser to the ruler of Dubai said that “the Grand Imam is a great authority for Muslim scholars and Islamic people in all countries”. Perhaps revealingly, this statement mirrors the reaction of Al-Tayeb when he first learned of his appointment as Sheikh Al-Azhar in 2010, when he thanked the former President Hosni Mubarak for his confidence and added that “the appointment as imam of the Muslims is a great

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responsibility”.

It appears that the ambitious philosopher from the Marashda village in Upper Egypt was thinking beyond Al-Azhar by referring to the “Imamate of all Muslims”. Will the UAE give Al Tayeb what Mubarak failed to give him?

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ABDULLAH BIN BAYYAH: THE SUFI FAQIH

Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah was born in 1935 in Tamabdgha, southern Mauritania. His father, Judge Al-Mahfouz bin Bayyah, encouraged him to study Sharia, Arabic, and the Quran at an early stage of his life, and later sent him to Tunisia to help configure the judiciary.

There are stark similarities in the developmental and career paths of bin Bayyah and his partner in the Presidency of the Muslims Council of Elders in Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb. One of those is being a cleric with political ambitions. In fact, a key factor behind bin Bayyah’s prominence in the public sphere was his engagement in politics in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, as a member of the ruling Mauritanian People’s Party, becoming a Permanent Trustee for the Party and a member of its Cabinet and Permanent Committee.

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As the People’s Party, like its former Egyptian counterpart the National Democratic Party, is the only ruling party in the country, bin Bayyah rapidly progressed through the political and religious establishments by virtue of being a party member. He was appointed as the primary mediator on Religious Affairs in the Republic, Minister of Awqaf, Minister of Islamic Affairs and Education, Minister of Justice and Official Holder of the Seals, Minister of State for Human Resources – with the position of Deputy Prime Minister, then Minister of State for Directing State Affairs, Organizations and Parties.

His life radically changed after he accompanied Saudi King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz during his trip to Mauritania in 1972, drawing the attention of Saudi officials during that visit. After considering Aelchenaqth’s position in the Kingdom, bin Bayyah decided to travel to Saudi Arabia where he worked for various high-level officials including King Faisal, King Khalid and King Fahd, who was the Crown Prince at the time. Bin Bayyah was then appointed as a professor at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah.

During this period, bin Bayyah enjoyed good relations with a variety of religious institutions, joining a wide range of religious bodies including the Commission on Scientific Signs in the Quran and Sunnah, the World Supreme Council for Mosques, the International Aid Organisation of Kuwait, the World Muslim Congress in Karachi, the European Council for Fatwa and Research, and the Islamic Fiqh Academy.

However, his association with the International Union of Muslim Scholars was fraught with controversy. He was quoted as expressing his dissatisfaction with the random member recruitment in the Union and the leadership’s tendency to make improvised decisions, often attaching his name to statements and political positions on which he did not formally lend his support. All of this led to his resignation from the Union in September 2013. He stated it was due to personal circumstances, necessary in order to help preserve his modest role in seeking reform and reconciliation, with no conflict of interest.

But it was clear to many that bin Bayyah’s resignation was in fact a result of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s escalation of rhetoric against the military regime in Egypt and the Gulf states who are supporting it. This did not go unnoticed by Abu Dhabi’s rulers, who invited bin Bayyah to stay with them, allowed vast space in the media for him and assigned to him religious positions such as the Chair of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, membership of the senior Advisory Board of the Tabah Foundation, and more recently, the co-Presidency of the Muslim Council of Elders along with Al-Azhar Sheikh, Ahmed Al-Tayeb.

In this third phase of bin Bayyah’s life, two important developments are clearly identifiable. First, he developed a passion for Sufism and tried to adapt it according to the religious discourse prevalent in the UAE, his new host

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country. Bin Bayyah began calling for a Sufi revival in the Islamic sciences “to refreshreligious studies”. However, bin Bayyah’s appearances in the media contradicted the very essence of his own beliefs, but this unbefitting exposure was a necessary undertaking in line with the wishes of the management of the Sufi Tabah Foundation in promoting the ritual space. The respectful Sheikh was seen at the annual Mawlid (the Prophet’s Birthday) celebrations and other religious festivals, sitting on the podium next to musical bands and instruments, not entirely compatible with his traditional religious and academic background.

Among other most prominent events and forums in which the bin Bayyah now appeared were the eleventh session of the “Burda” Award at the National Theatre in Abu Dhabi, and in the Committees for the celebration of the Prophet’s birth in the UAE. Widely reported also was his famous lecture in the Sidi Shiker Second World Meeting in Morocco, in which he attacked those who were against celebrating the birth of the Prophet (may peace be upon him).

Meanwhile, his students and colleagues in the universities of Saudi Arabia raised questions over his debatable fatwas concerning the permissibility of eating a carcass if it was blessed by saying a name other than the name of God, the admissibility of using certain musical instruments in “Islamic” music, and similar jurisprudence.

The second perceivable shift in bin Bayyah’s character was the resurgence of the political spirit he abandoned long ago. He became increasingly proactive in his Sufism, and his host country, the UAE, launched media campaigns against those religious parties and organisations who opposed institutions such as Tabah, especially those in Saudi Arabia.

In the meantime, questions were raised about the impact of bin Bayyah’s students on their sheikh, especially those who held advisory positions in Western governments such as Jihad Hashim Brown, the director of research at Tabah Foundation who worked as a consultant on issues related to Islam and international relations for various governments and institutions. From the United States, Hamza Yusuf, the director of the Zaytuna College in California who served as an adviser to the White House on relations between the Islamic world and the West, who organised bin Bayyah’s high-level official visits to the United States. These included meetings with the American president’s senior assistant Kyle Smith, the National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, representatives of government organizations and agencies including the CIA and the National Security Agency, the public relations director at the White House Jermaine Wet, as well as the Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Rashad Hussain.

During these visits bin Bayyah forged good relations with Western politicians and security officials, further cultivating these ties through his role of managing

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the Global Center for Renewal & Guidance in London. His involvement in the Tabah Foundation helped him build bridges of communication with the Naqshbandi political network, led by Hisham Kabbani. It also enabled him to develop controversial relationships with senior figures in the Iranian lobby in Washington such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Sayid Hassan Qazwini, and began to appear next to them in photos taken at conferences and public events in the West.

Those developments have raised questions over whether bin Bayyah was truly unaware of the fact that his name was being used in as a religious reference against opponents, or whether this was in fact in accordance with a desire to return to an active political role such as that which he enjoyed in Nouakchott?

Although bin Bayyah resigned from the International Union for Muslim Scholars with the stated aim of preserving his independence and to prevent the use his name in political debates, his membership of the Supreme Advisory Council of the Tabah Foundation has put his religious and political credibility back in contention, especially in the light of his strong association with the other members, such as Mohammed Saeed Ramadan Al-Bouti, Ali Gomaa, al Habib Umar bin Hafiz, Ali Jafri and other key actors in this political Sufi project.

Did bin Bayyah really achieve what he sought by resigning from the International Union for Muslim Scholars in terms of “bridging the gap and calling for reform and reconciliation?” Or did he find himself immersed in a conflict that did not in fact unite but rather divided the nation further?

In answering this question, we should note that one of bin Bayyah’s first actions as the newly-appointed co-President of the Muslim Council of Elders was “heading the Muslim Council of Elders’ delegation that visited Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, to participate in the inauguration ceremony of the Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz” (August 2nd, 2014).

Will the Faqih take off his turban and return to politics, following in the footsteps of co-President Ahmed Al-Tayeb when he re- joined the ruling National Democratic Party in Egypt?

Have the partners in the presidency of the Muslim Council of Elders found what they were actually looking for in this politically polarising project?

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ALI AL JAFRI: POLITICAL SUFISM, REALITY AND AMBITION

Ali bin Abdul Rahman Al-Jafri was born in the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. His father is Abdul-Rahman bin Ali bin Mohammed Al-Jafri, the leader of the Association of the Sons of Yemen, otherwise known as “Al Rai”, which supported the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP) and the attempted secession by forces associated with it in south Yemen in 1994. His father was appointed by southern leader Ali Salem al-Beidh as Vice President of the secessionist government but was then forced to flee the country with his family when southern forces were swiftly defeated. He was placed on the Yemeni government’s wanted “List of 16”, and he was later tried in absentia.

Due to the severe disruption in his education as a youth, which was limited to attendance at a public secondary school in Jeddah, Al Jafri was keen to compensate for the shortcomings of his educational background and so studied the works of 300 Islamic scholars, though he was unable to meet the vast majority of them.

Al Jafri was most influenced by the views and thoughts of Sheikh Mohammed Alawi al Maliki, a Sufi Sheikh of Moroccan origin who grew up in Hijaz. Al Maliki received a doctorate from the Faculty of Theology at the University of Al-Azhar, before returning later to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He wrote

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several books on Sufism, including Al Dhae’r and Shafa Al Fuad as well as Mafaheem. Renowned Saudi scholars such as Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz, Sheikh Abdullah bin Munia, Sheikh Hammoud Tuwaijri and Abu Bakr Algazairi identified strongly with Al Maliki’s writings and this had a significant impact on the psyche of his disciple Al Jafri.

Al Jafri was also an avid disciple of Habib Umar bin Hafiz, whom he lived with in Hadramout, Yemen between 1993 and 2003. It was there in the Dar al-Mustafa institute in Tarim that he studied a range of texts focusing on the core elements of Sufism, which are taught as part of courses to hundreds of students from inside and outside of Yemen each year.

Following this period of study with Umar bin Hafiz and others in the Dar al-Mustafa, Al Jafri would refer to himself as “a Sunni of the Ash’ari and the Shafi’i school, a lover of Sufism in my ways”.

Al Jafri worked with various satellite television channels in Egypt and Saudi Arabia but, owing to his age and relative inexperience, he made mistakes and errors of judgment, which led to him becoming a target of criticism by various authorities in Saudi Arabia and Palestine. In one incident, the Khatib (Speaker) of Al-Aqsa Mosque demanded that he be tried because his visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque was seen as a kind of “normalisation with the Israeli enemy, which amounts to collaboration and any collaboration with an enemy, amounts to treason.”

Al Jafri drew further condemnation in the wake of his visit to Denmark at the time of the protests in reaction to the publication of cartoons of the Prophet (PBUH). The Egyptian government subsequently declared him to be persona non grata and in 2001 requested he leave the country.

Al Jafri has stirred many a controversy, also evident in his visit to Cyprus to seek spiritual endorsement from Sheikh Nazim Haqqani, the leader of the Naqshbandia Sufi order. Al Jafri’s opponents raised objections to this along with the followers of Sheikh Nazim himself, perceiving his visit as an attempt to assume control over the Sufi leadership with financial backing from the UAE. Significantly, Sheikh Nazim’s heir, Hisham Kabbani, had also rejected Al Jafri’s approach.

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Al Jafri was further criticised for his management of the Tabah Foundation in the UAE, particularly over the contentious selection of the members of its advisory board, Mohammed Saeed Ramadan Al-Bouti, Umar Bin Hafiz, Ali Gomaa, and others, who were all notorious for their support of the failing governments in Egypt, Syria and Yemen.

However, the dynamic young man’s ambition continued to attract the attention of the authorities in Abu Dhabi, which sought to give him a central role in their project to promote a more politically-active brand of Sufism. In the UAE, Al Jafri organised what he called the “Award Burda” to celebrate the Prophet’s birthday, and was entrusted with the presidency of the “Festival of Love”. As a result his media exposure increased, especially on television in Abu Dhabi and Dubai where he was accorded publicity not readily available to other clerics either within the country or abroad.

Al Jafri has lectured at American universities on the subject of terrorism and is a member of various councils and organisations including the European Academy for Culture and Islamic Sciences in Brussels, the Al Noor Centre in Hadramout and the Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Jordan. He also lectures at the Dar al- Mustafa institute in Yemen, which is headed by Professor Omar Bin Hafeez.

Returning to Cairo after a long absence following the removal of Morsi from office, Al Jafri spoke extensively about the programs that have been developed there by the armed forces, delivering lectures in May 2014 at army barracks, and to the army, naval and air defence colleges.

However, because of his absence from various significant events held in the

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UAE whilst he was in Cairo, observers have aired doubts about his ability to progress the Sufi political project sponsored by the UAE. Moreover surprise was expressed at his absence from the launch of the Muslim Council of Elders in the Emirates, despite his previous prominent role alongside key founder Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah in organising the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies that preceded it.

Will the young Jafri need more time to mature and progress in his religious quest to join the ranks of senior learned scholars?

The answer may become apparent when the additional board members of the Muslim Council of Elders are announced.

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ALI GOMAA: GRAND MILITARY MUFTI OF EGYPT?

Ali Gomaa was born in Beni Suef in 1952. He completed a B.A in Commerce at Ain Shams University in 1973, then joined Al-Azhar University where he graduated in 1979. He later received a master’s degree in Juristic Methodology from the Faculty of Sharia and Law at Al-Azhar in 1985, and a doctorate in 1988.

Gomaa attracted the attention of the ruling National Democratic Party, through which he acquired a number of positions and titles including membership of the Islamic Research Academy and, more recently, the Muslim Council of Elders. He was appointed as the Grand Mufti of Egypt in 2003, and held this position until 2013. His tenure was marked by a propensity for theological contradictions and for issuing controversial Fatwas, especially on the sale of alcohol and the permissibility of Riba banking (or Usury). He once claimed to have seen the Prophet while awake. This prompted many scholars from Egypt and the Arab world to respond and challenge his fatwas. The Mufti responded with a campaign that lacked any restraint or propriety.

Taking up teaching responsibilities at Al-Azhar recently, Ali Gomaa has devoted much of his energy to promote Sufi Ash’ari theological discourse in Al-Azhar. He has organised and led intellectual confrontations against his opponents,

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whom he described as “arrogant extremists”, with the support of the Sheikh of Al-Azhar who invited Sufis from more than thirty Islamic and Western states to the first global conference of Sufism in September 2011.

Formerly Ali Gomaa had high regard for the scholars of Saudi Arabia during his work there. However, after his return from Saudi Arabia to Egypt, he distanced himself from the Kingdom, derided the Kingdom’s scholars and scorned Salafism and Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and his teachings.

This surprising U-turn caught the attention of Ali al-Jifri, the UAE-based Tabah Foundation’s director. Al-Jifri was similarly vocally critical of the scholars in the kingdom he grew up in and has worked to fulfill the aspirations of his spiritual mentor, Sheikh Muhammad Alawi al-Maliki, who bore a grudge against the kingdom. Al-Jifri visited Gomaa and developed a good relationship with him. In 2005, al-Jifri appointed Gomaa as a member of the Advisory Board of the Tabah Foundation, a group of Sufis and scholars who have been engaged in a campaign against their alleged extremist opponents. They follow the foundation’s scientific approach advocated by the American scholar Jihad Brown. Their output in sync with the policy approach of American political institutions, which have been persuaded to support Sufism as part of a strategy to counter the growing resistance in the Islamic world to America’s spreading influence there.

Ali Gomaa has worked closely with the Tabah Foundation’s leading thinkers, including the late al-Bouti, bin Bayyah, Nuh Al-Qudat, al-Habib Umar bin Hafiz, al-Jifri and some other Western Sufi Sheikhs, American and British. He has demonstrated a strong commitment to the foundation’s programme, joining al-Jifri on a visit to Jerusalem on the 18th April 2012 to launch the Integral Chair for the Study of Imam Al-Ghazali’s Work. As a result of this visit, the passport of the Grand Mufti of Egypt was stamped by an Israeli stamp, which was considered an embarrassment by al-Azhar scholars and the priests of the Coptic Church alike. The trip came on the tail of a previous visit by Ali al-Jifri, to Jerusalem on the 4th April 2012, which suggested that Tabah Foundation’s leaders were trying to break the fatwa forbidding non-Palestinian visits to Jerusalem while it is under occupation. Al-Jifri and Ali Gomaa’s visit to Jerusalem was part of a Tabah Foundation plan to override other fatwas, and re-interpret definitive historical Islamic texts. A conference was organised in Mardin in Turkey on 17th and 28th March 2010 to invalidate the famous “Mardin Fatwa” issued by Ibn Taymiyyah, concerning the conditions under which jihad is permissible. Ali Gomaa wrote a report about this conference, published by Al Ahram newspaper on the 6th May 2010.

In 2009, the former Egyptian Mufti turned 57, controversially celebrating the occasion by attending a local branch of the Lions Club headed up by Magdy Azab, and ignoring a fatwa issued by the al Azhar Committee prohibiting Muslims from joining such exclusive, elitist secular organisations.

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Like other politically submissive scholars who enjoyed cosy relations with the ruling elite, Gomaa was deeply troubled when his benefactor, former President Mubarak, fell from power in 2011. On another occasion he expressed his displeasure as millions of working class Egyptians voted in 2012 presidential elections for Mohammed Morsi, who did not share Gomaa’s goals and vision.

When Morsi was ejected from the Presidential Office, Ali Gomaa publicly came out in support of his ally in the military, al-Sisi, endorsing his actions in removing Morsi by stating: “Do not be afraid, religion is with you, the Prophet is with you, the believers are with you, the nation is with you and the angels in heaven support you”.

Gomaa showed a lack of respect for al-Azhar’s position and mockingly called those Egyptians defending the legitimacy of the deposed elected President Morsi as “stinky” people. He even called for extreme force to be used against them in a speech at the Police College on the 18 August 2013, in the presence of then Defence Minister, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Interior Minister Major General Mohammad Ibrahim, and a number of police and the army leaders. Gomaa castigated the demonstrators as Khawarij, and said: “Shoot them, and never sacrifice your people and soldiers for the sake of these Kha-warij. God bless those who kill them and those killed by them, and those who kill them are closer to God. We must cleanse our city and our Egypt from those brutes. They do not deserve to be Egyptians, and we are ashamed of them. We are innocent from them like the innocence of the wolf from the blood of Jacob’s son”. The scholar pointed out that Mohamed Morsi fell because he was “an interdicted imam” and declared to the audience that in his visions and visits from the Prophet, assurances were given that the actions of the military and police were just and morally valid.

After losing his position as Grand Mufti in February 2013, Ali Gomaa has frequently appeared in the media broadcasting mystical sermons, following in the footsteps of his sheikh, Abdullah bin Siddiq Ghumari, the leader of the Sufi order in Morocco. He has often highlighted the significance of Sufism in the al-Azhar educational curricula, and the importance of Al-Azhar in turn as a Sunni point of reference for the Islamic world.

Despite being a close ally of Sufi sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah and Sheikh Al-Azhar, supporting their political endeavours launched from the UAE, his name was not included on the members’ list of the constituent body of the Muslim Council of Elders. It is increasingly becoming doubtful whether he now possesses the credibility or prestige to lead an advisory or scientific body.

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HAMZA YUSUF: INTERSECTIONS – THE NAQSHBANDI NETWORK

AND NEW ALLIES

Islamic scholar Hamza Yusuf (also known as Mark Hanson) was raised in a Greek Orthodox Family in Northern California, USA. He converted to Islam at the age of 18 and then traveled to the Arab world, spending ten years of religious study in the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania. During this period, he became increasingly absorbed in the teachings of the Naqshabandi Sufi order, and was taken under the wing of a number of Sufi scholars in the al-Hajj Ould Fahfu School. Hamza Yusuf subsequently accompanied Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah to Saudi Arabia for a period of time, before eventually returning to his native United States to establish the Zaytuna Institute in California in 1996.

Throughout his academic career, Hamza Yusuf showed a keen interest in creating an English-language platform for the transmission of Sufi intellectual heritage. Despite his assertions that he was following a form of “Scientific Sufism”, he was criticised for adopting a more spiritual approach in his institute. In continuity with the teachings and beliefs of his mentor Sheikh Bin Bayyah, he would often say that Sufism is “the science of behavior and ethics, it is the core of Islam, while the ways and the sheikhs are a different issue”.

He is fond of telling his peers about his penchant for linguistic interpretation of Fiqh jurisprudence, especially in the field of the traditional Sufism that understands Sharia through the lens of metaphorical concepts revolving in an orbit of “truth”.

Greek philosophy greatly influenced Hamza Yusuf in his early life and he

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frequently cited philosophers and Western thinkers, reflecting on Aristotelian thought and his definition of happiness, Plato and his views on utopia, George Bernard Shaw and his views on Islam, and Arnold Toynbee and his hypothesis about the potentiality of a severe rift between the Global North and South.

But Hamza Yusuf’s scholarly prestige owes more to his political activities than spiritual teachings. He was appointed as the White House’s adviser for relations with the Muslim world following the events of September 11, 2001. He then closed the Zaytuna Institute temporarily and devoted himself to lobbying U.S policy makers on matters of Islamic affairs, making frequent appearances on satellite TV channels. Describing himself, he once revealed: “I even took off my turban and wore a suit and a tie”.

The attacks of 9/11 and its aftermath were a pivotal moment in Hamza Yusuf’s life. He launched a campaign against anti-Semitism in the Islamic world, called for the criminalising those who denied the Holocaust and urged Muslims to exercise restraint and practice non-violence against the American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This raised many eyebrows , in particular from his own followers, who noted a clear disconnect between the speeches he made before and after the events of September 2001, the New York Times even publishing glaring examples of those apparent contradictions. Hamza Yusuf meanwhile worked energetically to defend the credibility of his new policy approach and theological direction.

According to the Washington Post in an article printed on the 2nd October 2001 shortly before American intervention in Afghanistan, Hamza Yusuf was the only Muslim invited as part of a multi-faith delegation by the American administration to pray at the White House with then President George W. Bush, sing the national anthem, and show support for military action in Afghanistan.

Questions were also raised over Hamza Yusuf‘s links to a group of British Muslims close to the UK government, who adopted the teachings of the deputy leader of the Naqshabandi order in America, Hisham Kabbani, to wage a campaign against “Wahhabism” in order to isolate the extremists and defeat them. Also placed under the spotlight was Hamza Yusuf’s work with the Quilliam Foundation, which expressed its support for British involvement in the war in Iraq, and its recognition of the state of Israel.

In response to criticisms of his seemingly wavering political stance, he replied: “My alignment is with what I perceive as just and fair. If it’s with the Muslims, then I’m with the Muslims, if it’s with the West then I’m with the West.”

The book “Rebel between Spirit and Law”, written by Scott Kogl, offers an accurate description of Hamza Yusuf’s personality at this stage of his life and the nature of the advice he provided to the American administration. The author

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explained that Yusuf was convinced that the American administration’s battle against the “Wahhabi-terrorist” movements cannot be won without facing the governments standing behind those movements and funding them.

On this particular issue, Hamza Yusuf and his peers have it would appear lost some of their professional neutrality. He has used the label “Wahhabi” loosely, as if it is the ruling madhab in Saudi Arabia, interchanging it with the term “Salafi” and attributing the rise of the region’s terrorist movements to “Salafi-Wahhabi” theological currents. By such mixing of the cards, the implication is it’s “us” against “them”, that all Islamic movements that do not adhere to his doctrine should be shunned and possibly criminalised.

Hamza Yusuf’s deep Naqshbandi connections have been evident in recent initiatives. In a visit to the leader of the Naqshbandi order in Cyprus, Nazim Haqqani, sources from the Naqshbandi network highlighted that the aim of Yusuf’s visit was “to congratulate Haqqani on the opening of the grave of Umm Haram”. Umm Haram is the tomb on which a Mosque was built in the south Greek Orthodox side of the Island. It was closed during the civil war in 1974, but the United Nations Development Programme worked on the restoring it at a cost of $3 million, and the work took nearly four years. Haqqani reportedly informed Hamza Yusuf that he should not visit him until

he visited the tomb of Umm Haram near Laranca Airport. There, he was also introduced to the son of Hisham Kabbani, Nazim Kabbani, with the former declaring: “This boy is a sayyid” (denoting an honorific authority or descent to the Holy Prophet).

Upon returning to the United States, Yusuf was keen to maintain a strong relationship with Hisham Kabbani. Both were very close to the White House and actively worked together to draw the attention of the American administration to the dangers of cooperating with “Wahhabi” movements and the countries that support them.

The Kabbani-Yusuf alliance was further enhanced when a prominent Sufi Shiite figure and Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, was brought onboard. He joined his colleagues in warning the American administration of the threats of “Wahhabism” and soon became a regular guest at events organised by the Zaytuna Institute. The home page of the Institute’s website contained endorsements of the work carried out by the Institute and Nasr. This Sufi-Iranian convergence followed the announcement made by Sheikh Nazim Haqqani in April 2012 in which he declared that he and his followers believed the Hidden Imam (or Mahdi) was the disappeared Muhammad ibn Hasan al-Askari, the twelfth of the Ithna Ashari Imams.

It is worth mentioning that Seyyed Hossein Nasr and his son, well-known author and political scientist Vali Nasr, are prominent members of the Iranian lobby in

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Washington. Vali Nasr is a member of the American Council on Foreign Relations and the Council of American-Iranian affairs, and enjoys good relations with the American administration and some members of Congress. The American Centre for Strategic and International Studies has frequently published his writings and research, in which he has argued that it is in the interest of the United States to empower Shiites and put pressure on Wahhabi groups funded by Saudi Arabia, which, in his opinion, represent the greatest threat to American interests in the region.

In his book, The Shia Revival, Nasr expresses support for the teachings of Shia Iraqi cleric, Ayatollah al-Sistani, and calls for the empowerment of Shiite organisations in the Arabian Gulf whom he believes could prove to be reliable allies to the American administration. He has commented that such a strategy “will help limit the risk of Sunni extremism that comes from Saudi Arabia and the Wahhabi ideology”.

Furthermore, these linkages have been confirmed by the involvement of American-based and Iraqi-born cleric Sayed Hassan Qazwini, also a key figure in the Iranian lobby, with activities held by the Zaytuna Institute in co-ordination with the al-Shirazi network leadership to which Qazwini belongs. Revealingly, Hamza Yusuf has succeeded in enlisting the participation of his spiritual guide, Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah, in many of these events. Bin Bayyah has appeared next to Sayed Hassan Qazwini and Seyyed Hossein Nasr in public conferences hosting discussions about openness and building bridges, but which seem to have paradoxically and divisively encouraged alienation and resentment towards other religious groups and strands of theological thought.

In this light, Hamza Yusuf has used his influence in Washington to open the doors of the American administration to the Mauritanian Faqih Abdullah bin Bayyah, who has been promoting his controversial vision in the West of an Islamic jurisprudence focusing on “giving priority to achieving peace over claiming rights”.

Hamza Yusuf’s views and philosophical beliefs aside, it is important to recognise that his networking efforts have reinforced the activities of the Iranian lobby, which has put pressure on the American administration to recalibrate the territorial boundaries of the Arab region along ethnic and sectarian lines.

This would undoubtedly entail separating the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia from the interior Najd and coastal Hejaz regions. What the Naqshbandi and “Scientific Sufi” scholars seem to fail to appreciate is the vast complications of such intrusions, which could destabilize the Arab region even further. Given the clear risks of such a geopolitical strategy, it is perhaps even more difficult to comprehend why some Gulf capitals allocate vast sums of money to support this conflict-ridden vision.

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JIHAD HASHIM BROWN: TABAH REACH AND VISION

Jihad Brown grew up in the city of Santa Ana, California. He studied at Rutgers University, New Jersey, where he graduated in 1994 with a degree in Psychology and Middle Eastern Studies. He also received a graduate degree in philosophical theology from the University of Cambridge.

After completing his studies, Brown followed the path of his American Sufi peers. He embarked upon the study of Sufism in academic institutions in the Middle East to enhance his scholarly credentials and standing in the Muslim community worldwide.

At the beginning of his career, Brown travelled to Damascus with his wife and four children, forging close ties with Sufi leaders of whom the most important was Mohamed Said Ramadan Al-Bouti, the Dean of the Faculty of Sharia at Damascus University. Al-Bouti later joined forces with Brown in founding the Tabah Foundation.

Brown was also mentored by the Sufi Sheikh Mohammed Adib Al Klass, whom he revered as “a brilliant scholar in a long line of great scholars such as Al Shatabi and Ghazali.”

After completing his studies in the Levant “Al Mashriq”, Brown moved to Morocco “Al Maghrib” to round up his knowledge, where he studied at Tanalit in the Atlas Mountains.

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During this period, Brown studied under Muhammad Al Ghali Aldadsi, a member of the Moroccan Supreme Scientific Council which is a constitutional body headed by the King of Morocco. The council supervises the Religious Councils of the kingdom and deals with religious affairs and Fatwas in accordance with Moroccan traditions, specifically Maliki jurisprudence, the Ash’ari creed and Sufi mysticism.

After parting ways with Sheikh Aldadsi, Jihad Brown returned to the United States, where he became close to other American scholars of Sufism including Imam Zaid Shakir, Hamza Yusuf (founder of the Zaytuna University of Islamic Sciences), Yahya Rhodus and others.

Department of Research – Tabah Foundation (2005-2014)

When the UAE- based Sufi organisation, the Tabah Foundation, was launched in Abu Dhabi in 2005, the founder of the institute, Ali Al Jifri, appointed Brown to the Academic Committee, enabling Brown to concentrate on research and papers on law, theology and other contemporary issues.

The Academic Committee was formally established after receiving endorsement from Sheikh Al-Azhar Ahmed al-Tayeb, the former Grand Mufti of Egypt Ali Gomaa and the head of the Arabic Language Academy Hassan El-Shafei. Members of the committee included Dr. Farouk Hamada (a Sufi of Syrian origin, a Moroccan national and religious adviser to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi , Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan), Al Habib Al Jifri, Dr. Karim Lahham, Kamran Bajwa, Dr. Mahmoud Masiri and Aref Nayed (the Libyan Ambassador to the UAE).

Brown was also appointed as the orator for Friday prayers at the Mosque of Miriam Bint Sultan in Abu Dhabi. He was a regular columnist for The National newspaper in the UAE and has written about a range of topics including the acceptability of celebrating the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. He also translated the written works of prominent theologians such as Mahmoud Abdel-Halim. Brown’s writings are in no small part inspired by his philosophical academic background, which included the study of Psychology and Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University, and his pursuit of Islamic Studies in Syria and Morocco.

In line with his neo-Sufi peers, Brown engaged in media publicity and appearances. He participated in the ‘Doha Debate 2005’ on women’s rights in conjunction with Toujan al-Faisal (the first woman elected into the Jordanian parliament), Saudi born Khola Hasan and Tariq Suwaidan. As expected, Jihad approached his subject from a philosophical angle, philosophy being the essence of religion in his view.

He has also participated in various television interviews, most notably in 2010 on

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CNN when he discussed “the Muslim community at the crossroads in a leaderless vacuum.” Another interview was held on November 14th 2013, hosted by the Islamic satellite channel Iqra, focusing on “our ignorance of religion.”

In December 2007 following an initiative by the Royal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Amman, Brown and others signed “The Common Word” manuscript. This document, endorsed by prominent Muslim scholars, launched a Muslim-Christian interfaith initiative in collaboration and co-ordination with the Tabah Foundation.

Jihad also signed a Charter to promote stronger linkages between Islamic organisations and accredited Islamic Sharia students. 45 of his Sufi colleagues were also signatories, notably Faraz Rabbani, Hamza Yusuf, Abdullah bin Bayyah, Ibrahim Eissa, Muhammad bin Adam Hanafi, Yahya Rhodus, Abdul Hakim Jackson, Suhaib Webb and Zaid Shakir.

In recognition of his efforts to expand the reach of political Sufism, the Tabah Foundation appointed Jihad Brown to the Intellectual Committee as a senior adviser for research in September 2010. The Foundation acknowledged his contribution and efforts over many years as Director of Research and hoped that the new appointment would allow Jihad to further his research into law, theology and contemporary debates. Sheikh Jihad’s continued membership of the Board of the Foundation was underlined, as was his membership of the Governing Council for Research and role as acting Director of Research during the transitional period.

The promotion highlighted Brown’s central role within the Tabah Foundation, widely known as the home of political Sufism, funding international religious institutions and research Centre’s, and the driving force behind the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies and the recently established Muslim Council of Elders.

To strengthen the Foundation’s presence in foreign policy making circles (especially those connected to the influential network of Fetahullah Gulen) Jihad returned to the United States, settling in Princeton, New Jersey. There he is currently working to implement a number of educational projects, the most important of which is: ‘Knowledge without Borders,’ managed by the Sufi organisation Seekers Hub Global, under the guardianship of Faraz Rabbani.

Aside from his pivotal role within Sufi political networks (under the auspices and generosity of Abu Dhabi), Brown has succeeded in engineering a new vision of a globalised Islam, based upon Western thought and analysis.

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ZAID SHAKIR: IDENTITY, REASON, AND POLITICAL SUFISM

Zaid Shakir (formerly known as Ricky D. Mitchell) was born on 24th May 1956 in Berkeley, California in the United States.

During the early stages of his life, his home country experienced a racial struggle between whites and black African Americans, whose ancestors were forcibly brought over from the West African coast as slaves to work in plantations and in coal and precious metals mines in the New World.

Mitchell was influenced and inspired by Martin Luther King, who fought for racial equality and social justice, leading a campaign of civil disobedience.

Following the assassination of King in 1968, 12 year old Ricky continued his quest for identity and spirituality and declared his conversion to Islam in 1977, taking the name Zaid Shakir.

After a hiatus in his formal education, Shakir received a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the American University in 1983, then an MA in Political Science from the University of Rutgers. He then went on to study Arabic in Cairo, later becoming a professor of Political Science at Southern Connecticut State University, and was appointed as an interfaith council Chaplain at Yale University.

Like many of his fellow converts who embraced Sufism, Shakir travelled to the Arab world in 1994. He stayed there for 7 years, learning Sharia science in the Abu Noor Islamic Institute in Damascus, which was founded by Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro (the former Grand Mufti of Syria) in 1971, and in partnership with the College of Islamic Dawa in Libya and the Imam al-Awza’i Institute in

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Lebanon. Shakir was the first American to graduate from this Institute. He then journeyed westward to Morocco, where he studied to attain certification in the Islamic religious sciences, before returning to the United States in 2001to work as a professor at the University of Connecticut.

Following the events of the 11th September 2001, Shakir struggled to reconcile his religious and national identity. As an American Muslim, his American identity compelled him to defend the national interests of his country. The philosophy of his American Sufi friend Hamza Yusuf, who was an advisor on Islamic affairs to the White House, helped him overcome this dilemma, sowing

the seeds of a strong alliance between the two – embodied in the establishment of the Zaytuna College, the home of “scientific Sufism” based in California.

The institute strived to nurture a generation of neo-Sufis educated by a group of Western professors who received their Sufi education from scholars in the various madrasahs and institutes of the Arab world. Later branching into full cooperation with Sufi scholars of the UAE-based Tabah Foundation, drawing Zaid Shakir into the Sufi political project along with Hamza Yusuf, who introduced him to the way of Sufi Faqih Abdullah Bin Bayyah.

Shakir accompanied Bin Bayyah on the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca in 2006, and became increasingly involved in the activities of Sufi institutions headquartered in the UAE. Shakir was now a member of a community of like-minded scholars such as Umar Bin Hafiz, Faraz Rabbani, Shaykh Mokhtar Maghraoui, Abdal Hakim Jackson, Tariq Ramadan, Abdul Hakim Murad, Jihad Brown, Yahya Rhodus, Ali al-Jifri, Ali Gomaa and Mohamed Said Ramadan Al-Bouti. Shakir’s transformational spiritual odyssey culminated with the launch of a project in 2009 (led by Shakir) called “Uniting for Change”, which sought to create a new Islamic discourse based on Sufi values.

In common with his other colleagues in this Sufi political network, Shakir made frequent appearances in the media, hosting TV shows, pro-active on social media and participating in several Islamic events and conferences in the West. Reflecting his newfound fame within the Muslim communities in the West, he and his friend Hamza Yusuf were described in The New York Times as “leading intellectual lights” and were both listed amongst the 500 Most Influential Muslims in a 2009 report published jointly by The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Jordan and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

Shakir is distinguished among his Sufi American peers for his advanced formal education and his contribution to the academic community. He has translated several Arabic texts into English and authored a collection of books, including: “Scattered Pictures: A Reflection of An American Muslim”, “Where I’m Coming From” and “Agenda to Change our Condition” (co-authored with Hamza Yusuf).

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His rich academic record and close relationship with Emirati Sufis have steered him into the Sufi political network and its activities and agendas in the West. The question is: will Zaid Shakir, with his considerable scholarly acumen, emerge as a positive force of enlightenment and reason within this Sufi coalition? Or will the Sufi elders and scholars he is now working with enlist him as just another ally in their politically polarising struggle for control over Islamic discourse?

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ABDUL HAKIM MURAD: THE EUROPEAN WING OF POLITICAL SUFISM

Timothy John Winter was born in Britain in 1960. His early education was deep-rooted in established English institutions and eventually led him to Pembroke College at Cambridge University, where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Arabic in 1983.

Following a vacation in Corsica in 1970, Winter acquired a preference for the meditative life, developing a sense that beauty lies not in material objects, but rather in the abstract. According to journalist Tom Beck, this trip marked Winter’s first step on the road to Islam and to becoming one of the most influential clerics in the Islamic World (The Independent, 20th August 2014).

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Building on his newfound spiritual quest, Winter converted to Islam, adopting the Muslim name Abdul Hakim Murad. He then enrolled at Al-Azhar University, where he studied Islamic Theology and Sufism for three years under Sheikh Ismail Al Adawi. He subsequently moved to Jeddah, then to Hadramout in Yemen, where he delved deeper into the mystical world of Sufism under the guidance of Sheikh Sharif Ahmed Mashhour Al Hadad, who was teaching in Ribat Kidoon in Yemen. Hadad is one among a series of renowned Sufi clerics or ‘Sheikhs’ in the region, with others including Abdullah bin Omar al Shatri, Abdul Bari bin Sheikh Al-Aidarous, Ahmed bin Mohammed Al-Mihdar, Abdullah bin Mohsen Al-Attas and Alawi Bin Mohammed Al-Hadad.

After he completed his studies in Hadramaout, Abdul Hakim Murad returned to Britain to explore other branches of Islamic culture through the study of Turkish and Persian. In 1992, he went to Oxford University where he studied for a PhD. He also served as Secretary of the Islamic Academy in London and supervised the “Sunna Project” in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge.

During this period, Murad published various academic works, and in 1995 he translated two parts of Al-Ghazali’s book, Ihya’ ‘Ulum Al-Din (The Revival of the Religious Sciences). He has appeared in the British media, including BBC radio, and has published columns in UK newspapers. This brought him to the attention of the leaders of the political Sufi network based in Abu Dhabi and he was quickly embraced by the Tabah Foundation, which added him to the list of foreign Sufi contributors to the Foundation’s activities. He also participated in functions organised by Sufi scholar Ali Al Jifri such as “The Events of Love” in Abu Dhabi, “Hadramaout Nights”, and went on a group pilgrimage to Mecca with Abdullah bin Bayyah, Hamza Yusuf, Yahya Rhodus and Abdullah Al Qadhi. He visited the Monastery of Bahira the monk with Ali Al Jifri, Muhammad Said Ramadan Al-Bouti, and Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad. He also took part in tours aiming to promote the agenda of the Tabah Foundation with its founder Ali Al-Jifri.Of particular note was his 2012 trip on which he and his companion Al-Jifri gave lectures about Imam Al-Ghazali in various British towns and distributed the Foundation’s literature including the book, Reflections on the Structural Conceptual Framework of Mohammed Al-Shahroor, authored by Dr. Karim Lahham.

As a result of the close ties between Abdul Hakim Murad and Hamza Yusuf, Murad was invited to contribute articles in Yusuf’s Zaytuna College bulletin and participated in Sufi teaching seminars with other scientific Sufis such as Ali Al-Jifri, Abdullah bin Bayyah and Nuh Keller in a series of lectures held as part of a “Deen Intensive” course.

But contrary to the values of diversity and tolerance that the leaders of the political Sufism project claim to profess, Murad’s hostility towards Salafist

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ideology grew over time and he began openly revealing his abhorrence for Saudi Arabia and its religious doctrine. He became the fiercest Western critic of the Salafist movement, and wrote multiple articles to explain what he called “the contradictions of the Wahhabi Salafist ideology,” arguing that this movement represents a security threat in various conflict zones in the Islamic world.

In one of the anti-Salafism campaigns, Abdul Hakim Murad abandoned the rational, scientific Sufi method and succumbed to personal sentiments leading him, in a study entitled “The Contradictions of Salafisim”, to classify all “Salafist-Wahhabist” movements as a threat to world peace, both those comprising of moderate followers in Saudi Arabia and those seeking to establish universal brand of Wahhabism, which seeks to produce a dogmatic political model based on the concept of a “State of God on Earth”.

Murad’s hostility was apparent in an article in The Independent (1st July, 2007) when he proclaimed that “the activity of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Muslim neighbourhoods in Britain could be fatal to society”. He expressed concern that “the growth of radical Wahhabi Saudi obscurantist activity nurtured the roots that fed the ideology of Bin Laden”; and warned of the consequences of the spread of this ideology among young British Muslims.

In explaining his viewpoint to British officials, Murad somewhat simplistically equated Salafist ideology to the ideas of extremist Christian movements, stating that the movement aimed “to get rid of saints and shrines, and to condemn all devotional practices followed by Muslims in the Indian subcontinent”.

Persisting in his campaign against Salafism in its various forms, Murad asserted that “the preferred style of theology for all terrorists is the Salafist-Wahhabi approach.”

Murad’s inflammatory discourse on alternative theological movements, especially Salafists which he regards as “the cause of war and conflict in many parts of the world”, contrasts starkly with the spirit of tolerance and mutual coexistence that the Tabah Foundation claims to promote. Murad has previously asserted that a confrontation between Salafists and opposing ideologies is unavoidable, and that the West will live in constant fear as long as it allows Wahhabi ideology to influence the changing religious and sectarian map of the world.

This apparent disconnect between Timothy Winter, the academic who studied theology, and Abdul Hakim Murad the spiritual master who studied Sufism in Cairo and Hadramaout, is synonymous with the contradiction between the Tabah Foundation’s stated support for universal values, and its actual policy of exclusion towards divergent religious voices that finds form in provocative campaigns of misinformation and distortion that are creating cracks within the Ummah.

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MUHAMMAD HISHAM KABBANI: CONFRONTING HATE WITH HATE

Born in Beirut in 1945, Muhammad Hisham Kabbani studied chemistry at the American University of Beirut, before changing course and immersing himself in the study of Sharia’, attaining religious qualifications in Damascus. At this time, Kabbani sought out the company of the leader of the Naqshbandiya Sufi order, Nazim Haqqani (1922-2014), and subsequently married his daughter along with Haqqani’s standing in the Islamic world and digital presence on the internet.

In 1990, Kabbani moved to the United States and established the Supreme Islamic Council, through which there emerged strong links between the American administration and the Naqshbandiya order. He became a prominent adviser on Islamic affairs for administration officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, who held periodic meetings with the Council and consulted with them on issues of terrorism. Wolfowitz praised Kabbani for being “brave and the most important man in America” in recognition of his promotion of values such as human dignity, justice, freedom of opinion, and the rights of women.

In 1999 Kabbani was invited to both the White House and the State Department

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to lecture on “Islamic extremism and the threat to American national security”. He later commented that his intuition was correct in forecasting the events of the 11th September 2001, and stressed the need for the American administration to engage in a collaborative effort with Sufis in the fight against terrorism and extremist religious groups.

His spreading influence empowered him to establish 23 Naqshbandiya Centre’s and schools in the United States. He embarked on visits to a wide range of countries with significant Muslim communities such as Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Japan, Turkey, England, Spain, Morocco and the Levant where, often accompanied by his spiritual guide Sheikh Nazim, he was received officially at senior levels.

Dr. Hisham Kabbani was notorious for his frequently expressed hostility to “Wahabbism”, which he narrowly equated with Salafism, writing a number of books that attacked Salafist preaching and accusing it of fuelling extremism and terrorism. The most prominent of his works in the English language included “The Salafi Movement Unveiled” (2000), “The Doctrine of Ahl-as- Sunna Versus the Salafi Ideology” (Translation and Commentary 1996), and also “Refuting Salafist Ideology” (1996).

When asked by a Sunday Times correspondent: “Are you saying that Wahhabism is the main source of terrorism?”, Kabbani answered: “Yes, Islam is peaceful and non-aggressive, but the followers of the Wahhabi sect spread extremist ideas; they are financed by oil money and today we find Wahhabism everywhere, not just in Saudi Arabia. If you go to any mosque, you will find books about Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab (the founder of Wahhabism) and you will only find books written by scholars of Saudi Arabia.”

When Sheikh Nazim became ill and unable to move or travel, Kabbani seized the initiative and hurried to the opportunity as the representative of the Naqshbandiya order. This however unsettled followers of Haqqani and resulted in hasty visits by scholars such as Ali Jifri and Hamza Yusuf to Cyprus to meet with Haqqani and voice their concern over any attempts to monopolise the spiritual leadership of the order.

Meanwhile in the United States, Kabbani spearheaded a campaign against his rivals who were benefitting from generous funding from Gulf States. He accused them of hypocrisy by counseling American policymakers on the evils of extremism whilst harbouring extremist tendencies themselves, implicitly hinting at his Sufi colleague, Hamza Yusuf, who is well respected at the White House.

In response to pressing demands from American Islamic institutions, the State Department published minutes of meetings with Kabbani, which revealed controversial statements he made that were not well received by various Islamic groups in the United States. Amongst those disclosed were his warning that

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the government and Congress needed to be aware of the threat from extremist ideologies propagated by those responsible for running 80% of the 3000 mosques in America, to which the younger generation were increasingly becoming susceptible.

In reaction to these statements Islamic organisations resolved to develop a highly coordinated response, led by Hamza Yusuf and the scholars of the Zaytuna Institute, who engaged in intense rhetorical, philosophical debates with Kabbani’s followers about issues such as the position of Hamza Yusuf on Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’.

Despite Kabbani’s general wavering character, a consistent feature is his patent antagonism towards Saudi Arabia. In October 2003, the Nixon Centre held a conference to discuss the role that Sufi orders can play in American foreign policy, to which Kabbani was invited as a guest of honour. He proclaimed that Salafism does not exist in Islam, pointing out that it is “a term, coined by King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz in the 1980s, that enveloped all the extremist movements in the Islamic world; and sent them out to advocate the demolition of shrines throughout the world.”

In his speech to the conference, Kabbani asked: “Will we as Americans stand with Sufism or we will work with Wahhabism? If we work with the Wahhabi we will put ourselves in danger of dealing with terrorists, a risk we will not face working with Sufis. The United States needs to connect with non-Wahhabi Muslims to achieve victory in the battle against terrorism.”

Notwithstanding the tensions between Kabbani and other scholars for the leadership of the Naqshbandiya order, they still share a common determination to shape a narrative confirming Sufism as the natural extension of Sunni theological thought. Yet, they are deeply troubled by rational criticism of the legitimacy of their claims, and continue to paradoxically work to incite divisions and confrontations within the Islamic community, a strategy that does not match with their self-professed values of tolerance, inclusiveness and building bridges.

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MUSA FURBER’S SPIRITUAL JOURNEY AND THE WINDS OF TABAH

Musa Furber was born in Massachusetts and raised in Portland, Oregon. He majored in computational linguistics and cognitive sciences at Portland State University, undertaking a class in Arabic which deepened his knowledge and interest in Islam.

Furber subsequently converted to Islam and studied Shafi’i jurisprudence with a Sheikh who was a Portland resident. As has often proven to be the case with fellow Western Sufis, he moved to the Muslim world to obtain certificates in Muslim religious sciences. He arrived first in Damascus, where he lived with his wife and three children. There he established contact with a number of scholars,

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and translated some religious texts into English.

Furber then moved to Cairo, where he joined the Egyptian Dar Al Ifta and enrolled in scholarly courses supervised by the former Egyptian Mufti Ali Gomaa, from whom he learned the rituals and concepts of Sufism and under whose tutelage he delved deeper into the intellectual realm of Gnosticism. Upon completion of his studies, Furber stayed with Gomaa, working as a translator and researcher in the Egyptian Dar Al Ifta.

Following its formation in Abu Dhabi in 2005, the Tabah Foundation recruited Furber after Gomaa’s appointment to its advisory council. Gomaa had recommended Furber to the institute’s founder Ali Al Jifri, who appointed him as a researcher and mufti in the foundation. Furber translated several books into English, catalogued religious research and co-authored in English, along with Fouad Al Haddad, studies of the prophetic traditions (hadith) and the Shafi’i ethics. He also conducted advanced studies of fatwa, established a contemporary fatwa process, communiqués and publication channels. Two of his published Tabah fatwa studies were discussed at a Cambridge University meeting on 2nd July 2014.

Furber is an example of the breakthrough achieved by the Tabah Foundation in reaching out to western youth. After his time with the Sufis of the Levant and Egypt, Furber was utilised by Ali Al Jifri as a point of contact with activists from Hamza Yusuf’s Sufi network in the US and Abdul Hakim Murad in Europe. Furber also became an advisor to the Straightway Ethical Advisory (SEA), which is a Sufi foundation specialising in providing advice on education, finance and world economics. SEA is headed by two Sufi activists, Taha Abdul Basser and Faraz Rabbani. Its membership also includes Ashraf Gomma Ali, the Berkley Zaytouna Institute professor Abdullah bin Hamid Ali, Humza Maqbool Chaudhry, and the Nigerian Fatimah Iliasu. The SEA is yet another clear demonstration of the international dimension of the UAE-sponsored political Sufism project.

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CHAPTER 3:IMPLICATIONS OF

ABU DHABI’S SUFI NETWORK ON SAUDI SECURTIY

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DESCRIBING THE WAHHABI MOVEMENT AS JEWISH: A SLIP OF THE TONGUE OR A FORMAL ATTITUDE?

Two years after the controversy surrounding his criticism of some of As-sahabah, and the subsequent suspension of his TV show, Sheikh Ahmad Al Kubaisi faced further heat last August when, in a TV interview, he accused the founder of the modern Salafi school, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, of being a Jewish creation.

In a video recording that was widely published on social media networks, Al Kubaisi claimed that “Daesh (ISIS) and similar movements and even Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (the founder of Wahhabism) were certainly created by Jews and let them kill me if they want to”. He added: “I take full responsibility of this opinion in front of God… I swear that this movement was established by Jews to destroy the nation, and it already did. ”

Al Kubaisi’s statement encountered widespread criticism including a response from the Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Saud Al-Shuraim, who tweeted: “They are fed up with Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s teachings that took after the Salafs, so they claimed it was all part of a Jewish conspiracy, and this is the way Islam’s enemies follow.”

On Twitter there were calls to stop Al Kubaisi’s program or to demand his

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deportation from the United Arab Emirates, where he is presently based. Meanwhile, official organizations in the UAE rushed to manage the crisis and mitigate any potential political fallout by releasing statements reaffirming the strong relationship between the UAE and its Gulf neighbours.

On the 18th August, in an attempt to ease the tension caused by Al Kubaisi’s statement, Dubai police informed the Saudi lawyer Othman Al-Otaibi that the case made against the Iraqi Sheikh Ahmad Al Kubaisi, due to his attack on Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, was to be referred. Al-Otaibi confirmed that he had received moral support from some of the Sheikh’s grandchildren to bring forward this case, pointing out that the purpose of this measure was “to liberate humans from being devoted to things or people…supporting it is a religious and moral duty that must not be abandoned.”

On the day Al Kubaisi’s case was referred to the court, the Saudi ambassador to the UK in London, Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz, published an article refuting allegations of the Kingdom’s support of extremist organizations. He expressed serious reservations about the conflation of the term “Wahhabi” with violence or extremism. He stated, “Wahhabism is not independent from Islam, it is Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab invitation to revive what the Prophet, peace be upon him, called for.”

The ambassador emphasized that Saudis would never accept the label “Wahhabi”. He recalled what the Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, said three years ago when he stressed that “some people used the word Wahhabism to describe Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab teachings, in order to isolate the Saudi Muslims from the rest of the Islamic world”. He pointed to ways in which some governments, media and political analysts use the term to describe extreme movements such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, al-Qaida and now Daesh (ISIS), consistently declaring it as an Islamic threat to Western civilization.

There are concerns that some Gulf capitals are being used as bases to launch campaigns against prominent Salafi scholars, linking them with extremist trends and sometimes even branding them as disbelievers. However, this trend did not start with Al Kubaisi – friction has been evident in between the Salafi movement and followers of modern Sufi institutions. These have also criticized its teachings, attacked the religious traditions and approaches of Gulf States as well as reformers, and have often accused the movement of apostasy and promoting radicalism.

Numerous efforts have been made to distinguish between the Kingdom’s moderate approach on one hand and Islamist extremism on the other. However, accusations coupling the two continue to originate from some quarters in neighbouring Gulf States. Research centers in the region have a serious impact by contributing to this confrontational discourse, producing the conditions for

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sectarianism that divide Muslims and polarize the political and religious space.

In what seemed as a direct response to the Ambassador’s article, Hassan Hassan, a researcher at the Delma Institute in Abu Dhabi, published a study in The Observer newspaper, which was then republished in the Al-Arab newspaper in London (August 19, 2014). It contained statements attacking the Salafi approach of Saudi Arabia and described the teachings of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab as extreme and radical contending that “the Salafi movement turned form a religious movement that rarely disobeyed the ruler, to a religious political authoritarian organization, and Daesh is one of its modified versions”

Hassan Hassan further argued that “traditional Salafism and Wahhabism are the main religious doctrine of this movement,” and added: “Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab revived the term “Salafist” in the twelfth Islamic century and his movement then was called Wahhabism. The most prominent representatives of this school are Abdul-Aziz bin Baz, Muhammad Nasir Albani and Muhammed bin Saleh bin Uthaymeen. The essential and “hidden” approach that makes Daesh too dangerous is the neglect of the ideological “revolution” and strategic change in the traditional Salafi doctrine”.

In his study, Hassan Hassan concluded that extreme movements were borne from the Wahhabi Salafist ideology and that traditional Salafism produced a militant variant that objected to the principles of the traditional Salafis, and which called on blind obedience to the rulers.

There are multiple studies, published by official religious institutions that also made claims against the moderate religious discourse in the Kingdom and its deep intellectual roots. Particularly noteworthy in this regard are the writings of Tabah Foundation scholars such as Mohammed Saeed Ramadan Al-Bouti and Ali Gomaa, Grand Mufti of Egypt, who are both members of its Senior Scholars Council.

Published in the Observer one day after the publication of the Saudi ambassador’s article in the Guardian, concerns have been raised that Hassan Hassan’s study is part of a larger public campaign against Saudi Arabia, which seeks to create linkages between the prevailing Salafi discourse in the Kingdom, and terrorism.

The issue will not be solved through legal action against Al Kubaisi. It needs to be treated seriously on the intellectual level as a divisive strategy that threatens Islamic unity and glosses over Saudi Arabia’s serious efforts to fight extreme movements and radical ideologies.

The deployment of religious institutions by official bodies, which provide them with political and financial support, to fight political battles carries significant and serious risks that can undermine cohesion within the Gulf Cooperation Council, and weaken its capacity to confront common security threats.

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US-IRANIAN ALLIANCE OF CONVENIENCE

In retrospect it appears that one can begin with Bernard Lewis’ description in October 2003 of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s religious tradition as: “One of the most insane ideas in the history of the Islamic world”; then fast forward to US Vice President Joe Biden’s recent October 2014 gaffe that US-Saudi alliance was like “pairing with Soviet dictator Stalin during World War II”.

In that period between 2003 and 2014, many examples of hostile comments made by Western officials and intellectuals against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia can be found, and various proposals of dividing the Kingdom along sectarian lines.

This piece seeks to shed some light on the parties backing the campaign against Riyadh, in terms of both organisation and funding; and to point to the inherent dangers of utilising sectarianism to achieve political goals.

In the wake of 9/11, the US administration sought out a new strategy towards the Arab world to further its own interests, an aspect of this was division along sectarian and ethnic lines. Following the popular revolutions that later swept the Arab Republics, it worked closely with Shiite minorities and built networks of cooperation and coordination with opposition community groups.

In spite of fundamental differences with Iran over its nuclear program, the US administration found common ground with Tehran’s mullahs in confronting

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Islamic extremism, so-called “Sunni Terrorism”.

A conference in London organised by Zalmay Khalilzad back in December 2002 represented a turning point in cooperation between the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and the ruling Al Dawa Party. From that point onwards, and following the

preliminary stages of the campaign to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein, the relationship between Shiite groups and Western intelligence agencies was fortified, enabling Shiites to take over the institutions of government in Iraq in 2003. Since then, they have played an important role as a link between other Gulf Shiite leaders and Western intelligence services.

At the same time, US-Iran relations markedly improved. In the final months of his presidency, George W. Bush reached a limited rapprochement with Iran by holding indirect talks with its leaders, a policy trend that has continued under the Obama administration. William Burns, the former Assistant Secretary of State, disclosed that direct secret talks had been held with Tehran, triggering widespread resentment as Arab States expressed their exasperation at being excluded.

Coinciding with this apparent US-Iran détente, Western think-tanks published many studies exploring potential mechanisms for radical change of governance in the Gulf through ethnic and sectarian lines. Among the most prominent is a publication by the US Council on Foreign Relations and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which assessed the possibility of the spread of the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions to the GCC countries. Similar studies were carried out by the RAND Corporation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Meanwhile, other Western research Centre’s demonstrated their hostility towards Saudi Arabia when in 2012 they unveiled a so-called guide on ‘How to prepare for a military coup in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states’ prepared by Munzer Suleiman, the correspondent of Al Mayadeen channel in America. In the same year, they also promoted the book: ‘After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies’ written by Christopher Davidson, which predicts the imminent collapse of the GCC ruling families. It is worth mentioning that the author of this book, a researcher at the UK’s University of Durham, previously worked at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates and is a member in the Royal Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London. He published four other books between 2005 and 2011 on political and economic issues in the Arab Gulf, which portrayed the region in a negative light.

Throw into this mix a story reported in the British newspaper, The Guardian, and also on the BBC News website, which revealed that Davidson had received substantial sums of money from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Iranian embassy, as well as the U.S. embassy, to open communication channels with hard-line Shiite personalities and to invite Iranian officials to participate in

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events. When confronted, Davidson admitted receiving funds from Iran in order to “hold functions aimed at bringing closer views from the West and those of the Iranian establishment.”

The newspapers commented on payments made to Davidson by the US administration and the Iranian government, including a lump sum of £5000 from the Iranian Government to the University of Durham for a symposium in 2010.

The article highlighted that although Davidson claimed that these programs were intended to support democracy and encourage the Government of Iran to promote freedoms and human rights, ultimately any criticism of the Iranian Government was completely muted. Yet, Davidson – along with a group of his students and followers such Christian Olrikson – continue media campaigns against Saudi Arabia, openly prophesising in Western press the imminent “fall of the Gulf regimes”.

It is doubly troubling that some leading Western research institutions complicit in this campaign against Riyadh are still receiving generous funding from Abu Dhabi. They include the London School of Economics, which received donations from the United Arab Emirates amounting to a staggering £5.6 million at a time when some of its lecturers were involved in activities of a political nature. LSE’s reputation was tarnished in the 1990s, when reports circulated in the British press about the penetration of extremist elements. Later followed by the high profile scandal of Saif al-

Islam Gaddafi PhD in exchange for financial donations from his father and former Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi.

In November 2011, Britain’s Lord Chief Justice Harry Woolf issued a report and confirmed that LSE “has made mistakes and committed violations which greatly tarnished its reputation”.

Considering its generous funding to these institutions, and with such serious implications, should Abu Dhabi be concerned that it could be harnessing the influence of the Iranian Lobby in both London and Washington?

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IDENTITY CHALLENGES IN SAUDI ARABIA

At the end of last August, an “anti-extremism” initiative was launched in Washington. Amongst those who participated in the launch were a number of well-known American figures including Frances Townsend (the former Homeland Security Advisor to President Bush), the National Security Council Senior Director for Middle East Affairs under Bush, the deputy campaign manager of Bush’s presidential campaign in 2003 Mark Wallace, the former U.S. ambassador to Chile Alejandro Wolff, the former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, Farah Bandich (a representative of the Muslim community in America), former Senator Joseph Lieberman, Gary Samore (former White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction), and former U.S. Congressman Howard Lawrence Berman.

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Some international figures were also brought in by the neoconservatives, such as the former Pakistan ambassador to the United Nations, Munir Akram, the former Director of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, August Hanning, the Permanent Representative of Australia to the United Nations Robert Hill, and the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Cresencio Arcos.

Sources indicate that this initiative simplistically portrays all Islamist movements, using a broad paintbrush, as terrorist movements without distinction between the radical and moderate varieties.

Interestingly, before the launch of this project, the former U.S. diplomat and researcher at the Washington Institute, Dennis Ross, wrote an article entitled “Islamists are not our friends”. He pointed to the severe identity conflict raging in the heart of the Middle East and stressed that the popular revolutions have produced a new scene of conflict between Islamists and non-Islamists in the Arab region. He added that Egyptian President al-Sisi is leading an existential battle against the

Muslim Brotherhood, supported by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, and in cooperation with Algeria, Morocco and Jordan.

In order to shape the prevailing narrative, Ross put all Islamist groups into one basket including ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as Iran and its allied militias Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon. He explained that “what the Islamists all have in common is that they subordinate national identities to an Islamic identity”.

There are many studies produced by Western institutions concerning the identity conflict in the Middle East, and it is important to make some remarks about them here.

Firstly, it is very misleading to reduce the complex identity conflict in the Arab region to a dualistic dispute between Islamists and secularists. Ross and his peers fail to account for the fact that the nationalist and leftist movements that were once dominant were based on national cross-border concepts of Arab identity. They were not a threat to the national identity in the different countries that were under their rule.

Secondly, not all of the Islamic forces fall neatly into one category. Many Islamic groups believe in national identity and work to enforce it. The sectarian conflict that Washington triggered as a result of its occupation of Iraq during the past decade is still the biggest challenge to civil peace in regional societies.

Thirdly, it is surprising that the U.S. administration spends millions to rehabilitate, train and empower ethnic, sectarian and religious minorities and then simultaneously talks about preserving the national identity and character of

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the Arab states. Surely Ross ignores the efforts made by the Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations to legitimise certain unscrutinised (extremist) forces such as the Organisation of the Islamic Revolution, the Shiite al-Dawa party and the Peshmerga forces in Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as the current U.S administration’s visible leniency towards the Shia Houthis currently seeking to occupy swathes of Yemen? Added to which, the efforts made nowadays to enable the new cross-border sectarian militias represented by the Iraqi Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, the Iraqi Hezbollah, and the Lebanese Hezbollah.

Building on his analysis, Ross recommended that Western governments refuse to co-operate with Islamist political forces, deducing that Islamist beliefs and values were incompatible with Western values of pluralism and democracy. In so doing, he has ignored the role played by some Islamist forces in maintaining the political balance in the region. Ross has naively accused the moderate elements of being equally as dangerous as extremists, stating that in Tunisia, “the Ennahda party surrendered power only when it realised its policies had produced such a backlash that the party’s very survival was threatened”. Turning his attention to Turkey, he stressed that President Erdogan

needed to understand that his support for Muslim Brotherhood would inevitably curtail Washington’s scope for cooperation with him, and eventually isolate Turkey from its neighbours and allies.

Some sources have reported the positive reaction of Yousef Al-Otaiba, the UAE Ambassador in Washington, to these developments. Al-Otaiba himself has subscribed and contributed to this flawed narrative, publishing articles in the Wall Street Journal and the Sunday Telegraph calling for an alliance with the Western countries against extremism. However, US Vice President Joe Biden responded by stating that any potential alliance with Saudi Arabia and the UAE

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would be inconceivable and comparable to the unrealistic notion of an alliance between Washington and Stalin at the height of the Cold War. This shocked the Ambassador who believed his country could one day emerge as a strong and close ally of Washington.

Ross adopted a similar position to that of Biden when he described the UAE as an “authoritarian government” and highlighted that any cooperation with the UAE was simply on the basis of pursuing mutual national interests and should be terminated as soon as its purpose has been accomplished.

The U.S. administration is intentionally exploiting societal divisions to achieve its interests and strengthen its influence in the region. The former Assistant of the U.S. Foreign affairs confirmed this when he stated: “The new fault line in the Middle East is a real opportunity for America”.

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WAHHABISM: FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE FORMER BRITISH INTELLIGENCE OFFICER ALASTAIR CROOKE AND HASSAN NASRALLAH

The British intelligence (MI6) officer Alastair Crooke published an article on the Huffington Post website (28 August 2014), titled “You can’t understand ISIS If you don’t Know the history of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia”.

In this article Alastair Crooke claims that there is historical precedence on the emergence of “Daash” (ISIS) - linking it directly it would seem to Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s teachings.

In a poorly selective mix and match sources, the Director of Conflict Forum and former diplomat went over historical stages to confirm the link between: Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah’s thoughts, the teachings of Imam Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, King Abdulaziz “Ikhwan” movement, and other contemporary Salafi currents. He based his argument on a terminological system focused on: Takfiri, Jihadi, Salafist notions. He compared the foundations of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with that of the “Jacobin” radical thought that spread in Britain during the nineteenth century. He also likened the Kingdom to the kind of Nazism that produced the slogan: “one empire, one nation, one leader”, claiming that Wahhabism has the slogan: “one leader, one authority, one mosque”.

Following his historic rant, the experienced diplomat went on to conclude that the next threat to human civilisation lies in “the foundations of the Saudi-Wahhabi project”.

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However, in his conclusion he did not come up with anything new. He simply echoed an assessment made by his former history teacher, Bernard Lewis. The latter likened the basis of the Saudi state to those of “Ku Klux Klan”, the Christian extreme movement in America. He used tragedian images of the Salafi ideology in a RAND report (2003), Nixon Centre (2004) and Carnegie Institute (2007).

Those images were published in a research in the New York Times (20 August 2012) under the title: “Don’t Fear All Islamists, Fear Salafis”. It stated that the emergence of “A new Salafi Crescent, radiating from the Persian Gulf sheikdoms into the Levant and North Africa, is one of the most underappreciated and disturbing by-products of the Arab revolts. In varying degrees, these populist puritans are moving into the political space once occupied by jihadi militants… “

What Crooke failed to reveal was the MI6 contemporary records on: the creation of ISIS under US occupation; the support ISIS leaders received from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards; the facilities they obtained from the Qods Force; as well as the unmonitored easy outflow of hundreds of fighters from Britain, France and other European countries to join the organisation.

Crooke ignored this sensitive information and resorted to a slanted reading of history to escape his country’s culpability in the emergence of extreme thought and movements under the aegis of military alliances forged by his then former bosses Tony Blair and the White House.

It is interesting that Crooke stopped short of mentioning the Salafi risk, without telling us about the alternative Islamic version, as popularly nominated by British official circles, and represented by the Sufi-Shia alliance. Crooke could have spared us his historical narrative and presented a more contemporary story about the official support bestowed upon Naqshbandi leaders and followers of al-Khoei Foundation, within British decision making organisations, during his time. But, he left that task to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, who spoke on the third night of the ceremony of Ashura, in the October 26, 2014: “Today we are in need of calling things with their true names… In other words, let’s go right into the details, about 200 to 300 years ago, a new sect was born in the Arab region. This intellectual movement found itself in a position to have at its disposal governmental capabilities, and for the last 100 years, this intellectual movement has been working to strengthen itself, and to spread its ideas throughout the Islamic World, and the entire world. Schools were established, colleges, institutes, and universities throughout the entire world. Legal, political, and administrative facilitations were provided to it throughout the world. Research centres were established, and conferences were held, in order to spread (this thought) throughout the world. Newspapers, publishing companies, magazines, media outlets, leading satellite channels and Internet websites were established. Within 100 years, tens or hundreds of billions of dollars were spent in order to spread this thought … But allow me once to say, since it is obligatory to say the truth as it is… The essence of this thought is the Wahhabi thought, Wahhabism…

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They are the followers of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. This Wahhabism, which as I was saying earlier, huge efforts were exerted to support, propagate and spread throughout the world… here lies the danger. Whoever is searching for a real, fundamental, grassroots solution to what we are suffering from as Muslims, as Christians and as people of the region, they must go back to the essence of the issue and see how they can resolve it”.

If one is truly inclined to investigate “the essence of the issue”, we must find the reasons that compelled the leader of Hezbollah deflect slightly from the usual statements scripted by his masters in Tehran. The story began when the Washington Institute published a paper (20 April 2014) addressing the transformation of Western attitudes towards Iran following the White House instructions to form a political solution in the region through a comprehensive agreement with Tehran. It also pointed that European governments could follow the same approach, especially in view of their anxiety over the growing number of European jihadists in the Arab region.

The change in the American attitude toward Hezbollah was apparent when the US Secretary of State stated that America would not mind dealing with a Lebanese government that included Hezbollah, adding: “ I call on them - Iran, Russia, and I call on Hezbollah, based right here in Lebanon - to engage in the legitimate effort to bring this war to an end”. That was the first time a US Secretary of State spoke openly about the regional role of Hezbollah as an independent party to end the crisis in Syria.

That statement was made around the publication time of a Western report about negotiations conducted between the US Central Intelligence Agency and representatives of Hezbollah. The latter offered services to fight against “the forces of Sunni extremism”. Those leaks coincided with a statement by Hassan Nasrallah, confirming the possibility that his party may play an essential role in the fight against “extreme groups” and solve the Syrian problem if Western countries were willing to negotiate with Hezbollah. The source confirmed that the first two sessions of negotiations were held between representatives of the CIA and representatives of Hezbollah in Cyprus. The US ambassador in Beirut, David Hill, was coordinating the meetings and drafting points of agreement between the two parties. In Iran, Khamenei was very keen on bolstering the outcome of such negotiations by emphasising the role played by Tehran in the “fight against Wahhabism, Salafi groups and the countries that funded them”. At the same time, the former director for Iraq on the National Security Council, Douglas Ollivant, confirmed that the US administration was proceeding with its program to empower ethnic and religious minorities in the region. He said that teams from the US Army were working with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq’s militia that was fighting under the commands of Qassem Suleimani (the leader of the Qods Force).

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This being the current political climate, it would appear that Hassan Nasrallah jumped on the bandwagon in offering his services in the fight against terrorism. In fact, Hassan Nasrallah’s speech is ladened with great contradictions. He claimed that Wahhabism is terrorism and Takfir, while he is the leader of the largest outlaw militia that accused the symbols of Islam and the prophet’s Companions of apostasy. He asserted that: “Islam does not call for murder but for saving people”, at a time when his sectarian militia were murdering and destroying Syrian lives. He claimed he was defending Islam in the face of extremist groups who provided a distorted image of Islam to the West. In the meantime, he vilified other Muslims and sent a message to the West that, to end terrorism, the very foundations of Saudi Arabia must be targeted.

In addition to those inconsistencies, we should note the timing of Nasrallah’s speech. It came two days after Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais’s sermon at the Holy Mosque, in which he defended the roots of the Kingdom and indicated that the term “Wahhabi” is being erroneously used to challenge the Kingdom’s history, political and intellectual foundations.

However, Nasrallah’s and Crooke’s testimonials are but a part of a fierce assault waged by various parties associated with the new American project in the Middle East. It started in Dubai with Ahmed al-Kubaisi’s defamatory remarks on Imam Muhammad ibn abd al-Wahhab. Followed by media campaigns launched against the Wahhabi and Salafi ideology in unison with the “Forum of

Civil Peace” and Abu Dhabi’s “Muslim Council of Elders”. Again, it would seem almost in response to Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz’s clarifications in defence of Wahhabi teachings.

In spite of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s role in addressing extreme and Takfiri thought, these parties deny the fundamental role the kingdom has traditionally played in the fight against extremism. Theirs is a hostile campaign that shows greater cooperation between Western intelligence and the Iranians. It also reflects the considerable coordination with the Sufi political project and Iranian influence and expansion in the region.

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THE RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENT IN SAUDI ARABIA IN THE ABSENCE OF A COHERENT REGIONAL ROLE

The late King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia has taken on the task of reforming the religious establishment so that it is more compatible with society’s development and the requirements of the modern world. To achieve this, he sanctioned major changes to most of the senior positions across the Kingdom. In February 2009, he appointed new ministers of health, media, education, and justice, seven judges in the Supreme Administrative Court as Court of Appeal Presidents and about 50 new judges in various Sharia courts in the Kingdom. He restructured and expanded the Council of Senior Scholars, and introduced 82 new members in the fifth session of the 15-member Shura Council.

These changes came as part of a package applying the Royal Decree issued in 2007 to reform the judiciary, in which the king also appointed new heads for each judicial system, launched two new supreme courts and enhanced the powers of Sharia courts. He also added a new system to appeal and review verdicts, re-structured the Council of Senior Scholars under a new secretary general, and increased the Council’s members to 21 members representing the four madhabs (or Islamic schools of thought). In addition, he selected Sheikh Abdullah bin Suleiman bin Manie’, Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed al-Mutlaq and Sheikh Abdul Mohsen bin Nasser Al-Obeikan as advisors to the Royal Court. Other new appointments included the selection of Sheikh Ibrahim bin Shaya Hugail as head of the Office of the Ombudsman, Sheikh Fahd bin Saad Al-Majed

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as Secretary General of the Council of Senior Scholars and Sheikh Mohammed bin Fahd Al Dosari as president of the Supreme Administrative Court with the rank of minister.

Significantly, changes were made in the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Its chairman was replaced by Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Humain al- Humain, with the rank of minister. After his appointment, al-Humain held a press conference and talked about his plans for a comprehensive reform of the committee.

In a key development, Sheikh Saleh al-Luhaidan was relieved of his role as the President of the Supreme Judicial Council, following reports that he was responsible for stifling reform in the organization. The Ministry of Justice was placed under the purview of Dr. Mohammed al-Issa, who adopted the Change Project to update the legal foundations of the judicial system under the supervision of the ministry, flying in Western legal experts like such as Marcus Zimmer, Philip James Walker, David Stillman and Perry Mahoney in order to modernise the Kingdom’s Sharia courts.

Five years on since this broad package was rolled out, the Kingdom is still in need of more comprehensive and realistic reform that accommodates the requirements of this modern period. Prominent voices have loudly criticized the performance of the religious establishment recently, including the King Abdullah himself. He accused the Kingdom’s scholars of being too passive and lacking the energy and zeal needed to carry out their duty to serve Islam.

Some important publications have highlighted the weaknesses in the religious establishment, particularly in the fields of Fatwa, Justice, Public Morality (the responsibility of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice) and Islamic Affairs. The ministries governing these areas have traditionally been controlled by a group of pro-regime scholars considered out of touch by those calling for an “awakening”, who argue that they are less progressive in comparison to scholars who are independent from the official institutions. The latter are considered to be more efficient in dealing with societal shifts and enjoy close contact with the people, while the official establishment has failed to find ways to effectively communicate directly with society and keep its finger on the pulse.

This dilemma was not tackled until the government became involved in a clash with a number of scholars such as Sheikh Saleh al-Luhaidan, who was relieved of the presidency of the Supreme Judicial Council, and Sheikh Saad ash-Shathry who was dismissed due to his views on the mixing of genders. King Abdullah intervened by issuing a decree on the 2nd August 2010 that limited the power to issue fatwa’s to the Council of Senior Scholars in a bid to bring greater coherence to official religious policy.

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Similarly, those calling for an “awakening” have proven to be more responsive to the significant transformations in the Arab world over the last three years, and have demonstrably articulated mature and sophisticated views about culture and politics. They have secured extensive exposure on many satellite channels and the broader media, and have gained popular followings on social media compared with the official establishment figures, who lack the same degree of charisma and have lost the initiative and ability to influence the people.

Yet the leaders of this “awakening” have faced bitter criticism from various quarters by those who have been deployed by authorities to work on strengthening the position of the traditional religious institutions as the only religious authority in the land. This counter-attack has manifested itself in published material disparaging the phenomenon of independent preachers, spread through online social networks under false aliases and accounts in order to undermine independent scholars.

This struggle between “liberal” and “Islamic” religious groups has revealed a trend indicating that Saudi society is becoming increasingly polarised. Jamal Khashoggi pointed to this division, arguing that “we must recognize that our country is in a state of polarization, which is disturbing. A reformed Saudi, who is described as liberal, accuses his conservative opponent that he is from al-Qaida. And in turn, the conservative accuses the reformers of being America’s agents, and a fifth column”.

Leaving aside the arguments made by liberals in criticism of the religious establishment and its relationship with the regime, it is clear that lately serious flaws have arisen in the state’s strategy of dealing with religious issues as a purely internal matter. Nowadays, ideas about religion and identity are no longer limited by national borders and though it is still evident that the majority of Muslims rely on the Kingdom’s scholars as guides in public affairs, the regime symbols and the poles of the religious establishment are failing to come to terms with this changing reality and the risks associated with the fluid spread of ideas.

The protagonists of this Islamic “awakening” have attracted wide support from all over the Islamic world, have many followers on satellite TV channels and in social media where seminars and conferences are disseminated instantaneously at the click of a button. The authorities are troubled by this modern development, as this poses a direct challenge to the state’s ability to ensure preachers work in tandem with the kingdom’s political direction in terms of its management of its allies and adversaries in the battle for ideas.

The traditional religious establishment has been deeply affected by the various sudden appointments and dismissals in the religious authorities. In a study published by Middle East Online, Abdul Aziz al-Khamis connected Saleh Al-Lahaidan’s removal to his close relationship with the late Prince Sultan bin

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Abdul Aziz.

Others have observed the incoherence of policy within the religious authorities in dealing with religious matters, as highlighted in the controversy about the mixing of genders at the 2010 Riyadh Book Fair. Prince Khalid bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz had conveyed the Minister of Interior’s instructions to prohibit mixing at the Fair. Contradicting this, the Ministry of Culture and Information undermined these instructions and blocked the website that published the decision.

Linked in with this, the official Saudi news agency broadcast the dismissal of Sheikh Ahmad Al-Gamdi’s, as he had previously decreed that mixing of genders was permissible under specific conditions whilst he was still in the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. The decision was then annulled within the short space of a few hours, and any news coverage about it was subsequently retracted by the news agency. In its confused handling of religious affairs, the religious establishment has missed an opportunity to bring in leaders who could play a role in the regional and international arena.

At the international level, global media outlets have caused huge damage to the credibility of the Saudi religious establishment by promoting a discourse linking the Salafist traditions of the kingdom with the emergence of radical regional Takfiri movements, fostering a perception that the Saudi religious establishment was the prime stimulus behind the spread of extremism and terrorism.

The columnist Hamad Al-Majid commented on this phenomenon, claiming in an article in The Middle East (2nd September 2014) that the “Salafist Sunnis are the only creed on earth behind terrorism in the past, present and future. It is the only creed that is blamed and accused because of its members’ errors and the mistakes in its literature. It is interesting that the accusations are mostly made by Muslims, even by those who studied it from infancy”.

In this, Hamad Al-Majid is in fact highlighting the festering core of this very damaging predicament. It seems official and unofficial Saudi media have embarked on a negative campaign against Ifta, the judiciary, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, as well as the religious preachers. It appears that it is a campaign launched by liberals against more conservative Islamists, but oddly not directed at specific figures or specific errors, or aiming to offer any solutions. Also apparently unaware that such a negative attack tallies with targeting the historical and cultural foundations of the Kingdom.

While it must be acknowledged that the religious establishment is not beyond criticism, clearly the problem cannot be effectively treated through the use of confrontational language and by publishing defaming articles.

It is equally troubling that media coverage of religious affairs in Saudi Arabia is

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handled by inexperienced journalists and broadcasters who are not necessarily fully versed on the subject at hand and are more specialised in reporting on matters of popular culture such as music and art. They often overlook the role of the Kingdom’s scholars in repelling Takfiri intellectual attacks, and oversimplify the issue of religious extremism in the kingdom without considering the damage and divisiveness such allegations can cause.

The truth is that inconsistent and arbitrary mismanagement of the kingdom’s religious affairs and the coverage of these shifts in regional media has reinforced the impression that the state has lost control of the religious establishment at a crucial phase of its contemporary history. The solution begins when the various parties realise that the religious affairs of the Kingdom is no longer the domain of a small group of select religious figures. It is a complex and sensitive area of public policy – judicious management of this portfolio is wrought with both risks and promising opportunities. If it is not handled astutely, it could have a profound impact on the kingdom’s security and stability.

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THE SCRAMBLE FOR RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY

Several western institutions have recently adopted a hostile stance towards Saudi Arabia and accuse it of being behind the spread of extremism and terrorism in the region. They are supported by notable American figures such as Bernard Lewis, who compared the official religious authority in the Kingdom to the extremist Christian organisation of the Ku Klux Klan, and Henry Kissinger, who has long called for the sub-division of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

There is also a large sway of opinion within Western defence establishments and research institutions which call for a fundamental change of government in Saudi Arabia leaning towards a federal system, and for its division along ethnic and sectarian lines. They include retired officer Ralph Peters, who published an article in January 2002 in which he stated that the war on terrorism will remain incomplete unless “it restores human rights and tackles fundamentalist terrorism, and the hatred promoted by Saudi Arabia, which plays a role in undermining secular regimes, and spreads extremism in the Muslim world”.

Another is Laurent Murawiec, an expert strategist at the Rand Corporation, who at a meeting with Pentagon officials in June 2002 spoke of “the role of Saudi Arabia in supporting terrorism, its planning and funding”. He called on the US administration to control the oil fields in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia if Riyadh refused to adopt radical political reforms.

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Max Singer, founder of the Hudson Institute for Strategic Studies, presented a report to the Ministry of Defence in August 2002 calling for the division of the kingdom along sectarian lines and the creation of a separate Shiite entity. He argued that the Shia represent the “majority of the population of the eastern region, while Sunni Wahhabis are only a small minority in this region”.

The onslaught on Saudi Arabia intensifies with every terrorist atrocity because the West rather ineptly connects Islamic extremism to Wahhabism and Salafism, as highlighted in an article in the Foreign Policy magazine on 22ndSeptember 2012, in which the author suggested that the kingdom was complicit in funding extremist organisations “to feed the confrontations between Islam and the West”.

Geopolitical intelligence website, Stratfor, has also adopted this dubious narrative, warning of the spread of this extremist ideology of Salafism with “support and funding from Riyadh” (October 2 2012).

The build-up to an alternative Islamic authority

As a result of this ongoing western narrative, various groups such as the Naqshbandis are trying to establish an alternative Naqshbandiya Sufi religious authority that will receive American blessing and support.

This group also received a boost when it gained backing for its project from the UAE. At the meeting of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies in March 2014, attended by about 250 delegates from various countries, the Saudi delegation was limited to a select group of individuals who did not represent the collective wisdom of the Kingdom. It seemed clear from remarks made by the organisers that this exclusionary approach was evident throughout the initial launch conference. A source close to the head of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb, told Al Shuruq (March 12, 2014) that: “The Council of Elders of the Muslims is the correct path and would show an alternative route towards Muslim enlightenment”. However, in the final statement of the conference, emphasis was placed on the “importance of restoring the rule of reference to the ummah”.

This strategic aim was reiterated further in the opening statement of the launch event establishing the Muslim Council of Elders in Abu Dhabi in July 2014, which declared that the raison d’être of the Council was to evolve into “the primary authority of Elders of the Islamic ummah”.

Accompanying the launch of the Council were concerted campaigns in Abu Dhabi to polish the status of Al-Azhar as the leading religious authority of the ummah, above that of other religious institutions, which also attract widespread respect and authority throughout the Muslim world. In conjunction to this there was an unprecedented negative campaign against Salafi ideology and the teachings of Imam Muhammad bin Abdul Wahab.

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This is all part of an initiative involving members of the Advisory Board of the Tabah Institute to promote a Sufi approach that is compatible with Ash’ari and Mutaridi theological schools of thought representing Al-Azhar principles and by implication traditional Islam. And as conceived by Hisham Qabbani, the head of the Naqshbandi Sufi order in consolidation with the White House in 2003.

The rival Turkish project

Clearly attempts to monopolise religious authority in the Islamic world are not confined to the Tabah Institute, Al-Azhar or the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies. These institutions and their associated initiatives are facing stiff competition from Turkey, which is actively seeking to bolster its religious authority as a potential alternative epicentre for political Sufism.

A meeting of Islamic scholars under the title “World Islamic Scholars for Peace and Moderation”, was held in Turkey by the Head of the Directorate of Religious Affairs, Mohammed Gormez on July 17th, two days before the declaration of the establishment of the Council of Elders in Abu Dhabi. The conference, which was attended by scholars and academics from 32 countries, called for independent efforts to be made to resolve internal conflict and wars in Islamic countries, without outside political interference.

The similarity between the stated purpose of the Muslim Council of Elders on the one hand, and the World Islamic Scholars for Peace and Moderation on the other, is noticeable. The latter group includes a Sunni bloc larger than that represented by the Muslim Council of Elders, as Turkey exercises broad influence on Sufi sects over a wider geographical area in which Sheikh Al-Azhar and his associates are battling to assert their religious authority.

Sources spoke about Gormez leaning towards establishing a religious authority based on a convergence between Sunnis and Shiites and drawing upon Turkey’s influence due to its pivotal position in the Islamic world. It was noted at the conference that the presence of the Iranian delegation was sizeable and unprecedented, as was the absence of representatives from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. This project aims to tap into Turkish traditions of Sunni and Shiite coexistence by attracting Sufis from both sides and promoting the Turkish political model, which formally separates the secular state from religious authority.

On the other hand the group associated with the Tabah Institute and the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies have faced some criticism over their adoption of followers and disciples to bring Sunnis and Shiites together with the aid of Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah’s pupils in the West. They seem to have forged ahead with their agenda and attracted leaders of the Iranian lobby in Washington led by Sayed Hassan al-Qazwini, author Vali Nasr and his father

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Sayed Hussein.

In this struggle for the soul of Islam, religious authority and convergence, Saudi Arabia remains isolated, facing serious allegations of extremism and a continuous torrent of anti-Saudi negative campaigning.

Can the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia rise to the challenge, revive its strategic position as the regional power of moderation and prudence, implement a judicious and more inclusive dialogue to lead Islamic nations in unity, defeating fragmentation and divisiveness?

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WHAT IS THE SECRET BEHIND SAUDI’S UNEASY ATTITUDE TOWARDS

ISLAMIST MOVEMENTS?

This is a question that is frequently asked in Arab and Western communities, and for which you find various answers that differ according to the views of researchers and their varied affiliations.

It seemed at first that the Arab Spring was reinforcing the authority of the Islamists in Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, and even Egypt where the Muslim Brothers won 49.3% of votes in the parliamentary elections. The Salafists came after them taking 21.8%, while secularists could not attain even 17% of the votes.

The presidential elections and the constitutional referendum both confirmed that Islamists had emerged on top in the political struggle for Egypt. But, demonstrations against the Muslim Brotherhood and the subsequent military action altered the political equation and were contrary to expectations.

Once the movements in opposition to the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood started to act, Riyadh encouraged them. Some sources even mentioned that the Chief of General Intelligence, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, supported the army in order to overthrow the Muslim Brotherhood and permanently exclude them from power.

When Adly Mansour took the presidential oath of office, the late King Abdullah sent him a letter praising the Egyptian army, because “they saved the country from falling into a dark tunnel”. Then, he gave a speech that was unusual given Saudi Arabia’s traditional tendency to pursue a calm diplomatic agenda that works quietly behind the scenes. He said, “The people and the Government

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of Saudi Arabia stood and today still stand by our brothers in Egypt against terrorism, extremism, sedition, and against those who are trying to interfere in Egypt’s internal affairs”.

Shortly after, King Abdullah along with the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait offered financial support of about $12 billion in aid to Egypt, a sum four times that of the military and economic grants provided by the United States and the European Union combined ($1.5 billion and $1.3 billion respectively).

After returning from a meeting with the French President, the Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, pledged to compensate Egypt for any financial loss that may result from a cessation of grants from the European Union or the United States. In the meantime, Prince Bandar bin Sultan was in Moscow negotiating with the Russians on the mechanisms of providing logistic support for the new regime in Cairo.

After all of those events, many analysts questioned why the Kingdom, famous for its cautious diplomacy, decided to put all its eggs in the basket of such a fragile new regime with an unpredictable future, considering the recent instability in Egypt.

This pressing question was raised by Dr. Abdullah Al-Nafisi when he talked about Riyadh fighting “and destroying every Sunni Islamic movement”. He highlighted Saudi Arabia’s support to the army against the Islamists in Algeria, how they stood against most of the Sunni Islamist movements in Iraq, Syria, and Palestine, and opposed the Islamic re-orientation of Turkey in an uncharacteristically frank way. He concluded that “Saudi Arabia itself destroyed every element that could make it stronger or be a line of defence or a strength point”.

Despite sharing similar concerns to Al-Nafisi, it is difficult to substantiate this perspective. There are several alternative theories suggested by Arab and Western research institutions in their analysis of the Saudi position towards the Islamist movements in the Arab region. The most prominent of those are:

1. The theory about the fear of competition to its central religious position in the Arab world

Dr. Maha Azzam, an Associate Fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, believes Riyadh’s posture was not surprising. It was a reaction to Washington’s abandonment of the kingdom’s closest regional ally, Hosni Mubarak, and its acquiescence in his replacement by the Muslim Brotherhood who could challenge the Kingdom’s claims of being the protector of Islam.

Azzam argued that “What they had was a lethal equation, democracy plus

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Islamism, albeit under the Muslim Brotherhood. That was a lethal concoction in undermining the kingdom’s own legitimacy in the long run. They know full well they do not want democracy, but to have another group representing Islam was intolerable.”

David Hearst noted in the Guardian (20th August 2013) that the Saudi monarch was embarrassed by his nation’s sympathy for the rule of Islamists in Egypt and other countries involved in the Arab Spring. Social media feeds in his country were buzzing with statements displaying empathy with deposed President Mohamed Morsi. Some well-known judges, academics, businessmen and muftis used the emblem adopted by the Muslim Brotherhood after its removal from power, a four-fingered salute known as the sign of Rabaa, on their Twitter and Facebook pages.

As evidence of this, Hearst cited statements made by Saudi religious scholars condemning the Kingdom’s position. The king was criticized in a Friday sermon at the al-Masjid al-Nabawi mosque, and a group of 56 of them issued a statement describing the disqualification of Morsi as “a military coup and a criminal act that was illegal and unlawful.”

2. The theory about the fear of the Arab Spring spreading to the land of the Two Holy Mosques:

On the 2nd February, The Economist attributed the Saudi attitude towards Islamist movements in the region to Riyadh’s concern that the protests would expand and reach the Gulf monarchies. Most of those monarchies remained insulated from the storm that swept through the republics and this prompted them to restrict the activities of Islamist movements who were key players in mobilizing demonstrations and provoking the middle class against the ruling elites.

The West’s attitude towards the Gulf governments was alarming. Most Western countries thought the “enlightened” Islamist movements were the best alternative to the traditional regimes. Riyadh had no time to convince their Western counterparts that the region could not afford further disorder and chaos, especially when the political alternatives were weak and unable to manage the affairs of the state. Riyadh therefore rushed into action and deployed the military in Bahrain and supported the Army in Egypt, operating according to the logic that if it used enough power it could draw up a clear battle plan, affording it ample time to demonstrate the viability of its regional vision.

In fact, the recent reverberations of the Arab Spring have not tempted the people in the states that have as yet remained relatively untouched by its spread. The Houthis are rapidly expanding their influence in Sanaa and its surrounds, and

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Daash (ISIS) forces are worryingly close to Baghdad. Meanwhile, Europe stands still, panicking that terrorists will capture the regional capitals.

So, can we blame Riyadh for trying to protect its national security?

3. The theory concerning the security risks created by having Islamist movements in power

There are many reports in the Saudi media about the serious mistakes committed by Islamist movements in Egypt and Algeria, and the Islamic Salvation Front’s inability to sense the dangers of supporting Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait in the early nineties. Comparable to this were the efforts by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to seek a rapprochement with Iran without realizing the risks of changing the balance of power in the region, upsetting most of the GCC countries and pushing them to support the army.

Further examples of such behaviour can be found in a series of articles written by Abdullah bin Bejad Otaibi on the “Muslim Brothers and Saudi Arabia”. He detailed the important stages in the history of relations between Saudi Arabia and Muslim Brotherhood and the group’s threat to the security of the Kingdom. He pointed out that in 2012 Tunisian politician Rashid Al-Ghannouchi, in his speech at the Washington Institute about Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, said that “Revolutions made the Arab monarchies take tough decisions. They had either to recognize that the time for change had come, or the wave would not stop at their borders just because they were monarchies. The younger generations in Saudi Arabia believe that they deserve the change as well as young Tunisians or Syrians do”.

Otaibi added that “In 2009, and before Al-Ghannouchi, the Muslim Brotherhood stood with militant Houthis from Yemen when they attacked the Saudi borders. They issued a statement supporting Houthis, attacking the Saudis and denying them their right to defend their borders. There are many examples, and I do not intend to count them here, but just point out some”. He asked: “Is this Muslim Brotherhood’s attitude toward Saudi Arabia a new and different one from the ones that preceded it or is it the same old well-established one?”

The different theories were mentioned here not in order to weigh them up, but to emphasize that the truth lies within the small details of all the above theories.

The grave mistakes made by the Muslim Brotherhood when they were in power and their implications on the Islamist movements across the Middle East are serious and difficult to assess at this stage. Certainly the Gulf Cooperation Council fears the effects of the Arab Spring, which has turned the old republics into fragile states. Yet, there are considerable security risks arising from foreign

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intervention in the region’s affairs.

We can add another dimension to the existing theories- the sharp polarisation of the region’s countries.

On 11th July 2014, the Brookings Institute published a study by Gregory Goss, a researcher in the affairs of the Arabian Gulf. The study, entitled “The New Cold War in the Middle East”, pointed to the existence of a cold “Sunni-Sunni” war in the region, represented by polarization between the two Sunni poles, Turkey and Qatar on one hand, and the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on the other. The winner in this war are religious extremist groups, who are experiencing unprecedented growth in the region.

The Omani foreign minister raised similar concerns in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) meeting last August. He confirmed that Takfiris (extremists who practice Takfir, or the denunciation of political and religious opponents of various stripes as apostates) will largely benefit from the political polarization of the GCC countries, particularly those concentrated in Iraq and the Sinai Peninsula.

The Omani perspective of the regional crises will not be discussed in detail here. However, attention should be paid to the reality that this regional polarization is not only affecting diplomatic relationships between the leaders in the GCC, but also relations between intellectuals, journalists and religious scholars. These individuals are leading debates, for or against Islamist movements, on social media and using language that is not normally suitable on traditional media.

The underlying problem at this conflict-ridden time is the absence of a mature way to deal with the challenges of religious identity in the Gulf States. There is no doubt that these countries lack a nationally unifying discourse, with no strategic vision of how to build and define the relationship between the state and its religious organisations. This has ultimately fuelled social tensions and popular anxiety.

It is strange and appalling to hear the various accusations outlined above; that Riyadh is supporting extremist movements, that Qatar funds Takfiri groups, that Salafism-Wahhabism is the source of such violent groups, and finally, the argument that the Muslim Brotherhood is the primary source of malevolence and unrest in the region. They are all not aware that by painting such a chaotic scene, this puts the region’s safety at risk, threatens international security, and increases the chances of foreign interference in the Arab region’s affairs. Socially, this battle has fuelled hatred speech and increased the gap between elites. The lack of diplomacy between these countries and the absence of cooperation and coordination gives extremists the political space to act.

Instead of exchanging accusations, Saudi Arabia must take the initiative and develop a good strategy to manage religious affairs and come up with a

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diplomatic strategy that rises to the challenges in progress. This can only be achieved through reform followed by a national dialogue that does not exclude anyone. Only then can a united front be formed to confront extremist ideology.

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SAUDI ARABIA: TOWARDS A RATIONAL DIALOGUE

Social division in K.S.A. is an increasing phenomenon that is often discussed on satellite channels, newspapers and in social media.

At first glance it may seem that division is limited between liberal and Islamic elites, however, it is more complicated than that because religious elites are divided three ways between: ‘the official’; ‘the enlightened’; and ‘the loyalist’.

The same divisions are repeated amongst various liberal groups, and within government organisations, which encouraged western research Centre’s to investigate the phenomenon; as an example, the BBC considered that King Abdulla Bin Abdul Azziz inflamed the conflict by reducing the authority of religious institutions and expanding the power of liberals in the media, judiciary and education.

Not only are the factions of religious movements not in agreement, but also some Saudi liberals deny the merits of public freedom, political pluralism and urge the State to suppress public freedoms of those whom they disagree with.

In the context of increasing mutual hatred and social division, some may question the role of organisations that act as a bridge between the different groups and currents. The most noted of these is the ‘King Abdul-Aziz Center for National Dialogue’ which took over the task of: “enhancing dialogue between different

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groups of the Saudi society”.

The Centre’s director, Faisal bin Abdul-Rahman bin Moamer (who also has managed the ‘King Abdul-Allah Center of Inter-religious Dialogue’ since 2007, and has also been an advisor to King Abdul-Allah bin Abdul-Aziz and a former minister of education (2009-2011) speaks with pride about the Centre’s achievements that include the organisation of annual conferences on various issues, including: national unity, extremism, women’s rights, youth, education, employment, and medical services; as well as the organisation of more than 30,000 training programs to enhance communication skills, and the establishment of an academy to promote dialogue and to survey public opinion. The position of Bin Moamer was enhanced in July 2014 when he became the vice-chairman of the Board of Trustees in addition to his work as the General Secretary of the Centre since its establishment in 2003.

The King Abdul-Azziz Center of National Dialogue – the reality and the aspiration!

Away from the publicity that accompanies the Conferences, it must be admitted that the task of launching an intelligent national debate is still unattainable. The Centre’s programs fail to address the factors causing social rift.

Although the importance of this task is obvious, the Centre’s activities lean more towards foreign projects that do not serve the national interest. Centre officials are more committed to embellishing “Sufi-political” authority and promoting high profile personalities known for their hostility towards Riyadh.

There are many examples of the Centre’s bias towards foreign projects that do not represent the national interest, such as participation in the forum to Enhance Domestic Peace (March 2014) in which the religious authority condemned the K.S.A., and the vice-chairman of the Centre’s board ‘Abdulla Allah Naseef’ became a member of the Council of Elders in July 2014, which led to vital questions being asked about the Centre’s understanding of the risks of participating in a project to enhance a competing religious authority led by leaders of the Naqshabandi Order.

Being a Director of a Centre for national debate and inter-religious dialogue, Faisal bin Moamer should concentrate his efforts towards organising an effective national dialogue, his central role must surely be the responsibility to safeguard national welfare and defend the religious position of the KSA.

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CONCLUSION

The previous articles and research here focused on a western project aiming to use political Sufism to confront Islamist movements. In assessing the implications of such a project, we need to be very careful with confusing facts, misinformation and serious generalisations that can lead to injustice and abuse.

Sufism encompasses a diverse range of groups, spiritual paths and schools and is not a monolithic theological current with a single point of ideological reference. Its various political and institutional manifestations cannot all be judged under the same criterion, especially as a number of these groups frequently revise and adjust their paths, orientations and positions on various issues and challenges faced by the Muslim world.

The previous series of articles focused on the UAE-Sufi network, riding on the American vision for a new Middle East, having caused more friction and division than perhaps was anticipated. However, here we should emphasise the otherwise positive role contributed by scientific and revivalist Sufis in recent years.

But equally we also call for a clear distinction to be made between Salafist groups, whether scientific, loyalist, revivalist, and activists. We point to the need to avoid confusing these groups with extremist movements that claim to be Salafists. At the same time, we must reject flawed and misinformed arguments about other Islamic currents.

There’s a compelling call for justice and fairness across the religious spectrum, the region’s regimes must be reminded of the urgent need for a mature management of religious affairs to achieve national and regional security. We cannot continue to deal with religious currents through repression, demonising campaigns and distortion. Instead, these groups should be recognised as legitimate actors in public life and societal fabric. All societal currents and forces should take part in a rational and open, national-level dialogue aimed at promoting national identity and civil coexistence to achieve overall harmony and peace within our societies.

We must encourage and bolster transparent, honest and informed actors and institutions and enhance their role in theological reform and renovation.

The most effective and comprehensive way to deal with the identity crisis plaguing the region is through the strengthening of inter-relationships between these Islamic currents, rising courageously to tackle present political and security challenges, striving to achieve national unity and serving the public interest, reminding ourselves of the sacred verse:

“You are the best of the nations raised up for (the benefit of) men; you enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong and believe in God”