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While public opinion has grown rather dismissive of the Islamic World on account Islam has been labelled a vengeful and irrationally reactionary faith, it would serve the majority to finally admit that if indeed Islam has been wielded as a weapon of war, it has been so, on account a certain elite has sat, controlled and one may even add, hijacked Islam’s holiest of sanctuaries: Mecca, and thus risen itself as owner of a faith shared by over a billion people.

If Islam today inspires fear and hatred it is most certainly because it was molded to the image of its self-proclaimed guardians: the powerful Al Saud clan, who, since the fall of the Ottoman Empire bestowed upon themselves the coveted title of Custodians of the Two Holy Mosques. Such title, however empty of legitimacy, has essentially asserted Al Saud’s authority as a religious compass.

Those who resisted such infringement onto their religious rights - in Islam there can be no compulsion, have learnt, through much blood and violence, that Al Saud’s interpretation of Islam is that in fact of sectarianism and feudalism.

Under the rule of the Bedouins, just as it has been so since the dawn of time, the only allegiance to be had is that dictated by the king … God and religion are but subservient tools to his ambitions.

A reactionary theocracy sold to Salafism - an extreme and devolute interpretation of Islam rooted around the concept of Takfir, an ideology which calls for the death of all apostates (in the case of Saudi Arabia anyone offering a whisper of rebuttal) the kingdom has justified its persecution of religious minorities on the basis of its own absolutism.

Under the rule of Saudi Arabia’s Salafi clergy, those standing in contradiction to Salafism rigid belief system, ought to be laid waste to in whichever way befitting the occasion: torture, flogging, beheading, crucifixion … sometimes both.

Clerics have had no qualms aligning their dogma to that of Terror - squarely landing Salafism and Wahhabism within the realm of the abominable and the terrible.

In 2016 footage translated by British think tank Integrity UK showed leading cleric, Sheikh Adel al-Kalbani speaking to the Dubai-based channel MBC about what he believes are the roots of Daesh/ISIS.

“We follow the same thought [as Daesh] but apply it in a refined way,” he said. “They draw their ideas from what is written in our own books, from our own principles.”

The cleric said that “we do not criticise the thought on which it (Daeah) is based.”

What left is there to say as far as the nature of Al Saud’s fronted ‘faith’ goes?

Evidently quite a lot since the kingdom has been rationalised as a flag bearer for the Islamic World - a worthy ally to western liberal democracies, and a friend to those who cherish secularism over the distasteful diktat of theocratism. I suppose the irony of such a paradox would be amusing if not dreadfully terrifying.

The kingdom as it were, is not just in the business of spreading dogmatism outside its borders so that more communities could be brought under its ruling house: Al Saud. The kingdom ambitions to redact the religious history of Islam by persecuting its many communities so that only one will endure: that endorsed by Al Saud.

In September 2016 the Al Baqee Organization told the Huffington Post: “Ninety-eight percent of Islamic heritage has been destroyed at the hands of Wahhabism. No longer will we tolerate this cultural genocide. No more will we permit the peaceful message of Islam to be hijacked, and our history annihilated at the hands of Wahhabi terrorists.”

Not all people are ready to keep mum before Al Saud’s terrorism. And while I grant you such people sit a minority before the tentacular monster that is the Saudi lobby, their voices will hopefully carry loud enough, and convincingly enough for reason to finally win over insanity.

“Saudi Arabia’s reign of sectarian-based terror over religious minorities during the Hajj must stop, and if not, at the very least acknowledge as a clear violation of international law” - such has been the motto of the Al Baqee Organization as, over a year ago, it decided to file an official complaint before the United Nations.

On March 16, the Al Baqee Organization registered a Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the United Nations, under the auspices of the Human Rights Council, to denounce Saudi Arabia’s violence, and demand that protection be granted to pilgrims - whichever their religious inclination might be.

“Religious freedom is a basic human right that should suffer no limitation. While Mecca happens to be under the territorial jurisdiction of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we believe that the holy nature of Mecca and the Hajj pilgrimage, should not be ceded to a clergy whose understanding of the Scriptures is rooted in violence, sectarianism, and fanaticism,” reads the press release.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a unique process which involves a review of the human rights records of all UN Member States. The UPR is a State-driven process, under the auspices of the Human Rights Council, which provides the opportunity for each State to declare what actions they have taken to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to fulfil their human rights obligations.

As one of the main features of the Council, the UPR is designed to ensure equal treatment for every country when their human rights situations are assessed. The ultimate aim of this mechanism is to improve the human rights situation in all countries and address human rights violations wherever they occur. Currently, no other universal mechanism of this kind exists.

Speaking on its efforts to call on the international community to address Saudi Arabia’s sectarian ‘culture’, the Al Baqee Organization notes: “This submission highlights the destruction of Islamic heritage and sacred sites by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the systematic abuse of Muslim pilgrims wishing to visit those sites.”

And:

“Al Baqee calls on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to reform its current domestic law and policy in order to comply with its international legal obligations to preserve religious and cultural heritage sites and to respect the rights of religious minorities who wish to visit and perform religious service at those sites.”

For decades pilgrims have been physically assaulted, verbally harassed - men, women, and children have been brutalized, tortured and intimidated on account their school of thoughts differ from that of the Saudi regime.

But activists are not stopping there, quite the opposite in fact. A global campaign against religious persecution will kick off on the back of the Al Baqee’s efforts to raise awareness to sectarian-based intolerance, and the need to protect all religious communities, on the basis that freedom of religion is an inherent and inalienable natural right

Let’s hope that this time such efforts will be granted the attention they deserve.