Al-Qaeda

A message from Kuwaiti Sheikh Hamed bin Abdullah Ali was distributed yesterday, July 13, 2006, amongst jihadist forums and titled: “The Shari’a Position of What is Going On,” referring to Iran’s current position and the outbreak of fighting in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon. He writes of Iran as possessing an expansionist, imperialist spirit, hoping to spread its power and influence into the Gulf countries and Iraq, and using the “Crusader/Zionist” alliance as a conduit for part of its goals. However, the sheikh prays: “But at best and in the end - Allah willing - they will be burned with the same fire which they ignited to burn the Muslims.”

Iran’s “card” have presented the Shi’a Republic an opportunity to achieve its plans, which according to the message, include the coalition with Syria and Iran’s arm in Lebanon, Hezbollah, supporting parties in the countries of the Arab Peninsula and Iraq, capitalizing on the “Palestinian problem” and its steps towards achieving nuclear capability and becoming a threat atop that of North Korea and Venezuela. Sheikh Hamed al-Ali predicts that a confrontation is approaching, as the entire region of the Middle East in is between “Great War’s hands and mass chaos”. But in the end, it will be in Islam’s favor, “even if Islam and its people will have a great disaster”.

The “Shari’a position” then, as the sheikh writes, maintains that Palestine is Islam’s problem, as Muslims should not be deceived by Iran taking it as its own. Iran, he believes, is more dangerous than the “Crusader/Zionist” enemy. Therefore Sheikh Hamed al-Ali calls upon the Mujahideen in Palestine to be steady and show determination in jihad and Islam. He states: “We ask to help them by any means and support them with everything possible and make all efforts to release their blockade, this is a Shari’a obligation; nobody can leave it anyway.”

Sheikh Hamed bin Abdullah al-Ali was acquitted by a Kuwait judge Tuesday, December 27, 2005 of suspicion of forming a fundamentalist group in Kuwait that plotted to execute terrorist attacks in the country and for alleged complicity in four shoot-outs between Islamic militants and Kuwait security in January of this year. Sheikh al-Ali is a former secretary general of the Salafi Movement who received a two-year suspended sentence for publicly opposing Kuwait’s support for the US-led war on Iraq in 2003.