Originally published under the title, "Secure the Border! Saudi Arabia Building 600-Mile 'Great Wall' to Keep Out ISIS."
Saudi
Arabia began building a wall along its border with Iraq in September to
prevent Islamic State fighters from infiltrating the kingdom.
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In a move reminiscent of ancient history, Saudi Arabia is building a 600-mile-long "Great Wall"—a combined fence and ditch—to
separate itself from the Islamic State to the north in Iraq.
The irony here is that those Muslims that Saudi Arabia is trying to
keep out are the very same Muslims most nurtured and influenced by a
Saudi — or "Wahhabi," or "Salafi" — worldview.
Put differently, Saudi Arabia is again appreciating how jihad is a
volatile instrument of war that can easily backfire on those who support
it. "Holy war" is hardly limited to fighting and subjugating "infidels"
— whether the West in general, Israel in particular, or the millions of
non-Muslim minorities under Islam — but also justifies fighting
"apostates," that is, Muslims accused of not being Islamic enough.
Indeed, the first grand jihad was against Muslim "apostates" — the
Ridda ["apostasy"] Wars. After Muhammad died in 632, many Arab tribes
were willing to remain Muslim but without paying
zakat ("charity" or extortion) money to the first caliph, Abu Bakr. That was enough to
declare jihad on them as apostates; tens of thousands of Arabs were burned, beheaded, dismembered, or crucified, according to Islamic history.
Accordingly, the
Islamic State justifies burning people alive, such as the Jordanian pilot,
precisely because the first caliph and his Muslim lieutenants burned apostates alive, and is even on record saying that
"false Muslims" are its first target, then Israel.
Saudi Arabia is the chief disseminator of the Salafi ideology most associated with jihad.
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This is the problem all Muslim nations and rulers risk: no one — not
even Sharia-advocating Islamist leaders — are immune to the all-accusing
sword tip of the jihad. If non-Muslims are, as "infidels," de facto
enemies, any Muslim can be accused of "apostasy," instantly becoming an
enemy of Allah and his prophet.
A saying attributed to the Muslim prophet Muhammad validates this
perspective: "This umma [Islamic nation] of mine will split into
seventy-three sects; one will be in paradise and seventy-two will be in
hell." When asked which sect was the true one, the prophet replied, "al
-jama'a," that is, the group which most literally follows the example or "sunna" of Muhammad.
This saying perfectly sums up the history of Islam: to be deemed
legitimate, authorities must uphold the teachings of Islam — including
jihad; but it is never long before another claimant accuses existing
leadership of not being "Islamic enough."
Enter the Saudi/Islamic State relationship. Initially, the Arabian kingdom (or powerful individuals within it) was a
supporter of the Islamic State.
It was not long, however, before IS made clear that Saudi Arabia was
one of its primary targets, calling on its allies and supporters in the
kingdom
to kill and drive out the Saud tribe.
The funeral for Saudi border guards killed last month in an Islamic State attack
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Nor is this the first time the Saudis see those whom they nurtured —
ideologically and logistically — turn on them. Back in the 1980s, the
Saudis were chief supporters of the jihad against the Soviets in
Afghanistan.
But once the "distant" infidel was subdued, al-Qaeda and its
Saudi-born leader Osama bin Laden came home to roost, doing the
inevitable: pointing the accusatory finger at the Saudi monarchy for not
being Islamic enough, including for its reliance on the great American
infidel during the First Gulf War.
Moreover, Saudi Arabia is not only a chief disseminator and supporter
of the Salafi ideology most associated with jihad, but the Arabian
kingdom itself was forged in large measure by articulating and calling
for holy war in the 19
th and 20
th centuries, including against Turks and fellow Arab tribes (both Muslim).
The Saudi argument then was the very same argument being made by the
Islamic State now — that the rulers of Islam's holiest mosques in Mecca
and Medina (then, the Ottoman Turks) were not "Islamic" enough.
Such is the double-edged sword of jihad. All Islamic governments,
regimes, and kingdoms must always try to direct this potent instrument
of war against enemies or neutral targets — preferably ones far away
from their borders (Afghanistan, America, etc.). For they know that the
longer the jihad waxes in strength and goes uncontained, the more it
becomes like an all-consuming fire indiscriminately scorching all in its
path.
This also explains why Saudi Arabia is a chief funder and supporter
of external jihads: better to send its own zealots out of its borders to
fight distant infidels than have them stick around (a "better them than
me" mentality). It also explains why nations like Saudi Arabia, which
were forged by the jihad, continually find themselves threatened by the
jihad — or, to paraphrase a young Jewish rabbi: "Those who live by the
sword will die by the sword."
Raymond Ibrahim is a
Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a Judith
Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum. He is the author
of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (2013) and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007).
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