Dubai: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman has lashed out at the 'Triangle of Evil' – the Iranian regime, the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorists - in an interview with a US magazine.
“First in the triangle we have the Iranian regime that wants to spread their extremist Shiite ideology. They believe that if they spread it, the hidden Imam will come back again and he will rule the whole world from Iran and spread Islam even to America. They’ve said this every day since the Iranian revolution in 1979. It’s in their law and they’re proving it by their own actions,” Prince Mohammad told The Atlantic magazine in an interview published on Monday.
“The second part of the triangle is the Muslim Brotherhood, which is another extremist organisation. They want to use the democratic system to rule countries and build shadow caliphates everywhere. Then they would transform into a real Muslim empire.”
The third part of the triangle is the terrorists from Al Qaeda and Daesh who want to do everything using force, he said, stressing that their leaders “were all Muslim Brotherhood first.”
“This triangle is promoting an idea that God and Islam are not asking us to promote. Their idea is totally against the principles of the United Nations, and the idea of different nations having laws that represent their needs. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Yemen—all of these countries are defending the idea that independent nations should focus on their own interests, in building good relations on the foundation of UN principles. The evil triangle doesn’t want to do that.”
- Mohammad Bin Salman | Saudi Crown Prince
The crown prince said that he challenged anyone to bring any evidence that the Saudi government financed terrorist groups.
“Yes, there are people from Saudi Arabia who financed terrorist groups. This is against Saudi law. We have a lot of people in jail now, not only for financing terrorist groups, but even for supporting them. One of the reasons we have a problem with Qatar is that we are not allowing them to use the financial system between us to collect money from Saudis and give it to extremist organisations.”
Asked whether he believed the Jewish people had a right to a nation-state in at least part of their ancestral homeland, Prince Salman said that “each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation”, but insisted on the significance of peace accords.
“I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land. But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations. We have religious concerns about the fate of the holy mosque in Jerusalem and about the rights of the Palestinian people ... Our country doesn’t have a problem with Jews. Our Prophet Mohammad married a Jewish woman. Not just a friend -he married her. Our prophet, his neighbours were Jewish. You will find a lot of Jews in Saudi Arabia coming from America, coming from Europe. There are no problems between Christian and Muslims and Jews.”
Should there be peace in the region, “there would be a lot of interest between Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and countries like Egypt and Jordan,” he said since “there are a lot of interests we share with Israel.”
Prince Mohammad said that he supported women who represented half of the Saudi society.
“In our religion there is no difference between men and women. There are duties to men and duties to women. There are different forms of equality. In the Saudi government women are paid exactly like men. We have regulations like this that are going into the private sector. We don’t want divided treatment for different people,” he said.
However, he cautioned against decisions that could divide society.
“There are a lot of conservative families in Saudi Arabia. Some families like to have authority over their members, and some women don’t want the control of the men. There are families where this is okay. There are families that are open and giving women and daughters what they want.”
Getting rid of some laws means creating problems for the families that don’t want to give freedom for their daughters, he said.
“Saudis don’t want to lose their identity but we want to be part of the global culture. We want to merge our culture with global identity.”
