"Two clerics led the protestations: Safar al-Hawali and Salman al-Audah. Hawali was a forty-year-old, taciturn-looking man, with deep-set eyes and a long, untrimmed, jet-black beard. Audah was younger and more jovial, and he kept his beard short. The two men had opposed the jihad in Afghanistan, disagreeing with Azzam’s call on all Muslims to fight the Soviets. But they could not abide the arrival of the infidels on the peninsula. Their tapes sold like hotcakes, under the table, in the back of shops, passed around after prayers at the mosque. They decried the influence of the West on their country, warning that the war with Iraq and the arrival of infidel troops in Saudi Arabia were part of a larger plan by the West to dominate the Arab and Muslim world. “It is not the world against Iraq,” said Hawali in one speech, “It is the West against Islam. If Iraq has occupied Kuwait, then America has occupied Saudi Arabia. The real enemy is not Iraq. It is the West.”"
Salman al-Ouda

January 1, 1970