Jihadist cleric flies under the American radar screen

Chris Heffelfinger at The Jamestown Foundation's Terrorism Monitor profiles the strange influence of Hamid bin Abdallah al-Ali, a respected Salafi cleric in Kuwait and much of the Arab world, but a sponsor and financier of global terrorism as far as the U.S. is concerned - but yet still able to host his website in Washington state.

Heffelfinger believes that al-Ali is still able to operate here because Americans have a hard time believing that someone like al-Ali - who communicates using poetry and religious rhetoric - could possibly attract a substantial following.

But, as he points out, it was al-Ali who issued the famous fatwa in early 2001 condoning suicide missions involving flying aircraft into targets. He has also been known to use his website to recruite Kuwaitis to wage jihad in Iraq and Kuwait, as well as to disseminate directions on explosives-making.

As Heffelfinger points out:

Despite his clear ties to al-Qaeda and mujahideen in Kuwait, al-Ali is presented to thousands of Muslims as simply a senior Kuwaiti cleric. He enjoys this prestige, as do other Salafis, due to the juxtaposition of the Salafi movement with the two holiest sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina. To many, especially those less-educated Muslims who fulfill their Hajj duties, Salafi Islam is simply pure, or highly conservative Islam. Its exclusive reliance on the holy texts of Islam, seen by many as a return to the basics of the religion, obscures its true doctrine. It is thus seen not as a 17th century movement, arising largely out of the drive to expel Turkish Ottomans and their forces from Arabia, but Sunni Muslims who enjoy among the highest authority in Islam. Given this climate—and the view toward the Salafi movement by Muslims, Arabs and the West—it is unlikely that figures like Hamid al-Ali will cease the education and indoctrination of young Muslims into jihad.