Sheikh Sulaymān al-ʿAlwān or more fully known as, Sulaymān ibn Nāṣir ibn ʿAbdullāh al-ʿAlwān ( ar, سليمان بن ناصر بن عبد الله العلوان), is a theoretician of militant jihad. He is known to have memorised the 9 books of Hadith with the chain of narrations known as 'Isnaad'. At a young age, he memorised a lot of texts in different Islamic sciences alongside the explanations of these texts.
Fatwa
In 2000, he issued a
fatwa
A fatwā ( ; ar, فتوى; plural ''fatāwā'' ) is a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law (''sharia'') given by a qualified '' Faqih'' (Islamic jurist) in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist ...
endorsing the use of
suicide bombing
A suicide attack is any violent attack, usually entailing the attacker detonating an explosive, where the attacker has accepted their own death as a direct result of the attacking method used. Suicide attacks have occurred throughout histor ...
s against Israel, and in 2001 he supported the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the
Taliban
The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...
.From 9/11 to Iraq: The Long Arm of Saudi Arabia’s Suliman al-Elwan By Murad Batal al-Shishani, Jamestown Militant Leadership Monitor Volume 2 Issue 2, 28 February 2011
Al-Alwan's mosque in
Al-Qassim Province
The Qassim Province ( ar, منطقة القصيم ' , Najdi Arabic: ), also known as the Qassim Region, is one of the 13 provinces of Saudi Arabia. Located at the heart of the country near the geographic center of the Arabian Peninsula, it has ...
was criticised by moderate Islamic scholars as a "terrorist factory". Among his students was Abdulaziz al-Omari, one of the plane hijackers in the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
. After the September 11 attacks, Al-Alwan issued two fatwas (21 September 2001 and 19 October 2001), 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
Jihad (; ar, جهاد, jihād ) is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with G ...
. In January 2002, Alwan and two other radical Saudi clerics,
Hamoud al-Aqla al-Shuebi
Hamoud al-Aqla al-Shu'aybi (also Hamoud al-Oqala al-Shuebi, Humud b. ‘Uqala’ al-Shu‘aybi, ar, حمود العقلاء الشعيبي) (died late 2001) was a Saudi-born Islamic cleric.Ali al-Khudair, wrote a letter to Taliban leader
Mullah Omar
Mullah Muhammad Omar (; –April 2013) was an Afghan Islamic revolutionary who founded the Taliban and served as the supreme leader of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
Born into a religious family of Kandahar, Omar was educated at local ''madras ...
praising him and referred to him as the
Commander of the faithful
Commander (commonly abbreviated as Cmdr.) is a common naval officer rank. Commander is also used as a rank or title in other formal organizations, including several police forces. In several countries this naval rank is termed frigate captain. ...
.
Prison
On 31 March 2003, 11 days after the start of the
Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...
, 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.
He was due to be released in 2019.