by Zafar Bangash (Editorials, Crescent International Vol. 44, No. 4, Sha'ban, 1436)
The OIC is the butt of many jokes but it surpassed even its own absurd existence when the Kuwaitis host called for confronting the threat of terrorism and extremism while financing both in conjunction with their Bedouin cousins from Najd.
What ails the Muslim world was once again on display at the annual meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Kuwait City on May 27. The Kuwaiti ruler, Shaykh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah said Muslim countries must work together to counter terrorism. “We must take a serious stand on the sectarian malady that has been shaking the structure of our Ummah and fragments it,” he told foreign ministers and representatives from the 57-member OIC at its annual meeting. Going on, he said, “This fanaticism is the most dangerous to the existence of our Ummah… We are all losers in this conflict, and the winner is the one who wants to inflame this destructive strife for their [sic] own objectives...”
Fine words but who is inflaming destructive strife and sectarianism? Are Arabian rulers and their minions not the ones that have and continue to promote sectarianism and strife because there is no other way they can keep their hold on power?
The Kuwaiti ruler also called for better cooperation between countries so that terrorist organizations like the takfiri group Da‘ish (Dawlah al-Islamiyyah fi al-‘Iraq wa-al-Sham) could be dealt with effectively. “We are required to intensify efforts with the world to combat terrorism being waged by terrorist organizations.” The newly minted “Saudi” Foreign Minister ‘Adel al-Jubeir echoed Shaykh Sabah’s call. “We are all eager to confront the threats that face the Islamic Ummah, foremost among them the phenomenon of terrorism, violence, extremism and sectarianism, which have wrought deep damage in the Islamic world,” he said.
Nobody could fault these words; every sincere Muslim would welcome them, but what is the reality? Who is promoting and financing the takfiris and who provides ideological underpinning to them? The Najdi Bedouins, their court preachers, as well as regimes in Kuwait and the UAE together with the US and Zionists are the principal backers of these terrorists. This has even been admitted by some of the Najdi Bedouins themselves (al-Waleed bin Talal, CNN interview, October 19, 2014) although they claim such funding has now been stopped. This stretches the truth. Funding to terrorist outfits is provided by the Saudi regime as well as its front organizations. It channels insurgents awash with petrodollars through Kuwait where there are few restrictions. Qatar and Turkey are also deeply involved. The Turkish intelligence agency, MIT, facilitates the transfer of terrorists from Europe and Central Asia into Syria. A number of Turkish investigators were recently arrested because they exposed such activities.
If the Arabian potentates are serious about confronting terrorism and sectarianism, all they have to do is stop funding and promoting such activities. Further, they should allow their people a say in the affairs of state. Family-based rule has no basis in Islam. These regimes also spend hundred of billions of dollars on acquiring weapons that are used exclusively against other Muslims. Yemen is a prime example. While the Kuwaiti ruler called for cooperation among Muslim countries, at the same time he justified the Arabians’ illegal assault on the poorest country in the Muslim East (aka the Middle East). These regimes have not fired a single shot against the illegitimate Zionist entity. Instead they are now actively cooperating with it against Muslims. These same regimes had given tens of billions of dollars to the Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein to try and destroy Islamic Iran. Having failed in his mission against Iran, the Iraqi tyrant then gobbled up Kuwait. The takfiri terrorists are likely to repeat Saddam’s crimes on a much larger scale.