Sulaiman Al-Alwan


Sulayman al-ʿAlwān or more fully Sulaimān ibn Nāṣir ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿAlwān is a Saudi Arabian Salafi Islamist Scholar and theoretician of militant jihad. He has been described by some as being one of the most knowledgeable contemporary Islamic scholars, particularly in the field of Hadith. He was arrested in 2004 due to his radical beliefs.

Fatwa

In 2000, he issued a fatwa endorsing the use of suicide bombings against Israel, and in 2001 he supported the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban.
Al-Alwan's mosque in Al-Qassim Province was criticised by moderate Islamic clerics as a "terrorist factory". Among his students was Abdulaziz al-Omari, one of the plane hijackers in the September 11 attacks. After the September 11 attacks, Al-Alwan issued two fatwas, in which he declared that any Muslim who supported the Americans in Afghanistan was an infidel, and called on all Muslims to support the Afghans and Taliban by any means, including jihad. In January 2002, Alwan and two other radical Saudi clerics, Hamoud al-Aqla al-Shuebi and Ali al-Khudair, wrote a letter to Taliban leader Mullah Omar praising him and referred to him as the Commander of the faithful.

Prison

On 31 March 2003, 11 days after the start of the Iraq War, al-Alwan published an open letter in which he called on the Iraqi people to fight the American soldiers and use suicide bombings against them. On 28 April 2004, Saudi authorities arrested al-Alwan and after being held for 9 years without trial, he was released on 5 December 2012.
In October 2013, Alwan was sentenced to a 15-year prison term; charges included questioning the legitimacy of the country's rulers and financing terrorism by collecting money for Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, as well as supporting Jihad in Syria and meeting with several leaders of Al-Qaeda. With time already served, he was due to spend six more years in jail.