Creating Frankenstein: The Impact of Saudi Export of Ultra-Conservatism in South Asia (Part 3)

Yet, he Muslim Council of Britain, widely viewed as the UK’s foremost Muslim umbrella group, in line with Deobandi, Wahhabi and Salafi thinking, declared in April 2016 a position against Ahmadis who are also on the defensive in various countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Britain.[1] 

In a statement that paid only lip service to “to pluralism and peaceful coexistence and…the rights of all to believe as they choose without coercion, fear and intimidation,” the Council,  in response to requests by unidentified parties for it to take a stand on the persecuted group, stated that “Muslims should not be forced to class Ahmadis as Muslims if they do not wish to do so, at the same time, we call on Muslims to be sensitive, and above all, respect all people irrespective of belief or background.”[2] The BBC documentary further linked Scotland’s largest mosque, the Glasgow Central Mosque, 23 years later to Sipah-e-Sahaba that has been banned in Britain because of its deadly attacks against Shiites and other minorities in Pakistan.[3]

Responding to the MCB statement in The Independent, Waqar Ahmedi, a British Ahmadi, warned that “when Muslims start playing God in this way, religious prejudice, bigotry and hate will inevitably rise – including here in Britain…. They appear content to regard extremists like the murderer of Asad Shah and hate preachers as among their co-religionists, but not those who live by the motto ‘love for all, hatred for none.’ Whatever the theological differences, no individual or institution has any authority to dictate what anyone else can and cannot call themselves. My faith is a matter between me and my Maker. Freedom of belief and the right to self-determination are among the cornerstones of any progressive society. The Prophet Muhammad certainly stood up for those rights  - one hopes bodies like the Muslim Council of Britain does too,” Ahmedi wrote. Asad Shah was a popular news vendor in Glasgow who was murdered a month before the MCB statement because of his faith.[4]

The MCB statement seemed to belie the longstanding rejection of the notion by Britain’s Islamic scholars that Muslim radicalism emanated from the country’s South Asian mosques. The MCB scholars identify Arab Islamists like Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, better known as Abu Hamza al-Masri, a fiery Egyptian cleric, (who preached at London’s Finsbury Park Mosque in London before being extradited to the United States where he was sentenced to life in prison on terrorism charges, and Omar Bakri Muhammad, a Syrian-born Salafist, as the guilty parties. “These Wahhabi preachers, who operated on the fringes of Muslim communities, certainly played an important role in radicalising elements of Britain’s Muslim youth. But it was Azhar, a Pakistani [Deobandi] cleric, who was the first to spread the seeds of modern jihadist militancy in Britain – and it was through South Asian mosques belonging to the Deobandi movement that he did it,” Bowen said.[5]

In his lectures during his visit to Britain, Azhar argued that much of the Quran was dedicated to “killing for the sake of Allah”, while a substantial number of the Prophet Mohammed’s sayings dealt with jihad.  At the inauguration of a mosque in Plaistow, Azhar dwelled on “the divine promise of victory to those engaged in jihad.” In another public presentation, Azhar argued that “the youth should prepare for jihad without any delay. They should get jihadist training from wherever they can.” His slogan was “from jihad to Jannat (paradise).”[6]

Birmingham-born Mohammed Bilal, a student in the West Midlands, who left Britain in 1994 to join Azhar’s newly founded Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed), was one of the first Azhar recruited on his UK tour. He died in 2000 as a suicide bomber when he attacked an Indian Army barracks in Srinagar, killing nine people.[7] Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a student from London, was another. Sheikh gained notoriety as one of the hijackers of an Indian Airlines flight, who demanded Azhar’s release from prison as well of one of the 2002 kidnappers who snatched Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and beheaded him.[8] Rashid Raul, an in-law of Azhar’s, who like Bilal hailed from Birmingham, is widely believed to have been one of the masterminds of the 7/7 attacks in 2005 on London’s public transport system, as well as a failed attempt to again assault the system two weeks later on July 21 and efforts to smuggle liquid bomb-making substances aboard trans-Atlantic flights.[9] Waheed Ali, a young Bangladeshi friend of the 7/7 bomber Shehzad Tanweer, reported that he listened to tapes of Azhar’s speeches.[10]

Jaish-e-Mohammed maintains a semi-legal, public presence in Pakistan itself, despite government assertions that it is cracking down on jihadist groups. A Wall Street Journal reporter on a recent visit to Lahore, a city of 600,000 that is home to the headquarters of the Pakistan Army’s XXXI Corps, visited the group’s four-storey, downtown compound that also houses an affiliated seminary.  

Although the group has had several of its seminaries closed down, it is building an even bigger facility on four hectares of land on the edge of Lahore with a new madrassa, crowned with white domes, looming over the surrounding farmland. “We don’t hide who we are. We are a jihadist group,” a cleric affiliated with Jaish-e-Mohammed told the visiting reporter.[11] A sign outside another Jaish complex in the Usman-o-Ali madrassa in the central Pakistani city of Bahawalpur says its seminary is “under the guidance” of Azhar.[12]

Jaish-e-Mohammed’s overt operations despite being proscribed reflect the degree to which the Pakistani military`the intelligence and interior ministry have embraced Saudi-backed sectarianism and ultra-conservatism. “There is a sense of weary resignation hung around the shoulders of reports that the government is struggling, and largely failing, to keep on top of the problem of banned organisations that continue to resurface, remake and relaunch themselves under a new set of acronyms. Many of these groups are decades-old, at least in their original iteration, and almost equally many are either openly sectarian in nature or simply dedicated to the downfall of the democratic state. It is the interior ministry that is ultimately responsible for this sorry state of affairs, and the buck ought to stop at the desk of the interior minister himself — an outcome as likely as rivers ever flowing uphill…. Let us not deceive ourselves — there is no shortage of people in the populace that do support such groups, be it with money or logistical support, and allow them a broad footprint nationwide... Millions are inclined to give succour to these snakes that we keep at the bottom of the garden and which all too often turn and bite us,” commented The Express Tribune.[13]

Pakistani indulgence of Saudi-backed militant groups impacts Muslim communities far beyond the South Asian nation’s border. In the UK, prominent UK-based Deobandi scholar Khalid Mehmood has frequently been associated with Aalmi Majlis Tahaffuz Khatm-e-Nubuwwat (AMTKN), a militant Pakistan-based group that is also legally registered with the UK Charity Commission. AMTKN, with a history of Saudi backing in its various guises since it first was established in 1953, campaigns against Ahmadis, an Islamic sect widely viewed by conservative Muslims as heretics that is on the defensive in various countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Britain alongside Pakistan. 

As far back as the then, Saudi Arabia intervened to prevent the execution of AMTKN scholars, including Abul Ala Maududi, one of the 20^th centuries for most Muslim thinkers, who were sentenced to death for sparking anti-Ahmadi riots in Lahore that led to the imposition of martial law in the city. The clerics were released a year later on a legal technicality

Back in the UK, prominent UK-based Deobandi scholar Khalid Mehmood has frequently been associated with Aalmi Majlis Tahaffuz Khatm-e-Nubuwwat (AMTKN), a militant Pakistan-based group that is also legally registered with the UK Charity Commission. AMTKN campaigns against Ahmadis. The AMTKN website describes Ahmadis as wajib-al-qati or deserving to die.[14]  

However, the group defines itself on its website as “an international, religious, preaching and reform organisation of Islamic Millat, (a global Islamic nationality irrespective of geographical boundaries. It says that its sole aim has been and is to unite all the Muslims of the world to safeguard the sanctity of Prophethood and the finality of Prophethood and to refute the repudiators of the belief in the finality of Prophet hood of the Holy Prophet Hazrat Muhammad.”[15] It has 50 and operates 12 madrassas, mostly in Pakistan, but says it has operations abroad, listing only Mali by name on its website.

The AMTKN group, whose name translates as the Global Congress for the Preservation of the Finality of Prophethood, traces its root to Saudi Arabia’s decision in the late 1970s to deny Ahmadis visas for the pilgrimage to Mecca and call for their excommunication. The kingdom, leveraging its financial support for Pakistan, including funding of its clandestine nuclear weapons program, got Bhutto to introduce constitutional provisions that obliged the country’s presidents and prime ministers to swear an oath that they believed in the finality of Mohammed’s prophecy and denied the possibility of any prophet after him – provisions designed to move Ahmadis beyond the pale.

Saudi King Faisal advised Bhutto on the sideline of the 1974 Islamic Summit Conference in Islamabad that Saudi aid would be contingent on Pakistan declaring Ahmadis non-Muslims.[16]  The Muslim World League called two months later on all Muslim governments to excommunicate Ahmadis and bar them from holding sensitive government positions. The Saudis effectively forced Bhutto to reverse his awarding of senior posts to Ahmadis after they supported him in a narrowly won election in 1970. Bhutto’s Minister of State for Defence and Foreign Affairs was an Ahmadi, as were the official overseeing Pakistan’s nuclear program and the commanders of the navy and the air force.  Ahmadis were also among the Army’s corps commanders. The Saudi campaign was crowned when Pakistan’s national assembly amended the constitution in 1974 to designate Ahmadis as a minority. Saudi rejection over the years has been supported by the Deobandis.[17] .[18] Ahmadis have since been banned from calling their houses of worship mosques and greeting one another with the customary words, As-salamu alaikum, Peace be upon you. Pakistani passport applications require Muslims to distance to forswear the founder of the Ahmadi community.

The immediate impact in Pakistan of the campaign was the killing of Ahmadis, burning of their properties and the desecration of their mosques and cemeteries. Little has since changed. In 2011, a AMTKN leaflet in Urdu calling for the murder of Ahmadis that circulated in Pakistan identified a south London mosque, the Stockwell Mosque, as its overseas contact point.[19]  The mosque at the time denied any association with either the leaflet or AMTKN, even though it is listed as an AMTKN office with the Charity Commission.  Four of the mosque’s managers serve as AMTKN trustees. Piles of leaflets in English demanding death for Ahmadis were found by a BBC researcher in the mosque in April 2016.[20]

Three months later, the group again listed the London mosque as its international address alongside the contact details of its offices in Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Quetta, and Multan in newspaper advertisements across Pakistan calling during Ramadan for donations to restrict Ahmadi activity; “save Muslims from them;” file lawsuits against them; establish mosques and seminaries in Chenab Nagar, home to the Ahmadi’s main organization, Jamaat-e-Ahmadia; and print anti-Ahmadi literature.[21] The ad appeared three weeks after unidentified gunman killed an Ahmadi outside his home in Karachi.[22]

The ad appeared on the back of years of deadly attacks on the Ahmadis and repeated manifestations of tacit government approval. Two gunmen sprayed an Ahmadi mosque in Lahore in 2010 with bullets. At the same time, two others lobbed grenades and exploded suicide vests in another mosques 15 kilometres away. 95 people were killed and 120 others injured. Days later, gunmen attacked the hospital were the wounded were being treated. “This is a final warning to the (Ahmadi community) to leave Pakistan or prepare for death at the hands of the Prophet Muhammad’s devotees,” the group said in a statement.[23]

At the time, Punjab's law minister, Rana Sanaullah, a member of Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League, campaigned openly alongside leaders of Sipah-e-Sahaba in an election during a special election in Jhang. Members of Sipah, flouting restrictions placed on the outlawed group, paraded through the town wielding weapons and chanting bloodcurdling anti-Ahmadi and anti-Shi'ite slogans. Rather than halting the march, police escorted it.[24]

Four years later, on the eve Eid-al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan, a frenzied mob in the city of Gujranwala set Ahmadi homes and businesses ablaze in retaliation for an allegedly blasphemous Facebook post by a young Ahmadi man. While the mob danced and police stood idly by, a fifty-five year-old Ahmadi woman and her two young granddaughters suffocated to death as a result of the smoke. The girls’ pregnant aunt miscarried during the ensuing chaos.[25]

Taxi driver Tanveer Ahmed took AMTKN’s advice literally when he killed Asad Shah, an Ahmadi shopkeeper in Glasgow, in March 2016. An AMTKN-linked Facebook page congratulated all Muslims on Shah’s death.[26] Ultra-conservative and Deobandi prejudice against Ahmadis is weaving itself into the fibre of British society, with Sunnis in Muslim neighbourhoods refusing to greet the minority with the traditional welcome, salaam aleikum ‘peace be upon you, share a meal with them or do business with them.[27] Ahmadi butchers who sell halal meat in Britain have seen their business substantially reduced after imams called on their flock to boycott Ahmadi shops.[28]  Death threats have persuaded the Beitul Futuh Mosque in London and Ahamdi mosques elsewhere in Britain, frequented by the country’s 30,000 followers of the sect, to introduce airport-style security checks at mosques.[29]

Security measures at Ahmadi mosques and mainstream Muslim rejection of the Ahmadis, along with the anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe, contrast starkly with the role the Ahmadis played on the continent a century ago in forging bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe. Founded in 1923 as part of the first wave of Muslim emigration to Europe, the Ahmadi mosque was centre of intellectual discussion on issues as divergent as balancing modern daily life with the requirements of Islamic doctrine and the future of Germany and Europe in the wake of World War One. German non-Muslims, disappointed by Christian civilization, sought answers in those discussions and many ultimately converted to Islam.[30] One of the mosque’s directors, Hugo Marcus, was a gay Jewish philosopher who converted to Islam.[31] Built by a Jewish scholar, Gottlieb Leitner, the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, a town 45 kilometres south of London, played a similar role at the time.[32]

A Poor Return on Investment

Violence in Pakistan in which an estimated 60,000 people have been killed in the last decades, as well as the thousands of deaths in numerous other parts of the world, is likely not what Saudi Arabia hoped to achieve through its campaign to further ultra-conservatism.

A more conservative, intolerant society in which Saudi Arabia held the foremost status as the leader of the Muslim world was. Pakistan is paying the price in terms of lives, Saudi Arabia in terms of reputational damage. The events of March 2016 are the latest to raise questions about the effectiveness of Saudi Arabia’s more than US $100 billion, four-decade long campaign in building the kingdom’s soft power.  So do Saudi efforts to harness the kingdom’s diplomatic and military relationships in support of its more assertive foreign and military policies Saudi Arabia came up short in its effort to rally support in early 2016 for its conflict in Iran, following Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al Nimr, the storming of the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the breaking off of Saudi diplomatic relations with Iran. Only a handful of countries – Bahrain, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, and the Maldives – followed Riyadh’s example and ruptured their ties with Iran, as a result of Saudi check book diplomacy. Major players like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia despite close diplomatic, intelligence and non-governmental ties to the kingdom, rejected the Saudi request, choosing instead to walk a tightrope between Riyadh and Tehran.

The stakes for Pakistan were higher than other Muslim nations not only because of its shared border with Iran, but because of the changing geopolitical dynamics that have come with lifting of Iran’s sanctions. It revived the construction of an Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline as well as Iranian, Afghan and Indian interest in development of the Iranian port of Chabahar. Besides competing with the Chinese-funded Pakistani port of Gwadar, Chabahar would allow Afghanistan to break Pakistan’s regional maritime monopoly and offer India access to energy-rich Central Asia.

Saudi Arabia’s seemingly poor soft power return on investment is not simply that Muslim states largely want to keep their lines open to two of the Middle East’s foremost power. It also is the result of domestic repercussions that governments across the Muslim world fear. Saudi Arabia was taken aback when Pakistan despite massive Saudi financial support for its economy, madrassas, and nuclear program and the kingdom’s assistance in getting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif out of prison following General Pervez Musharraf’s 1999 coup and hosting him for his seven years in exile; rejected a Saudi request that it support military intervention in Yemen.

Saudia Arabia’s seemingly poor soft power return on investment is not simply that Muslim states largely want to keep their lines open to two of the Middle East’s foremost powers, but also the result of domestic repercussions that governments across the Muslim world fear. Saudi Arabia was taken aback when Pakistan rejected a Saudi request to support its military intervention in Yemen, despite massive Saudi financial support for Pakistan’s economy, madrassas, and nuclear program, as well as,  the kingdom’s assistance in getting Nawaz Sharif out of prison following General Musharraf’s 1999 coup and hosting him for his seven years in exile, using Lebanese politician Saad Hariri as an intermediary, Saudi Arabia warned Musharraf that continued good relations depended on the release of Sharif and his family.[33]

Saudi Arabia had assumed that it had sufficient Pakistani chits to cash in. The kingdom is home to over two million Pakistani expatriates,^[34] and is Pakistan’s single largest source of remittances.^[35] Saudi Arabia has come to Pakistan’s aid in times of difficulty, for example, by providing oil on deferred payment when Islamabad was hit by U.S. sanctions after conducting nuclear tests in 1998. In addition, some 1,200 Pakistani troops are stationed in the kingdom.^[36] Pakistani military foundations recruited retired military personnel to serve as mercenaries in Bahrain during the Saudi-backed crushing of a popular revolt in Bahrain in 2011.^[37]

Yet, with Shiites constituting up to 20 percent of the population in Pakistan and escalating sectarian tensions in recent years, as well as plans for closer economic and energy cooperation with Iran, Pakistan has little choice but to walk a tightrope. Just how tight the tightrope is, was evident in guidelines for coverage of the Saudi-Iranian dispute issued by Pakistan’s electronic media regulatory authority. “Media houses should ideally refrain from airing programs that can result in irreparable damage," the guidelines said.^[38]

Lack of Oversight

Wahhabism’s proselytising character served the Al Saud’s purpose as they first sought to stymie Arab nationalism’s appeal in the 1950s and 1960s, and later that of Iran’s Islamic revolution. These were tectonic developments that promised to redraw the political map of the Middle East and North Africa in ways that potentially threatened Saudi Arabia’s rulers. Both developments were revolutionary and involved the toppling of Western-backed monarchs. Arab nationalism was secular and socialist in nature. The Islamic revolution in Iran was the first toppling of a US icon in the region and a moreover involved a monarch. The Islamic republic represented a form of revolutionary Islam that recognised a degree of popular sovereignty. Each in their own way, posed a threat to the Al Sauds who cloaked their legitimacy in a religious puritanism that demanded on theological grounds absolute obedience to the ruler.

Ultimately, the Saudi campaign benefited from Arab socialism's failure to deliver jobs, public goods and services, as well as the death knell to notions of Arab unity delivered by Israel's overwhelming victory in the Middle East in the 1967 in which the Jewish state conquered East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. Moreover, Egyptian leader 

Gamal Abdel Nasser’s early rupture with the non-Salafist Muslim Brotherhood, led many Brothers to join the stream of migrant workers that headed for the Gulf. They brought their activism with them and took up positions in education that few Saudis were able to fill. They also helped create and staff organisations like the Muslim World League, initially founded to counter Nasser’s Pan-Arab appeal.[39]  The campaign further exploited opportunities created by Nasser’s successor, Anwar al-Sadat, who defined himself as “the believing president.”[40] Sadat in contrast to Nasser allowed Muslim groups like the Brotherhood and Salafis to re-emerge and create social organisations, build mosques and found universities.[41]

The rise of the Brotherhood in the kingdom sparked a fusion of the group’s political thinking with segments of the Wahhabi and Salafi community, but also accentuated stark differences between the two. Saudi establishment clergy as well as militants took the Brotherhood to task for its willingness to accept the state and operate within the framework of its constrictions. They also accused it of creating fitna or division among Muslims by endorsing the formation of political groups and parties and demanding loyalty to the group rather than to God, Muslims and Islam.[42]

The Saudi campaign was bolstered by the creation of various institutions including not only the Muslim World League and its multiple subsidiaries, but also Al Haramain, another charity, and the likes of the Islamic University of Medina. In virtually all of these instances, the Saudis were the funders. The executors were others often with agendas of their own such as the Brotherhood or in the case of Al Haramain, more militant Islamists, if not jihadists. Saudi oversight was non-existent and the laissez-faire attitude started at the top.

The lack of oversight was evident in the National Commercial Bank (NCB) when it was Saudi Arabia’s largest financial institution. NCB had a department of numbered accounts. These were all accounts belonging to members of the ruling family. Only three people had access to those accounts, one of them was the majority owner of the bank, Khaled Bin Mahfouz.[43] Bin Mahfouz would get a phone call from a senior member of the family who would instruct him to transfer money to a specific country, leaving it up to Bin Mahfouz where precisely that money would go.

In one instance, Bin Mahfouz was instructed by Prince Sultan, the then Defence Minister, to wire US $5 million to Bosnia Herzegovina. Sultan did not indicate the beneficiary. Bin Mahfouz sent the money to a charity in Bosnia, that in the wake of 9/11 was raided by US law enforcement and Bosnian security agents.[44]  The hard disks of the foundation revealed the degree to which the institution was controlled by jihadists.[45] In one instance, the Saudis suspected one of the foundation’s operatives of being a member of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad. They sent someone to Sarajevo to investigate. The investigator confronted the man saying: “We hear that you have these connections and if that is true we need to part ways.” The man put his hand on his heart and denied the allegation.  As far as the Saudis were concerned the issue was settled until the man later in court testimony described how easy it was to fool the Saudis.

Read further Part 4

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[1] Athar Akhmad, Muslim sect called 'less than animals' , BBC Two, 13 April 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03qx6q5.

[2] Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), Position Statement: The Muslim Council of Britain and Ahmadis, 6 April 2016, http://www.mcb.org.uk/position-statement-the-muslim-council-of-britain-and-ahmadis/.

[3] BBC News, Police probe Scottish mosque figures’ links to banned sectarian group, 31 March 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-35928089.

[4] Libby Brooks, Asad Shah killing should be condemned by all Muslims, say Ahmadi community, The Guardian, 7 April 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/07/asad-shah-killing-should-condemned-muslims-say-ahmadi-community-glasgow.

[5]Ibid. Bowen

[6]Ibid. Bowen

[7] Emma Brockes, British man named as bomber who killed 10, The Guardian, 28 December 2000, http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/dec/28/india.kashmir.

[8] BBC News, Profile: Omar Saeed Sheikh, 16 July 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1804710.stm.

[9]Nic Robertson, Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister, Documents give new details on al Qaeda's London bombings, CNN, 30 April 2012, http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/30/world/al-qaeda-documents-london-bombings/.

[10]Ibid. Pantucci

[11] Saeed Shah, Despite Crackdown, Some Pakistani Militants Walk the Streets, The Wall Street Journal, 25 April 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/pakistans-crackdown-on-islamic-militants-looks-selective-1461565803.

[12]Ibid. Shah

[13] The Express Tribune, Re-emergence of banned groups, 10 June 2016, http://tribune.com.pk/story/1120361/re-emergence-banned-groups/

[14]Aalmi Majlis Tahaffuz Khatm-e-Nubuwwat, 2016, www.amtkn.com.

[15]Ibid. Aalmi

[16]Ibid. Jalal

[17]Mohammed Wajihuddin, DarulUloom asks Saudi Arabia to ban Ahmadiyas from Mecca visit, The Times of India, 30 June 2011, http://www.thepersecution.org/world/india/11/06/ti30.html

[18] Mohammed Wajihuddin, Darul Uloom asks Saudi Arabia to ban Ahmadiyas from Mecca visit, The Times of India, 30 June 2011, http://www.thepersecution.org/world/india/11/06/ti30.html

[19] Kurt Barlin, London mosque accused of links to ‘terror’ in Pakistan, BBC News, 22 September 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15021073.

[20]Sajid Iqbal and Noel Titheragde, ‘Kill Ahmadis’ leaflets found in UK mosque, BBC News, 11 April 2016, ttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35928848.

[21] Rana Tanveer, Anti-Ahmadi group campaigning for funds through newspaper ads, The Express Tribune, 25 June 2016, http://tribune.com.pk/story/1129892/anti-ahmadi-group-campaigning-funds-newspaper-ads/

[22] The Express Tribune, Ahmadi man shot dead in targeted attack in Karachi, 26 May 2016, http://tribune.com.pk/story/1110466/tragic-incident-ahmadi-man-shot-dead-targeted-attack/

[23] Omar Waraich, Sectarian Attacks on Lahore Mosques Kill More than 80, Time, 28 May 2010, http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1992630,00.html

[24] Ibid. Waraich

[25] Iqbal Mirza, Mob attack over alleged blasphemy: Three Ahmadis killed in Gujranwala, Dawn, 28 July 2014, http://www.dawn.com/news/1122143

[26] Libby Brooks, Shunned for saying they’re Muslims: life for Ahmadis after Asad Shah’s murder, The Guardian, 9 April 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/09/shunned-for-saying-theyre-muslims-life-for-ahmadis-after-asad-shahs.

[27]Ibid. Brooks

[28] Omar Oakes, Worshippers told at Tooting Islamic Centre to boycott Ahmadiyya shops, Wimbledon Guardian, 14 October 2010, http://www.wimbledonguardian.co.uk/news/8451539.Worshippers_told_to_boycott_Ahma%20diyya_shops/

[29] Athar Ahmad, Muslim sect called 'less than animals', BBC Two, 13 April 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03qx6q5.

[30]Joern Wegner, Die erste deutsche Moschee, Eine wechselvolle Geschichte, TAZ, 4 August 2013, https://www.taz.de/!5061890/; Westdeutsche Rundfunk, Stichtag, 26 April 1925 – Ältestenocherhaltene Moschee Deutschlandseröffnet, 6 May 2005, http://www1.wdr.de/stichtag/stichtag-224.html.

[31]Gerdientje Jonker, The Ahmadiyya Quest for Religious Progress: Missionizing Europe 1900-1965, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015, p. 145.

[32]Roshan Mughal, Unlikely origins, The Express Tribune, 4 December 2011, http://tribune.com.pk/story/300034/unlikely-origins/.

[33]Ibid. Abbas

[34] Shah Faisal Kakar, KSA-Pakistan ties touch new heights, Arab News, 14 August 2015, http://www.arabnews.com/saudi-arabia/news/790986.

[35] State Bank of Pakistan, Country-wise Workers’ Remittances, 2016, http://www.sbp.org.pk/ecodata/Homeremit.pdf.

[36] Muhammad Anis, 1,180 Pakistan Army personnel present in Saudi Arabia: Kh Asif, The News, 20 January 2016, http://www.thenews.com.pk/print/92465-1180-Pakistan-Army-personnel-presentin-Saudi-Arabia-Kh-Asif.

[37] Jean-Luc Racine, Pakistan’s difficult neighbours, Le Monde Diplomatique, March 2016, https://mondediplo.com/2016/03/08pakistan.

[38]Ifran Haider, Pemra advises TV channels to display 'caution' on Saudi-Iran conflict, The Dawn, 06 January 2016, http://www.dawn.com/news/1231171.

[39]Gilles Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West, Cambridge/London: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2004, p. 170 – 173; Madawi al-Rasheed, Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices from a New Generation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 73-74.

[40]Bassem Hassan, Egypt: The Continuing Legacy of the Mubarak-Sadat Regime, Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, 8 June 2011, http://studies.aljazeera.net/ResourceGallery/media/Documents/2011/7/30/2011730124542515580Egypt-The%20Continuing%20Legacy%20of%20the%20Mubarak-Sadat%20Regime.pdf.

[41]Zachary Laub, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, Council on Foreign Relations, 15 January 2014, http://www.cfr.org/egypt/egypts-muslim-brotherhood/p23991.

[42]Laurant Bonnefoy, Salafism in Yemen: Transnationalism and Religious Identity, London: Hurst, 2012, p. 61-3.

[43] Interviews with author of senior Saudi bankers in 2001/2002.

[44] Interviews with author of senior Saudi bankers in 2001/2002.

[45]Andrew Higgins, Robert Block, Glenn Simpson, James M. Dorsey, Christopher Cooper and Michael Sesit, The War on Terrorism: Muslim Charities Tied to Terror Are a Risky Target for the U.S./ Saudis Are Asked to Sort Out Religious Promotion and Support of Militants”/ People Feel Targeted for No Reason and That the Americans Are Again Trying a Witch Hunt, The Wall Street Journal, 21 October 2001.