Tariq Suwaidan Barred From Saudi Arabia

0

Gulf media is reporting that Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood leader Tariq Suwaidan has been barred from entering Saudi Arabia where he planned to go on Umrah (lesser pilgrimage). According to a Gulf News report:

Tariq Suwaidan
Tariq Suwaidan

October 2, 2013 Dubai: Prominent Kuwaiti intellectual, motivational speaker and preacher Tareq Suwaidan has been barred from performing the lesser Umrah pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, he said on Twitter.

‘I have been banned from entering Saudi Arabia solely for my views and my position against the coup in Egypt, and I say that my love for Saudi Arabia and its people is unshaken and that ideas can [never]be banned,’ Suwaidan wrote on his Twitter account on Sunday.

Suwaidan was referring to the June 30 ouster of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammad Mursi in Egypt by the military. Suwaidan acknowledged in a televised address recently that he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. That admission cost him his television show on Al Resala, an Islamic channel owned by billionaire Saudi prince and media tycoon Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal, who also owns the Rotana conglomorate. Prince Al Waleed wrote in a letter to Suwaidan in August that there was no place for a Muslim Brotherhood member on the channel\

On Tuesday, Suwaidan tweeted: ‘I have known the people of Saudi Arabia to be the most hospitable of people, therefore I consider those who told me that I am not welcome not to be representing true Saudi hospitality’. He later wrote: ‘Averros said that ideas have wings to fly with. I say: I wish he had seen Twitter to see how right he was’.”

 In August, the GMBDW reported that Suwaidan had been removed as head of the Al-Resalah TV channel by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal as a result of his part in the Muslim Brotherhood.In January 2009, we reported on the struggle for control over Suwaidan’s Wikipedia page and the issue of whether or not he was part of the global Brotherhood. 

Tariq Suwaidan is one of the most important leaders of the Kuwait Brotherhood as well as the General Manager of Al-Resalah Satellite TV, the brainchild of Saudi businessman Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. In May 2007, Suwaidan was listed by federal prosecutors in a group of U.S Muslim Brotherhood members named as part of a large group of Unindicted Co-Conspirators in the terrorism financing case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, convicted of providing funds for Hamas. Suwaidan is also the author of the anti-Semitic “Encyclopedia of Jews.” A previous post discussed both his background and the struggle to control his Wikipedia page. Another post discussed an interview with Suwaidan in which he called on the Islamic nation to provide “direct support to the armed resistance” against Israel as well as urging Islamic youth to undertake “electronic Jihad” in order to destroy Israeli websites. In March 2012,  Suwaidan gave a TV interview in which he made various anti-Semitic comments and said that the most dangerous thing facing Muslims is not dictatorships but Jews whom he calls “the greatest enemy.”

In June 2012, MEMRI published a profile of Al- Suwaidan detailing some of his extremist views.

Comments are closed.