Goldfinger

(Source: Hatred's Kingdom, by Dore Gold, Copyright 2003 by Dore Gold, Published by Regnery Publishing, Inc. USA; ISBN 0-89526-135-9; numbers in brackets are page numbers.)

A review of recent history in the Balkans….

By the end of 1992, an estimated four hundred Saudi volunteers were fighting with Muslim forces in Bosnia. These were in addition to Afghan veterans from Egypt, Pakistan, Sudan and Algeria. Because of serious ideological and religious differences between Arab soldiers and native Bosnians, in 1993 a separate El-Muzhahidun regiment was formed.
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This unit had questionable military value.
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But the Arab force acquired a reputation as fierce fighters, known to have severed the heads of the “Christian Serbs” and mutilated their enemies’ bodies. These acts, however, frequently undermined the cause of the Bosnian Muslims, who presented themselves as the victims of Serb brutality. [143-4]

The native Bosnian Muslims were involved in a war with significant ethnic overtones. Radical Muslim soldiers from overseas hurt the Bosnian Muslim cause more than helping it: by radicalizing it, by giving "the Muslims” a reputation for atrocities, and quite likely by provoking more harsh reactions from their enemies.

Its proxies' military capabilities coming up pathetically short, the real threat posed by the Saudi Kingdom was a monetary one: financial jihad (see a related post at The Gathering Storm ), run through Islamic charities.

Saudi money had more influence in the Bosnian struggle.
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On August 11, 1995, King Fahd himself sponsored a telethon in Saudi Arabia that raised more than $100 million. These charities were instrumental in moving volunteers and especially supplies to the Bosnian front.
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Saudi officials confirmed that the charities also provided arms and backing for the Arab volunteers. [144]

With Saudi financial backing of Wahhabi ideological conquest, the deck was stacked in favor of extremism in a new era of Islamic ideological imperialism:

Both the Saudi volunteers and the Saudi charities propagated Wahhabism to the Bosnian Muslims. They were disappointed with the type of Islam they encountered in Bosnia. [144-5]

Once the Saudis identified a lower form of religious life, the ideological conquest began.

The Saudi charities stayed active in the Balkans even when the postwar reconstruction efforts were under way, but the clash between the Saudi donors’ Wahhabism and the Balkan recipients’ form of Islam became ever more glaring. [145]

In a Darwinistic struggle, survival went to the best-financed. Historic Balkan mosques, not true enough to Islamic ideals – as understood by the Wahhabists – were plastered over and reworked, or just demolished and replaced altogether.

Thus, just as the Wahhabi-influenced Taliban destroyed Buddhist statues in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley, the Wahhabis in the Balkans had no problem tearing down the symbols of other cultures, no matter their archaeological and cultural value. But in this case, they were destroying Islamic culture. Saudi Wahhabism sought to restore the puritanical Islam of the seventh century, skipping over the centuries of Islamic civilization under the Ottoman Empire.

A clear cultural clash was under way. The head of the UN mission in Bosnia noted, “There is a conflict here between a Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi interpretation of Islam and an Ottoman perception.” Indeed, one Bosnian official confessed, “We have a big problem with the Saudis; they are spreading around huge amounts of money to help rebuild Bosnia. But, they are also building mosques and spreading a version of Islam that is alien to our Bosnian Islam.” [145-6]

The Saudi influence went beyond ideological or religious imperialism; in an overt act of cultural imperialism, some Albanian radio stations began to offer nightly broadcasts in Arabic, prompting Albanian Muslims to wonder if they were suddenly in an Arab country. [146]


The Saudi Kingdom is rich with petrodollars. The black gold under their desert gives the royal sponsors of ideological imperialism a midas touch; with Islam having spread to so much of the world, the Saudi Royal Family needs only to rearabize the Islamic World in order to turn an existing Islamic Empire into its own Arab Empire, all while helping the Islamic conquest to gain momentum.

At the same time, the connections between the Saudi charities in the Balkans and international terrorism came into focus. In October 2001, a NATO force raided the offices of the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia in Sarajevo. The commission, founded in 1993 by Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, was supposed to help Bosnian war orphans, and had raised $600 million. But the NATO raid turned up maps of Washington, D.C., with bull’s-eyes on U.S. government buildings, a computer program explaining how to use crop-duster aircraft (a method of spreading chemical weapons), and photographs of past American targets of terrorist attacks. [146]

Desiring resources for a variety of reasons, Islamic communities around the world are lured to accept the enticing bait of Saudi help. That help, however, has turned out to be the kiss of death to the rich traditions that have developed in these Islamic communities -- as well as to the traditions of the infidel communities around them.

For the Saudis, Wahhabi extremist ideology and its associated terrorism are an instrument of imperialistic foreign policy; the combination is worth its weight in gold.

Goldfinger
He's the man, the man with the Midas touch
A spider's touch
Such a cold finger
Beckons you to enter his web of sin
But don't go in

Golden words he will pour in your ear
But his lies can't disguise what you fear
For a golden girl knows when he's kissed her
It's the kiss of death ...

Goldfinger