A post of mine from early last month, Imagine You're a Woman, describes the plight of women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. According to the interpretation of Islamic law in the KSA, women are basically slaves; they are treated in many ways not unlike cattle, needing a male to be in charge of them all their lives.
Riders on the storm
One commentator who responded to that post is Rider of Rohan, who said, in part: "Well, I'm a Muslim woeman myself, and somehow I feel the stuff written in this post are so typical of Saudi Arabia. And its taken as a benchmark for the way Islam is supposed to function."
Riders on the storm
Those words nail it.
The Saudis are on the scene, worldwide, with more petrodollars than a camel can carry. They use this money to spread Islam; but, it's not just any Islam, it's their brand of Islam: a particulary violent and intolerant version of Islam. The Saudis fund the construction and renovation of mosques, and they arrange for Islamic scholars to study Islam in their Kingdom; but, those who accept their help find a price tag hidden in the bargain: as Saudi influence spreads, the Islamic world becomes radicalized, intolerant, and explosively violent.
Into this house we're born
Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, explains his view: Why I Serve As Executive Director, Center for Islamic Pluralism (CIP) (I italicized the name of his book, where that is not done at his site -- YD):
June 7, 2007
A Bosnian supporter of my book The Two Faces of Islam wrote to me about the Saudi-funded Wahhabis there:
"I used to gaze into their faces, and believe me they are more than ready to kill us: ordinary Bosnian Hanafi Muslims. I clearly see it as I see this day. The only thing that prevents them from conducting that is the state, law enforcement and their small number which guarantees them complete disappearance if they commence such an adventure...
"They will kill us first. I have no doubt about that. I can show that their fascism (which is easy to establish) is primarily directed towards Muslims, as you can clearly follow up throughout the Muslim world wherever they have sizable followings.
"We are their first and last targets; accepting Islam you transformed yourself into their target."
Into this world we're thrown
"Believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabaeans -- whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does what is right -- shall be rewarded by their Lord; they have nothing to fear or to regret." Qur'an 2:62
Like a dog without a bone
In addition to being executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, Stephen Suleyman Schwartz is an author whose work appears in The Daily Standard and The Weekly Standard
The Saudi Connection
In Iraq and elsewhere, terrorism thrives with Saudi support.
by Stephen Schwartz
07/30/2007 12:00:00 AM
ALMOST SIX YEARS after September 11, 2001, and more than four years since the beginning of the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq, the American government and media have begun to admit something every informed and honest Muslim in the world has known all along. That is: the "Sunni insurgency" in Iraq, as well as 9/11 and certain acts of extremist Sunni violence inside Iraq before then, are consequences of the official status of the ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi sect in Saudi Arabia, Iraq's southern neighbor. Saudi Wahhabi clerics have preached and recruited for terror in Iraq; Saudi money has sustained it; the largest number of those who have carried out suicide bombings north of the Saudi-Iraqi border have been Saudi citizens.
Does this sound obvious and familiar? Perhaps to regular readers of THE WEEKLY STANDARD and THE DAILY STANDARD, which have reported frequently on the Saudi connection to terror in the Iraq war since the phenomenon first appeared. But the truth is finally seeping out elsewhere.
An actor out of role
On Friday, July 27, the Washington Post and the New York Times reported on the links between Saudi Arabia and the Wahhabi terror in Iraq, employing their usual cautious and polite language when dealing with the desert kingdom. The Post ran a Reuters rewrite of the Times reportage, casting the problem in terms of Saudi distrust for the Shia-led Iraqi administration of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and the resulting difficulties facing Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates as they visit the Saudis this week. Seven paragraphs down, the story quoted the Times about the real issue: "the Saudis had offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq and U.S. officials were increasingly concerned about its close Arab ally's 'counterproductive' role in Iraq."
Riders on the storm
"Counterproductive" is a euphemism for Saudi state subsidies to Wahhabi clerics who demand the genocide of Shia Muslims, urge young men to go north and sacrifice themselves to that end, and preach eulogies after their deaths. It is also a diplomatic way to describe the official Saudi policy of ignoring financial contributions by rich Saudi citizens to support Wahhabi terror in Iraq. Others might call such behavior acts of war rather than merely "counterproductive."
There's a killer on the road
The Times itself, in an article by Helene Cooper, further noted, "Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow."
His brain is squirmin' like a toad
Administration officials, the paper reported "spoke on the condition of anonymity because they believed that openly criticizing Saudi Arabia would further alienate the Saudi royal family." Then came the bald truth: "the majority of suicide bombers in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia [and] about 40 percent of all foreign fighters are Saudi. Officials said that while most of the foreign fighters came to Iraq to become suicide bombers, others arrived as bomb makers, snipers, logisticians and financiers."
Take a long holiday
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has "revealed" information about the Al Rajhi Bank, one of the kingdom's main financiers of Wahhabism, most of which has been available in print for several years. The "fresh" disclosures include the role of the Al Rajhi Bank in facilitating Saudi extremist operations. But the Journal admits that the Al Rajhi name appeared on a document many Westerners were loath to take seriously, the "Golden Chain" roster of al Qaeda donors seized by Bosnian authorities in Sarajevo, and handed over to the U.S. government in 2002.
Let your children play
The totalitarian ideology of our enemies places a focus of hatred on anyone who disagrees with them. You are not supposed to so much as question them, but merely accept their explanations and their views...
If ya give this man a ride
...submitting to their ideology until you are divorced from reality, unable to think independently, and waiting to be programmed; lost to humanity....
Sweet memory will die
Yet even the Journal seems not to have noticed that the Al Rajhi financial system's Suleiman Abdul Al-Aziz Al Rajhi also created the SAAR Foundation, an object of the federal raid known as GreenQuest, which struck a nest of Islamist entities in Northern Virginia in 2002.
Killer on the road, yeah
Why has there been so little media interest in the role of Saudi money and influence in Iraq and elsewhere? The best explanation is media cooperation with the official U.S. preference for the "quiet, behind-the-scenes influence" that one administration after another has defaulted to in dealing with Saudi problems, and which the Saudis exploit to continue their deceptive ways.
Girl ya gotta love your man
Saudis and Iraqis, even with own imperfect media, are much better informed. Here is what they have been reading.
Girl ya gotta love your man
* On July 25, the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan reported on 61 Saudis held in Iraqi jails. The inferred charge was terrorism.
Take him by the hand
* The day before, Al-Watan described an uproar over Saudi clerics advocating the destruction of Shia holy sites in Iraq. According to Iraqi sources, the Wahhabis have specifically called for the destruction of the shrines of Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in Karbala, and of Caliph Ali, the prophet's son-in-law, in Najaf--the two most sacred Shia sites. As also reported in Iraqi media, students at the Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, located in Riyadh and known as the "terrorist factory," have organized activist groups and sent members streaming north to join the onslaught on Iraqi Shias.
Make him understand
* On July 17, the Grand Mufti or chief Islamic cleric of the Saudi kingdom, Abd al-Aziz Al Ash-Shaykh, cautioned Saudis not to go to Iraq to engage in terror, and said that "those who mislead young Muslims, calling them to jihad, refuse to send their own sons to participate in the same conflict."
The world on you depends
* On July 16, the Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat quoted the comment of Prince Nayef, the Saudi interior minister who wriggles like an eel on this issue, that Saudis lured to participate in the Iraq terror are "brainwashed teenagers." The same day, the Saudi daily Al-Hayat interviewed U.S. Treasury undersecretary Stuart Levey, who argued that financing terror in Iraq is no different from contributing to al Qaeda elsewhere.
Our life will never end
* And the day before that, on July 15, the Wahhabi website Al-Sahat posted a list of Saudi terrorists recently killed in Iraq, with names, addresses, and dates and places of their demise.
Gotta love your man, yeah
This, too, is merely the beginning of a long inventory of such information reported in the Muslim world. Nobody can say the Saudis, Iraqis, and other Muslims do not know who organizes and supports the Wahhabi terror in Iraq.
Wow!
We -- the United States and our allies -- have deployed our military forces across the southern part of Asia, battling terrorists and their allies.
Riders on the storm
Yet, no one is dealing with the source of the hatred that is producing those terrorists, and no one is dealing with the source of the funding that trains and equips them.
Riders on the storm
For a variety of demographic reasons, birthrates in the Islamic world are quite high...
Into this house we're born
...and Saudi-trained and -funded "holy men" are ready to fill the minds of these young Muslims with violent Wahhabi hatred... a never-ending supply of suicide bombers, and petrodollars to equip them...
Into this world we're thrown
...preachers of hatred, waiting like so many spiders.
None of the recent "revelations" should come as a suprise to anyone. In 2002, THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported on the Al Rajhi financial network and terrorism; in 2003 on the Saudi injection of Wahhabi radicals into Iraq, including Saudi media publicity about their deaths in defense of Saddam Hussein and on Saudi involvement in combat against the U.S.-led coalition at Falluja; in 2004 on general Saudi support for terror in Iraq, and yet more on the Saudi involvement in the fight for Falluja.
Like a dog without a bone
One question remains: How many more American and Coalition soldiers, as well as innocent Iraqis, will be killed before the Saudis are compelled to end their support for terrorism in Iraq?
An actor out of role
US and allied troops continue to fight Saudi-backed and -supplied terrorists in Iraq....
Riders on the storm
Iran, seeing the threat posed to Shiites by Saudi-funded hatred, in part seeks merely to protect its own interests....
Riders on the storm
US and allied troops continue to fight Saudi-run and -funded Al Qaeda in Afghanistan....
Riders on the storm
Sibel Edmonds continues to be gagged by the US Presidential Administration of a friend of the Saudi elite....
Riders on the storm
Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and others are being sued by the likes of Saudi Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, the Saudi-backed Council on American Islamic Relations, and others....
Riders on the storm
And rank-and-file Muslims must Saudify, or face the consequences....
Riders on the storm
7 comments:
Wow, emotive and breathtaking post, Yankee! This is, as you say the crux of it: The Saudis are on the scene, worldwide, with more petrodollars than a camel can carry. They use this money to spread Islam; but, it's not just any Islam, it's their brand of Islam
It reminds me of that old Disney cartoon, the Sorceror's Apprentice where the brooms, enchanted by the apprentice, begin bringing water and can't be stopped.
As long as we're buying their oil, the enchanted helpers will keep coming, keep coming.
In Australia, we see the words "Sponsored by the Emirates" everywhere; a nice sanitized name so the public doesn't have to think about the fact that its filthy Saudi money seeping into just about every corner of the west's existence. How can we hope to resist when we are silenced by complicity!
That's why we need to find some other source of fuel and related products.
That's also why we need integrity in Washington.
One could argue that the Saudis are right, and that we're getting what we deserve, although not for the reasons the Saudis offer.
I like your analogy, except that, instead of water, it's napalm.
It will be fun to watch when the conflagration generates a backdraft that cooks the Saudi goose.
What an excellent article. So much information and so nicely presented. The lyrics from the song (which I really like) are such nice break points and actually fit the information preceding them.
You say: "Yet, no one is dealing with the source of the hatred that is producing those terrorists, and no one is dealing with the source of the funding that trains and equips them."
I think this is one of THE biggest problems as we continue to give money to the Saudis. In fact, each year in our supplemental funding bills (I believe) we have money allotted for Saudi Arabia. It baffles the mind.
Debbie
Right Truth
http://www.righttruth.typepad.com
The refusal at the beginning of this year of the Blair government "in the interests of national security" to allow the long-running fraud investigation into the massive slush fund alleged to have been provided by British Aerospace to "reward" Saudi princes for a huge arms contract marked the nadir of Blair's integrity.
He had obviously been 'leaned on' by the Saudis, and one does wonder what their hold over UK/US policymakers is.
And now Blair is the 'impartial' peacemaker for the Quartet in the Middle East, and is negotiating for millions of Murdoch dollars for his mendacious memoirs.
Ye Gods!
Schwartz will be killed before most of us. As a member of an order
that sees Islam diffrently he is more likely to be killed than ordnary infidels.
However, Jews still come before appostates in most cases.
Saudi Arabia is a cash-paying customer, which is important for our arms industry. If you label them a state sponsor of terror, which they are, tens of billions of dollars of arms sales per year would have to get axed.
Turkey and Pakistan are big recipients of US foreign aid, which in turn goes to buy US arms. This ostensibly contributes to the security of our allies and brings jobs to America.
However, tied in with offsets, the net result is that more jobs actually leave America, as Turkey gets a boost to its high-tech industry by being allowed to produce F-16's and other weapons systems under license, and we have to buy Turkish produced exports (carpets, clothes, furniture). And, since it's all paid for by US subsidies (in the case of Turkey and Pakistan), the bill for all this goes to the US taxpayer.
Not to mention that Turkey is the main marshalling and transshipment point for South Asian heroin coming westward....
See my posts under the label Counterjihad, Inc.
Interestingly, Beak, the main source of dissent within the terrorist ranks is who should be first on the list of people to die. Some of these guys think America and Israel should be first, some of them think the killing should start with Muslims who aren't faithful enough....
Yankee said That's why we need to find some other source of fuel and related products.
Salty Dog (who posts at TMS) always says the same thing whilst having to explain to other Conservatives that its not about the manmade GW religion but about disabling the Mid. East by cutting out their oil money.
Unfortunately, it's a hard mindset to break, the oil loving one. I agree that it's essential that we cut the power supply to these barbarians.
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