Usama bin Laden’s bedtime story

In the so-called war on terrorism, propaganda is as critical as military might. Propaganda bolsters personal morale and conviction, and is liberally employed by both sides of any conflict. President Bush’s invocation of God in his decision to invade Iraq, for example, is indistinguishable from Usama bin Laden’s fatwas (religious edicts) that lash out at the West. But there is a third strand of propaganda that does not seek to demonize, but to protect the status quo.

In the aftermath of 9-11, Western commentators pointed at the disproportionate number of Saudi nationals involved and quickly deduced that the regime, together with its religious establishment, had contributed to the terrorist mindset. The numbers- all but four of the hijackers had been Saudi- were mind-boggling to a country that had always regarded Saudi Arabia as a major ally.

The United States retaliated on two fronts. At home, closer scrutiny was imposed on such places as mosques, Muslim institutions and charities. On the international stage, the United States invaded Afghanistan to punish the Taliban regime for protecting Usama bin Laden, widely believed to have been the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks.

The Muslim world was incensed. Leaders railed from pulpits that the war on terrorism was an excuse to wage war on Islam itself.

In all this, Usama bin Laden remained a pivotal figure. For many Westerners, he was made out to be nothing less than an enemy of humanity. For Muslims, though, another theater unfolded. Usama was carefully crafted by Salafists to fill the shoes of an enemy that is generally described as the very "antithesis of ‘Wahhabism‘".

Muslims and non-Muslims were informed (through such channels as The Wahhabi Myth) that even though Usama bin Laden had been involved in 9-11, he was not necessarily a true or worthy representative of the Saudi brand of Islam. The latter, of course, being Salafist in ideology and literalist in flavor.

Instead, Usama was conceived to be a Sufi, the so-called antithesis of ‘Wahhabism’. His alleged Sufi-ism was first and foremost based on his pedigree. It was disclosed that the bin Laden clan had originated from Hadramout in South Yemen, an area ostensibly crawling with Sufis.

The logic is absurdly simple, and because it is so simple, many people overlook how superficial it really is.

Muslims in South Yemen belong to one of Sunni Islam’s Schools of Thought which is named after the early mujtahid (those qualified to issue expert legal opinion) Imam Shafi’i.

Because the detachment of Sufism from normative Islam only makes sense from an Orientalist and a Salafist standpoint, it is misleading to generalize any region in South Yemen as being uniquely Sufi in character.

The majority of ulema (religious scholars), and this includes Muslims residing in Malaysia, Indonesia, Algeria, Chechnya, Bosnia, Egypt, the Hijaz and significantly, South Yemen, hold that the spiritual discipline of Sufism is an indispensable component of Islam.

The ulema of Singapore, for example, unequivocally states in an official “Charter on Moderation in Religious Practice” (Moderation in Islam) that:

Sufism and tasawuf are accepted as practices which aim to purify the soul and bring oneself closer to Allah.

However, all this was set to change dramatically in 1970s and 1980s when poor Yemeni laborers were allowed to work in Saudi Arabia for their upkeep. Enthralled by Saudi activism, these men brought back with them the first seeds of Salafism.

In typical fashion, sectarian violence spiked; with the first wave of attacks leveled against the Zaydi Shi’a who dominate North Yemen and the second wave targeting the mosques of Shafi’ite Muslims in South Yemen.

Word for word, the narrative of Salafism’s entry into Yemen mirrors that of Afghanistan through the vehicle of the Taliban.

9-11 had of course forced the Saudis to reevaluate their ties with the Taliban regime, if only because of the Taliban’s refusal to surrender Usama bin Laden. The Taliban were unceremoniously ditched, their embassy in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia was one of only three countries to recognize the Taliban’s legitimacy) shut down exactly two weeks after the attacks on New York.

Yemen is a more delicate issue than Afghanistan because of its closer proximity to Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom has always regarded Yemen as a troublesome neighbor, whether it is on account of its republicanism, its larger population, its whimsical path toward democratization, or the unruly ways of some of its people.

In addition, Yemen dredged up sour memories of the 1962 civil war fostered on the one side by Saudi Arabia and on the other by its cold war rival, Egypt.

Any talk about unification between North and South Yemen was therefore met with alarm, and the Saudis did everything they could to prevent the expansion from taking place.

Billions of Saudi riyals were thus pumped into benevolent causes, like conventional parochial education, legal training and private religious charities; the better to advance Saudi influence. Money also found its way into the creation of a group known as al-Tajammu al-Yamani lil-Islah (Islah, or Reform); helmed by the paramount chief of the powerful Hashid tribe, Shaykh Abdallah bin Hussein al-Ahmar.

Now, this is where the Salafist take on bin Laden’s Sufi credentials gets a little slippery, because the Hashid tribe also happens to be the tribe of the bin Laden family. Unlike most other Arab countries, Yemen’s tribal system remains extremely vibrant. Deviation from tribal norms remains a rare occurence.

It is therefore unlikely for the Hashid-Islah co-operative to have held any significant “Sufi tendencies” in the first place. If the Saudis had even caught a whiff of this, money for the movement would have vanished in an instant.

As it stands, Saudi money for the movement is drying up, though for a very different reason.

In 1993, President Ali Abdullah Salih won elections and received the remarkable mandate to rule over both North and South Yemen.

In an overt rebellion against Saudi wishes, the Hashid-Islah movement accepted President Ali Abdullah Salih’s (himself a member of the Hashid) invitation to join a coalition government; thereby supporting his ambitious bid to strengthen Yemen’s tenuous unity.

Matters took a turn for the worse when President Ali Abdullah Salih opposed the first Gulf War and explicitly called democracy "the rescue ship" for all political regimes. The latter was a direct challenge to Saudi Arabia’s role in the 1964 civil war on the side of the ill-fated royalists.

Playing up Usama bin Laden’s progeny is a deft move which fulfills several objectives, implicit as some of them are. First, it deliberately seeks to demonize Sufism in general. Second, through the crass generalization of labeling a whole region as Sufi, it also demonizes the Shafi’ite Muslims of South Yemen. The documented attacks on Sunni mosques in South Yemen attests to this aspect of the propaganda.

Lastly and most significantly, it transplants the context of Usama’s personal ideology and upbringing to a place little known outside Yemen. The progeny-argument clearly benefits from a studious effort to ignore the fact that Usama had not only been born and raised in Saudi Arabia, but also graduated from the prestigious King Abdul Aziz University.

If a test is to be placed before the bin Laden family, it should rightly fall on the shoulders of Usama’s father, Mohammed bin Laden. He was the first to migrate from the "Sufi-infested" region of Hadramout after all.

The test fails miserably, however, when one considers that the bin Laden family remains one of the largest construction conglomerates in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. More importantly, the ties between the bin Laden family and the Saud monarchy continue to be intimate and lucrative.

There is little reason to compare bin Laden’s case with that of the Hashid-Islah movement, although both share a profound tribal bond. It is more accurate to describe Saudi Arabia’s generous financing of the Yemeni movement, however, as nothing more egregious than an attempt to interfere with another country’s political destiny. Nevermind that it directly contravenes Saudi Arabia’s own stated foreign policy.

The relationship with the Hashid-Islah movement was also ideological from the outset, as verified by the wave of Yemeni Salafists who flocked to join al-Ahmar’s movement.

Indeed, Dr David Buchman (Hanover College) describes the Islah movement to be a hotchpotch of factions professing varying levels of “puritan” zeal.

One faction follows the Saudi-sponsored Salafism, which rabidly opposes Sufi practices; the other follows the teachings of the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood, which is less hostile to Sufism. What is striking is that under different circumstances, both sides would have gone for each other’s throats.

While it is true that South Yemen continues to host a strong Shafi’ite presence, the Hashid tribe that Saudi Arabia once munificently supported remains committed to the ideology of neo-Salafism.

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