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Quotes on Saudi Arabia

"We can't get around the fact that the House of Saud underwrites the mosque schools that turn out the jihadists, just as it administers the charities that fund the jihadists. It channels the anger of the jihadists against the west to distract it from the rot in the House of Saud."
-- Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil

"Backed by money from Saudi Arabia, Wahhabis have built or taken over hundreds of mosques in North America and opened branches of Saudi universities here for the training of imams as part of the effort to spread their beliefs, which are intolerant of Christianity, Judaism, and even other strains of Islam."
-- "Spreading Saudi Fundamentalism in U.S.", Oct. 2nd, 2003 Washington Post article

Starting in the late 1980s--after the dual shocks of the Iranian revolution and the Soviet war in Afghanistan--Saudi Arabia's quasi-official charities became the primary source of funds for the fast-growing jihad movement. In some 20 countries, the money was used to run paramilitary training camps, purchase weapons, and recruit new members.

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, officials say.

Princely Giving
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.

Accompanying the money, invariably, was a blizzard of Wahhabist literature. Wahhabist clerics led the charge, causing moderate imams to worry about growing radicalism among the faithful. Critics argue that Wahhabism's more extreme preachings--mistrust of infidels, branding of rival sects as apostates, and emphasis on violent jihad--laid the groundwork for terrorist groups around the world.

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.

U.S. intelligence agencies, meanwhile, were picking up disturbing "chatter" out of Saudi Arabia. Electronic intercepts of conversations implicated members of the royal family in backing not only al Qaeda but also other terrorist groups, several intelligence sources confirmed to U.S. News. None were senior officials--the royal family has some 7,000 members. But several intercepts implicated some of the country's wealthiest businessmen. "It was not definitive but still very disturbing," says a senior U.S. official. "That was the year [1996] we had to admit the Saudis were a problem." Despite the mounting evidence, the issue of Saudi complicity with terrorists was effectively swept under the diplomatic rug. In the CIA, merely getting permission to prepare a report on a subject can require up to five levels of approval. On the subject of Saudi ties to terrorism, the word came back: There was simply no interest. The result, says a CIA veteran, was "a virtual embargo."

It didn't hurt that the Saudis had spread money around Washington by the millions. Vast sums from Saudi contracts have bought friends and influence here. "The Saudis put out the message," former CIA operative Bob Baer wrote. "You play the game--keep your mouth shut about the kingdom--and we'll take care of you." The list of beneficiaries is impressive: former cabinet secretaries, ambassadors, and CIA station chiefs. Washington lobbyists, P.R. firms, and lawyers have also supped at the Saudi table, as have nonprofits from the Kennedy Center to presidential libraries.

After finding that bin Laden's inherited wealth was largely gone and his Sudanese businesses failing, the question was, where did the money come from? The answer, the NSC task force eventually concluded, was Saudi charities and private donors. In the Middle East, the CIA learned, Saudi donations were funding as much as half of Hamas's budget and paying off the families of suicide bombers. In Pakistan, so much Saudi money poured in that a mid-level Pakistani jihadist could make seven times the country's average wage. Jihad had become a global industry, bankrolled by the Saudis. The Saudis had virtually no financial regulatory system and zero oversight of their charities; Saudi police and bank regulators had never worked together. In Pakistan, meanwhile, President Pervez Musharraf has twice asked Riyadh to curtail the millions of Saudi dollars that pour into local Islamic political parties, jihad groups, and religious schools. Again, the Saudis have promised change, but Pakistani officials are skeptical.

-- "How billions in oil money spawned a global terror network", U.S. News & World Report (12/15/03)

[Scenario:] "Feminists get together a small international army and take over Saudi Arabia. We are able to do this with a minimum of violence because the men of the royal family are so freaked out at the idea of being attacked by women--and so unable to take the attack seriously--that they barely fight back. They are victims of their own prejudice.
We then free Saudi women from the palace women's quarters, harems, veils, and a status as chattel so complete that they are not allowed to drive cars and legally can be executed for infidelity. (Actually, we've had subversive agents there for some time: the fed-up wives of American oil executives, and reliable reports of Ms. magazine being read in the harem. More important, Saudi women have been coming in disguise to international women's conferences.) Together, we turn to the world, and say: "Now deal. You want this oil? Here's what you have to do for women and all your powerless groups. Here's how you redistribute the wealth, and overthrow systems based on sex, race, and class. Otherwise--no oil."
-- Gloria Steinem, revealing a certain apparent "neo-con" streak, in her article "Rx Fantasies: For Temporary Relief of Pain due to Injustice" (first published in the July 1980 issue of Ms. Magazine, and included in her 1983 book Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions).

Here are some appropriate Arabic-language slogans about Saudi Arabia:

AnonMoos
4/15/2005

Go up to the "Symbolic Truth Middle East Graphics Site" main page (which includes further quotes relevant to a full explanation of the "Saudia in Partes Tres" graphic).

Go to a preliminary placeholder page for my website on the Zanj Revolt (the Black African slave liberation movement resisting Arab oppression in southern Iraq during the years 869-883 A.D.).

Go to a map of early ancient historical Israel (the Biblical United Monarchy).

Go to the Tengwar Arabic Mode writing system for the Arabic language.