Enemies and Allies by Joel C. Rosenberg

Author:Joel C. Rosenberg [Rosenberg, Joel C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

WHO WAS JAMAL KHASHOGGI?

Most Americans had never heard of Jamal Khashoggi.

Now he was a household word.

But who was he really? And why might the Saudis have wanted him silenced?

As I searched for answers, I found allegations that Khashoggi was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a radical Islamist trying to portray himself as a voice of moderation and reason. Some reports indicated that Khashoggi was more than a mere critic of the Saudi government but someone long connected to the jihadist movement, increasingly close to the Turkish and Qatari regimes, using his role as a columnist to attack and weaken the Saudi government.

If such reports were true, they might provide a motive for the Saudis wanting to bring Khashoggi back to the kingdom for questioning. They were certainly no justification for an inexcusable and ghastly murder. But were they true?

Curiously, it was a widely respected Washington Post columnist—David Ignatius—who confirmed Khashoggi’s long history with radical Islamists. In an opinion column under the headline “Jamal Khashoggi’s Long Road to the Doors of the Saudi Consulate,” Ignatius reported the following facts about Khashoggi:

“He was friendly with Osama bin Laden in his militant youth.”

He “criticized Prince Salman, then governor of Riyadh.”

He was photographed in Afghanistan, “standing among the Arab fighters, cradling a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in his hands.”

He was “a passionate member of the Muslim Brotherhood,” which he joined about the same time Osama bin Laden did, in the late 1970s.

He “shared a passion [with bin Laden] for the mujahideen’s war in Afghanistan, first against the Soviet Union and later for power in Kabul. He covered the war “as a journalist, but he was clearly sympathetic to the [jihadists’] cause.”

He was close friends with a woman named Maggie Mitchell Salem, the head of the Qatar Foundation International, an organization “partially funded by Qatar,” home to the bitterly anti-Saudi Al Jazeera TV network.

He told Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower—a Pulitzer Prize–winning book detailing the birth, rise, and history of al Qaeda leading up to the 9/11 attacks—why he was drawn to the Muslim Brotherhood: “We were hoping to establish an Islamic state anywhere. We believed that the first one would lead to another, and that would have a domino effect which could reverse the history of mankind.” Wright used the quote in his book.[3]

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.