Wahhabism in the War
By Stephen Schwartz
The Weekly Standard | March 31, 2003

ON THE IRAQI WAR FRONT, Sunday, March 23 was a blood-red day for the terrorist
Wahhabi movement, funded by "our Saudi allies" and aiming at control over world
Islam.

First, terrorism struck in the early hours, from within the ranks of the U.S. armed
forces. Army captain Christopher Scott Seifert, 27, was killed and 15 servicemen
were wounded in an attack on the command area of Camp Pennsylvania, the rear base
in Kuwait for the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. A second serviceman
has now died of wounds suffered at Camp Penn.

One of the unit's members, Sgt. Asan Akbar, an American Muslim, is being held and
is said to have been motivated in his bloody spree by Islamist views.

Sources within the American Muslim community say Akbar attended the student mosque
at the University of California, Davis, which is controlled by the Saudi-created
Muslim Students' Association (MSA). He also listed (under his original name, Mark
Fidel Kools) an address at the Bilal Islamic Center in Los Angeles, which is
reportedly under "official" Saudi ownership. The Bilal Islamic Center and its
Saudi-trained imams are known for venomous preaching of extremism.

Media outlets in the United States have so far remained largely silent on the
details of Akbar's background.

In a similar development on the same day in northern Iraq, Australian television
journalist Paul Moran, along with at least one other person, was murdered in the
Kurdish zone in a suicide bombing that left eight more people injured.

Kurdish officials blamed the atrocity on Ansar ul-Islam (Supporters of Islam), a
terrorist group habitually described in the ever-cautious American media as
"allegedly" linked to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

However, more credible experts on Islam in Kurdistan have described the group as an
activist component in the Saudi conspiracy to impose Wahhabism on the Kurds, who
are traditional, Sufi Muslims. Kurdish Muslims have complained for the past year
about desecrations of graveyards and other forms of aggression practiced by Ansar
ul-Islam.

Proof of Saudi-Wahhabi complicity in the activities of Ansar ul-Islam has come with
the naming of the bomber who killed Moran. He was a Saudi subject, Abd al-Aziz
al-Gharbi, aged 23, from the Saudi city of Hail.

The identification of the Saudi terrorist was confirmed by the Saudi Information
Agency, an independent journalistic enterprise, in a story bylined by Saeed
al-Saleh and Ali al-Ahmed. A cousin of al-Gharbi said the terrorist had left Saudi
Arabia last October after graduating from university, with the intention of joining
Ansar ul-Islam.

The Ansar ul-Islam website took responsibility for the murder of the Australian
journalist but did not immediately identify the terrorist involved.

The attack occurred the day after Ansar ul-Islam's base in northeast Iraq was hit
by U.S. cruise missiles.

Although websites maintained by independent media and opposition groups are blocked
in Saudi Arabia, the Ansar ul-Islam website remains accessible inside the kingdom.

The same day as the atrocity in the U.S. Army camp in Kuwait and the assassination
of the Australian journalist, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a Wahhabi
extremist institution with official Saudi backing, announced it was resuming
activities in Northern Iraq. WAMY also operates an office in Northern Virginia that
has been the object of a U.S. investigation of terrorism funding. WAMY is headed by
Saudi minister of Islamic affairs Saleh al-Alshaikh.

March 23 was a bad day for America, the Kurds, and other traditional Muslims, but a
good day for the Wahhabis and their Saudi backers. We must not be diverted from the
fight against Islamofascism by the challenges faced by brave coalition troops and
the combative Iraqi people, who are themselves shedding their blood for the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein, in the war zone. A stab in the back is as dangerous as
a direct military assault.
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