In 2017, Human Rights Watch was complaining that the Saudi crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood had entangled a number of clerics including Sheikh Ayed al-Qarni.
“These apparently politically motivated arrests are another sign that Mohammad bin Salman has no real interest in improving his country’s record on free speech and the rule of law,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Saudis’ alleged efforts to tackle extremism are all for show if all the government does is jail people for their political views.”
Here were some of those views on display back when CAIR was advocating for Qarni.
The head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) vows to complain to U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials after they blocked a radical Saudi cleric from entering the country this week to attend a national Islamist conference in Chicago.
Sheikh Ayed al-Qarni was scheduled to speak twice during the Muslim American-Society (MAS)/Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) national convention Dec. 22-25. But a statement released during the convention expressed “the unpleasant and saddening news” that al-Qarni had been removed from his flight from Saudi Arabia despite having a visa from the U.S. embassy, and that he appears to be on the U.S. “no-fly list.” Al-Qarni is described as “one of our great speakers” and as someone known “for his logical discourse and balanced views, he promotes understanding and collaboration between all people, regardless of their faith, background, or language.”
During a 2005 sermon flagged by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), al-Qarni called the jihad against American forces in Fallujah “a source of pride … downing their planes, destroying equipment, slaughtering them, taking them hostage, and proclaiming ‘Allah Akhbar’ from the mosques, and the worshippers and the preacher cursing them in their prayers, and then come others begging for forgiveness, and requesting a dialogue and a ceasefire and negotiations. Who can say even one word against this true Jihad against these colonialist occupiers?” [Emphasis added]
He belittled Muslims who failed to take action, including “harming the Jews.” He invoked Israel’s targeted killings of Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, saying he prayed that Allah “will destroy the Jews and their helpers from among the Christians and the Communists, and that He will turn them into the Muslims’ spoils. I praise the Jihad, the sacrifice, and the resistance against the occupiers in Iraq. We curse them all of them every night and pray that Allah will annihilate them, tear them apart, and grant us victory over them…”
“Throats must be slit and skulls must be shattered,” al-Qarni said. “This is the path to victory, to shahada, and to sacrifice.”
A 2005 interview published in the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi March 2005 quoted Nasir Ahmad Nasir Abdallah al-Bahri, one of Osama bin Laden’s personal bodyguards, saying al-Qarni was among the Saudi clerics whose preaching influenced bin Laden’s followers.
“We were also influenced by the sermons delivered by some speakers in the mosques in Jedda about jihad in Afghanistan. The cassettes on jihad that influenced us most were those by Shaykh A’id [Ayed] al-Qarni, especially the first cassette, titled ‘Nights in Afghanistan,’ and the second cassette, ‘The Afghanistan I saw. Al-Qarni used to speak, enjoin, and call for jihad in an astonishing way.”
Now, he’s sorry.
Dubai: Aaidh Al Qarni has caused a lot of noise after he appeared on a talk show and apologized for his hardline interpretations of Islam and called for a more modernised Islam.
“I apologise in the name of the Sahwa to the Saudi society for the mistakes that were not related to Islam and for the extreme fatwas,” Al Qarni told Saudi TV show Al Laiwan airing on Rotana Khaleej on Monday evening.
Al Sahwa movement was a faction of Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia. They demanded a bigger role for clergy in governing and a more conservative society as a defense against Western cultural influences. They also opposed the presence of US troops on “Muslim land.”
Al Qarni said he now supported the moderate Islam advocated by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
“I apologize to Saudi society for the mistakes that have contradicted the Qur’an and Sunnah, and contradicted the tolerance of Islam, a moderate religion.”
Al Qarni apologised in the same interview about his ties with Qatar, accusing it of “conspiring” against Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis are cleaning up a mess that they helped create once it became a threat to them. And they’re showing how surprisingly easy it is to take Jihadist imams and turn them into lambs.