Wahabism, and radical Islam in Iraq.

In my previous post I tried to explain why in my mind the Islamic brotherhood had transferred into a terrorist group. The reasons I gave does not apply to Al Qaeda and Wahabism in general as I noted in the beginning of that post, as although both trends contribute to terrorism they differ from each other so much in almost everything.While the Islamic brotherhood formation was a response -and an accumulative product of efforts- of many thinkers to the deteriorated social economic and political situation in Egypt with attempts to find a solution through Islam, Wahabism had no such background.Whabism was the product of mainly one man in response to what he considered (Shirk) i.e. worshiping other people or other things along with God. It was an attempt by Mohammed Abdul Wahab to purify Islamic belief from what various existing sects had introduced into it over centuries. It was not a political movement and although it was supposed to reform Islam, the idea was mainly going back to the roots in almost a copying manner with no place for science or philosophy. While books written by the Islamic Brotherhood's early leaders are still studied till now, Wahabies had no such thinkers and writers and depend mainly on books written my Muslim scholars who died more than a thousand years ago, mainly Ibn Taimyiah.Another difference is that economic difficulties and miserable situations played smaller role in people's decisions to join Wahabism unlike what happened with the Islamic Brotherhood. This is mainly because as I said earlier the Brotherhood promised a change to the better in living conditions while Wahabisim was only concerned with the spiritual side of Islam and the reward they were offering was only to be cashed in another life.Mohammed Abdul Wahab rejected the ceremonies both She'at and Sunni have introduced in form of glorifying humans (Imams), raising them to a very high rank where they served as God's successors and the only way to reach him and to gain his blessings. They built fancy shrines for them that were more sacred to some of them than the Ka'aba itself. She'at went further than Sunnis in this area and glorified Mohammed and Al Al Bait [means residents of Mohammed's house but always refer to only Fatima (Mohammed's eldest daughter), her husband (Imam Ali who was also Mohammed's cousin), two of their sons (Hussain and Hasan) and selected first sons of one of them down to the twelfth Imam, Al Mehdi] to the degree that many She'at believe that the whole universe was created for the sake of the five people whom I named.There's a joke here that says that two Iraqi She'at women went to the Hij in Mecca. One of them looked at the Ka'aba and asked her friend, "Pray sister, what is this big black building?" Her friend answered, "Don't you really know!? It's the Ka'aba, Allah's house" The first woman asked again," So Allah is buried here!?" her more informed friend replied, "Can you really be this ignorant!? If Allah were to die he would be buried in Najaf not here!"Anyway, after Wahabies controlled Saudi Arabia in the early decades of the 19th century they launched repeated raids against Iraq and destroyed all the Shrines they found in their way, Sunni and She'at but of course mainly She'at shrines. These wars are very different from the Islamic Brotherhood late attacks, sine the latter were mainly put to change the regime and to fight a corrupt government. It has a political nature while violence used by Wahabies was and still is based on pure religious issues. Followers of Islamic brotherhood think of Christianity and Judaism as imperfect beliefs but they do not see Jews and Christians as infidels, and their hatred to the west came mainly from political reasons since they believe it was responsible for their misery one way or another, while the Wahabies think of the followers of other religions as infidels and when they started fighting them this element was the main one, at least in their speeches to their followers although mixed with other political reasons sometimes.Unlike the Brotherhood that criticized most Caliphates and deemed them as corrupt tyrants that had no right in claiming authority since most Caliphates gained their positions by inheriting them and not through a consensus by Muslims, Wahabies respect all Caliphates and consider their authority as a sacred one given by God. So inside their own land, Wahabies never gave their Kings any problem until those kings started to attack them lately due to pressure from the US. In fact they were always a tool for the ruling family in Saudi Arabia.Saudi Arabia kings did not want a conflict with Israel, their best Ally's best ally and therefore this radical Muslim group never attacked Israel which is so strange given their supposed ideology is to fight the "infidels" and that they do see Jews as ones not to mention that they look at them as occupiers of holy Muslim lands.Hating or fighting the west or Israel was never the reason behind the rise of the Wahabism, as it was only concerned with purifying the Islamic belief in the area of worshiping and religious duties that has little to do with politics. Also one of the main principles in Wahabism is that it's illegitimate act to fight your Muslim ruler no matter how corrupt or unjust he was, and this is literally, exactly, what you would find in their books. And if you ask a Wahabi how does he thinks the world can be a better place with such negative attitude his answer would be, "the good people will inherit the earth" which is a verse from the Quran that they took to mean that all you have to do is to worship God and be a good person and God will take care of the rest!So the question is what turned this group to expand their activities and direct their violence everywhere and not just only towards She'ats or Sunnis?It was simply because the royal family in Saudi Arabia used their clerics to focus on the Jihad and convince them that helping their Muslim brothers in Afghanistan against the communist infidels is a religious duty and a gate to heaven. It was pure politics that made the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan use the religious card to combat the former Soviet Union. After Afghanistan came Bosnia, Chechnya and all places were Jihad would serve the Royal family and the Interests of the west and mainly the US.I'm not saying that the US encouraged terrorism but rather that the American administration at that time made a move that looked tactically right but it proved to be a strategic disaster, as it missed an important point. Jihadies do not retire!The Genii was out of the bottle and it became so difficult to get it back there.I think it's illogical to assume that the invasion of Afghanistan led to the rise of terrorism there, as there were many Muslim groups that resisted the Soviet invasion and none of these became a terrorist organization. Terrorism in Afghanistan came from outside, from an authoritarian country and then exported its violence back to spread in the whole region.Speaking of authoritarian countries and their role in spreading radical beliefs, in Iraq as one would expect, Wahabism was not very popular since it was founded. However, in the 90s and after the invasion of Kuwait, the terrible defeat and sanctions that followed, many Iraqis, mainly Sunnis, were converted to Wahabies. In my district many of my friends joined a Wahabi circle in our mosque and they were neither poor nor uneducated. I and some fewer friends, we were very close to join the Muslim Brotherhood, not in the form of being part of any organization but we embraced a lot of their ideals. I want to point here that Sayed Qutub and other early leaders of the Islamic brotherhood did not want to separate religion from politics because they saw Islam's message as an attempt to fix the world as a whole not just to determine the relationship between God and human beings but such belief carried a lot of dangers with it. However they did not call for the rule of clerics or Muslim scholars but rather to implement the basics of Islam in politics and life in general and thus they focused on some principles in Islam that were 'forgotten' and mainly "Doing the good and preventing the evil" as a duty and a responsibility of every Muslim, which is something most clerics did not give much attention to in their teachings and speeches because they knew it might lead to 'unfavorable' consequences when Muslims think that they're that responsible. Instead most sects (including Wahabism) left politics for the Sultan as both his right and duty that he's responsible for only in front of God and therefore no human had the right to question that authority.So we were just lost youth trying to find some answers for all these wars, unnecessary death, lack of freedom, torture and why we had no say in our life. Most of my friends were desperate to find any hope in this life and so they went to the mosque searching for answers from the only reliable source that was still available, God.However there was no God inside the mosque. There was a cleric who had just got two cars with the number (Iraq-Kuwait) on them, cars that were stolen from Kuwait that is. They also found two young Wahabies who were preaching a different version of Islam that looked more pure and who were getting booklets, recordings and video cassettes from Saudi Arabia and Yemen mainly for speeches of radical clerics. The two young men had no problem in exposing the hypocrisy of the cleric but their teachings while looking attractive on the first look, couldn't keep my friends in that circle for more than a year, as my friends were smarter than accepting these teachings without any questioning, something that the Wahabi preachers would never allow and called "devil's entrances", meaning you should not question the "principles" of the belief or you'd be risking losing your faith totally! Besides, my friends had a life to go on with despite the general difficult situation. They had their colleges, work; they got married and had families and a future to look for. And in the end Wahabism provided no answer to any of daily life problems.I couldn't but think that the majority of Iraqis were not as fortunate as my friends and that in poorer districts things may have gone differently and that a reward in another life without trying to change anything in current reality may have sounded enough for weak hopeless people, and indeed that was what happened as Wahabism spread in many districts of Baghdad, mainly poor ones.So while economic reasons did not contribute to Wahabism in many areas, it did drive others in other areas to embrace more radical versions of Islam and Wahabism was one of these.On the other hands, we who searched for a more revolutionary form of Islam and found some answers in the Islamic brotherhood that looked reasonable for some time, we did so because we wanted to confront the regime. We were very unhappy with our life and we felt a bit more responsible. But we were very scared of facing that horrible killing and torture machine alone and thus we asked for God's help. We did not search for a compassionate loving God who would ask us to be patient and reward us in the after life, but instead we were looking for an angry God that would stand with us in a very scary conflict. But we were also careful not to rush any decision on that fight, partly because of our fears and partly because we were not sure we were fighting for the right reasons. We thought that if we fought just out of anger we would be just committing suicide and suicide is prohibited in Islam and looked at as a crime.It was long after that that I started to think that there's no pure "God's cause" and that God's cause only exists when there's a human cause, while at that time and in the end we just stood there in the middle of the road not knowing what to do.Others were less careful (more courageous, it depends) and fought but most of those Muslims who fought needed the assistance and guidance of radical organizations and subsequently they took the struggle (or it took them) far away from their original goal.