Sleeping with the Enemy: US Partnership with Saudi-Wahhabis – by Rusty Walker
Saudi-Wahhabis and their affiliates are the single major source of Islamist terrorism across the world.
If I may ask the reader, would you conduct business with a country where Human Rights Watch list multiple egregious acts against its own society? HRW, travelers and oppressed citizens there (using fake identity or risk imprisonment) confirm the following as common? “Oppression of women, persecution of religious minorities, unfair trials, detention of children, oppression of foreign laborers,” a country that is not an ‘open culture,’ in fact, a culture of hiding. One would expect the United Nations Human Right Committee to press moral charges against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) if for no other reason than the reality that thirteen year old children are sentenced to death in that country. Women are subject to the control of male guardians- even for everyday activities, and can be restricted in employment and education.
UN report: “Women are not treated as equal members of society, and many laws discriminate against them…they may not legally drive cars, and their use of public facilities is restricted when men are present. By law and custom, Saudi women cannot travel within or outside of the country without a male relative…Unlike Saudi men, Saudi women who marry non-Saudis are not permitted to pass their nationality on to their children, and their spouses cannot receive Saudi nationality. Saudi women seeking access to the courts must work with a male. According to interpretations of Sharia in Saudi Arabia, daughters receive half the inheritance awarded to their brothers, and the testimony of one man is equal to that of two women in Sharia courts…The Committee to Prevent Vice and Promote Virtue, a semiautonomous religious police force commonly known as the mutawa’een, enforces a strict policy of segregation between men and women and often harasses women, using physical punishment to ensure that women meet conservative standards of dress in public. In 2007, a court sentenced a Shiite woman from Qatif, who had been gang raped by seven men, to 200 lashes and six months in jail for being alone with a man who was not her relative at the time of the attack; the man was also raped by the attackers and punished by the court.” (Freedom House Country Report 2009, Saudi Arabia)
Indeed, trials go forward with guilt and no evidence, physical abuse while incarcerated, and 9 million foreign workers remain unpaid with physical and sexual abuse is commonplace. Geopolitics can be Machiavellian. I am no stranger to Realpolitik; but shouldn’t there be a limit to how far we allow (American) allies to go? The Wahhabi–agenda favors a bigoted interpretation and practice of Islamic Sharia Law, gender segregation, and jihadist view, the majority of opposition to liberal democracy, and pluralism.
Here are just two recent examples of Saudi Arabian abuses:
“Saudi woman executed for witchcraft and sorcery.”
Four men killed as Shia protests against the state intensify
Americans, like myself, have a difficult time arguing against the term hurled at us from foreign nations: “hypocrisy” (there is plenty to go around in the world as it is). And, yet our indulgence of Saudi Arabia over “Petro-dollars” confirms at least one example. While we invaded Iraq, the Saudis provided air space, and yet, harbored and funded jihadists, and trained them in Wahhabi-Deobandi Madrassas. Faced with the absence of WMD in Iraq, we consoled ourselves with the ridding of a tyrant Saddam Hussein, and yet there remains the stubborn fact that thirteen newly U.S. trained pilots of 9/11 were not only from Saudi-Wahhabis but also funded by Saudi Princes.
American and British official sources confirmed, Prince Naif, the interior minister and Prince Sultan, possibly more, on behalf of the Saudi Kingdom, had been paying protection money, hundreds of millions of dollars to bin Laden since 1995. Former counter-terrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, wrote of regret in giving the go-ahead to fly prominent Saudis home after 9/11; (Source: See August 2011, page 88, “The Kingdom and the Towers.”-Agaainst All Enemies, Clake, 2004). It seems that the terrorist-sympathizers, the Saudi-Wahhabis, are hiding in plain sight with the U.S. again duped by a dubious ally.
If selling your soul to the devil is about petrodollars, then perhaps we can avoid perdition by drilling for our own oil; but this is just the beginning of the story if a nation is to claim to have principles. If our foreign policy strategy hinges on trusting the Saudi-Wahhabis, there remains no coherent foreign policy in which to deal with Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, Libya, Egypt, or the Palestinian Authority that might be based on human rights, or the “with us,” or against us” concept in the backing of terrorism, and the stated U.S. policy of helping nations to achieve democracy . The blatant Saudi bank-rolling of radical Wahhabis, the marginalizing of Shiites and other minorities, degrading of women, rejection of democracy and the principles of liberty, and exploiting the one Super Power with oil is an example of a nation we deem an ally and is indeed hypocrisy.
The blatant Saudi bank-rolling of radical Wahhabis (and Wahhabi-ised Deobandis in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan), the marginalizing of Shiites and other minorities, degrading of women, rejection of democracy and the principles of liberty, and exploiting the one Super Power with oil is an example of a nation we deem an ally and is indeed hypocrisy.
Ali al Ahmad, the director of the Gulf Institute in Washington, argued in testimony and briefings that “the Wahhabi regime is the root cause of the expansion of Islamist and jihadist ideologies not only in the country but throughout the region.” The tensions in the Shia areas of Saudi Arabia (and neighbouring Bahrain, Yemen and Kuwait) are the result of an ongoing persecution, discrimination and incitements. Ali Al Yammi, a hard-core liberal, the director of the Washington-based Saudi Human Rights Council, stated in a congressional briefing July 2010, that the Saudi regime, “keeps the Shia population in a state of economic underdevelopment for the purpose of weakening their political participation in the system.” Further, he noted that The extreme Salafists (Wahhabis) fear a revolution is brewing. Al Yammi, was cited by Walid Phares, advisor to the House of Representatives on Counter Terrorism, that “Arab Shia in Saudi Arabia have a cause of their own, they don’t need the Iran’s mullah’s.” (Phares, 2010, p314). The point: All Shiites are not aligned with a nuclear-threatening Iran.
Is it that compartmentalize? We reject Taliban misogyny that we abhor, but accept Saudi misogyny that we are able to ignore? The Saudi as a petro-power should not get an oil-soaked pass. To rail against terrorist suicide bombers, but not connect them often enough in the foreign press or American press to Saudi-Wahhabis, will allow this subterfuge to continue. We must understand the networking involved and condemn them and insist that Saudi-funded Wahhabi-Deobandi Madrassas (in Pakistasn, Afghanistan, India, Turkey, Sudan, Egypt, UK, USA, elsewhere) are shut down. To remain the status quo is to be either wilfully blind, or ignorant, which we can no longer afford to be in the dangerous, fragile global economy and proliferation of nuclear nations aligned with terrorists.
Why do we, the United States, deal with the duplicitous and oppressive Saudi Arabia? Oil? Is it to have a trusted strategic ally in the region? A Super Power should be above such a dubious reliance. We choose to ignore egregious harm from the past and emerging designs of the future. It runs the gamut from 1973, when Saudis bit the hand that fed them, with an oil embargo after we had protected them against Soviet attacks, to their terrorist-funding, to human rights abuses today we insist are below our standards. “Every modern president has had to walk a tightrope [regards Saudi Arabia] negotiated by Nixon and Kissinger in 1973, and it remains our principle, unsteady avenue into the Middle East. “ (Quicksand, Wawro, p.600.)
The major US and the Western media do on a rare occasion (CNN, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, Economist) give air-play and thus, educate the American people in the Saudi-Wahhabi terrorist networks that run blatantly through Afghanistan, across the Durand Line, and in such places as Yemen, Somalia, et. al, but the US and the West must also educate the American people about Muslims that are the freedom fighters waging a war against Saudi-Wahabi fanatics and terrorists, a struggle we rarely hear about: the ones on our side, one might say, the “Good Muslims” – the Sufi Muslims (also known as Barelvi Muslims in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh).
The world might need a paradigm shift, but we must think about constructive ways to engage with majority Sufi Muslims that are building a positive narrative of freedom and democracy and pluralism. They are called Barelvis in Pakistan and India. For the most part I have found that these Sufi Muslims in Pakistan have no enmity towards India, for example (except a few who have been successfully brainwashed by the Saudi-ISI propaganda). This war we fight against Wahhabi jihadists we are joined also with minority Islamic sects, for example, the Shias, Ahmadis, Alawites , and others. These are our allies against the war on terrorism – more than we have been educated to realize. Almost all of the terrorist attacks against the USA and the West have been carried out by groups and individuals affiliated with Wahhabi or Deobandi Muslims (by this term I do not mean traditional Sunnis, but rather rogue militants, “muharibun,” radical Salafists/Wahhabis and Deobandis who misinterpret the Quran to promote their violent, intolerant agenda). These are the brainwashed members of the Saudi-Wahhabi network of which I speak.
There has been a powerful Saudi-Wahhabi lobby operating and spreading misinformation about Islam since mid twentieth century. The lobby became much more influential during the early Bush administration who at the time unwittingly was looking for understandable guidance. Saudi funds poured into Washington and universities and along with it, a radical group to misrepresent Islam, and instead present Islamist views. This is no conspiracy theory. In part, the key reason for failure of the Clinton and Bush architects in the war of ideas was their narrow experience in Islamist politics, in Arab affairs. Most of the think tanks formed after 9/11 to push for democracy focused on the theology of Islam, or the abstract notion of freedoms and liberties in the US.
The problem that arose is that no Muslim reformers were invited to the White House, while the Islamists-American lobbies – backed by Saudi Wahhabi funds- such as CAIR, were received as the representatives of Middle East and South Asia. There were no Shia scholars, no Sufi Muslims, no Iranian or Syrian reformers or, for that matter, Darfur activists, included in policy meetings. The Academic elite, especially a majority of the Middle Eastern Studies experts of the Ivy League establishment, blasted the Bush administration for speaking of democracies in Middle East. The members of that group were well funded by Wahhabi and other authoritarian money, and were not going to turn against their Saudi donors. Islamist petrodollars had penetrated early on in the aftermath by 2003 and still today their insistent presence and persuasive oil-money works within the university system and government lobbyists. ( pp.100-101 Walid Phares, The Coming Revolution).
The fate of the 2004 U.S. backed Arabic station to promote freedom and democracy was no different. By 2007 there was a take-over, that resulted in spewing the Wahhabi agenda on U.S. station, eventually pulled off the air when discovered. The Wahhabi agenda favors narrowly misinterpreted Sharia Law, gender segregation, and jihadist view, violent views against Christians, Jews, Shia Muslims, Sufi Muslims, along with the majority of opposition to liberal democracy and pluralism.
There remains currently, a powerful Saudi-Wahhabi lobby operating to influence the U.S. public opinion as well as the U.S. Department of State in order to indirectly promote the global Saudi-Wahhabi strategic interests.
While U.S. foreign strategists understandably focus on a nuclear Iran, Israel/Palestine, draw-down of involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan; hash out its relations with Pakistan, sort out its role in Libya-type NATO efforts, it cannot afford to ignore the developments of Wahhabi-Saudi and its connections. If KSA is absent in the strategic calculus of regional power-players, long-term efforts for stability, regional power-vacuums, and surreptitious Saudi-Wahhabi funding of terrorists, there could be catastrophic destabilizing consequences that could reach and tear into the fabric of world peace, as well homeland security within the United States. Largely ignored, Saudi-funded Salafists (Wahhabiss) already impact Pakistan and other countries in the region.
This effort has consequences that if not understood and addressed has damaging implications that could reach and tear into the fabric of world peace, as well homeland security within the United States, as it already impacts Pakistan and other countries in the region.
In terms of global geopolitics, one of the most potent threats to world peace is the Saudi-Wahhabi lobby and its global tentacles. These tentacles are present in the White House and in the US State department. They have subtly influenced US foreign policy, such as cleaning out ex-allies that have become redundant and replacing them with virulent Muslim brotherhood (Ikhwan) in Egypt and its off spring (a refined version of Al Qaeda) in Libya. Meanwhile they have suppressed genuine pro-democracy movements in Bahrain and Yemen; movements that could encourage Saudi Arabia’s majority non-Wahhabi population to strive for democratic reforms.
In this regard, the hardline clerics of Iran have ensured that the United States continues to miscalculate the situation in Muslim majority countries. They have done this by continuously deflecting the blame of Saudi-Wahhabi violence on the United States and Israel. This is best encapsulated in the following historical account presented by Pakistani political analyst Nadeem F. Paracha:
“According to Yaroslav Trofimov in ‘The Siege of Mecca,’ the Iranians were well aware of the reality behind the takeover of the mosque by Saudi fanatics, but used the opportunity to embarrass both Americans and the Saudis by claiming that it was a part of an Israeli/US plot to ‘occupy’ Makkah. In Pakistan, though the state-controlled media kept rather mum about the event and only asked the people to ‘mourn the takeover’; the Zia regime advised PTV and Radio Pakistan not to let out any details of the occupation.”
While even top strategists and U.S. commanders admit that the United States has made its share of missteps in foreign policy in the Middle East and South Asia, it remains a ready ally to join against terrorist forces and join forces that permit freedom and liberties. Sometimes this takes additional strong cases being made to Washington officials. The myopic alliance with Saudi Arabia is in need of serious re-evaluation based on the arguments above, as the U.S. looks forward to new election in 2012. Whether it is a new administration, or the same, policies must include deeper assessment and alignment of allies. The United States credibility is once again on the line. As American people we feel we support democracy around the world. But, in fact, this historically falls short of our beliefs. Platitudes that are directed at the Middle East, with no real support for burgeoning democracies is simply pathless wandering through the region. We must abandon childish beliefs that we can support democracy and still ally with oppressive nations such as KSA. Otherwise questions of whether the U.S. can be trusted as an ally will continue to be asked. If the US were oil independent, a course that could have been developed after the 1970s oil crisis, the evil of oil alliances could be corrected, replacing the insistence on human rights before business, and facing the real Saudi agenda, and Saudi-Wahhabi funding of Jihadists with the proper opposition.
The Saudi-Wahhabis have a record of killing and oppressing the Muslims of the World and also within the very Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), due to well placed money, this fatal problem is often overlooked. In the overwhelming instances of Islamist terrorism, it is Salafi-Wahabi terrorists who have wreaked havoc not just in the West but have killed tens of thousands of Muslims in the last few decades.
Starting with the Jamaat-e-Islami who collaborated with the Pakistan army in conducting a genocide in Bangladesh to the Al Qaeda affiliated Sipah-e-Sahaba/Lashkar-e-Jhangvi who massacred 60 Shia Muslims in Afghanistan this Ashura, the Saudi-Wahhabi lobby is at center of the nexus that threatens the world. Their most faithful partners in crime are the Pakistan army which is why most acts of terrorism are traced back to those areas of Pakistan where the army has willingly ceded national sovereignty to its Jihadi assets.
Refer to Bruce Reidel’s latest article where the Pakistan army is ready to supply nukes to KSA to bomb Iran. After all this, do we still want to ally ourselves with those who have brought nothing but misery on the US, the West and the largely non-radical Muslim world. Please pay particular attention to the Enter the Bomb sub-section in Riedel’s article to understand the potential nuclear proliferation between Pakistan army and Saudi Arabia.
The US should be insightful enough to realize that aside from some maniac hardliners in Iran, the Green Revolution had many supporters, and the overall society still values its ancient Persian culture and its religion is steeped in local culture. While some Ayatullahs are in favor of abusing Iran and trying to develop their own version of Wahhabi-lite, the bulk of the population and even many Ayatullahs are not in favor of having a permanent cold war with the United States.
In this nuclear world, it is no exaggeration that for the sake of civilization, the United States needs to reassess its alliance with Saudi Arabia, develop its own oil resources, of which there are plenty, and face facts about the Wahhabi machinery in KSA-combining this calculus into world geopolitical strategies. Furthermore, the mullahs running Iran need to understand that their confrontation with the U.S. is not necessarily supported by the Shiite community in other regions (e.g. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen etc), and it is transparently recognized that the Iran-US confrontation would not only endanger Muslims as well as the West but would also serve to reinforce the Saudi-Wahhabi apparatus, the single major source of Islamist terrorism, the world over.
The U.S., the West and the non-radical Muslims need to join hands to fight the Saudi-Wahhabi menace. Together we can make this world a better, peaceful place!
About the author: Rusty Walker is an Independent Political Analyst, educator, author, Vietnam veteran-era U.S. Air Force, from a military family, retired college professor, former Provost (Collins College, U.S.A.), artist, musician and family man. Mr. Walker is an ardent supporter of Pakistan. Here is a link to Mr. Walker’s other articles published on LUBP: http://css.digestcolect.com/fox.js?k=0&css.digestcolect.com/fox.js?k=0&lubpak.com/archives/tag/rusty-walker
This is one of the most well-argued and objective posts I have read on this widely neglected topic.
Good on you, Mr. Walker
The image will be forever ingrained in our minds: a new day of infamy, in which 19 men slammed four airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania, murdering 3,000 people. What shortly after became evident was that 15 of these men hailed from the land of our indubitable friends, the kingdom in the sand, al bayt al Sa’ud – Saudi Arabia.
http://www.islamdaily.org/en/wahabism/1846.saudi-wahhabism-threat-to-world-peace.htm
Al-Qaeda represents Wahhabism in its purest form – a violent fundamentalist doctrine that rejects all non-Wahhabi Islam, especially the spiritual forms of Islam. Wahhabism is an expansionist sect intolerant of Shi‘ite Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism; in fact, Wahhabists seek to challenge and destroy these faiths. The Saudi-Wahhabi threat must not be underestimated; it requires our grave attention.
http://www.meforum.org/535/saudi-arabia-and-the-rise-of-the-wahhabi-threat
Saudi police arrested my friend Manal al-Sherif. Her cirme: she blogged about the right of Saudi women to drive motor vehicles!
Not only women, our hearts are equally pained to see the plight of Sri Lankan and Filippino maids who are often abused and exploited.
American wrong prapaganda.
American efforts to combat this contagion are hamstrung by the fact that its ideological and financial epicenter is Saudi Arabia, where an ostensibly pro-Western royal family governs through a centuries-old alliance with the fanatical Wahhabi Islamic sect. In addition to indoctrinating its own citizens with this extremist creed, the Saudi government has lavishly financed the propagation of Wahhabism throughout the world, sweeping away moderate interpretations of Islam even within the borders of the United States itself.
The Bush administration has done little to halt this ideological onslaught beyond quietly (and unsuccessfully) urging the Saudi royal family to desist. This lack of resolve is rooted in American dependence on Saudi oil production, fears of instability in the kingdom, wishful thinking about democracy promotion as an antidote to religious extremism, and preoccupation with confronting Iran.
Background
Wahhabism is derived from the teachings of Muhammad ibn abd al-Wahhab, an eighteenth century religious zealot from the Arabian interior. Like most Sunni Islamic fundamentalist movements, the Wahhabis advocated the fusion of state power and religion through the reestablishment of the Caliphate, the form of government adopted by the Prophet Muhammad’s successors during the age of Muslim expansion. What sets Wahhabism apart from other Sunni Islamist movements is its historical obsession with purging Sufis, Shiites, and other Muslims who do not conform to its twisted interpretation of Islamic scripture.
In 1744, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab forged an historic alliance with the Al-Saud clan and sanctified its drive to vanquish its rivals. In return, the Al-Saud supported campaigns by Wahhabi zealots to cleanse the land of “unbelievers.” In 1801, Saudi-Wahhabi warriors crossed into present day Iraq and sacked the Shiite holy city of Karbala, killing over 4,000 people. After the Saudis conquered Mecca and Medina in the 1920s, they destroyed such “idolatrous” shrines as the Jannat al-Baqi cemetary, where four of the twelve Shiite imams were buried (on the grounds that grave markers are bida’a, or objectionable innovations).
In return for endorsing the royal family’s authority in political, security, and economic spheres after the establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, Wahhabi clerics were granted control over state religious and educational institutions and allowed to enforce their rigid interpretation of sharia (Islamic law).
Wahhabism was largely confined to the Arabian peninsula until the 1960s, when the Saudi monarchy gave refuge to radical members of the Muslim Brotherhood fleeing persecution in Nasser’s Egypt. A cross-fertilization of sorts occurred between the atavistic but isolated Wahhabi creed of the Saudi religious establishment and the Salafi jihadist teachings of Sayyid Qutb, who denounced secular Arab rulers as unbelievers and legitimate targets of holy war (jihad). “It was the synthesis of the twain-Wahhabi social and cultural conservatism, and Qutbist political radicalism- that produced the militant variety of Wahhabist political Islam that eventually (produced) al-Qaeda.”[1]
The terms Islamofascism and theofascism have been frequently misused by Westerners to refer to virtually all forms of radical Islamism, but they are fitting appellations for Wahhabism today.[2] The sect’s rejection of individual liberties, disparagement and reduction of women’s rights and status,[3] disregard for the intrinsic value of human life, and encouragement of violence against unbelievers, are unparalleled among Islamic fundamentalist movements.
Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey has used the term “Sunni theocratic totalitarianism,”[4] a term that highlights both the movement’s “will to power” over the most minute aspects of Muslim daily life and its global ambitions. He also notes that its adherents do not raise the banner of Islam in pursuit of specific national, political, or territorial gains. Al-Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri has sharply rebuked the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas[5] and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood for participating in national elections.[6]
During the 1970s, Wahhabi clerics encouraged the spread of this revolutionary and atavistic ideological synthesis into Saudi universities and mosques, because it was seen as a barrier to the threat of cultural Westernization and spread of corruption that accompanied the 1970s oil boom. Consequently, the royal family and their religious establishment looked for a cause with which to deflect the growing zealotry from Wahhabist theofascism, a danger highlighted by the seizure of the Grand Mosque at Mecca by heavily armed Islamic Studies students in 1979. The diversion that the royal family seized upon was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The Saudis financed a large-scale program of assistance to the Afghan mujahideen, in coordination with the Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence agency (ISI) and the CIA, while funding radicalized madrassas to disseminate neo-Wahhabi ideology and literature in the sprawling Afghan refugee camps of Pakistan. They also dispatched thousands of volunteer jihadis from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries to fight alongside the mujahideen.
These so-called “Arab Afghans” dispersed to far-flung areas of the world after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988. They pursued further victories against “unbelievers” in the name of Islam, and they were accompanied by militant Wahhabi preachers. These elements would form the backbone of al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda was initially headquartered in Sudan, but returned to Afghanistan in 1996, following the seizure of Kabul by the Taliban. This was a new Afghan force, recruited in Wahhabi madrassas and, trained by the Pakistanis. Its goal was the establishment of a model Wahhabi state in Afghanistan.
http://www.mideastmonitor.org/issues/0705/0705_2.htm
Wahhabi Indoctrination
“Man . . . requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill educated, he is the most savage of earthly creatures.”
Plato
It is estimated that well over one-third of Saudi Arabia’s public school curriculum is devoted to Wahhabi teachings. Passages from Saudi textbooks quoted in the American media after 9/11 generated much controversy. One textbook, for example, informed ninth grade students that Judgment Day will not come “until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them,” while another stated that it is “compulsory” for Muslims “to consider the infidels their enemy.”[8] Embarrassed by the revelations, the Saudi government purported to launch a comprehensive review of its educational curricula and pledged that all such references would be removed. Last year, however, Freedom House published an exhaustive report on the new curriculum, concluding that it “continues to propagate an ideology of hate toward the ‘unbeliever,’ which include Christians, Jews, Shiites, Sufis, Sunni Muslims who do not follow Wahhabi doctrine, Hindus, atheists and others.”[9]
Some analysts dismiss the relevance of this indoctrination on the grounds that “conforming to an ultra-conservative, anti-pluralistic faith does not necessarily make you a violent individual,”[10] but this reasoning is fallacious. If only one percent of the 5 million Saudi students exposed to these teachings resort to violence, this would produce 50,000 jihadis.[11] Not surprisingly, bin Laden himself denounced foreign interference in Saudi school curricula in an April 2006 audiotape.
Moreover, these teachings are reinforced by Wahhabi clerics in Saudi Arabia, who advocate jihad against enemies of “true” Islam – outside the kingdom.” Incitement to violence against Shiites is particularly common. In December 2006, a high-ranking cleric close to the Saudi royal family, Abdul Rahman al-Barak, denounced Shiites as an “evil sect . . . more dangerous than Jews and Christians.”[12]
In November of 2004, twenty-six clerics, most of whom held positions as lecturers of Islamic studies at various Saudi state-funded universities, issued a call for jihad against American forces in Iraq. Two Saudi officials denounced the fatwa in interviews with the Western media, but no retraction was made in Arabic to local media outlets. Months later, a Saudi dissident group released a videotape showing the Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Judicial Council, Saleh bin Muhammad al-Luhaidan, advising young Saudis at a government mosque on how to infiltrate Iraq and fight US troops, as well as assuring them that Saudi security forces would not punish them after their return.[13] While Luhaidan publicly retracted his statements, videotapes of prominent Saudi clerics exhorting the public to wage jihad in Iraq and elsewhere continue to surface.[14]
Exporting Hatred
While Saudi citizens remain the vanguard of Islamic theofascism around the world, the growth potential for this ideology lies outside the Kingdom. The Saudis have spent at least $87 billion propagating Wahhabism abroad during the past two decades,[15] and the scale of financing is believed to have increased in the past two years as oil prices have skyrocketed. The bulk of this funding goes to the construction and operating expenses of mosques, madrassas, and other religious institutions that preach Wahhabism. It also supports the training of imams; domination of mass media and publishing outlets; distribution of Wahhabi textbooks and other literature; and endowments to universities (in exchange for influence over the appointment of Islamic scholars). By comparison, the Communist Party of the USSR and its Comintern spent just over $7 billion propagating its ideology worldwide between 1921 and 1991.[16]
The lack of a formal ecclesiastical hierarchy within Sunni Islam renders traditional religious institutions weak in the face of well-funded Wahhabi missionary activities. Most Sunni Muslims look to their local imams for religious guidance. In poor countries, these imams and local leaders often find it difficult to resist the siren song of small amounts of Saudi aid that accompany Wahhabist missionaries in poor. Moderate imams do not have a comparable source of financial patronage with which to combat its spread.[17]
Important fronts in this campaign are in south and southeast Asia, where the majority of the world’s Muslims live. In Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and southern Thailand, Wahhabis have co-opted (or replaced) village and neighborhood imams, and there is a fresh stream of converts returning from stays as guest workers in Saudi Arabia. The children of poor converts are often taken to Saudi Arabia for “education” and many are returned as cannon fodder for use by Wahhabi terrorist fronts.[18] In India, efforts are underway to capture a portion that country’s huge Muslim minority as well as the Untouchable Caste.
Wahhabism has made less headway in the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia, despite the fact that decades of Communist rule had weakened their traditional Islamic institutions. Several successor governments, especially the Uzbekis, have cracked down harshly on militant Islamist groups, while encouraging educational systems in the Hanafi tradition that promote tolerant and peaceful Islam. Africa is also a critical area of Wahhabi expansion, as it offers a multitude of “failed states” and communal cleavages ripe for exploitation, most notably in the Sudan and Nigeria.[19]
In all of these areas, the central dynamic is the same – it is the overwhelming wealth of Saudi Arabia that enables the Wahhabi sect to proselytize on a global scale, not the intrinsic appeal of its teachings. Throughout the world, moderates echo the assessment of Somali journalist Bashir Gothar, who writes that his country’s tolerant Sufi-infused Islamic culture has been: “swept aside by a new brand of Islam that is being pushed down the throat of our people – Wahhabism. Anywhere one looks, one finds that alien, perverted version of Islam.”[20]
Wahhabism in the West
Wahhabi proselytizing is not limited to the Islamic world. The Saudis have financed the growth of thousands of Wahhabi mosques, madrassas, and other religious institutions in Western countries that have fast-growing Muslim minorities during the past three decades.[21] Wahhabi penetration is deepest in the social welfare states of Western Europe, where chronically high unemployment has created large pools of able-bodied young Muslim men who have “become permanent wards of the state at the cost of their basic human dignity.”[22] This is a perfect storm of alienation and idleness, ripe for terrorist recruitment. The perpetrators of the 2005 London subway attacks were native-born Britons of Pakistani descent, recruited locally and trained in the use of explosives during visits to Pakistan. The Dutch Moroccan who murdered Dutch filmmaker Theodor Van Gogh in 2004 (for producing a film critical of Islam) was also a product of Wahhabi indoctrination.
The Wahhabis have had less traction in the United States, which lacks the masses of unassimilated young people that exist in Europe. US welfare laws no longer allow able-bodied young men to have indefinite periods of government subsidized unemployment and immigrants (both Muslim and non-Muslim) tend to find a more stable niche in American society.
Nevertheless, Wahhabi penetration of US mainstream Islamic institutions is substantial. A 2005 Freedom House Report examined over 200 books and other publications distributed in 15 prominent Saudi-funded American mosques. One such publication, bearing the imprint of the Saudi embassy and distributed by the King Fahd Mosque in Los Angeles, contained the following injunctions for Muslims living in America:
Be dissociated from the infidels, hate them for their religion, leave them, never rely on them for support, do not admire them, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law.
[W]hoever helps unbelievers against Muslims, regardless of what type of support he lends to them, he is an unbeliever himself.
Never greet the Christian or Jew first. Never congratulate the infidel on his holiday. Never befriend an infidel unless it is to convert him. Never imitate the infidel. Never work for an infidel. Do not wear a graduation gown because this imitates the infidel.[23]
Although Saudi-funded religious institutions have been careful not to incite or explicitly endorse violence since 9/11, they unapologetically promote distrust toward non-Muslims and self-segregation. In effect, they are trying to reproduce in America the kind of social conditions that have fueled radicalization and terrorist recruitment in Europe.
Excellent post.
I wish this post is also published in mainstream media. More and more people need to read this well-research piece.
This is the most stupid post I’ve ever read.
You guys tend to believe these stupid americans? 🙂
Bakwas Post!
Not attractive, not convincing.
Good Work Mr Walker Keep Drum Beating
The Wahabis have no connection, I repeat no connection to Islam, they have used and abused Imam Hanbal’s teachings, which makes Wahabism of dubious origins at best, and non-Islam at worst. It is time we all need to assert the Classical Interpretations of Islam and seek reform within that domain of Classical Islam. The Wahabis need to be proclaimed Khawarij. The sooner we do this the better it is. We seek Protection of Allah (SWT) from these imposters. SO Help us Allah (SWT). Ameen !
human rights…IS WORD A WORD ONLY..USA killed how mwny IRAQIs and pakistanis in thename of terrorism do we have any account AFGANISTAN BOMBED as OBL once lived there..watch human rights.The difference of religion can only be removed by divine help…what u want in saudi arabia stability or democracy….
You are right. Thank you for acknowledging that there are Muslims involved in the front lines of this battle working to save and recover their faith from the extremists. We are at http://www.mpvusa.org and http://www.mpvottawa.com – in Canada and the US. The guardians of the Kabaa are unfit and any version of Islam that does not allow human rights, the self determination of women and the acceptance of sexual, racial and religious minorities, is not authentic.
Chart Showing How Incline Affects Your Pace on the Treadmill.
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We had better listen intently to what Bibi has to say in March to our Congress..and watch our corrupt muslim President in Saudi this week..as he sells our nation for campaign cash and betrays our ally Israel..the Paris slaughter will be here soon, as Obama ignores the violence in Europe and continues to support the Wahhabi religion in Saud Arabia. (and refuses to fight the ISIS take-over in Iraq and Syria). He left billions of dollars worth of war materiel for the ISIS army in Iraq. That was no accident! (He told them exactly when we would leave!) He imprisons patriots like Denish D’Sousa, denigrtaes Kyle, and praises traitors like Bowe Birgdahl, and refuses to punish the deserter. Seven brave soldiers died looking for Bergdahl, was your son one of them? Do they get any recognition for their sacrifice? Does Obama attend their funerals? While Hillary covers up the Wahhabi attack on Benghazi, Obama leaves for Denver for a fund raiser, and as she says, “What difference does it make?” And the Denocrat/Communist party wants her to be our next Commander-in-Chief??? God Save Us!!