The Saudis are the Wall Street of international terrorism and anti-Semitism.
Robert Fisk: King Abdullah flies in to lecture us on terrorism
By Robert Fisk
Tuesday, 30 October 2007Saudi Arabia is a state which bankrolled – a definite no-no this for discussion today – Saddam's legions as they invaded Iran in 1980 (with our Western encouragement, let it be added). And which said nothing – a total and natural silence – when Saddam swamped the Iranians with gas. The Iraqi war communiqué made no bones about it. "The waves of insects are attacking the eastern gates of the Arab nation. But we have the pesticides to wipe them out."
Did the Saudi royal family protest? Was there any sympathy for those upon whom the pesticides would be used? No. The then Keeper of the Two Holy Places was perfectly happy to allow gas to be used because he was paying for it – components were supplied, of course, by the US – while the Iranians died in hell. And we Brits are supposed to be not keeping up with our Saudi friends when they are "cracking down on terrorism".
Like the Saudis were so brilliant in cracking down on terror in 1979 when hundreds of gunmen poured into the Great Mosque at Mecca, an event so mishandled by a certain commander of the Saudi National Guard called Prince Abdullah that they had to call in toughs from a French intervention force. And it was a former National Guard officer who led the siege.
Saudi Arabia's role in the 9/11 attacks has still not been fully explored. Senior members of the royal family expressed the shock and horror expected of them, but no attempt was made to examine the nature of Wahhabism, the state religion, and its inherent contempt for all representation of human activity or death. It was Saudi Muslim legal iconoclasm which led directly to the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban, Saudi Arabia's friends. And only weeks after Kamal Salibi, a Lebanese history professor, suggested in the late 1990s that once-Jewish villages in what is now Saudi Arabia might have been locations in the Bible, the Saudis sent bulldozers to destroy the ancient buildings there.
In the name of Islam, Saudi organisations have destroyed hundreds of historic structures in Mecca and Medina and UN officials have condemned the destruction of Ottoman buildings in Bosnia by a Saudi aid agency, which decided they were "idolatrous". Were the twin towers in New York another piece of architecture which Wahhabis wanted to destroy?
Nine years ago a Saudi student at Harvard produced a remarkable thesis which argued that US forces had suffered casualties in bombing attacks in Saudi Arabia because American intelligence did not understand Wahhabism and had underestimated the extent of hostility to the US presence in the kingdom. Nawaf Obaid even quoted a Saudi National Guard officer as saying "the more visible the Americans became, the darker I saw the future of the country ". The problem is that Wahhabi puritanism meant that Saudi Arabia would always throw up men who believe they had been chosen to "cleanse" their society from corruption, yet Abdul Wahhab also preached that royal rulers should not be overthrown. Thus the Saudis were unable to confront the duality, that protection-and-threat that Wahhabism represented for them.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-king-abdullah-flies-in-to-lecture-uusu-on-terrorism-398266.htmlMalise Ruthven: How the Saudis used oil money to export a hardline ideology that fuels Islamist terror
Tuesday, 30 October 2007Since the 1970s, when rising oil revenues enabled the Saudis to export the Wahhabi brand of fundamentalist Sunni Islam, Saudi Arabia has been a major exporter of ideas and values that differ from those espoused by Osama bin Laden and his followers on issues of strategy, but not on the broader perspectives.
During its years of rivalry with Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt, the Saudi government nurtured leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood which President Nasser had forced underground after an attempt on his life in 1954. Those exiled from Egypt included Muhammad Qutb, the brother of Sayyid Qutb – the Brotherhood's leading intellectual. His writings have helped to inspire a wave of terror attacks, from the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981 to the more recent attacks on New York, Madrid and London.
While Muhammad became a shade more moderate than his more famous brother, who was executed 1966, they shared the fundamental belief, which is incompatible with modern pluralism, that Islam (in its narrow, political version) is the only religion for humanity. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 11 September 2001 were Saudi citizens.
The Saudi monarchy, always vulnerable to the charge of corruption, nepotism and cosying up to the infidel West to protect its interests, may be belatedly opposed to the current manifestations of jihadism in Europe and America. But its very existence is the result of a successful jihadist movement launched by the kingdom's founder Ibn Saud between 1906 and 1926.
The movement was built around an alliance between a tribal confederation led by the Al Saud family and followers of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, an 18th-century preacher who sought to purge Arabian Islam of alien influences, including devotional practices which had grown up in the centuries since the death of Muhammad in 632.
The Wahhabi tribesmen who in 1924 conquered the Hijaz, the western part of what is now Saudi Arabia, were merciless. "I have seen them hurl themselves on their enemies, utterly fearless of death, not caring how many fall, advancing rank upon rank with only one desire: the defeat and annihilation of the enemy," wrote one Arab witness. "They normally give no quarter, sparing neither boys nor old men, veritable messengers of death from whose grasp no one escapes."
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/malise-ruthven-how-the-saudis-used-oil-money-to-export-a-hardline-ideology-that-fuels-islamist-terror-398267.html Hate material 'in one in four UK mosques'
By Nigel Morris, Home Affairs Correspondent
Tuesday, 30 October 2007
Material urging hatred of other religions can be found in mosques across Britain, most of it linked to Saudi Arabia, according to a new investigation.
Gordon Brown was challenged to raise the problem with King Abdullah when they hold talks in Downing Street tomorrow.
A year-long investigation by Policy Exchange, the centre-right think-tank, found that hate and separatist literature was available in one quarter of Britain's mosques and Islamic centres.
Researchers uncovered propaganda calling for homosexuals to be murdered, women to be subjugated and denouncing Jews and Christians as the enemies of Islam. A call was uncovered for jihad against "tyrants and oppressors", which is "best done through force if possible".
Many publications urged British Muslims to segregate themselves from non-Muslims and for "unbelievers" to be regarded as second class.
Most of the material is produced by agencies closely linked to the Saudi regime, according to the investigation. It included virulently anti-Semitic propaganda produced by the Saudi ministry of education.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hate-material-in-one-in-four-uk-mosques-398301.html 
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