posted by Christopher W Holton
Doug Bandow, writing in the Orange County Register, reminds us that Saudi Arabia has created breeding grounds for Jihadists around the world.
Excerpts and link below…
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have attacked their neighbor, Qatar, for supposedly supporting terrorism. They pretend to be firefighters, but spent years as arsonists.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been consolidating power while posing as a reformer. The only positive so far of his de facto reign is his recent decision to liberalize Saudi social life. Women now can breathe and even drive.
However, he has not relaxed political or religious controls. Most important, while limiting the influence of fundamentalist clerics at home, he has not yet dropped the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s longstanding support for radical Islamism abroad.
The KSA spends as much as $4 billion annually promoting its uniquely intolerant brand of Salafist Islamic thought, aimed at the “purification” of the faith known as Wahhabism. By enforcing this rigidly intolerant theology the KSA has acted like a housebroken version of the Islamic State.
Indeed, the two powers used the same school textbooks. Reported the New York Times, ISIS “circulates images of Wahhabi religious textbooks from Saudi Arabia in the schools it controls. Videos from the group’s territory have shown Wahhabi texts plastered on the sides of an official missionary van.”
In recent years the Saudi royals have spent $3 to $4 billion a years on educational fellowships and scholarships, Islamic clergy and scholars, academics and journalists, construction projects, operating funds, and school materials.
Textbooks and other materials tend to show anyone who does not profess Wahhabist precepts in, shall we say, a bad light. Over the years a number of studies have found highly negative results.
“A number of violent extremists around the world have reported that their radicalization first began when they were exposed to Salafist literature or websites.”
Riyadh wants to play America’s friend. However, as long as the KSA creates fertile ground for Islamic extremism, the U.S. is likely to find terrorists being created faster than they are being killed.
