From: Salih Muhammed <l**@gmx.com>
Subject: On Yemen Unification and Autonomy
To: Richard Stallman <r**@gnu.org>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2023 00:23:29 +0300
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I would like to share my comment on one of your recent political notes
from June 24, 2023 about the autonomy of Yemen:

>s Yemen may find peace by splitting once again into two countries, but
>Salafi Arabia objects because neither one is under its influence.

First, I would like to address your definition of “Salafi Arabia,” and
then discuss the actual position of Saudi Arabia regarding Yemen’s
initial unification and the current proposed separation. From your
glossary definition of Salafi Arabia, it is:

>a form of Islam, Salafism, is poisonously opposed to human rights. The
>Saudi monarchy actively funds the spread of Salafism everywhere there
>are Muslims. To call attention to this, I refer to the country as
>Salafi Arabia.

While Saudi Arabia did use kinds of Islamic Da’wah to spread influence in
many countries under the cover of Salafism, this only proceeded during
the Sahwa movement, which was profoundly promoted by the Saudi
government and did hold powerful authorization that was always
accompanied by the Saudi regime resolutions. (hosting US-army brigades
is an example, it was followed by a Fatwa from Wahhabists that allowed
the regime to use the help of a none-Muslim army, which of course would
be prohibited by any other Islamic scholars).

However, Saudi Arabia’s reliance on Salafi influence diminished over
time, as it proved to be less useful and sometimes even detrimental to
their interests. Ansar al-Sunna in Egypt serves as an example. This
relatively small political group was founded in Cairo in the late 1920s
and experienced growth until the 1952 Egyptian Revolution, which led to
Gamal Abdel Nasser’s presidency. Abdel Nasser held strong influence
across several Arab countries, fostering revolutions known as the Rise
of Pan-Arabian Socialism. Naturally, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia opposed
these developments and initiated a propaganda campaign against Nasser’s
politics, utilizing Islamic propaganda due to its effectiveness among
the religiously devout populations. Many institutions influenced by
Saudi Salafism received funding to propagate claims such as “Abdel
Nasser is an atheist” (Schulze 1990, 162). Ansar al-Sunna transformed
from a small political group in the 1920s into one of the staunchest
opponents of Nasser’s regime, alongside the Muslim Brotherhood.

Saudi funding started to decline after the Six-Day War and the Israeli
attacks on Egypt, leading to Abdel Nasser’s resignation and the
subsequent decline of pan-Arabism—an outcome the Saudi Kingdom had long
pursued. Subsequently, salafists that are promoted by Saudi Arabia in
Egypt completely vanished.

Over time, Wahhabists gained significant influence among the Saudi
population and, through Saudi media propaganda, extended their reach to
other Arab countries. However, the influence that Sahwa shiekhs held on
the Saudi population did not align with many of Saudi Arabia’s
recreational projects, plans intentions. For instance, music tours and
alcohol trade remained strictly prohibited. Once Sahwa figures opposed
the Kingdom’s policies under the new Saudi Crown Prince regime, they
were either imprisoned or, in some cases, executed (e.g., Salman
al-Ouda, Aid al-Qarni, Nasr al-Omr, Ali al-Omari, and others).

Saudi Arabia’s current influence on other countries is rarely linked to
Islam or Salafi Islam. Instead, they tend to fund dictators who wage war
against Islamists and imprison them. An example of this is #######
####### ########, ##### ###### #######.

Now, let’s discuss Yemen, where the population’s form of Islam has been
heavily influenced by anti-imperialism, socialism, and even Jihadism—all
of which strongly oppose monarchies. Saudis have found it challenging to
exert influence in Yemen through means other than funding military coups
and supporting terrorist militias.

I want to talk a little about the past Saudi and other gulf countries
position on the 1990 unification of the People’s Democratic Republic Of
Yemen.

I would like to briefly address the past position of Saudi Arabia and
other Gulf countries regarding the 1990 unification of the People’s
Democratic Republic of Yemen. The six Gulf countries, which also led the
recent war on Yemen, were dissatisfied with the unification. This
discontent stems from the ruling families of the Gulf monarchies, as
they have no desire to engage with a democratic republic (instead of
other ruling family or a dictator). Note that the inclusion of Southern
Yemen in the unification posed a problem, as it was the region that held
Nasser’s socialist influence and received support from the USSR. The
collapse of the USSR had implications for Southern Yemen and its
eventual unification with the north. Do note that after the unification,
Gulf countries adopted a soft power approach, promoting a Northern
government that aligned with their interests. Which was followed by the
first separation war in 1994, in which Saudi Arabia provided funding to
the separatists.

This situation persists to this day. Prominent figures, such as
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed, who is associated with Saudi propaganda, have
advocated for the separation of Yemen, claiming that it would benefit
the Saudi regime. Similarly, the Kuwaiti minister Saad Bin Tefla
expressed support for Yemen’s separation in an article published by
Independent Arabia (s). The Southern Transitional Council, an
institution known to promote separation, is widely known to receive
funding from the UAE.

In conclusion, the influence of Saudi Arabia has shifted over time.
While it initially utilized Salafi influence and propagated against
ideologies like Nasser’s socialism, its reliance on Salafism has
diminished, and its current influence extends through support for
dictators and military interventions. In Yemen, the current position of
Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, to the unification stemmed from
their aversion to democratic republics and concerns is the opposition
and the welcoming of the separation.

Used references:

Schulze, Reinhardt. 1990. Islamicher Internationalismus im 20?
Jahrhundert: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Islamischen Weltliga.
Leiden: Brill.


Regards,
Salih


[–]


From: Richard Stallman <r**@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: On Yemen Unification and Autonomy
To: Salih Muhammed <l**@gmx.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2023 23:00:45 -0400
Reply-To: r**@gnu.org
Flags: replied, seen, personal
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 To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider
 whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,
 foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden’s example.

  > Saudi Arabia’s current influence on other countries is rarely linked to
  > Islam or Salafi Islam. Instead, they tend to fund dictators who wage war
  > against Islamists and imprison them. An example of this is #######
  > ####### ########, ##### ###### #######.

If I get convincing references to confirm this, I will reconsider the
name “Salafi Arabia”.

Even if that country no longer promotes Salafism today, the disastrous
effects caused by many years of promoting Salafism are lasting – they
won’t be undone just because their promotion ceases. For instance,
Islam in Indonesia has become intolerant and repressive, threatening
the country’s unity and human rights laws.

As regards Yemen, it sounds like what I said is not exactly wrong,
just incomplete. The situation as you describe it is very complex
so if my statement is wrong, I can’t tell.

I don’t want to try to explain that complexity. Is there a simple
error you can point out?

–
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)


[–]


From: Salih Muhammed <l**@gmx.com>
Subject: Re: On Yemen Unification and Autonomy
To: r**@gnu.org
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2023 18:31:56 +0300
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> If I get convincing references to confirm this, I will reconsider the

If “this” refers to support for #######, it is unquestionable that Saudi
Arabia was the first country to provide $5 billion funding to #######
########## ########### ##### ### ##### ######## (s). In fact, some
researchers argue that Saudi Arabia played a significant role in the
2013 #### ######, with Stéphane Lacroix’s work serving as an example.

On the other hand, if you were referring to Saudi Arabia’s support of
Salafism and Islamists in general, I believe it can be affirmed by the
fact that the majority of Salafists have been imprisoned or executed.
Currently, the form of Islam promoted by Saudi Arabia has no connection
to Salafism or Islam as a whole. To illustrate this further, I will
provide two additional examples. In 2020, the Saudi Minister of Justice
and the Secretary General of the Muslim World League, Muhammad bin Issa,
participated in “prayers in memory of the victims of the Holocaust” (s).
Such an act would certainly be prohibited by a student studying
Salafism 101.

The other example directly comes from an interview with Mohammed bin
Salman, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia:

> s
> MBS said that the government would implement Quranic regulations and
> teachings based on Mutawatir hadith (sayings of the prophet reported
> by a significant number of narrators), while needing to look into the
> reliability of Ahad hadiths (sayings reported by a single source). He
> described the latter as “not as compelling” as the former.

The Mutawatir hadiths that he mentioned means that there are only about
30 (maybe more or less) hadiths that the Islamic legislation in the
government will use. To understand how much this means, the Salafists
had at average 7500 hadiths as a reference for Sharia. As a person who
studied Mutawatir hadiths, I can further confirm that they have almost
nothing to do with any type of Islamic rule, so what he said basically
meant that there will not be any legislation based on Islam. (further
readings on this l)

> I don’t want to try to explain that complexity. Is there a simple
> error you can point out?

Yeah just that Saudi Arabia wouldn’t object separation of Yemen at all,
it will welcome it instead just like they did in 1994 and 1990 (I
elaborated on this in my original text).


Regards,
Salih

[–]


From: Richard Stallman <r**@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: On Yemen Unification and Autonomy
To: Salih Muhammed <l**@gmx.com>
cc: r**@gnu.org
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2023 22:34:12 -0400
Reply-To: r**@gnu.org
Flags: replied, seen, personal
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 To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider
 whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,
 foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden’s example.

  > On the other hand, if you were referring to Saudi Arabia’s support of
  > Salafism and Islamists in general, I believe it can be affirmed by the
  > fact that the majority of Salafists have been imprisoned or executed.
  > Currently, the form of Islam promoted by Saudi Arabia has no connection
  > to Salafism or Islam as a whole. To illustrate this further, I will
  > provide two additional examples. In 2020, the Saudi Minister of Justice
  > and the Secretary General of the Muslim World League, Muhammad bin Issa,
  > participated in “prayers in memory of the victims of the Holocaust”
  > (https://p.dw.com/p/3Wjb6). Such an act would certainly be prohibited by
  > a student studying Salafism 101.

This may all be true – but I don’t have a reference for it.
What your saying about Salafism may be true, but I don’t know
that either. (I have not studied Salafism 101 – I don’t have
time to go that deeply into the details of Islam.)

  > The Mutawatir hadiths that he mentioned means that there are only about
  > 30 (maybe less) hadiths that the Islamic legislation in the government
  > will use. To understand how much this means, the Salafists had at average
  > 7500 hadiths as a reference for Sharia.

This topic is interesting – and perhaps brief enough that I could
read about it and understand. Can you point me at an article that
describes the Mutawatir hadiths? I could then see what that implies.

–
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)


[–]



From: Salih Muhammed <l**@gmx.com>
Subject: Re: On Yemen Unification and Autonomy
To: r**@gnu.org
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2023 20:16:51 +0300
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Attachment: [2. application/pdf; A Collection of Mutawatir.pdf]…


> This topic is interesting – and perhaps brief enough that I could
> read about it and understand. Can you point me at an article that
> describes the Mutawatir hadiths? I could then see what that implies.

You can check this Also, Dr. Shabir Ally explained it very well in this video,
and he pointed too about how small it is (the total number of Mutawatir
hadiths). (watch)

Dr. Othman Alkamees, a hadith scholar, stated too that the maximum number of
Mutawatir hadiths can never be more than 50. (watch) Unfortunately the video is
in Arabic.

Even if the number is raised up to 300 as claimed (which is totally
impossible), the 300 hadiths that are mentioned do not provide anything
about political Islam, they don’t even provide legislation about many
things in Islam such as the known stoning penalty for the adulterous
married woman, because all the hadiths about it are not considered to be
Mutawatir. They only provide basic ethical information.

p.s. I attached the document that Ally talks about in the video.


Regards,
Salih


From: Richard Stallman <r**@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: Re: On Yemen Unification and Autonomy
To: Salih Muhammed <l**@gmx.com>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2023 22:20:03 -0400 (6 days, 8 hours, 54 minutes ago)
Reply-To: r**@gnu.org
Flags: seen, personal
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 To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider
 whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,
 foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden’s example.

I looked at the Wikipedia page which mutawatir leads to,
and I think I understand the matter now.

Thanks.

–
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)


[–]

From: Richard Stallman <r**@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: On Yemen Unification and Autonomy
To: Salih Muhammed <l**@gmx.com>
cc: r**@gnu.org
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2023 22:41:42 -0400
Reply-To: r**@gnu.org
Flags: replied, seen, personal
Maildir: /Inbox

 To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider
 whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,
 foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden’s example.

I am still interested in seeing a reference for what you’ve said
about descreased support for Salafism in Saudi Arabia.
If I see that this is true, I will act accordingly.

What really concerns me is how that country’s money promoted strict
and repressive forms of Islam in place of more relaxed forms.
If promotion of repressive forms continues but no longer under
the rubric of Salafism, that would be a change in detail.
If that promotion has ceased, it would be an important change.

–
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

[–]


From: Salih Muhammed <l**@gmx.com>
Subject: Re: On Yemen Unification and Autonomy
To: r**@gnu.org
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2023 13:47:44 +0300
Flags: seen, personal
Maildir: /sent


The demise I talked about actually starts from the late 90s when Saudi
government stopped funding general Salafists and moved to fund only
madkhalis, which states the whole “loyalty to secular authoritarian
governments”, you can read the Wikipedia article on Madkhalism to learn
more about it. To read about how Madkhalism turned to be the only
allowed type of Salafism in the state, see Lacroix 2011.

The infitah that was led by the new price directly targeted Salafi
tenets of theology, forced Salafi scholars to moderate their discourse.
Quoting from Besnik 2022:

“By way of example, a religious scholar like Shaykh Salih Al al-Shaykh,
the longest serving Saudi Minister of Religious Affairs (till 2018), and
a direct descendant of the founder of Wahhabism, is known for authoring
religious texts in the 1980s where he passionately advocated for
excommunicating Muslims he considered to be heretics. Throughout the
first decade of the 21st century, however, as one can see in his
personal website, he has been equally passionate in condemning the use
of takfir.”

In 2017, MBS identified the kingdom’s political orientation as embracing
a “return to moderation” (Sheline 2017). This marked a shift away from
the religious and political culture that had emerged after the Siege of
Mecca and the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The objective was to combat
extremism, primarily focusing on former Sahwa-affiliated reformist
preachers. The media in Saudi Arabia highlighted events like the Siege
of Mecca, instances of young activists destroying musical instruments in
the 1980s, and Sahwa scholars delivering inflammatory speeches during
the First Gulf War. The government targeted Islamist reformist preachers
as a group, accusing them of promoting extremism and incarcerated them,
regardless of the unique nuances in their views, activism, or subsequent
changes.

An essential aspect of this drive towards moderation involved
associating political activism seeking reform and participation with
violence and extremism. In pursuit of this “return to moderation,” the
government established social spaces that operated outside the confines
of religious norms, thereby reducing religious influence over public
morality, education, and the legal system. This approach signified a
gradual diminishing of the religious field and the influence of Salafi
authority within society (Sinani 2019).

It is important to highlight that the government’s insistence on
promoting state-sponsored moderation has had repercussions on the status
of Salafi scholars among their followers. MBS’s reforms have openly
challenged Wahhabi norms, putting established scholars in a difficult
position. They have been pressured to issue statements and religious
opinions that align with the government’s stance, even if it contradicts
their previous beliefs, or they have opted to remain silent.

The reforms introduced by MBS, such as endorsing entertainment projects,
opening movie theaters, relaxing social restrictions, and gender
segregation rules, have led to significant changes. These changes have
resulted in a considerable reduction in the influence of religion and
the power of Saudi Salafi scholars. This transformative approach has
been aptly described as “touching nothing, but changing everything”
(Farouk and Brown 2021).


One crucial institution affected by these reforms is the Council for the
Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Evil (Mouline 2014), which has
become paralyzed and incapacitated in its traditional role.
Additionally, the de-centering of Wahhabism from the nation’s founding
narrative serves as a notable indication of the diminishing authority of
Saudi Salafism.



I hope these so far poses a good reference to you for my claim. I also
recommend you to read Besnik 2022, I think it’s a quite prefect
reference for this matter, actually it mentions my allegation about
mutawatir hadiths as an argument:

“Recently, in a televised interview, MBS was asked about the meaning and
application of ‘moderation’. He reiterated that he is committed to
following the Quran and the Sunna. However, he added that he is not
required to follow the interpretative school of Ibn “ Abd al-Wahhab and
that he intends to follow only the most reliable statements of the
Prophet, which have been transmitted from several chains of
transmission, such that Muslim scholars consider their fabrication
impossible (mutawatir). Such hadiths, however, are very few in number,
indicating a substantial reduction in the number of hadiths the Prince
considers worthy of referring to. Additionally, in these statements he
challenges once again the historical Saudi-Wahhabi labor division, where
religious expertise was entrusted to the scholars. The Prince appeared
to symbolically occupy both roles (Al-Saud 2021)”.

I do not have reference for that, but I assure you that MBS does not
mean it by saying that he is “committed to following the Quran and the
Sunna” (because there is neither Quran nor Sunna in his claim), he is
just saying that to avoid an anger wave from the public muslim
population who does not know what mutawatir hadith is and probably
confuses it with sahih hadith.




Used references

Farouk, Yasmine, and Nathan J. Brown. 2021. Saudi Arabia’a Religious Reforms Are
Touching Nothing but Changing Everything. Carnegie Endowment for Peace. June 7.
Available online: here.

Lacroix, Stephane. 2011. Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in
Contemporary Saudi Arabia. Boston: Harvard University Press.


Mouline, Nabil. 2014. The Clerics of Islam: Religious Authority and Political
Power in Saudi Arabia. New Heaven: Yale University Press.


Sheline, Annelle. 2017. Mohammed bin Salman’s Plan to Moderate Islam in Saudi
Arabia. The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. Available online: here.

Sheline, Annelle R. 2019. Declaration Proliferation: The International Politics
of Religious Tolerance. Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.
July 11. Available online: here.

Sinani, Besnik. 2022. “Post-Salafism: Religious Revisionism in Contemporary
Saudi Arabia” Religions 13, no. 4: 340. doi


Regards,
Salih