Salafi Crescent: The Threat of Wahhabi Revival, The End Times Prophecy of the Sufyani, and the 2012 Countdown
to the Return of Imam Mahdi al Hujjah min Al-e Muhammad (sawaws)
Kenneth Kamran Toloui
Jakarta, Indonesia
Keywords: Salafi, Wahhabi, Al-Qaeda, Nasibi, Sufyani,
Dajjal, Anti-Christ, Arab Spring, Islamic Awakening, Shia Crescent, Shia
Revival, Yamani, Mahdi, Mayan Calendar, 2012, 1433/1434
The confluence of recent political events across the greater
Middle East and North Africa, along with an Anglo-American/Zionist hegemonic
policy of “divide and conquer” making for strange bedfellows, have given rise
to a nascent Salafi Crescent[1], embodied and prophesied in the figure of the Sufyani,
foretold in Shi’a and Sunni prophetic traditions alike. The dream of the “Arab
Spring”, or “Islamic Awakening”, which began in Tunisia in late 2010, resulted
in revolutions in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen in 2011, and has manifested in
various forms throughout the Arab and Islamic world, even reaching Europe and
North America, will in 2012 give rise to a nightmare of apocalyptic proportions,
an unprecedented bloodbath along sectarian lines resulting from the power
vacuums it has produced. Israeli and Western pressure on the Islamic Republic
of Iran, the last true holdout to unipolar global dominance, has resulted in a
cynical policy of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, with Shi’a once again playing
the bogeyman in mainstream media discourse, and unholy alliances being formed
by European (post)colonial powers with al-Qaeda and its Wahhabi/Salafi allies
throughout the world. This marriage of convenience will beget a demon spawn, a
mass murderer to whom Abu Musab al Zarqawi of Al Qaeda in Iraq will pale in
comparison. The riwayat, or prophetic traditions, that have been passed down by
the Ahlul Bayt (as), the Pure Family of the Prophet Muhammad (sawaws), give us
a glimpse of the doomsday scenario horrors that lie ahead, and we can in effect
from them produce a timeline or countdown for 2012, one which coincides with
the end date of the Mayan Calendar.
The Sufyani in both Shi’a and Sunni hadith is a dictator who
will emerge in Sham, modern-day Syria. After emerging victorious in a
three-sided civil war, the Sufyani will target the Shi’a of the region, with
genocidal consequences. The scene has already been set: the Western powers have
called for regime change in Syria, and a global jihad against the Assad
government has been announced, with arms and fighters pouring in from
throughout the world. Once the government of Bashar al-Assad has fallen, these
takfiri jihadis will set their sights on the Shi’a of the region, be they
Alawite (Alawi), Twelver (Ithna ‘Ashari), or Fiver (Zaidi/Houthi). This
worldwide attack on Syria, with the Zionist entity playing a prominent role
behind the scenes, will create two “revolutionary” anti-Assad factions, one
explicitly pro-Western and pro-Israel, and one nominally Muslim, but dominated
by the cultish sect of Salafism/Wahhabism/al Qaeda, who will do much of the
dirty work for their Western puppet-masters. In time, this Frankenstein’s
monster gone amuck, the Salafi faction of the Syrian civil war, will produce
the Sufyani, who will attack a third faction, the defenders or remnants of the
current Assad government, and possibly their Shi’a allies from Lebanon’s
Hezbollah.
Unlike the nonviolent model of revolution in Tunisia,
Egypt, and Yemen, which notably targeted Western-backed puppet dictators (and
effectively toppled the Western or American Bloc, if a comparison is to be
made between the Arab Spring and the 1968
Prague Spring, and the later post-Communist collapse of the Eastern or Soviet
Bloc), the Syrian “revolution” has been explicitly armed and violent (the level
of pacifism of Gene Sharp and George Soros inspired and/or funded movements
seems to correspond to the needs of the elite attempting to sway and steer the
masses, though at least initially in Tunisia and Egypt the popular uprisings
appears to have been spontaneous). In this respect the Syrian situation has
more closely resembled the Libyan civil war and revolution, which ultimately
resulted in Western NATO (and Qatari) military intervention. But unlike Libya, direct
Western military involvement in Syria
seems less likely, for a number of reasons. Syria has some support from Russia and China, both permanent veto-wielding
members of the United Nations Security Council. There is burnout from the wars
in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Central Africa… Barack Obama’s
endless military adventurism and interventionism. Adding to that list a protracted
and convoluted Syrian war will not help United States President Obama to get
the support of anti-militarist elements of his own Democratic Party or
isolationists from the swing vote in the upcoming US presidential elections in November.
The headache of clan warfare resulting from NATO bombing in Libya is nothing
compared to the predictable disaster that will result from the Balkanization of
multi-denominational, multi-faith, and multi-ethnic Syria, which consists of a majority
of Sunni Arabs, and a roughly 12% minority of Allawite Shi’a holding control
through the Assad family and his Ba’ath Party allies, as well as significantly
large minorities of (mostly Sunni) Kurds, Turkmens, and Cicassians, (mostly
Christian) Armenians and Assyrians, (Sevener Shi’a) Ismailis, and Druze. The
West itself is ambivalent about the nature of the Syrian “resistance”, and
aware of the potential dangers of a power vacuum resulting from the removal of Assad,
to whom in their eyes could apply the proverb, “Better the devil you know than
the devil you don’t”. Representative of this Western ambivalence are the words
of United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who claimed the US would
not arm the Syrian opposition because that would entail arming elements whose
loyalties are unclear, and since Al-Qaeda and HAMAS support the Syrian opposition. "Are we supporting
Al-Qaeda in Syria?” she asked rhetorically.[2] But a deeper analysis will
reveal that the answer is not a simple negative, but that in fact the US and
Britain have supported and have had an on-and-off relationship with Al-Qaeda
and its predecessor, the Wahhabi movement, from their beginnings through to the
present.
The Al-Qaeda network origins lay in the jihad which
brought foreign fighters to the struggle against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan,
but more specifically that network was
formalized, funded, and trained by the CIA (the word “al Qaeda” being
Arabic for “the base”, referring to the database of Western intelligence operatives
and assets in the area). The Western/Al-Qaeda alliance ostensibly received a
setback in the attacks of September 11th, 2001, but in reality
America has had close ties with al Qaeda from its inception through to the
present, and in fact the Wahhabi philosophy on which it is based has been supported
by the British Empire since the time of its founder, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahab.
Wahhabis were backed by the likes of Lawrence of Arabia as a means of weakening
the Ottoman Empire and the last vestiges of the (Sunni) Caliphate, later by
British and American oil corporations who created a new state, “Saudi Arabia”,
a neologism named after the family with whom they traded oil, and to the
present day by MI6 as a part of the “Great Game” being played out by the United
Kingdom’s spies in Central Asia and beyond. Asking the question “cui bono” with
regard to the World Trade Center attacks and other purported or actual Al-Qaeda
activities often yields the response: the powers that be, namely the
Anglo-American elite and their Zionist partners. False flag operations are part
and parcel of Mossad’s daily operations, whose motto is after all: “By Way of
Deception, Thou Shalt do War”. An example: the first and only “Al-Qaeda” cell
found in Palestine turned out to be composed of Israelis. This is consistent
with a pattern of Al-Qaeda activity beneficial to the Zionists. While Al-Qaeda
has always paid lip service to the liberation of al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the
Palestinian cause, in practice they have never struck Israeli targets. In
Palestine, the activities of Salafi militants seemed to consist mainly of
fighting with HAMAS, and kidnapping and killing Westerner supporters of the
Palestinian people. While occasionally on-the-ground opposition to American
imperialist wars, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq, has been carried out by
local elements who have acted either under the banner of Al-Qaeda or in a
manner loosely affiliated with it, the majority of the activities of “Al-Qaeda”
has been campaigns of bombings of mosques, markets, schools and other soft
targets via homicide or suicide bomber (though the latter is sometimes in fact
an unwilling or unknowing participant on whom an explosive device is planted),
killing and maiming innocent civilians, often Shi’a or non-Wahhabi Sunnis, with
a huge Muslim death toll resulting. This is consistent with a hadith of the
Prophet Muhammad (sawaws), as recorded in Sahih Bukhari 9:527 and 8:184, regarding a satanic sect which shall emerge from the
capital of modern-day Saudi Arabia, who “will kill the Muslims and leave the
idolators”.
With remarkable detail, the Wahhabi menace was foreseen
by the Prophet Muhammad (sawaws) 14 centuries ago. There are several hadith
from Ahlus Sunnah in which the Prophet warns that in the future out of the region
of the Najd, there will emerge shayatin (devils), who will have the outward
piety of Muslims, engaging in the riyaa’ of excessive ostentatious praying and
fasting, but who are in fact Munafiqun (hypocrites), who “will go out of the
religion [of Islam] as an arrow darts through the game’s body” (Sahih Bukhari,
Book 84, Hadith 67). The region of the Najd is the location of present-day
Riyadh, the birth-place of the Wahhabi movement, and its center up until today.
The present day Saudi government remains a puppet of the British and Americans,
with King Abdullah preferring to collude with the Israelis rather see the Iranians
support resistance against his and other regional dictatorships. His status as
lackey of the American imperialists allows his government to remain seemingly
impervious to criticism and the Islamic Awakening happening all around him. In fact
with the backing of the US, Saudi Arabia sent 2000 troops to Bahrain to kill
Shi’a and burn mosques (along with the copies of the Qur’an in them), and fire
on hospitals and elementary schools. This a repeat of its 2009-2010 war, with
the aid of US airstrikes, on the Shi’a of Northern Yemen, who are mostly ethnic
Houthis and members of the Fiver (Zaidi) school of Shi’ism, though some appear
to have become Ithna ‘Asheri. Within the Saudi kingdom itself, demonstrations
and calls for an Islamic Awakening in predominantly Shi’a centers like Qatif
have been murderously repressed, with American and British blessing. Wahhabism,
the official state sect of Saudi Arabia, underlies its neo-colonial foreign
policy, as well its domestic policy toward the Shi’a, whom Allah (swt) has not
coincidentally placed in the oil-rich Eastern Province of Ash-Sharqiyah.
Wahhabism is also the ideology of Al-Qaeda, which while it has on occasion criticized
the current Saudi regime, in particular for allowing the presence of American
military bases, has nonetheless had unofficial backing and funding from the
Saudi elite up to the level of its king. The Bin Laden family, for example,
have built much of Saudi Arabia, and have close personal and business ties with
the family of US Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
To be continued insha’Allah
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[1] King Abdullah II of Jordan in December 2004 referred to the
geographical swathe in the Middle East with a Shi’a majority, plurality, and/or
central government as a “Shi’a Crescent”, which he claimed was a threat to the
region due to the new balance of power between Sunni and Shi’a communities
brought about by the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and subsequent overthrow of
Saddam Hussein. My title is a play on that phrase, but whereas the “Shi’a
Crescent” proved to be a sectarian ploy for (increased) US backing of Sunni
Arab dictatorships, I maintain that the Salafi Crescent is a very real and
emerging threat to worldwide peace, one endangering the lives of all, Sunni and
Shi’a, Muslim and Non-Muslim. See Ehsan Ahrari, “The Real Challenge From the
‘Shia Crescent’”, 25 July 2006, viewed on 14 March 2012, http://www.antiwar.com/orig/ahrari.php?articleid=9398 .See also Vali Nasr
2006, The Shia Revival, New York:
W.W. Norton, and 2009, Fateful Crescent,
later renamed Forces of Fortune, New
York: Free Press, for a Council of Foreign Relations endorsed agenda of
secularizing the Middle East through the banal commodification of capital.
[2] Ali
Rizk, “Possible Disassociation from Syria”, viewed 14 March 2012 on Hezbollah
website, http://www.english.moqawama.org/essaydetails.php?eid=16767&cid=269
