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The Salafi Taqiyya

Thoughts and Ideology

{Let not the believers take the disbelievers as friends instead of the believers, and whoever does that, will never be helped by Allah in any way. [Quran 3:28]}

The Salafist Movement (SM), along with their secular liberal and progressive leftist allies, have through their devious connivance with the fanatically secular ‘Young Turk’ military become a highly controversial entity in the opinion of independent international observers. The SM, through their support of the coup against Dr. Morsi - the legitimate and democratically elected President of Egypt - have forever stained their hands with the blood of the Islamist Movement (IM) martyrs.

Hypothetically the IM and the SM would be considered as ideological brethren by casual observers, for they both claim to support the same cause i.e. the Islamization of the world. Yet the enmity which the SM harbors towards the IM is outlandishly baffling; which was amply demonstrated by the SM support of the coup alongside their ‘arch-enemies’.

 

The Discovery:

The Salafist Movement stormed into the international political lexicon with the conclusion of the first democratic elections in Egypt (June 2012), even though their presence within the Arab world has been exponentially growing for the past 20 odd years.  

Their rise has been attributed to the charisma and apparent ‘piety’ of the SM preachers in an environment where the secular authorities either encouraged or turned a blind eye to their aggressive proselyzing. Their regional analogy would be in the Tabligi Jamaat Movement of South-Asia, where most of the mosques in the sub-continent are under the Tabligi ideological sway thanks to nearly a century of patronage by secular national governments, from the British Raj to today’s post-Imperial era.

Even though Islam enjoins Believers to struggle for the establishment of political Islam, groups like the Tabligi Jamaat Movement and SM have courted secular government’s favor using the specter of the IM, either by completely abandoning political Islam or by employing taqiyya – which will be explained later in the thesis - respectively.

 

The Beginning:

The word salafi comes from the root word salaf, which means the front line which is a metaphor for the people on the Day of Reckoning who will be positioned on the front amongst the entire resurrected crowd, and be delivered unto paradise by Allah’s special mercy. The international Salafi movement came with a storm after the end of the Cold War, thanks to the financial and diplomatic backing of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

With the end of the Cold War the anti-imperialistic and jihadi ideology of the Islamic Movement (IM), from the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East to sister organizations like the Jamaat-e-Islami in South Asia, became redundant to the capitalist power in the new unipolar world. Throughout the mutual cooperation between the IM and the American coalition against their mutual enemy (especially in the Afghanistan theater), the IM fiercely maintained their ideological and methodological independence from their diametrically more powerful ally. In light of a strongly independent superpower slaying umbrella organizations that has strong legitimacy within the Muslim body, and which was until recently an ally in the fight against the brutal Soviet imperialists, containment became a priority for the USA. Otherwise the fear was that the IM would prove to be a double-edged sword, to the detriment of the pax-Americana new world order.

The containment solution which the US-Saudi axis came to formulate was the Salafist Movement.

 

The Taqiyya:

Even though the SM arch enemy is the Shi’a, the SM shares a few important traits unique to certain Shi’a sects, like Taqiyya (deceit). Taqiyya is the Shi’a methodology of playing with haram-halal; i.e. to lie/sell Islam for a paltry price of dunya, not unlike the deviant Jewish priests cited in the Quran.

Case in point:
#1: Salafist used to say that democracy is haram, and that the MB is fitna for participating in democracy. Come 2012, in the wake of the Arab Spring, democracy suddenly became halal for these Salafists and they did very well in the parliamentary elections emerging as the largest party after the MB. Ironically even whilst Salafists were preaching the kufr of democracy, the SM in Kuwait had been participating in democracy and superseded the Muslim Brotherhood to become the largest bloc in parliament until recently.

#2: Salafists used to say that opposing the ruler is haram, and that the MB is fitna for going against the secular rulers. Come 2013, suddenly this behavior becomes halal for the Salafists when they opposed the legitimate and Islamist party in power and welcomed the overtly secularist 'Young Turk' military usurpers.

The self-invented twin pillars of shariah upon which the Salafists' religious exclusivist policy vis a vis the MB had stood for 30 years, has now been completely swept away within a span of one year by these same Salafists.

What will the honest salafist do, now that the taqiyya of these Saudi puppets have been exposed?

 

Postscript:

The writer has generously interchanged the term Muslim Brotehrhood (MB) with Islamic Movement (IM) throughout the thesis. Even though the MB, out of humility, do not presumptuously claim any unrestricted excess to Paradise, the writer believes the MB to be the party Allah speaks of in the Quran.

 

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