THE SAUDI ARABIAN AND OTHER ARAB AND MUSLIM LEADERS HAVE NOT FULLY BENEFITTED FROM ISLAM; AND ISLAM HAS NOT FULLY BENEFITTED FROM THEM EITHER

. ...THEY ARE THE WORSHIPPERS OF NEW IDOLS.

By Mansor Puteh

And what sort of idols if not giant clocks, tall buildings, wide highways and self-adulation by their own countrymen and women.

They do all this while many Muslims in their own countries and all over the world are still being prosecuted due to neglect by them, so their countries do not develop and they suffer as a result of the gross negligence of their leaders.

They are blind to the true teachings of Islam. They had not obeyed Allah’s call to serve the religion and its believers first, and not just for themselves alone.

They were given the Holy Kaabah and OIL, but what are they doing with them to serve Islam?

It’s okay and good if their own countries are developed; but it is also okay if the other Muslim countries are still backward?

The backwardness of these countries especially those that are so close to Saudi Arabia is proof that the Saudis just didn’t care for their well-being.

They looked elsewhere and at themselves too much not to realize that the backwardness of these and the other Arab and Muslim countries is also their own backwardness.

Islam has not benefited them fully; and they have also not fully benefited Islam.

It’s just too bad and too sad how the Saudi leaders could feel aloof to the problems that surround their own lives and their own countries, as they continue to embark on more grandiose plans to expand the Masjidil Haram and to construct better and wider highways and taller buildings.

This, they claim to be in the name of Islam. The more their country is developed, the more they think Islam will be held in high regard especially by those who are not Muslims like them.

But they do not care for the backwardness of the many other Arab and Muslim countries around them which are in the Arabian Peninsula, Gulf Region, Africa and elsewhere in Central Asia and Asia Proper.

Many smaller Muslim communities in China as well as in South America are in dire straits; they need to be given the boost to better themselves.

But support for their cause is not forthcoming, as the Saudi Arabian leaders look elsewhere.

The leaders of the better developed Arab and Muslim countries also don’t seem to care.

In the end, they trample on the teachings of Islam which stress on charity for others. Yet, these people are not ‘the others’ but fellow Arabs and Muslims.

Somalia and Yemen are two of the poorest countries in the world; yet, they are just at the doorsteps of Saudi Arabia.

So how could the Saudi Arabian leaders ignore their plight? How could they look elsewhere and did not make any attempt to help them?

The situation in Somalia is now so bad. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis are being threatened by starvation.

Yet, only Malaysian Muslims are the ones who are keen to do something to help them, even if the efforts may not be significant.

Yet, the other Arab and Muslim countries around it and elsewhere are still unaware of what is going on in Somalia.

The situation in Somalia should not have been allowed to be like what it is today if only Saudi Arabian and other Arab and Muslim leaders had plans to contain their problems and had made attempts to bring the whole country into their sphere of development.

There is no point for some Arab and Muslim countries to tell the whole world how developed they are, if there are still Muslim countries such as Somalia and Yemen which are in such a backward stage.

Some others also suffer in the hands of ruthless western and pseudo-western regimes whose real reason for existence is to ensure Muslims suffer because of their religion and because of the natural resources that their lands have in abundance.

Yet, their own leaders are totally aloof to their sufferings, even until disaster struck threatening the extinction of many of them due to starvation and physical harm.

Even when ancient masjid are being demolished they still remain aloof.

No wonder, many other Arab and Muslim countries had remained stagnant and which did not get any benefit from having acquired the language of the Arabs and the religion their forefathers had exported out of Saudi Arabia.

This is what has happened to Somalia and Yemen, two of the poorest Arab and Muslim countries which are closest to Saudi Arabia than the others.

One therefore asks what have the Saudi Arabian leaders been doing all this while that has allowed these two countries to regress to almost back to the Stone Age.

Some Somalis have become sea pirates. Hundreds and possible millions other Somalis have become food starved with death looming.

What sort of influence Saudi Arabia has on these countries; never mind those which are much further away from them?

The Saudis have failed miserably to show how charitable and Islamic they are.

They have failed to cause those and the other Arab and Muslim countries to prosper and develop.

It seems that the Saudi Arabian leaders only care for themselves alone; they develop their own country without linking it to the development of the other countries in the Muslim World.

Saudi Arabia may be the epicenter of Islam, with the Holy Kaabah located in the country where all Muslims pray towards it as the main focus of all Muslims.

Other than that, Saudi Arabia is a poor leader of the Islamic faith and for all Muslims.

So in many ways, many Arab and Muslim countries are economically backward.

They can be said to be in the Second Age of Jahiliyah or Ignorance.

Even those few Arab and Muslim countries which are said to be better off, although they cannot be said to be fully developed, are not interested or keen to support the other Arab and Muslim countries to get out of their quagmire.

They are all too busy telling the whole world how unIslamic they have become and how they aspire to become modern - meaning too westernized or too American.

The only Islamic features that they are found by their own admittance and not by their behavior and attitude.

Yet, there were some Arab leaders who wanted to fashion themselves as the modern-day Salahuddin al-Ayubi (or Saladin, as those in the west describe him.)

Alas, they were only so in name and not in deed. They have slogans which are empty and devoid of substance.

No wonder, they have been annihilated, with one being hanged and the other expelled from his palace and is now in hiding.

Will this other 'Saladin' be ferreted out from a fox hole somewhere in the Libyan Desert soon?