Saudi Arabia’s Islamic Affairs Department website contained a passage extolling jihad: “The Muslims are required to raise the banner of Jihad in order to make the Word of Allah supreme in this world...” (As published by The Middle East Media Research Institute) The Saudi government and some of its influential radical Islamic citizens and groups are pursuing the export of jihad in two ways. The first is through what has been referred to as “civilization jihad.” Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars in funding Sunni mosques, madrasas, and Sunni cultural centers all over the world, which spread the Saudis’ radical Islamic Wahhabi ideology. However, Saudi Arabia’s jihad also includes the support of terrorism. A cable released by WikiLeaks under then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s name stated: “Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”
The Muslim World League is an organization with ties to jihadist terrorist groups, including Hamas and al Qaeda. The Muslim World League was founded by members of the Saudi government. Abdullah Omar Naseef exemplifies the connection between the Saudi government and this terrorist-supporting organization. He served as Secretary-General of the Muslim World League from 1983 to 1993. He also served as Vice-President of the Kingdom’s Shura Council. In addition, he founded the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, which, according to former Assistant United States Attorney Andrew McCarthy, seeks to “grow an unassimilated, aggressive population of Islamic supremacists who will gradually but dramatically alter the character of the West,” and to “infiltrate Sharia principles in our law, our institutions, and our public policy.”
The Muslim World League escaped being placed on the list of terror groups sanctioned by the United States shortly after the 9/11 attack, reportedly due to concern by President George W. Bush’s administration about embarrassing the Saudi government. Nearly thirteen years later, the Saudi government is still getting a free pass. The American people have still been denied access to the portion of the 9/11 Commission report relating to any Saudi Arabian government ties to the 9/11 hijackers.
Into this morass steps Huma Abedin, the co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and a person likely to have significant influence in a Hillary Clinton White House. Huma Abedin has had murky associations in the past with the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, which not only is a radical Islamist group in its own right but, as Breitbart has reported, was “located in the offices of Saudi Arabia’s Muslim World League.”
Huma grew up in Saudi Arabia, where she was exposed to the Wahhabi ideology during her formative years. The Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, founded by Abdullah Omar Naseef, has been an Abedin family affair. Huma herself served as the assistant editor of the institute’s journal for a dozen years until she joined Hillary’s State Department. Abdullah Omar Naseef was on the board of advisers of the journal while Huma was its assistant editor.
Hillary Clinton owes the American people an explanation of the role that she would foresee for her close confidante, Huma Abedin, in a Hillary Clinton administration. And Huma Abedin owes the American people a full accounting of the associations which she and her family have had with any radical Saudi-backed Islamic groups, such as the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs and its co-located Muslim World League, or radical Islamic Saudi individuals such as Abdullah Omar Naseef.
It’s not as if Hillary is unaware of Saudi Arabia’s connection to terrorism. As mentioned earlier, a cable sent under Hillary’s name while she was Secretary of State warned that Saudi Arabian donors “constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” Following the Orlando shooting, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president said: “It is long past time for the Saudis, Qataris and Kuwaitis and others to stop their citizens from funding extremist organizations. And they should stop supporting radical schools and mosques around the world that have set too many young people on a path towards extremism.”
It’s also obvious that Saudi Arabia and ISIS share the same basic underlying Islamic supremacist and jihadist ideologies, despite the Saudi government’s protestations that it is committed to fight terrorism.
For example, ISIS beheads apostates. Saudi Arabia treats apostasy as a capital offense. They are both following literally the path of Prophet Muhammad’s sayings, collected in what is known as the Hadith: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.” (Bukhari 9.84.57)
ISIS kills and persecutes Christians. It destroys Christian holy sites. Saudi Arabia does not allow public worship of any religion other than Islam. It has even arrested Christians praying in a private home. Its religious leader, the Grand Mufti, has called for destruction of all Christian religious sites in the Arabian Peninsula. Smuggling Bibles into the country is a capital offense. Persecution of Christians, Jews and other “non-believers” by ISIS and Saudi Arabia is also based on core Islamic teaching, rooted in the Koran itself. Infidels are regarded as Muslims’ “inveterate enemies.” (Sura 4:101) Muslims are directed to “seize them and put them to death wherever you find them, kill them wherever you find them, seek out the enemies of Islam relentlessly.” (Sura 4:90)
ISIS beheads suspected homosexuals or throws them off rooftops to die. The Saudi judiciary is calling for capital punishment against homosexuals who display their sexuality in public or on social media. Again, ISIS and Saudi Arabia are both following traditional Islamic teachings. Prophet Muhammad is quoted as saying, “Whoever is found conducting himself in the manner of the people of Lot, kill the doer and the receiver.” (Hadith: al-Tirmidhi, Sunan 1:152)
Finally, Saudi Arabia, like ISIS, believes in exporting its Islamic ideology as widely as possible. ISIS has declared its goal to expand until its flag “covers all eastern and western extents of the Earth, filling the world with the truth and justice of Islam.” Saudi Arabia’s Islamic Affairs Department website contained a passage, quoted at the beginning of this article, which talks about raising “the banner of Jihad in order to make the Word of Allah supreme in this world...”
Huma Abedin was brought up in Saudi Arabia and was subject to the influence of the very kind of Saudi individuals and groups supporting terrorism that Hillary Clinton has warned about. If Hillary is as concerned as she says about Saudi-funded terrorism and its export of radical Islamist ideology, she must fully address the real concern of many Americans that she may bring an individual susceptible to such ideology into the inner circle of the White House.