You Can't Understand ISIS If You Don't Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia

[applegrove]

You Can't Understand ISIS If You Don't Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia

by Alastaire Crooke at the Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-wahhabism-saudi-arabia_b_5717157.html

"SNIP............


In the collaborative management of the region by the Saudis and the West in pursuit of the many western projects (countering socialism, Ba'athism, Nasserism, Soviet and Iranian influence), western politicians have highlighted their chosen reading of Saudi Arabia (wealth, modernization and influence), but they chose to ignore the Wahhabist impulse.

After all, the more radical Islamist movements were perceived by Western intelligence services as being more effective in toppling the USSR in Afghanistan -- and in combatting out-of-favor Middle Eastern leaders and states.

Why should we be surprised then, that from Prince Bandar's Saudi-Western mandate to manage the insurgency in Syria against President Assad should have emerged a neo-Ikhwan type of violent, fear-inducing vanguard movement: ISIS? And why should we be surprised -- knowing a little about Wahhabism -- that "moderate" insurgents in Syria would become rarer than a mythical unicorn? Why should we have imagined that radical Wahhabism would create moderates? Or why could we imagine that a doctrine of "One leader, One authority, One mosque: submit to it, or be killed" could ever ultimately lead to moderation or tolerance?

Or, perhaps, we never imagined.



.............SNIP"

[niyad]

1. k and r and bookmarking for later.

[smirkymonkey]

2. K&R

[Yorktown]

3. Absolutely. The funders of islamism are Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

[Jesus Malverde]

4. Great read...thanks!..nt

[Mojorabbit]

5. Marking to read later. nt