On October 26, 2001, The Guardian printed a report entitled "Salafi Views Unite Terror Suspects; (the Binding Tie)," in which its authors, John Hooper and Brian Whitaker, claim that, "The diverse group of terrorists that launched the Sept. 11 attacks appear to have embraced the same fundamentalist Salafi interpretation of Islam."

Falsely trying to link the Salafi/"Wahhabi" methodology to al-Qaeda, they reported the misleading claim that "Investigators hunting members of Osama bin Laden's network have discovered that all the suspected terrorists arrested in Europe over the past ten months follow an extreme Salafi interpretation of Islam."

Furthermore, they went on to link this interpretation of Islam to the creed of Saudi Arabia and its educational institutions: "The link between Salafis and Bin Laden's terrorist web will prove acutely embarrassing to Saudi Arabia, whose royal family has invested huge sums in spreading Salafi thought abroad. The leading center for the study and export of Salafi ideas is the Islamic University of Medina, in Saudi Arabia, which was founded by the king in 1961 'to convey the eternal message of Islam to the entire world.'"

If only John Hooper and Brian Whitaker had researched the origins of al-Qaeda's ideology, which was clearly formed upon the writings of Sayyid Qutb, who was Egyptian and not Saudi, their readers would have benefited many times over. Had they researched this subject carefully, they would have known that what is taught on an official basis at the University of Medina is an in-depth analysis of the falsity of the Khawarij's system of belief.

Clearly, the problem of contemporary terrorist ideology does not lie in the creed of the Salafis, whether they be in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else. The media and Western think-tanks are failing to make the distinction between pure, orthodox Islam, and a twentieth century revolutionary movement based upon ignorance called Qutbism, a sect based upon the teachings of Sayyid Qutb.

It would have been more accurate for Hooper and Whitaker to say that all of the Islamic groups and movements of today, the violent and the non-violent of them, stem from the ideologies of Hasan al-Banna, Abu A'laa Maududi and Sayyid Qutb. None of these men were Islamic scholars, but instead, were only so-called 'Islamic thinkers'. Furthermore, Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb were adherents of Sufism, not Salafism.

In short, Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda Qutbists have more in common with the darlings of the orientalist scholars and media, the Sufi tradition of Islam, than they do with today's media scapegoats, the Salafis. Even if some of the Qutbists who come from the Arabian peninsula might still hold on to their claim of Salafism or quote out of context sayings from known orthodox Salafi scholars, the source of their deviation comes from the teachings of the devient sects that ascribe to Islam, through the likes of Sayyid Qutb. Salafism is actually free from the likes of Sayyid Qutb and Osama bin Laden.

- abridged from the book: The 'Wahhabi' Myth