One basic truism in today’s world is that to get answers, one follows the money. After all, nowadays it’s money that makes the world go around. So how about terrorism and the spread of violent, fundamental Islam?
Turns out that it works for that too. But first, let’s define violent Islam.
It’s called Wahhabism and was created in the 18th century by some guy that wore a funny hat. It was (and is) an attempt to return Islam to it’s roots and eliminate all western influence. Kind of like Jerry Falwell and his bunch, but with guns. Saudi Arabia, that cradle of Wahhabism, soon became their target due to the modernization policies of the Saud family.
To understand why the Saudis would fund a movement that now terrorizes even their own society, some history is in order. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was born of a kind of marriage of convenience between the House of Saud and the strict Wahhab sect of Islam. In the 18th century, Mohammed ibn Saud, a local chieftain and the forebear of today's ruling family, allied himself with fundamentalists from the Wahhab sect.
Over the next 200 years, backed by the Wahhabis, Saud and his descendants conquered much of the Arabian peninsula, including Islam's holiest sites, in Mecca and Medina. Puritanical and ascetic, the Wahhabis were given wide sway over Saudi society, enforcing a strict interpretation of certain Koranic beliefs. Their religious police ensured that subjects prayed five times a day and that women were covered head to toe. Rival religions were banned, criminals subjected to stoning, lashing, and beheading. That’s why Saudi Arabia is so intolerant today.
The Wahhabis were but one sect among a back-to-the-roots movement in Islam that had limited attraction overseas. But that began to change, first with the flood of oil money in the 1970s, which filled Saudi coffers with billions of petrodollars. Next came the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, in 1979. Most ominously for the Saudis, however, was a third shock that same year: the brief but bloody takeover by militants of the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
Threatened within the kingdom, and fearful that the radicals in Tehran would assert their own leadership of the Muslim world, the Saudis went on a spending spree. From 1975 through last year, the kingdom spent over $70 billion on overseas aid, according to a study of official sources by the Center for Security Policy, a Washington think tank. More than two thirds of that amount went to "Islamic activities"--building mosques, religious schools, and Wahhabi religious centers, says the CSP's Alex Alexiev, a former CIA consultant on ethnic and religious conflict.
The Saudi funding program, Alexiev says, is "the largest worldwide propaganda campaign ever mounted"--dwarfing the Soviets' propaganda efforts at the height of the Cold War. The Saudi weekly Ain al-Yaqeen last year reported the cost as "astronomical" and boasted of the results: some 1,500 mosques, 210 Islamic centers, 202 colleges, and nearly 2,000 schools in non-Islamic countries. So they paid their own fundamentalists to cause trouble anywhere but at home. Nice.
Saudi National Charities and the Financing of International Terrorism:
IIRO - International Islamic Relief Organization. Headed by Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah Al al-Sheikh (Grand Mufti, Saudi Cabinet Member) Grand Mufti, like in Star Wars, Chairman of Constituent Council of World Muslim League. Receives Donations from Saudi Royal Family.
WAMY World Assembly of Muslim Youth, Headed by Sheikh Saleh bin Abdul Aziz Al al-Sheikh (Minister of Islamic Affairs, Saudi Cabinet Member)Chairman of WAMY Secretariat. Receives Donations from Saudi Royal Family.
Charitable Foundations of al-Haramain. Headed by Sheikh Saleh bin Abdul Aziz Al al-Sheikh (Minister of Islamic Affairs, Saudi Cabinet Member) Chairman of al-Haramain Administrative Council. Receives Donations from Saudi Royal Family.
The charities were part of an extraordinary $70 billion Saudi campaign to spread their fundamentalist Wahhabi sect worldwide. The money helped lay the foundation for hundreds of radical mosques, schools, and Islamic centers that have acted as support networks for the jihad movement. U.S. intelligence officials knew about Saudi Arabia's role in funding terrorism by 1996, yet for years Washington did almost nothing to stop it.
Examining the Saudi role in terrorism, a senior intelligence analyst says, was "virtually taboo." Even after the embassy bombings in Africa, moves by counterterrorism officials to act against the Saudis were repeatedly rebuffed by senior staff at the State Department and elsewhere who felt that other foreign policy interests outweighed fighting terrorism. If the Saudis' efforts had been limited to pushing fundamentalism abroad, their work would have been cause for controversy. But some Saudi charities played a far more troubling role.
U.S. officials now say that key charities became the pipelines of cash that helped transform ragtag bands of insurgents and jihadists into a sophisticated, interlocking movement with global ambitions. Many of those spreading the Wahhabist doctrine abroad, it turned out, were among the most radical believers in holy war, and they poured vast sums into the emerging al Qaeda network.
Over the past decade, according to a 2002 report to the United Nations Security Council, al Qaeda and its fellow jihadists collected between $300 million and $500 million--most of it from Saudi charities and private donors.
The origins of al Qaeda are intimately bound up with the Saudi charities, intelligence analysts now realize. Osama bin Laden and his followers were not exactly holy warriors; they were unholy fundraisers. In Afghanistan, Riyadh and Washington together ponied up some $3.5 billion to fund the mujahideen--the Afghan fighters who took on the Soviets. At the same time, men like bin Laden served as fundraisers for the thousands of foreign jihadists streaming into Afghanistan. By persuading clerics across the Muslim world to hand over money from zakat, the charitable donations that are a cornerstone of Islam, they collected huge sums. They raised millions more from wealthy princes and merchants across the Middle East. Most important, they joined forces with the Saudi charities, many already moving aid to the fighters.
Getting the picture? Saudi Arabia. They were scared of Saddam enough to allow the US to fight for them and save their asses. How kind that they provided bases for our forces.
They keep status as a valued ally yet push the terrorists out of their own country and pay for their existence and actions over the rest of the planet. They seem to be hoping that the world will finally cry “enough!” and wipe them out so the Saud family can stay in business.
Now, are you still falling for the crap that all Islam is the same and they’re all bad guys? Like any other religious group, they have sects that have their own political agenda and they’re willing to fight for it till the money runs out. Now that you know where the money is coming from, can you possibly deduce who the real bad guys are? Well can you?
Written By: Lorenzo Sticky, of Bumfuk Florida
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