For a self-declared mere "servant" of holy places, the Saudi king makes his state visit to Turkey in Style: 500 luxury cars, 450-square meter King Suite with bullet proof windows

For a self-declared mere "servant" of holy places, the Saudi king makes his state visit to Turkey in Style: 500 luxury cars, 450-square meter King Suite with bullet proof windows

    Monday, April 11, 2016   No comments

For a self-declared "servant" of holy places, the Saudi king makes his state visit to Turkey in Style: 500 luxury cars, 450-square meter King Suite, with bullet proof windows

A week of intense preparations in Ankara for Saudi King Salman has been completed, with extraordinary security measures marking the king’s two-day visit upon the invitation of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The windows of the 450-square meter King Suite in the JW Marriot in Ankara have been covered with bullet-proof glass while the walls of the suite have been covered with bomb-resistant cement.
...
The hotel has been booked for the king for three days, and a team of 300 Saudi officials arrived there a few days ago to coordinate private preparations. It is reported that the total cost of preparations at the hotel was around $10 million.

All personal belongings and other necessities were transferred to Ankara in cargo planes, while around 500 luxury cars have been rented for the king’s meetings in Ankara and Istanbul. To fulfil this demand, vehicles have been rented from provinces across Turkey including Antalya and Adana.
Source

Saudi Arabia Uncovered

Saudi Arabia Uncovered

    Thursday, March 31, 2016   No comments

With undercover footage and on-the-ground reporting, FRONTLINE reveals a side of Saudi Arabia that’s rarely seen, and traces the efforts of men and women who are working to bring about change.

Watch on Frontline

Jordan's king accuses Turkey of sending terrorists to Europe; Turkey is deliberately 'unleashing' Isis terrorists into Europe, says Jordan's King Abdullah

Jordan's king accuses Turkey of sending terrorists to Europe; Turkey is deliberately 'unleashing' Isis terrorists into Europe, says Jordan's King Abdullah

    Sunday, March 27, 2016   No comments

Turkey is exporting Isis-linked terrorists to Europe, according to King Abdullah of Jordan.

The monarch's remarks came in a meeting with members of the US Congress, in which he said that Islamist militants were being "manufactured in Turkey" and "unleashed" into Europe.

He also used the debriefing, held after a cancelled rendezvous with US President Barack Obama, to remind the US politicians of Turkey's alleged complicity in buying Isis oil....

King Abdullah of Jordan accused Turkey of exporting terrorists to Europe at a top level meeting with senior US politicians in January.

The king said Europe’s biggest refugee crisis was not an accident, and neither was the presence of terrorists among them: “The fact that terrorists are going to Europe is part of Turkish policy and Turkey keeps on getting a slap on the hand, but they are let off the hook.”

Asked by one of the congressmen present whether the Islamic State group was exporting oil to Turkey, Abdullah replied: ”Absolutely.”

Abdullah made his remarks during a wide-ranging debriefing to Congress on 11 January, the day a meeting with the US president, Barack Obama, was cancelled.

The White House was forced to deny that Obama snubbed one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East, attributing the cancellation to "scheduling conflicts," although Obama and Abdullah met briefly at Andrews Air Force Base a day later.

Present at the meeting in Congress were the chairmen and members of the Senate Intelligence, Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, including Senators John McCain and Bob Corker, and Senators Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid, the Senate Majority and Minority leaders respectively.  ...

UN: Most civilian casualties in Yemen were caused by Saudi Arabia's attacks

UN: Most civilian casualties in Yemen were caused by Saudi Arabia's attacks

    Friday, March 18, 2016   No comments

The UN human rights chief has accused the Saudi-led coalition of causing twice as many civilian casualties as all the other forces fighting in Yemen.

Zeid Raad Al Hussein condemned "the repeated failure" of the coalition to prevent deadly incidents.

He said air strikes had caused almost all the coalition's civilian casualties.

More than 6,000 people, about half of them civilians, have been killed since Saudi Arabia launched a multi-national campaign against rebels in March 2015.

Saudi Arabia has denied causing large-scale civilian deaths, saying it is making every effort to avoid hitting civilian targets.

Mr Hussein's comments come three days after some 106 civilians were killed in what medics and witnesses said was an air strike on a market in Mastaba, north-west Yemen, in one of the deadliest incidents of the war.

source: BBC

Early Medieval Muslim Graves in France: First Archaeological, Anthropological and Palaeogenomic Evidence

Early Medieval Muslim Graves in France: First Archaeological, Anthropological and Palaeogenomic Evidence

    Monday, March 07, 2016   No comments

On the outskirts of the ancient Roman city of Nimes in southern France, archaeologists have discovered the graves of three Muslim men that date back to the 8th century.

The finding, reported Wednesday in PLOS One, suggests the early medieval presence of Muslims north of the Pyrenees was more complicated, and perhaps more welcome, than previously thought.

The medieval history of Muslims in Spain and Portugal is well established, but information about the experience of Muslims in France during the same time period has been more difficult to find.

According to historical documents, around the year 719, Muslim troops from the Umayyad army crossed the eastern Pyrenees and occupied the region around Narbonne 530 miles south of modern-day Paris. But the occupation was short-lived. By 760, the Franks, who came from the north, took over the region known as Septimania.
Very little known is about these early invaders. Historians cannot say for sure whether they lived in garrisons or created more long-term establishments, or what cities they could be found in. They don't even know if the occupiers were Arabs, Berbers or converts.

And that's why the three Muslim graves that date back to this time period are so valuable.

"They could start to answer these questions," said Yves Gleize, who studies archaeo-anthropology at the University of Bordeaux and was the lead author on the study.


Abstract
The rapid Arab-Islamic conquest during the early Middle Ages led to major political and cultural changes in the Mediterranean world. Although the early medieval Muslim presence in the Iberian

Peninsula is now well documented, based in the evaluation of archeological and historical sources, the Muslim expansion in the area north of the Pyrenees has only been documented so far through textual sources or rare archaeological data. Our study provides the first archaeo-anthropological testimony of the Muslim establishment in South of France through the multidisciplinary analysis of three graves excavated at Nimes. First, we argue in favor of burials that followed Islamic rites and then note the presence of a community practicing Muslim traditions in Nimes. Second, the radiometric dates obtained from all three human skeletons (between the 7th and the 9th centuries AD) echo historical sources documenting an early Muslim presence in southern Gaul (i.e., the first half of 8th century AD). Finally, palaeogenomic analyses conducted on the human remains provide arguments in favor of a North African ancestry of the three individuals, at least considering the paternal lineages. Given all of these data, we propose that the skeletons from the Nimes burials belonged to Berbers integrated into the Umayyad army during the Arab expansion in North Africa. Our discovery not only discusses the first anthropological and genetic data concerning the Muslim occupation of the Visigothic territory of Septimania but also highlights the complexity of the relationship between the two communities during this period.

Source

#IslamicSocietiesReview : BBC report, al-Qaeda in Yemen on the same front as the Saudi Coalition

#IslamicSocietiesReview : BBC report, al-Qaeda in Yemen on the same front as the Saudi Coalition

    Monday, February 22, 2016   No comments

BBC reported that it now has evidence that al-Qaeda in Yemen is fighting on the same front as the Saudi coalition.

The Saudi rulers launched a brutal war that killed tens of thousands of civilians in Yemen, has also created a foothold for al-Qaeda and ISIL in that country. For instance, when the Saudi coalition pushed the Yemeni army and their Houthi allies out of Aden, al-Qaeda and ISIL moved in and they are now in control of many neighborhoods  of that city.

Despite the Saudi rhetoric that they are committed to fighting terrorism, the kingdom's military did not attack, in any significant way, al-Qaeda fighters in Yemen or anywhere else. That makes their offer to send troops to fight ISIL in Syria highly suspicious. 

Saudi Arabian rulers are interested in staying in power, not fight terrorists who espouse Wahhabi-Salafism, which is deeply rooted in Saudi society.

Sources: BBC