Bin Laden's Spiritual Mentor Condemns Ft. Hood Attacks

 

November 16, 2009: The Ft. Hood shootings were so gruesome and inhuman; even Osama Bin Laden's former spiritual mentor is condemning them — calling the massacre that killed 13 "irrational" and "empty of thought," according to a translation provided to Danger Room by the NEFA Foundation.

Salman Al-Awdah, a Saudi cleric who played an influential role in Bin Laden's early radicalism, made the statement during an appearance on his "Life is a Word" show on MBC, a Saudi-owned news and entertainment satellite TV channel, later posting his remarks on his website, Islam Today.

"Incidents [such as the Ft. Hood shootings]  have bad consequences, and undoubtedly this man might have a psychological problem; he may be a psychiatrist but he [also] might have had psychological distress, as he was being commissioned to go to Iraq or Afghanistan, and he was capable of refusing to work whatever the consequences were."

That's in contrast to the words of radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who quickly endorsed the shootings.

Danger Room spoke to NEFA Foundation senior analyst Evan Kohlman, who first flagged al-Awdah's statement.  He described Awdah's comments as "a good indication of how far on a tangent Anwar al-Awlaki is, that even former favorites of [O]sama Bin Laden openly reject his globalist view of jihad.  He's been characterized as a deviant, even according to the standards of others within the Salafi-jihadi world itself."

Al-Awdah, who Osama Bin Laden once cited as his "ideal personality," first became a favorite of the al-Qaeda leader in the early 1990s through his opposition to the stationing of U.S. forces on Saudi soil during and after the first Gulf War.  In lectures circulated on cassette tapes, Awdah became a prominent critic of the Saudi regime, joining an Islamist opposition, which grew out of Saudi Arabia's "Sahwa" or "awakening" movement.  In 1994, Saudi authorities arrested al-Awdah for his criticisms along with another prominent regime cleric, Safar al-Hawali.  Their detention became a grievance regularly cited by Bin Laden, including in his first declaration of war against the United States, the 1996 "Declaration of Jihad against the Americans Occupying the Two Holy Places."

Following his release in 1999, al-Awdah has moderated his radicalism somewhat.  He spoke out against the 9/11 attacks, Saudi al-Qaeda's 2003 bombing campaign, the Mumbai attacks and terrorism in general, but signed an open letter in 2004 along with several other Saudi scholars calling for jihad against American forces in Iraq.  In 2007, al-Awdah criticized Bin Laden directly, posting a much-publicized open letter to the al-Qaeda chief on his website, asking his former devotee "How much blood has been spilled? How many innocent children, women, and old people have been killed, maimed, and expelled from their homes in the name of 'al-Qaeda'?"

Kohlman said that the contrast between Awlaki's and Awdah's statements reveals a gap between al-Awdah's generation of Salafi jihadists, many of whom have mellowed in recent years, and the post-Iraq generation of jihadists.

"The naive younger guys have been raised and fed on bright-eyed propaganda about the 'Shaykh of the Slaughters' Zarqawi, beheadings, and suicide bombings.  On the other hand, many of the older celebrated advocates of jihad and the mujahideen are increasingly opposed to the fanatical takfiri direction of Al-Qaida — casting it as counterproductive and even criminal," said Kohlman, "And, of course, these critical issues of jihadi jurisprudence are now being debated and contested largely over the Internet."story914.htm