Timeline: Life and Death of Osama bin Laden
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in Pakistan and his body was recovered, President Barack Obama announced on Monday.
Here is a timeline of major events in bin Laden’s life.
1957 – Osama bin Mohammad bin Awad bin Laden born in Riyadh, one of more than 50 children of millionaire businessman. There are conflicting accounts of his precise date of birth.
1976 – Studies management and economics at university in Jeddah.
Dec 26, 1979 – Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. From 1984, bin Laden is involved in Peshawar-based Services Office to support Arab volunteers arriving to fight Soviet forces.
1986 – Bin Laden moves to Peshawar, begins importing arms and forms his own small brigade of volunteer fighters.
1988 – Al Qaeda (The Base) is established as a magnet for radical Muslims seeking a more fundamentalist brand of government in their home countries and joined in common hatred of the United States, Israel and U.S.-allied Muslim governments.
Handouts dash Saudi king’s reformer reputation
Saudi King Abdullah’s lavish social handouts and a boost to security and religious police, but no political change, leaves his prized reputation as a reformist in tatters, analysts say.
The king, believed to be 87, has carefully crafted an image as a cautious reformer in a country ruled by a single generation of his brothers as absolute monarchs for nearly six decades. But faced with unrest rocking much of the Arab world, he is playing the old game of buying support from key sectors of society to keep family rule as it is.
In a rare TV address to the nation last Friday, the king announced the new spending but gave no concessions on rights in a country where public space is dominated by the royal family, political parties are banned and there is no elected parliament.
There was no word either on a much anticipated reshuffle of a cabinet whose main posts are held by senior princes, some of whom have been in their jobs for more than four decades in the key U.S. ally and world’s top oil exporter. “I was expecting perhaps a cabinet reshuffle but unfortunately he focussed on paying money and he has increased the role of the religious establishment,” said Tawfiq al-Saif, a leading intellectual among minority Saudi Shi’ite Muslims.
“He is returning to the policy of the late King Fahd in the 1980s when money and religion was the only tool of the government,” he said.
Measures to raise benefits for the unemployed, add jobs and increase the minimum wage were accompanied by the creation of 60,000 security positions and more money for the religious police who keep a firm grip on personal behaviour. And in a sign Saudi’s ruling elite will not tolerate dissent, Abdullah said the media must respect the Sunni clerics who oversee the application of sharia law in the Islamic state.
NRead the full analysis by Jason Benham and Amena Bakr here.
Bahrain crisis could worsen Sunni-Shi’ite sectarian tensions in the region
A Bahraini police crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, two days after Saudi Arabia sent in 1,000 troops to bolster its longtime Gulf Arab ally, will heighten Sunni-Shi’ite tensions in Bahrain and beyond. At least five people were killed and hundreds wounded when police cleared demonstrators from Manama’s Pearl Square on Wednesday in an attempt to halt weeks of popular unrest.
The violence, so soon after the Saudi-led intervention, will further embarrass Washington, which had urged dialogue to tackle Bahrain’s problems and says Riyadh did not consult it before moving troops to the island where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based. That may be the case, but U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates visited Bahrain at the weekend. To many Arabs the timing smacks of U.S. complicity in King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa’s decision to invite the Saudis in and declare martial law.
The decision to crush a protest movement inspired by popular revolts in Egypt and Tunisia is conditioned by the sectarian factor in Bahrain, a tiny country seen by the United States and the GCC as a bulwark against the rising power of Shi’ite Iran.
Sunni Gulf rulers tend to view Shi’ites in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia as a potential fifth column for the Islamic Republic, despite what Gulf-based political analyst Neil Partrick called the “clear Arab affinity of many of the Shi’ites of the Gulf.”
Bahraini Shi’ites have long complained of discrimination in housing and jobs, charges the government rejects. The protesters had sought to cast their movement as national, not sectarian. But amid the tumult of Middle East protests, the sectarian overtones of the Bahrain crisis find a ready echo in places like Iraq and Lebanon, where Sunni-Shi’ite tensions run high.
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Saudi insists protests not Islamic, Facebook group calls for demos
Saudi Arabia’s ruling family has mobilised the power of its conservative religious establishment to prevent a wave of uprisings against Arab autocrats from roaring into its kingdom, home to more than a fifth of the world’s known oil reserves. Whether these traditional tactics will work with a young population that grew up in the information revolution age, with the ability to use the internet to organise and spread awareness of ideas of universal rights to political participation, is still to be tested.
The day all eyes are fixed on is Friday. More than 32,000 people have backed a call on Facebook to hold two demonstrations this month, the first on March 11 and then March 20. The theme running through comments from princes, clerics and newspaper editorialists is that protests in the key U.S.-allied state are not Islamic, the subject of a fatwa issued by the Council of Senior Clerics this week.
They used rhetoric that Saudis are long used to, based on the idea that Saudi Arabia is unique as a country that replicates the early Islamic state — and Islamic Utopia where God’s word is law and allegiance to the ruler is non-negotiable. They cited Koranic verses and their perception of the early Muslim state established by Prophet Mohammad to argue that reform should come via advice and not street protests, and even argue that signing petitions “violates what God ordered”.
But Fouad Ibrahim, who has written studies on Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi school of Islam, said the word of the senior scholars had far less authority now that it did in the past. “‘We live in an Islamic state, we are not like Egypt and Tunisia, we implement sharia law, there is not enough reason for people to revolt against the Islamic state’ — these claims used to be marketed but many people don’t believe this any more,” said Ibrahim, who is based in London.
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Saudi clerics condemn protests as un-Islamic
Saudi Arabia’s council of senior clerics has issued a statement forbidding as un-Islamic the public protests, which the rulers of the U.S. ally and key oil exporter fear could spread following demonstrations by minority Shi’ites. The kingdom has escaped major protests like those which toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, but the wave of unrest has reached its neighbours Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan and Oman.
“The Council of Senior Clerics affirms that demonstrations are forbidden in this country. The correct way in sharia (Islamic law) of realising common interest is by advising, which is what the Prophet Mohammad established,” said the statement by the body headed by the Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al al-Sheikh.
“Reform and advice should not be via demonstrations and ways that provoke strife and division, this is what the religious scholars of this country in the past and now have forbidden and warned against,” said the statement, carried by state media on Sunday.
More than 17,000 people backed a call on Facebook to hold two demonstrations in Saudi Arabia this month, the first on Friday. The interior ministry said on Saturday that protests violate Islamic law and the kingdom’s traditions. Security forces have detained at least 22 Shi’ites who took part in protests in the kingdom’s oil-rich east, activists said. Neighbouring Bahrain has seen protests by majority Shi’ites against their Sunni rulers.
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Watching Bahrain, Saudi Shi’ites demand reforms
When Saudi Shi’ites mark the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad, meeting at mosques and exchanging sweets is only part of what’s going on. The Shi’ites also are testing the tolerance of Sunni clerics and taking advantage of reforms introduced by King Abdullah that allow them greater freedom to practise their branch of Islamic faith.
For the hundreds of Shi’ites who gathered on Sunday in the rundown eastern town of Awwamiya, near the Gulf coast, this year is special. Just an hour’s drive and a bridge away is the island nation of Bahrain, usually a place where Saudis go for a bit of weekend fun but now the scene of a majority Shi’ite uprising that is challenging the minority Sunnis’ grip on power.
“You need to demand reforms and start popular movements if you want to achieve something. If you don’t do anything the government will not act,” said Mohammed, a young man who, like others, gave only his first name.
“You need to make use of the fact that the regime is in a weak position,” he said, referring to anti-government protests sweeping across the Arab world after popular uprisings toppled the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt.
Mohammed used the Arabic word ‘nizam’ for ‘regime’ — the same word shouted by thousands of Egyptian protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to demand change. Normally fear of landing in jail would curb such talk, but television images of protests and rapid Internet communication are making people think about what might be possible.
Read the full report here. Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld
Saudi king, religious police, Islam and donkeys – via WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks has come up with an interesting insight into the way King Abdullah views his own kingdom’s religious police, the mutaween who enforce Islamic behaviour in public. A cable from the Riyadh embassy entitled IDEOLOGICAL AND OWNERSHIP TRENDS IN THE SAUDI MEDIA and dated 11 May 2009 mentions what appears to be a U.S. diplomat’s visit to a Saudi newspaper editor whose name is XXXed out. The Saudi says the king had visited the office and complained about how ignorant the religious police were about Islam and how they treated people like donkeys:
//Okaz// ¶18. (S) In a meeting with Jeddah CG and XXXXXXXXXXXX, XXXXXXXXXXXX was blunt when asked about SAG efforts in countering extremist thinking. “King Abdallah was here,” he said, pointing around his well-appointed office XXXXXXXXXXXX in Jeddah. “He told us that conservative elements in Saudi society do not understand true Islam, and that people needed to be educated” on the subject. King Abdallah, he said, used a metaphor of a donkey to explain how the religious police use the wrong approach. “They take a stick and hit you with it, saying ‘Come donkey, it’s time to pray.’ How does that help people behave like good Muslims?” XXXXXXXXXXXX quoted the king as saying.
The same cable also comments on a new and more moderate tone in religious programming on some television channels:
¶15. (C) Saudi-produced religious programming on ART and Rotana also departs from past models. Rotana’s popular religious channel “Al Risala” features a hip, clean-shaven Saudi in western clothes offering practical religious advice in a calm and friendly manner. Jeddah-based Arab Radio and Television company (ART) (owned by Saleh al-Kamel and according to our contacts being edged aside by MBC and Rotana) recently featured an MTV-style music video clip on its “Iqraa” religious channel depicting a group of dissolute young Saudi men who give up their carousing and return to observance. They are then shown succeeding in sales presentations and other interactions at work, gaining the admiration of their colleagues and supervisors. The young men continue to dress in standard attire, remain clean-shaven and are fully integrated into normal, workaday Saudi society. The message of moderation in the religious realm could not be clearer.
The religious police don’t treat all Saudis like donkeys, however. In a cable on 18 November 2009 entitled UNDERGROUND PARTY SCENE IN JEDDAH: SAUDI YOUTH FROLIC UNDER “PRINCELY PROTECTION”, the Jeddah Consulate reported on an underground Halloween party where the “full range of worldly temptations and vices are available — alcohol, drugs, sex — but strictly behind closed doors.” It then noted:
Beard guide and song ban among Salafist books barred in Algeria
(Photo: Customs officers inspect books purchased at an Islamic book fair in Algiers, searching for Salafist books, October 29, 2010/Zohra Bensemra)
Concerned by the growing influence of the ultra-conservative Salafist branch of Islam, Algeria has this year been cracking down on the import and distribution of Salafist literature. Salafist publications, most printed in Saudi Arabia, are still available in some specialist bookstores. See our feature on this crackdown here.
Following is a selection of titles on sale in a bookshop in Rouiba, an eastern suburb of the Algerian capital.
* “Islamic Songs, a bid’a“ by Sheikh Abdel Aziz Ibn Nada El Otaibi.
This book explains that singing is illicit even when the song is religious. The book aims also to counter the Sufi school of Islam, which does not object to most forms of music.
* “How to answer El Albani’s opponents” by Sheikh Mekbel Ibn Hadi El Wadi’i.
Haj pilgrims flock to Mount Arafat to beg forgiveness
Millions of Muslims gathered around Mount Arafat, where the Prophet Mohammad delivered his last sermon, to beg for God’s forgiveness on Monday, the spiritual climax of the annual haj pilgrimage. Pilgrims flocked mostly on foot to Arafat, a rocky outcrop in a dusty plain a few kilometers away from Mecca, to pray until sunset. They set up tents where they could, squatted on the side of the road in shelters or stayed at the nearby Namira mosque.
A record of at least 2.5 million pilgrims have come to Saudi Arabia to perform this year’s haj, one of the world’s biggest displays of mass religious devotion. So far, the authorities have reported none of the major problems or disasters that marred the event in previous years, such as building collapses and deadly stampedes caused by overcrowding.
But the sheer number of pilgrims was still a worry for the Saudi government. Around 100,000 security forces have been deployed to the oversee the pilgrimage, security officials said.
“I thank God for sending me to haj but it’s really difficult with so many people here and the heat,” Mohammed Ramzi, a pilgrim from Egypt, said as he cooled off under one of thousands of water sprinklers erected by the authorities against temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius. “I’ve just lost a friend in the crowd … but God will give me the strength to perform haj despite the difficulties.”
“Haj is difficult with the crowds and heat but God will help us,” said Abdulrahman Kado, a pilgrim from Nigeria.
At least 2.5 million Muslim pilgrims begin haj
At least 2.5 million Muslims began the annual haj pilgrimage on Sunday, heading to an encampment near the holy city of Mecca to retrace the route taken by the Prophet Mohammad 14 centuries ago.
Traveling on foot, by public transport and in private cars, the pilgrims will stream through a mountain pass to a valley at Mina, some three km (two miles) outside Mecca. The path is the same as the Prophet himself took on his last pilgrimage.
The haj, one of the world’s biggest displays of mass religious devotion, lasts for five days. In the past it has been marred by fires, hotel collapses, police clashes with protesters and deadly stampedes.
Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef said on Wednesday the kingdom could not rule out an attack by Al Qaeda’s regional wing, although the kingdom’s forces were ready to combat any such operations. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula on Sunday denied it had any intentions of targeting Muslim pilgrims at haj.
Islam is now embraced by a quarter of the world’s population and haj is a duty for all able-bodied Muslims who can afford it. Many wait for years to get a visa.
To minimize the risk of overcrowding and to lessen congestion on the roads the authorities will for the first time be operating a Chinese-built train that will call at haj sites.
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