A Sinner in Mecca

by Parvez Sharma

  “You are a brave man, sir,” he said and directed me to the TSA Pre-Check line, where you zoom through security and don’t have to take your shoes off. I still wish I had taken a selfie with him. His nametag said “Julio,” so I imagined he was Latino.

  With each issue of Dabiq, Daesh’s very own Vanity Fair, becoming sleeker, and every HD beheading or thrusting off a building uploaded on YouTube, Daesh are empowered almost daily to be the spokespersons for Islam, and I can understand why this leads to Islamophobia. The world’s richest and most influential (Wahhabi) Muslim ideology from Saudi sands has done the gravest harm to modern Islam. The West is seeing its macabre consequences, sponsored by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

  As the “Christian West” (misleadingly) cowered, the filmmaking and typesetting skills of the uber-savvy media arms of Daesh only got stronger. Dabiq spawned a new, shorter, sharper, and more “global” online rag called Rumiyah. TV pundits quoted from it: “Mow the infidel down like grass.” The Islam supremacist logic of Daesh remained. The videos, too, got sleeker—a particular one of two Turkish “soldiers” being burnt to death stuck with me. This was cinematic. There were clearly multiple cameras and cinematic concepts like cutaways and pull-focus used. The jittery, low-res shakiness of handheld phone shots was gone. The very latest in directorial skill and technology was being deployed.

  “Rumiyah” was no accident. It meant Rome. This new rag, notably published in many more languages, titled itself (Dabiq-style) on obscure logic. Daesh’s “media arm” Al-Hayat Media Center (named after the region’s biggest newspaper) had dug up some questionable Islamic prophecy from the fifteenth century. It said Rome—and, by extension, the West—would fall after the Muslims took Constantinople and presumably restored the glory of the long dead Ottoman Caliphate. The idea of Christendom (the Vatican-containing Rome) being Dar al-Harb (House of War) suits the Muslim supremacists of Daesh just fine. Christianity at war with Islam? Tried, tested, trusted, and thus dusted from historic obscurity into being front and center, on stages built by either Al-Hayat or the Trump White House.

  Al-Qaeda had always been obsessed with Bollywood-style spectacle. How many can you kill and how (3,000 had perished in a hundred minutes on 9/11, the visual component the planet lived horrifically on live TV). Trucks driving into crowds would never replicate that spectacle. But for a historic minute, it did seem Daesh just wanted massacre, never mind the optics. Massacres of Muslims right up to current times no doubt get less or no airtime in the West.

  The secretive monarchy though seems to get stronger: The Wahhabization of the planet is complete and Salman deceptively claims a great non-oil-related economic future. Just like Trump, they have no problem lying shamelessly. In June 2016, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey met with a high-level Saudi prince visiting New York. It was hardly a courtesy visit. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the forty-first richest man in the world according to Forbes magazine, owns much more of Twitter than Dorsey does. Talal is at 5.2 percent and Dorsey is a poor third at 3.2 percent. The latter was being obsequious out of necessity. Talal had been public about his desire to see the newly re-minted Dorsey replaced. And this cruel irony had brought one of America’s greatest innovators to his knees in front of a corrupt Saudi prince. He needed to keep his job.

  “The Sauds probably run the damn thing by now!” I texted Adham, who predictably had no idea of the Al Saud-Twitter connection. In the meantime, millions of ordinary Saudis, princes and princesses, the king, and crucially the ulema (religious scholars) fight for space in the Saudi Twitterverse. Following their traffic is critical.

  These are times of social-web sheikhs and Twitter fatwas. Saudi Wahhabi cleric Mohammed al Arefe claims to be the most influential Arab Islamist ever with more than 15 million followers on Twitter. Some of Arefe’s Twitter fatwas are bizarre, many dangerous. About the always red-hot topic of women driving, Arefe tweeted it was wrong because it would lead to more accidents. He must have missed the memo that statistically Saudis are amongst the world’s worst drivers. He said it was OK for husbands to “Quranically” beat their wives, but the “beatings should be light and not make her face ugly.” Many followers were not amused. “How,” I texted Adham after the beatings-fatwa tweet, “is this man allowed to even exist in this century? Why do people follow him?”

  “You have no idea how many people love him.” Adham said, adding that what his friends really needed was legal ikhtilat, not “this joker Arefe.” They are “at breaking point,” he said. The cruelly enforced Saudi misogyny makes modern Iran, where women drive and run in elections, feel like a paradise.

  Other powerful Twitter sheikhs include Nasser al-Omar (1.8 million followers) and Saud al-Shureem (1.25 million followers). Each one of them can be rabble rousers and some, like Arefe, are.

  Arefe once tweeted at the Emirati music diva Ahlam, asking her to become pious and use her fame to preach Islam since Ramadan was approaching. She politely refused. Gulf newspapers quoted Arefe at a conference, “The Shia are nonbelievers who must be killed.” Arefe survives because he says things the Al Saud want to but cannot.

  But profound perversion also lives within the religious establishment. TV preacher Fayhan al Ghamdi raped, tortured, and killed his five-year-old daughter Lama in 2012. He paid more than a million Saudi riyal to Lama’s already divorced Egyptian mother as blood money. The barbarian was released. The hashtag #AnaLama (#IAmLama) proliferated and died. The beheading-needing Ghamdi is alive.

  For me, the voice of Amr Khaled, the idolized Egyptian televangelist, held in high esteem by millions, with more than 7 million Twitter followers, had more promise. He was one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people and was the sheikh of rawshaha (hip and cool) who unimaginably made religion “fun.”

  Meanwhile in Saud-land, a newly moderate, sixty-year-old Sheikh called Salman al-Ouda is closing in on Arefe with 10 million followers. Ouda is also director of the popular, some say extremist, Islam Today website. He was once admired and quoted by Osama bin Laden and he returned the favor. In the nineties, the Sauds had imprisoned him for five years after he publicly attacked them for hosting infidels (American troops). Later, he did a 180, scolding Osama in a famously melodramatic “letter” broadcast by MBC (Saudi State TV):

  My brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocent people, children, elderly, and women have been killed . . . in the name of al-Qaeda? Will you be happy to meet God Almighty carrying the burden of these hundreds of thousands or millions of victims on your back?

  Notably, Ouda was still calling Osama a brother though this was the perfect moment for takfir.

  In 2016, Ouda allegedly spoke to a Swedish reporter. The story got picked up by CNN Arabic, Huffington Post, and more. It was the stuff of sensation. Ouda allegedly said, “Even though homosexuality is considered a sin in all the Semitic holy books, it does not require any punishment in this world.” Alluding to Daesh, he added, “By condemning homosexuals to death, they are committing a graver sin than homosexuality itself. Even though homosexuality does not distance oneself from Islam, Islam does not encourage individuals who have same-sex attraction to show their feelings in public.” He added, “homosexuality doesn’t mean a person is not a Muslim.”

  There followed a Twitter storm in the majority-homophobic Middle East. Ouda was cleverly killing his two birds, Wahhabis and Daesh (which is busy pushing homosexuals to their deaths) with one (homosexual) stone.

  “A former hero of Osama bin Laden saying homos are OK! Is this possible?” I texted Adham.

  “If this is true, Parvez, his words matter,” texted Adham.

  With Daesh ever close to Saudi borders, Ouda tweets with fanatical zeal against them and extremism. Ouda went on Rotana, a TV channel owned by Prince Talal. A YouTube video of that interview was uploaded on June 21, 2015, in which Ouda said armies and wars were not the solution. Daesh have a strong media presence and use rhetoric that appeals to the uneducated, he said. For the poor masses, said Ouda, Daesh represent victory an
d power.

  My thesis was getting stronger. The Twitter sheikhs proved that Muhammad created not just a spiritual Islam. In many ways (especially with the Medina constitution), Muhammad was also creating a political Islam. The marriage of the two would evolve differently wherever Islam went. Iran loved it. Al Saud fear it.

  Adham sent hilarious videos of the Saudi comic-sheikh Amr Khaled in Ahmad al-Shugairi. He is the self-described “Elvis” of televangelists. He has almost 6 million followers and tweets about his bland TV show Khawater (“Thoughts”). In a 2009 piece about him, the New York Times said, “(He) effortlessly mixes deep religious commitment with hip, playful humor.”

  “Like you call the Kardashians your Xanax . . .” Adham texted.

  “And . . . ?”

  “That’s how I use Khawater!”

  Shugairi claims he is interested in spreading the ideas of da’wa and jihad al-nafs (“struggle with the self”). The Islam of Khawater is sugar-coated. Lying as comfortably as Trump, Shugairi says he is the “only” nonsectarian Muslim.

  These Twitter sheikhs are influential state actors. For cultural cues, Muslims, especially Arabs, have always looked toward India’s Bollywood and the music, cinema, and culture of Egypt. For religious cues, they sadly emulate their Wahhabi clerics. The Saudi Project of the export of its Wahhabism is clearly bigger than its oil exports.

  In comparison, Egypt, with its relatively low Twitter population, produces modern Islamic leaders like Islam Behery, whom Egypt’s newest dictator, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, sentenced to one year in prison in 2015 for “contempt of religion.” Behery’s TV show was cancelled but not his voice. He was released in six months and said, sarcastically, “Many thanks to President Sisi and his religious revolution . . . I am thankful for freedom of expression in Egypt.” He remains an open critic of many hadith quoted in Sahih Bukhari among much else that needs to change in Islam. A Behery in Saudi would be sentenced to death, probably by the preferred public beheading.

  By 2013 I had started taking Daesh very seriously. It made sense that my time in Saudi Arabia had a sense of premonition, of the coming plague. Muslims like me tuned in to all the chatter on the Arab, Persian, and Urdu social webs. I perused the sleek issue of Dabiq magazine. Its cover showed Shia mourners at Karbala. The title said, “The Rafidah: From Ibn Saba’ to the Dajjal.” That title made perfect sense with the accompanying picture. Karbala in Iraq is the second-holiest city for Shia, the scene of the momentous Battle of Karbala. It claimed the life of Shia Islam’s most revered imam, Husayn. It’s always been a Sunni target. The pejorative Rafidah (for Shia) are enemies for Daesh and Wahhabi alike. Ibn Saba is the name of a seventh-century Yemeni Jewish convert to Islam, and Dajjal is the Antichrist.

  There is historic logic to Dabiq, the Daesh magazine title. Dabiq is a humble little town in the north of Syria. Most maps don’t include it and Daesh is close to losing it, and thus the need for a Rumiyah to eventually replace Dabiq. Some Wahhabi eschatology believes that this will be the location of the final “end of days” battle between “forces of Islam” and the “forces of ‘Rome.’” Daesh claims Quranic validity to this obscure if real mention and Rome for them represents the “armies of Christianity and America.” Page one warns the rag will “also contain photo reports, current events, and informative articles on matters relating to the Islamic State.”

  These barbarians are masters at using the social web, and also graphic design, cinematography, typesetting, video editing, and photography. Final Cut Pro, Vimeo, WeTransfer, and Google Docs are probably used, too. Dabiq editors and content producers could be sitting anywhere in the world, even America, using free IP address–changing apps like TunnelBear.

  With perilous economic indicators, the endless flow of fully state-funded Saudi students to American schools has ebbed. In addition, their monarchy has not changed its habits. In 2015, the usual Saud gravestone annihilators did a hypocritical about-face and remodeled the grave of ibn Wahhab in Diriyah, a suburb of Riyadh, now a tiny Muslim Disneyland with three museums, of which one was solely dedicated to Wahhab. These paragons of no-shirk virtue were hoping no one would notice. Adham sent me pictures. To me it looked like a theme park of terrorism.

  At this point, 90 percent or more of Islamic history has been bulldozed. Because it was yet another construction site in dug-up, crane-filled Mecca, I didn’t realize I had witnessed the aftermath of the destruction of the home of an important Sahaba (companion) of the Prophet called Abu Bakr, reduced to rubble for a new Hilton hotel—allegedly the world’s largest hotel. More destruction. The bill will be $3.5 billion. Anything that is antediluvian is destructible in Wahhabi-sanctioned bin Laden hands.

  This Hilton was going to be called the Abraj Kudai, not far from the Abraj al-Bayt with its Starbucks where I once prayed and hung out. Paris Hilton had joined the nouveau riche melee, opening a store in Mecca Mall, which she had tweeted a picture of, saying, “Loving my beautiful new store that just opened at Mecca Mall in Saudi Arabia!”

  Cranes busily sifting centuries of sand, oblivious to what might lie beneath, had filled the site even when I was there. Rumors had it that the Saudis were commissioning 10,000 rooms, a helipad, many malls, and more than fifty restaurants. It would include twelve towers, “royal suites,” a “convention center,” and “prayer rooms.” The bin Ladens of 2016 had gained even more power. They still held the contracts for the continuing $21 billion expansion of the Masjid al-Haram, the “Haramain” high-speed rail-rink, which was open in Saudi-style apartheid only to Arab citizens of the Gulf Cooperation Council in 2011, and the contract for the “world’s tallest building,” the other Kingdom Tower in Jeddah.

  The vulgar excess of the Al Saud has always been transformed into reality by the bin Ladens.

  Adham explained a new malaise, “Waithood,” often also a hashtag. Getting wives was impossible. Parents demanded larger mehr (dowry) for their educated daughters. More women than men have been abroad to get their hard-fought degrees. Costs of weddings and new homes are astronomical.

  “I just wish you could have gotten out of Mecca and Medina,” Adham said, adding, “You would find so much more material here in Jeddah. I could have introduced you to all the angry, young, and broke Saudis you want—tayyib as many! And they love to talk and tweet all the fucking time. There’s even a couple of cool graffiti guys. We have our own Banksy of Jeddah! Have you seen the ‘No Woman, No Drive’ video?”

  “What was I to do?” I replied. “They took our passports away.”

  “Can we have two tickets for Jihad please?”

  Two older men were at the ticket booth of the IFC Cinema in New York’s West Village. My film A Jihad for Love played to usually packed houses for five weeks at this movie theater in the summer of 2008. In the late afternoons, I would often hang out around the box office to see how many people were there for the film. I was overjoyed when audience members said just “Jihad” while buying tickets. By putting jihad and love together, had we made a dent in Islamophobia? Even a little bit mattered.

  I was taking away the horror of jihad’s other Islamic definition when I answered journalists everywhere, “In the Quran, jihad is understood as a struggle with the self in a path towards God.” My film company was called Halal Films, because in my deepest self, I believe Muhammad would approve of what I had done. And halal literally meant permissible, the opposite of haram (if it was being used and pronounced as “forbidden”). Years later I would call the film company for A Sinner in Mecca Haram Films, using the word with its other (more important) meaning, “noble sanctuary.”

  At the end of Jihad, Zahir, the gay imam, conducted a PowerPoint workshop for about fifteen “straight,” “devout,” Muslim social workers in Cape Town. Debating Quranic semantics, they were mere drops in Islam’s vast oceans of “homophobia.” His solution to what I call the “problem of homosexuality” was ijtihad, and he got the last word in A Jihad for Love. I have now come to disagree with his logic.

  Knowing what I know
now, I would also not dismiss jihad so easily, and I would not say “in the Quran” but “in Islamic exegesis.” I started to study my religion with adult vigor only in the mid-nineties. I began with what would become a heavily dog-eared copy of Yusuf Ali’s translation of the Quran, full of marginalia in my bad cursive. It traveled with me to KSA. Most Muslims I knew then would say jihad was a Quranic calling to strive as a better Muslim. But the other jihad, only to be used in self-defense, does exist both in and out of context. As Muslims, it is our responsibility to acknowledge both kinds. Quranically, violent jihad is often the last option. But the Quran sometimes seems to sit on the precarious wall between an offensive vs. defensive jihad.

  If a Daesh terrorist sat across from me, I would use the verse below. The problem is that he could find one for his argument, too. Al-Hajj (“The Hajj”) 22:78 partly says:

  And strive in His cause as ye ought to strive (with sincerity and under discipline). He has chosen you, and has imposed no difficulties on you in religion; it is the cult of your father Ibrahim. It is He Who has named you Muslims, both before and in this (Revelation).

  The Arabic word jihad as “strive in His cause” subsumes striving in the way of God entirely in this chapter above. I know it is dangerous to parse the Quran. But if Daesh and backward imams worldwide are doing it, so can we.

  In Ayah 39 of the same chapter, God gave the Sahaba, then refugees to Yathrib (Medina), permission to fight back. This, again, for some scholars is a nod toward the pacifism they claim is inherent in the Quran. War is sanctioned only in self-defense, they say, quoting 22:39: “To those against whom war is made, permission is given (to fight), because they are wronged and verily, Allah is most powerful for their aid.”