Medina Saudi Arabia Quotes

Like the Khawarij, Wahhab declared all Muslims who disagreed with him to be unbelievers who could be lawfully killed as heretics and apostates. In 1744 Wahhab entered into an alliance with an Arab chieftain, Muhammad ibn Saud, and together they set out on jihad against those enemies, fighting against the Ottoman authorities, who Wahhab believed had lost all legitimacy by departing from the tenets of Islam. Not long after Wahhab’s death in 1792, the Wahhabis captured the Two Holy Places of Mecca and Medina and after that gradually expanded their domains until finally, in 1932, the Wahhabi sheikh ibn Saud captured Riyadh and established the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Wahabism is the dominant form of Islam found in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and is also popular in Egypt, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Wahabists control the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, giving Wahabists great influence in the Muslim world. More important are the extensive oil fields of Saudi Arabia which have been used to fund the promotion of Islam’s most radical sect across the world. Saudi oil funds have built most of the Muslim Mosques in the western world since 1975. More than 1,500 mosques across the globe were built from Saudi petro funds over the last 50 years.

Simultaneously a small commando force of Husayn’s Arabs, commanded by a British officer, blew up the Damascus-to-Medina railway north of Aqaba, interrupting the flow of Turkish reinforcements to the Hijaz. In the Hijaz itself an Arab force commanded by Husayn’s son Feisal, supported by three British warships, had captured the port of Wejd towards the northern end of the Red Sea.

In thirty years of going to study in Medina, “sitting with the ‘ulama,” “making hijrah,” distributing books from Saudi Arabia, making Dawah, pointing out bid’as, tearing down imams, taking over mosques, backbiting Muslims, putting people on and off “the minhaj,”  and calling other Muslims names, Salafis have established absolutely nothing.

it was Mohammed al-Saud who gave refuge to Abd al-Wahhab. In the summer of 1744, Mohammed Abd al-Wahhab took his message to Dir’iyyah, where he entered into a compact with Mohammed al-Saud, sealed with the same oath that the Prophet Mohammed and the men of Medina had sworn in order to cement their alliance some 1,400 years ago. The reformer promised the ruler that if he held fast to the doctrine of God’s unity his domain would expand, and the ruler declared his readiness to undertake jihad in defense of Islam.

Aggressive Wahhabi evangelism created the First Saudi State (1744–1818) when, as in Islam’s first three centuries, religion fueled military conquest. By the time he died in 1765, Mohammed al-Saud had, through war and diplomacy, gained control over most of the Nejd. In 1802, his grandson, Saud al-Saud, led the Wahhabi army into the Hejaz. He captured Mecca in 1803 and Medina in 1805. In

The Sunnis are terrified that the Shiites will take over the two holiest sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina, both of which are located in Saudi Arabia.

UBIQUITOUS SCOTS As the British Empire grew, Scots found themselves scattered to the corners of the Earth – an experience which often profoundly changed them. Few changed as much as Thomas Keith. Born in Edinburgh, he enlisted in the 78th (Highlanders) Regiment of Foot and was sent to Egypt as part of the Alexandria expedition of 1807. Captured near Rosetta, he was bought as a slave by Ahmad Aga, and he and his compatriot, William Thompson, decided to convert to Islam. Thomas became Ibrahim Aga and William, Osman. After fighting a duel with an Egyptian soldier, Thomas sought the protection of the wife of a powerful figure, Muhammad Ali Pasha, and she sent him into the service of her son, Tusun Pasha. In 1811 he joined an expedition to fight the Wahhabis of what is now Saudi Arabia, and four years later he was appointed Acting Governor of the holy city of Medina, the burial place of the Prophet Mohammed.

Al-Wahhab allied with Muhammed bin Saud, the founder of the state of Saudi Arabia, and provided religious and ideological backing to the newly formed state.  The Wahhabi Saudi troops took advantage of the chaos of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I to seize control over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. It’s probably safe to say that the Shia will never forgive the Wahhabis for the zealotry they pursued upon taking the cities, which included obliterating centuries-old sacred Shia shrines and claiming that they were used to worship the Imams as gods and were therefore heretical.  In the Cemetery of al-Baqi in Medina, they utterly destroyed the tombs of the Imams Hasan, Ali ibn Husayn, Muhammed ibn Ali, and Jafar, as well as the tomb of Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad.  In Mecca, they destroyed the Cemetery of Mualla, where the ancestors of Muhammad and his first wife Khadija were buried.  These prominent destructions were part of a pattern of violence that witnessed the Wahhabi Saudis smash buildings, tombs and mosques associated with the history of the Prophet and his family and which were venerated by Shia.  In addition, they alienated Shia from governance and oppressed them throughout the kingdom[26].  This vandalism has been repeated time and time again by Wahhabis in other areas as well, including the much-publicized destruction of the Buddha statues of the Bamiyan Valley of Afghanistan by the Taliban in 2001[27] and the outbreak of violence in 2013 around the city of Timbuktu, where Wahhabi fundamentalists  destroyed holy artifacts and burned a priceless library of manuscripts before fleeing the arrival of French troops[28]. While the establishment of the Wahhabi school of thought created an intellectual form of anti-Shia ideology, it is probable that this philosophy would have remained isolated in the political backwater of the Nejd Sultanate (the core of modern Saudi Arabia) if not for the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the final abolition of the Caliphate. The Ottomans had claimed to be Caliphs of the Muslim world since 1453, the same year that they conquered Constantinople (Istanbul) from the Byzantine Empire, and they ruled over a considerable portion of the world's Sunnis, as well as the shrine cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem.  After 1876, the Sultans had placed particular emphasis on their role as Caliphs in order to bolster their global position by asserting their Empire's "Muslim” character, and while this was never universally accepted by all Sunnis or Shias, Sunni Muslims everywhere at least could say that there was a government that claimed to represent the form of rule established by the Prophet and that provided legitimacy and continuity.

the Al Saud’s control of Mecca and Medina has given them both prestige and a special role in Islamic affairs. The Great Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina are collectively known as Al Haramain—literally, the two sanctuaries, but more often translated as “The Two Holy Mosques.

The history of Lebanon’s Shia community is said to stretch back to the early days of Islam, the oldest community outside Medina, where, after the prophet Muhammad died, some had chosen Ali, cousin of the prophet and husband of his daughter Fatima, as the rightful heir. They were known hence as the partisans of Ali, shi’at Ali.