Serious trouble is brewing in the Arab world
following the decision of the descendants of
the founding father of Saudi Arabia’s
Wahhabi brand of Islam to distance
themselves from Qatar’s ruling family.
Descendants of the founding father of Saudi
Arabia’s Wahhabi brand of Islam have
sought to distance themselves from Qatar’s
ruling family, according to a statement
published on Sunday, in a further sign of a
rift among Gulf Arab states.
In the front-page statement, Saudi Arabia’s
Okaz newspaper said that 200 descendents
of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab demanded the
renaming of a Qatar mosque named after
the 18th-century cleric even though most
Qataris practice Wahhabism.
The demands come after Qatari state media
last week published purported remarks by
the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani,
criticizing Gulf rhetoric against Iran and U.S.
foreign policy.
Qatar denied making the comments, saying
its news agency had been hacked, but Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates allowed
their state-backed media to continue
running the story, angering Doha.
Although the statement in Okaz did not
mention Qatar by name, the statement
referred to “the emir of one of the Gulf
states” who had built a mosque named after
Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, claiming that the cleric
was his great grandfather. Qatar’s state
mosque, opened in 2011, is known as the
Sheikh Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab
mosque.
“We, therefore, demand that the name of
the mosque be changed for it does not carry
its true Salafi path,” the statement said,
according to the Arabic-language Okaz.
Other Saudi newspapers have carried similar
reports.
Qatar’s ruling al-Thani family traces its
history to Najd, the central and northern
part of Saudi Arabia where Ibn Abd al-
Wahhab was from, but it is not clear
whether there is a direct family link to him.
The rift has also prompted authorities in
Saudi Arabia and the UAE to block the main
website of Qatar-based al Jazeera television,
which Riyadh and Abu Dhabi see as critical
of their governments. The station says it is
an independent news service.
