"Investing
in terror"
"As things stand, whether intentionally or not, there's a reasonable probability that funds from the ambassador's wife helped pay for the scheme that murdered thousands of Americans. And that the President knew this when he lunched with her at Crawford a few weeks ago." (Mark Steyn)
News and commentary on Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism.
Part 1: 2001/09/22 - 2001/12/31
Part 2: 2002/01/04 - 2002/06/18
Part 3: 2002/07/08 - 2002/11/30
Part 4: 2002/12/01 - 2003/04/29
Part 5: 2003/05/01 -
November 2002
"The Princess and Her 'Charities'" (Stephen Schwartz, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/12/09 issue)
"Bush and the Saudi princess" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2002/11/30 issue)
"A Golden Couple Chasing Away a Black Cloud" (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 2002/11/27)
"CIA: Saudis still sending tens of millions to Al Qaida" (World Tribune.com, 2002/11/27)
"The End of an Alliance" (Alex Alexiev, National Review, from the 2002/10/28 issue)
"Saudis Face U.S. Demand On Terrorism" (Douglas Farah, The Washington Post, 2002/11/26)
"The Real Axis of Evil" (Stephen Schwartz, New York Post, 2002/11/25)
"Palace Intrigue" (Jason Zengerle, The New Republic, 2002/11/24)
"The Saudi Money Trail" (Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas, Newsweek, from the 2002/12/02 issue)
"Greed and torture at the House of Saud" (John Sweeney, The Observer, 2002/11/24)
"9/11 Report Says Saudi Arabia Links Went Unexamined" (David Johnston and James Risen, The New York Times, 2002/11/23)
"Egyptian Christian Copts on Prejudice in Egypt & Saudi Arabia" (MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 110, 2002/11/12)
"Frederick's of Riyadh" (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 2002/11/10)
"Saudis test limits of freedom" (BBC News, 2002/11/09)
"Saudi Arabia Searches for a More Flexible Social Contract" (Philip Taubman, The New York Times, 2002/11/07)
"Under the Ramadan Moon" (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 2002/11/06)
"Saudi minister rebukes religious police" (BBC News, 2002/11/05)
"Saudis: No airspace, bases for Iraq strike" (CNN.com, 2002/11/04)October 2002
"Defeating Wahhabism" (Stephen Schwartz, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/10/25)
"Can We Coexist? A Response from Americans to Colleagues in Saudi Arabia" (Institute for American Values, 2002/10/23)
"U.S.: Al Qaida funded by only 12 individuals, most Saudis" (World Tribune.com, 2002/10/20)
"U.S. Pinpoints Top Al Qaeda Financiers" (Douglas Farah, The Washington Post, 2002/10/18)
"Report Decries Saudi Laxity" (Douglas Farah, The Washington Post, 2002/10/17)
"Saudi link to Bali blast, says al-Qaeda prisoner" (Mark Huband, Financial Times, 2002/10/15)September 2002
"Friday Sermons in Saudi Mosques: Review and Analysis" (MEMRI, Special Report - No. 8, 2002/09/26)
"Columnist for Saudi Daily Al-Jazirah: Jews Use Blood for Baked Goods" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 421, 2002/09/19)
"Saudi Arabia recalls envoy who praised bomber" (Richard Beeston, The Times, 2002/09/19)
"Saudis May Change Stance on Iraq" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/15)
"David Duke's Kinda Kingdom" (Deroy Murdock, New York Post, 2002/09/15)
"A Sense Of Betrayal" (Lisa Chedekel, The Hartford Courant, 2002/09/08)
"What, Saudis worry? Pass the caviar" (Tito Drago, Asia Times, 2002/09/03)August 2002
"Saudi Reactions to the Lawsuit by September 11 Families" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 416, 2002/08/30)
"Saudi Foreign Minister Says Iraq Attack 'Unwise'" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/08/28)
"I'm With Dick! Let's Make War!" (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 2002/08/28)
"Kabul Terror Lab Said Found at Ex-Saudi NGO Office" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/08/25)
"Saudis In $200M Deal With Devil" (Niles Lathem and William J. Gorta, New York Post, 2002/08/25)
"Shilling for the House of Saud" (Matt Welch, National Post/Matt Welch, 2002/08/24)
"The Saudis' Bad Press" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/08/16)
"Saudi Arabia gives US the cold shoulder" (Michael Evans, The Times, 2002/08/15)
"Saudi King Vacations in Luxury" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/08/14)
"The Saudi Way" (Simon Henderson, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/08/12)
"The Mideast Threat That's Hard to Define" (Youssef M. Ibrahim, The Washington Post Outlook, 2002/08/11)
"Saudis blame Jews for hostile views" (UPI, 2002/08/07)
"Our Enemies the Saudis (Continued)" (Michael Barone, usnews.com, 2002/08/07)
"Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies" (Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2002/08/06)
July 2002
"Do We Still Need the Saudis?" (Romes Ratnesar, TIME, 2002/07/28)
"Expat Brits live in fear as Saudis turn on the West" (Paul Harris et al., The Observer, 2002/07/28)
"Britons left in jail amid fears that Saudi Arabia could fall to al-Qaeda" (Martin Bright et al., The Observer, 2002/07/28)
"Human Development in the Arab World: A Study by the United Nations" (Nimrod Raphaeli, MEMRI, 2002/07/25)
"Still Hung Up on Sept. 11?" (Annie Naseem, Arab News, 2002/07/18)
"Our Enemies, the Saudis" (Victor Davis Hanson, Commentary, from the July/August 2002 issue)
"A Few Saudis Defy a Rigid Islam to Debate Their Own Intolerance" (Neil MacFarquhar, The New York Times, 2002/07/12)
"Perfidious Belgium" (Paul Belien, The Spectator, from the 2002/07/13 issue)
"The West must stop kidding itself about Saudi Arabia" (Simon Henderson, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/07/11)
"Saudi envoy: Israel occupation worse than Nazis" (Reuters/Haaretz, 2002/07/09)
"A Clash of Cultures and Religions" (Fox News, 2002/07/08)
"The Princess and Her 'Charities'" (Stephen Schwartz, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/12/09 issue)
More on the Saudi Money Trail: "Prince Bandar, like almost all members of the Saudi royal family, belongs to the Wahhabi sect of Islam, the extremist state religion of Saudi Arabia. ... Prince Bandar and Princess Haifa know that the Wahhabi religious hierarchy in Saudi Arabia preaches hatred and contempt for Christians, Jews, traditional Muslims, Shiites, Hindus, and Sikhs. They know that the same religious hierarchy has operated Islamic outreach and charitable institutions like the Muslim World League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, and the International Islamic Relief Organization (all with offices in the United States) that have served as cover for terrorism. They know that financial gifts or donations to these bodies or their hangers-on are likely to end up in the hands of the terrorists. ... More important, September 11 was an outcome of the indoctrination of Saudi society in the Wahhabi mentality. The same is true of the money trail that now turns out to have soiled the princess's expensive shoes. The tracing of terrorist funds to the royal family cannot come as a surprise to anyone who understands the intimate relationship of the Saudi state to Wahhabi extremism. The Saudi royals are so embedded in Wahhabism they are conditioned to ignore the consequences of such 'charity.'""Bush and the Saudi princess" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2002/11/30 issue)
Steyn on the Saudi money trail between Princess Haifa and two of the hijackers: "As things stand, whether intentionally or not, there's a reasonable probability that funds from the ambassador's wife helped pay for the scheme that murdered thousands of Americans. And that the President knew this when he lunched with her at Crawford a few weeks ago. ... Clearly, the House of Saud has come to an arrangement with al-Qa'eda, and this arrangement involves, among other things, money. More interesting is why the administration insists on pretending otherwise. On 20 September, George W. Bush said, 'You're either with us or you're with the terrorists.' A couple of weeks later, a small number of us began pointing out the obvious: the Saudis are with the terrorists. But the US-Saudi relationship is now so unmoored from reality that it's all but impossible to foresee how it could be tethered to anything as humdrum as the facts. ... Meanwhile, Bandar, a humble ambassador from an economically moribund theocratic dictatorship, gets received like a head of state. Nothing quite explains the administration's willingness to assist the Saudis in making a mockery of America's war on terror. Even murkier rumours that the royal house has the goods on Bush and Cheney for some dark oil-biz shenanigans can't account for the scale of the administration's denial. We have a huge Saudi-financed pile of American corpses, the Saudis are openly unco-operative, and meanwhile back at the ranch it's ribs with Princess Haifa." (See also: "A Golden Couple Chasing Away a Black Cloud" (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 2002/11/27) and "The Saudi Money Trail" (Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas, Newsweek, from the 2002/12/02 issue))"A Golden Couple Chasing Away a Black Cloud" (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 2002/11/27)
"Prince Bandar is known as the Arab Gatsby. Rising from a murky past in a racist society, born in a Bedouin tent as the son of an African palace servant impregnated by a Saudi prince, to a glamorous present as dean of the Washington diplomatic corps. ... Flying off in his private Airbus to hunt birds in Spain with his friends George Bush Sr. and Norman Schwarzkopf, entertaining the current President Bush's sister, Doro, at his Virginia farm, and palling around on the D.C. social circuit with Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, George Tenet, Brent Scowcroft and Bob Woodward. Spinning a smoky web of intrigue with his cigars and C.I.A. operations, helping finance the contras. So if Bandar bin Sultan is Gatsby, his wife, Princess Haifa, must be like the careless Daisy, her voice full of money that could have ended up supporting two of the Saudi hijackers. And those 15 Saudi hijackers would be "the foul dust that floated in the wake" of the Arab Gatsby's dreams. ... It would probably be far easier for America to reduce its dependence on Saudi oil than for the House of Saud and the House of Bush to untangle their decades-long symbiosis. ... The Bush crowd was praying it wasn't a last-days-of-disco scene similar to the one when the shah of Iran was overthrown by Islamic fundamentalists, and the jet-setting Iranian diplomats had to pour all the liquor down the drain at their embassy. Will the Arab Gatsby end like the original - "borne back ceaselessly into the past"?" (See also: "The Saudi Money Trail" (Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas, Newsweek, from the 2002/12/02 issue))"CIA: Saudis still sending tens of millions to Al Qaida" (World Tribune.com, 2002/11/27)
"The CIA has traced transfers of tens of millions of dollars from the Saudis to Al Qaida over the last year, U.S. officials and congressional sources said. The key backers of Al Qaida are said to be 12 prominent Saudi businessmen - all of whom have extensive business and personal connections with the royal family. These include ties to such ministers as Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz, Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz and Riyad Governor Prince Salman. ... "The facts are not in dispute," a congressional source familiar with the CIA investigation said. 'The CIA has briefed key congressional committees on the Saudi violation of its promises to stop funding to Al Qaida. The argument between the administration and Congress concerns what do we do now.'""The End of an Alliance" (Alex Alexiev, National Review, from the 2002/10/28 issue)
Alexiev's article on Saudi Arabia is available online: "But the Bush administration has to face up to the fact that Riyadh has been - and remains - the main ideological and financial sponsor of Islamic extremism worldwide, and is not at all interested in helping us combat it. Until the administration confronts this reality in a decisive manner, lasting progress in the war on terrorism is unlikely. ... What accounts for the Saudis' blatant unwillingness to cooperate, even as they continue to insist that they are our ally? The answer is very simple: Any genuine help by Riyadh in untangling the complex web financing extremism will inevitably implicate both the Saudi government and countless prominent Saudis. Saudi charities are no more private than were yesterday's Soviet-sponsored "peace-loving" organizations. In a dictatorship of a totalitarian bent like Saudi Arabia's, "private charities" exist for the explicit purpose of carrying out the policy of the state, and that policy will change only if the state is forced to change it. And this will not happen if Washington continues to speak softly and carry no stick. ... While exact figures on this spending are hard to come by, it is clear from what we do know that this is the largest worldwide propaganda campaign ever mounted. ... As a result of these efforts, many Muslim religious establishments and institutions worldwide have fallen under the influence of radical Islamist doctrines and jihadist groups. It would be an exaggeration to argue that extremism has become the dominant idiom in Islam, but there is no question that Saudi money has been able to buy a significant foothold for extremist views and fanaticism unrepresentative of mainstream Islam.""Saudis Face U.S. Demand On Terrorism" (Douglas Farah, The Washington Post, 2002/11/26)
"A National Security Council task force is recommending an action plan to President Bush that is designed to force Saudi Arabia to crack down on terrorist financiers within 90 days or face unilateral U.S. action to bring the suspects to justice, senior U.S. officials said yesterday. The interagency plan, devised before the recent furor over allegations of Saudi involvement in terror financing, comes amid growing concern among some congressional leaders and U.S. allies that the administration has been unwilling to press Saudi Arabia for action for fear of alienating a key Arab ally as possible war with Iraq looms." (See also: "US urges Saudi action against terror" (BBC News, 2002/11/26): "The United States has urged Saudi Arabia to do more to help President George W Bush's campaign against terrorism. "Saudi Arabia is a good partner in the war against terrorism but can do more," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. Mr Fleischer said a working-group of officials was looking at how to improve Saudi Arabia's ability to take action against militant groups.")"The Real Axis of Evil" (Stephen Schwartz, New York Post, 2002/11/25)
"Saudi Arabia and its Wahhabi death cult represent naked Islamofascism, with the same stink: The odor that hung in New York so long after 9/11; the unmistakable smell of the dead victims of Wahhabi/Saudi terrorism inside and outside the kingdom. There is nothing surprising in finding a money trial from the 9/11 scum to the palatial residence of Prince Bandar. Fifteen of 19 was not a tactic by Osama bin Laden; it was the logical and inevitable product of Wahhabism, the state religion of the Saudi monarchy. ... As detailed in a major report to be released today by the International Crisis Group, titled Arming Saddam: The Yugoslav Connection, Serbia has derived billions in income from the massive sale to Saddam of biological, chemical and missile technology for military use. ... The stink is identical. Serbia reintroduced real fascism to Europe a decade ago, with all of the requisite props: concentration camps, mass rapes, liquidation of whole villages, the massacre of civilians. Serbian society is rotten to the core, and seems almost incapable of redeeming itself. Saddam, Saudi Arabia and Serbia constitute a genuine fascist axis, and that is the real axis of evil. Is war necessary against all of them? No, Serbia has been defeated; what it needs is the purge of all fascist elements from its political and economic life, and their full punishment." (See also: "The Saudi Money Trail" (Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas, Newsweek, from the 2002/12/02 issue))"Palace Intrigue" (Jason Zengerle, The New Republic, 2002/11/24)
More on the Saudi money trail, or rather about reactions to it: "On "This Week," Republican John McCain noted that the Saudis had been financing Islamic radicals for years and declared, "Facts are facts. The Saudi royal family has been engaged in a Faustian bargain for years to keep themselves in power." Democrat Charles Schumer, on the same show, said that the Saudis "have played a duplicitous game, and that is, they say to the terrorists, 'We'll do everything you want, just leave us alone.' That game has got to stop." And, on "Face the Nation," Joe Lieberman put things in the bluntest terms possible: '[A]ll of us in Congress who have felt that the Saudi relationship was critically important to us now have to look back and say, "Fifteen of the nineteen terrorists [were] from Saudi Arabia, [there is an] increasing trail of money going from Saudi Arabia to the terrorists." Remember the president's edict here ... right after September 11th last year, [he] said to the nations of the world, "You are either with us or with the terrorists. And if you're with the terrorists, you're going to feel our wrath." And I think we have to apply those standards not just to enemies, like Iraq and Afghanistan under Taliban or Iran, we have apply it to our friends, like Saudi Arabia. And either they have to change, or the relationship that we have with Saudi Arabia is going to change dramatically.'""The Saudi Money Trail" (Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas, Newsweek, from the 2002/12/02 issue)
An article about the Saudi money trail connected to two of the hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar: "The Feds' interest in al-Bayoumi has been heightened by a money trail that could be perfectly innocent, but is nonetheless intriguing - and could ultimately expose the Saudi government to some of the blame for 9-11 and seriously strain U.S.-Saudi ties. It is too soon to say where the trail will wind up, but it begins with a very surprising name on a Washington bank account. About two months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar, Newsweek has learned, al-Bayoumi’s wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually around $2,000, totaling tens of thousands of dollars. The money came in the form of cashier's checks, purchased from Washington’s Riggs Bank by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal friend of the Bush family. The checks were sent to a woman named Majeda Ibrahin Dweikat, who in turn signed over many of them to al-Bayoumi's wife (and her friend), Manal Ahmed Bagader. The Feds want to know: Was this well-meaning charity gone awry? Or some elaborate money-laundering scheme? A scam? Or just a coincidence? ... After al-Bayoumi left San Diego in July 2001, the cashier's checks purchased by Princess Haifa continued to flow to Majeda Dweikat, who in turn signed many of them over to her husband, Osama. Basnan also befriended the two hijackers, Almihdhar and Alhazmi. After the terrorist attacks, Basnan, who was known as a vocal Qaeda sympathizer, "celebrated the heroes of September 11" and talked about "what a wonderful, glorious day it had been," according to a law-enforcement official.""Greed and torture at the House of Saud" (John Sweeney, The Observer, 2002/11/24)
"The threat comes from the stark, alluring nihilism of Osama bin Laden and his supporters, and the House of Saud takes refuge in denial, and cruelty. There is no better evidence of the feebleness of its grip on power than its denial of twenty-first century evidence that the seven Western men it has locked up for planting bombs that killed other Westerners are innocent. ... The Saudi system of justice is that the moment you are a suspect you are deemed to be guilty, and so you are tortured until you make a confession in front of the khavi, the investigating judge. If you don't, you get tortured some more. It's a closed loop with no way out. ... The difficulty for the old men of the House of Saud is that, although they have now arrested, found guilty and sentenced seven Westerners (before they met their defence lawyers) for bombing other Westerners, the bombs have kept on exploding. While seven allegedly guilty men were locked in Saudi's maximum security prison - Al Haier, east of Riyadh - another bomb killed British banker Simon Veness this June and yet another - the eleventh - killed German businessman Maximillian Graf in September. ... The proof that Jones was tortured blasts a hole in the safety of the convictions of the other seven Westerners. Unless they win an appeal, two of them - Scot Sandy Mitchell and Canadian Bill Sampson - face an appointment with the executioner at a public beheading in Riyadh's infamous Chop-chop Square.""9/11 Report Says Saudi Arabia Links Went Unexamined" (David Johnston and James Risen, The New York Times, 2002/11/23)
"A draft report by the joint Congressional committee looking into the Sept. 11 attacks has concluded that the F.B.I. and the C.I.A, in their investigations, did not aggressively pursue leads that might have linked the terrorists to Saudi Arabia, senior government officials said today. The report charged among other things that the authorities had failed to investigate the possibility that two of the hijackers, Saudis named Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, received Saudi money from two Saudi men they met with in California in the year before the attacks.""Egyptian Christian Copts on Prejudice in Egypt & Saudi Arabia" (MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 110, 2002/11/12)
From a letter about the treatment of Christians in Saudi Arabia, published in The Copt weekly Watani: "I am an Egyptian who left Egypt in pursuit of a better livelihood. I worked in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE. Whereas I was welcomed and accepted by most of the people of these countries, I was met with bitter hate and fanaticism against anything or anybody Christian in Saudi Arabia. Saudi hate does not stop at harassing Christians and chasing them [even] outside the Saudi Kingdom at the least indication of their religious identity. It extends to adopting active policies to export the hate to all neighboring countries. ... A Greek young man who went to Saudi Arabia for business was harassed at Jeddah airport by the customs official who pulled off a cross pendant he wore about his neck and threw it violently in the waste basket. ... A Christian who was walking in the street in Jeddah was stopped by the Mutawa'ah [the Muslim Religious Police] and asked why he was not at the mosque for afternoon prayers. Upon replying that he was Christian, the Mutawi' [policeman] cried out 'A'udhu Billah' [I seek Allah's protection!] and spat on the Christian's face. ... On a television programme that provides religious counseling [fatwa] a viewer asked the counseling Sheikh if he could travel to Egypt to hand an item he had in safekeeping over to a Christian friend's family. The Sheikh reprimanded the viewer for having a Christian friend in the first place – Muslims were not permitted to take Christian friends. He then went on to advise the viewer to keep the item in question for himself, since all possessions of kuffaar [non-believers] were the rightful property of Muslims.""Frederick's of Riyadh" (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 2002/11/10)
A report from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on a society "torn between secret police and secret undergarments": "The three-story mall was so chockablock with designer stilettos, bondage boots, transparent blouses and glittering gowns with plunging necklines that it would have made Las Vegas blush. I felt drab, dressed in black to suit Saudi standards with a scarf over my hair, a long skirt, a sweater over a T-shirt and flats. An earlier outing with a pink skirt had caused my Ministry of Information minder to bark: "Get your abaya! They'll kill you!" ... Suddenly, four men bore down on us, two in white robes, one in a brown policeman's uniform and one in a floor-length brown A-line skirt (not a good look). They pointed to my neck and hips, and the embarrassed diplomat explained that I had been busted by the vice squad. "They say they can see the outline of your body," he translated. ... After the men argued for 15 minutes, I fretted that I was in one of those movies where an American makes one mistake in a repressive country and ends up rotting in a dungeon. I missed John Ashcroft desperately." (See also: "Under the Ramadan Moon" (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 2002/11/06))"Saudis test limits of freedom" (BBC News, 2002/11/09)
"The former Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki, recently wrote an article for the Washington Post about the fire at the school in Mecca in which 15 girls died because the religious police allegedly stopped them from fleeing unveiled - a story of explosive sensitivity here. But when the Saudi papers translated this piece, they cut several crucial sentences. Absurdly, Prince Turki was moved to write a letter of protest to his own papers. Among other things, he pointed out, the article had been about the government's more liberal attitude to the media.""Saudi Arabia Searches for a More Flexible Social Contract" (Philip Taubman, The New York Times, 2002/11/07)
"For every instance of fresh thinking I encountered, there was a disheartening example of encrusted thought. The Internet is easily accessible, but censored. Hamad M. Al-Baadi, an educator, welcomed me warmly as a fellow degree holder from Stanford University, then informed me in utter seriousness that Natan Sharansky, Israel's deputy prime minister, had played a pivotal role in White House policy deliberations about the Middle East. Numerous Saudis told me that the American media were deliberately disparaging their society as part of a campaign to impugn Islam. The most familiar refrain was that Jews control the United States. When I told Saudis that that assertion was as accurate as the American perception that Saudi Arabia is populated by millions of terrorists, they looked at me blankly." (See also: "Saudi minister rebukes religious police" (BBC News, 2002/11/05))"Under the Ramadan Moon" (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 2002/11/06)
Maybe they should go to Israeli math textbooks themselves and prove their ridiculous allegation: "I went to see the minister of education at his home in Riyadh. Mohammed Ahmed Rasheed and half a dozen deputies, men in long white robes and headdresses, arrayed themselves on chairs against the walls and worried their beads. ... They were defensive about American suspicion of the religious hard-liners' influence on boys' schooling. "Why don't you go to Israeli math textbooks and see what they're saying - 'If you kill 10 Arabs one day and 12 the next day, what would be the total?'" demanded one deputy. Agreed another: 'If 5 or 8 percent of our curriculum has to be changed, then 80 to 90 percent of the content of American media has to be changed.'""Saudi minister rebukes religious police" (BBC News, 2002/11/05)
"Saudi Arabia's religious police should show "leniency" and respect the people's privacy and freedoms, the Saudi interior minister has said. Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz gave his unprecedented public rebuke during a visit to the force's headquarters, according to the official news agency SPA. ... This criticism has been growing since March, when 15 schoolgirls died in a fire at their school in Mecca after the mutawa allegedly prevented male rescuers from entering because the girls were not veiled. ... Overall, the past few years have seen the slow erosion of many of the powers of the mutawa - which has been described as a "kinder, gentler Taleban" - along with the gradual liberalisation of Saudi culture. No longer are women beaten with sticks for allowing their faces to show." (See also: "Saudi police face deaths criticism" (Reuters/CNN.com, 2002/03/15))"Saudis: No airspace, bases for Iraq strike" (CNN.com, 2002/11/04)
"Saudi Arabia's foreign minister pledged his country's allegiance with the United States in its fight against the al Qaeda terrorist group, but said Saudi Arabia would not allow its bases and airspace to be used in any U.S.-led military strike against Iraq. "We will cooperate with the [U.N.] Security Council, but as to entering the conflict or using the facilities as part of the conflict, that's something else," Prince Saud al-Faisal told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in a recent interview, when asked about allowing overflights by U.S. forces. "So that's a 'no'?" Amanpour asked. "No," al-Faisal said.""Defeating Wahhabism" (Stephen Schwartz, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/10/25)
Remarks by Stephen Schwartz at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies Central Asian and Caucasus Institute: "In Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Kosovo, and Chechnya, we see repetition of the pattern of Wahhabi-Saudi infiltration. The Wahhabi-Saudi agents who introduce their doctrines, financing, recruitment, and incitement to terror into these countries have the same aim in all of them: to utilize ordinary Muslims for the advancement of their fundamentalist and extremist agenda. ... While the main immediate aim of Wahhabism is to capture and guide the global Islamic community, its doctrines are also deeply suffused with hatred of the other religions. ... Wahhabism is as different from "ordinary" anti-Israeli ideology, or even from most of so-called "militant" Islam, as Nazism was from the mentality of the German military in the first world war, as different as Stalinist Communism was from the radical socialism of a generation before. It is a nihilistic, violent, Islamofascist movement that seeks not only to impose conformity on the world's Muslims, and to completely wipe out Shi'a Islam, but also to attack the world's Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, and other worshippers.""Can We Coexist? A Response from Americans to Colleagues in Saudi Arabia" (Institute for American Values, 2002/10/23)
A response to a letter from 153 Saudi intellectuals, which in its turn was a response to a paper prepared by the Institute for American Values entitled "What We're Fighting For": "Our most important disagreement with you is that nowhere in your letter do you discuss or even acknowledge the role of your society in creating, protecting, and spreading the jihadist violence that today threatens the world, including the Muslim world. For example, speaking of those who murdered 3,000 innocent persons on September 11, you do not speak in your letter of perpetrators, but instead of "alleged perpetrators." These words sadden and disappoint us. Do you expect us to believe that you are not aware that 15 of the 19 murderers of September 11 were Saudis? Or that their leader, Osama bin Laden, was a Saudi? Or that their organization, al-Qa'ida, has for years received substantial financial support from sources in Saudi Arabia? ... These facts are well known and are beyond empirical dispute. Yet your letter incorrectly suggests that these facts are not facts at all, but instead mere "allegations," and that this entire subject - who are these terrorists and who is supporting them? - is somehow irrelevant to the present crisis. ... Your major theme and ultimate conclusion, stated repeatedly in your letter, is that the attacks of September 11 in particular, and Islamist violence generally, are primarily the fault of the United States and its allies. You brought this upon yourselves, seems to be your basic message to us. ... ...we ask you sincerely to reconsider the tendency, evident in your letter, to blame everyone but your own leaders and your own society for the problems that your society faces." (See also: "What We're Fighting For: A Letter from America"(Institute for American Values, 2002/02/12)and "How We Can Coexist" (Institute for American Values, 2002/05/07): "It is unreasonable to assume that those who attacked the United States on September 11 did not feel in some way justified for what they did because of the decisions made by the United States in numerous places throughout the world. ... If the United States sought to withdraw from the world outside its borders and removed its hand from inflammatory issues, then the Muslims would not be bothered whether or not it is a progressive, democratic, or secular nation. ... The United States, in spite of its efforts in establishing the United Nations with its Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other similar institutions, is among the most antagonistic nations to the objectives of these institutions and to the values of justice and truth.")"U.S.: Al Qaida funded by only 12 individuals, most Saudis" (World Tribune.com, 2002/10/20)
"The United States has identified the sources of Al Qaida funding and found they were fewer in number than earlier estimated. Officials said U.S. intelligence has determined that Al Qaida is supported by 12 financiers, most of them Saudis. They said the Bush administration is sharing the findings with Washington's allies in NATO and the European Union. ... "It is our first big break in understanding Al Qaida's financial network," an official said. "At first, the network was so big that we didn't think could find major channels of support. Now, we believe we have." ... But officials said most of the dozen financiers are Saudi bankers and businessmen who provide direct support to Al Qaida. They did not elaborate.""U.S. Pinpoints Top Al Qaeda Financiers" (Douglas Farah, The Washington Post, 2002/10/18)
"U.S. intelligence has identified about a dozen of al Qaeda's principal financial backers, most of them wealthy Saudis, and a top financial investigator is headed to Europe seeking a unified front to freeze their assets in the hope of crippling the terror network, senior administration officials said yesterday. ... The official said most of the alleged financiers are wealthy Saudi bankers and businessmen. Because the Saudi government has previously proven uncooperative in confronting its prominent citizens about links to terror, the United States has not yet sought its help in the new effort, officials said. Instead, the government hopes to freeze their assets in Europe, where the Saudi financial and business empires have much of their money, and put together the broadest possible consensus to demand that the Saudi government crack down on the alleged terror financiers, they said." (See also: "Report Decries Saudi Laxity" (Douglas Farah, The Washington Post, 2002/10/17))"Report Decries Saudi Laxity" (Douglas Farah, The Washington Post, 2002/10/17)
"The Bush administration's efforts to cut off funds for international terrorism are destined to fail until it confronts Saudi Arabia, whose leaders have tolerated some of its wealthy citizens raising millions of dollars a year for al Qaeda, according to a new report from an influential foreign policy organization. The report from the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, scheduled for release today, contends that the administration must pressure the Saudis - as well as other governments - to crack down on terror financing, even at the risk of sparking a public backlash that could jeopardize the Saudi government. "It is worth stating clearly and unambiguously what official U.S. government spokespersons have not," the report notes. "For years, individuals and charities based in Saudi Arabia have been the most important source of funds for al Qaeda, and for years the Saudi officials have turned a blind eye to this problem." (See also the report: "Terrorist Financing" (Council on Foreign Relations, 2002/10/17))"Saudi link to Bali blast, says al-Qaeda prisoner" (Mark Huband, Financial Times, 2002/10/15)
"The spiritual leader of the Islamist group suspected of responsibility for the bombings in Bali was backed by a Saudi who gave $74,000 (£47,700) to buy explosives, a top al-Qaeda detainee has told US interrogators. Omar al-Faruq, an al-Qaeda-trained Kuwaiti arrested in Indonesia in June, is being held by US forces in Afghanistan. He has told US interrogators that the spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiah, Abu Bakr Bashir, was sent the money earlier this year. The explosives were bought from Indonesian army officers who sold the material illegally, Mr al-Faruq has said. Part of the cache may have been used in the Bali bombings which killed nearly 200 people at the weekend, said Rohan Gunaratna, a regional terrorism expert who has seen the US interrogation report.""Friday Sermons in Saudi Mosques: Review and Analysis" (MEMRI, Special Report - No. 8, 2002/09/26)
An analysis of major themes featured in Friday sermons in Saudi Mosques: "'The Jews' are the central issue of many sermons delivered in Saudi mosques. ... In a sermon delivered at the Al-Nour mosque in Al-Khobar, Sheikh Nasser Muhammad Al-Ahmad said: 'In the Jews, an astonishing quantity of moral abomination and corrupt behavior has accumulated. These cannot exist in any other nation. What is amazing is that this corruption in all things concerning morality, and this impudent behavior, are not limited to a specific generation of Jews, or to a specific group of Jews, but are manifest in the distorted Jew everywhere. ... Moral corruption is a general trait of the Jews, all the Jews. [These are] stable hereditary genes [found] in the Jew in every time and in every place. If you want to know the Jew through and through, imagine a group of perverse moral traits... ... Most of the world's wars, particularly the great modern wars, were planned and started by the Jews so as to disseminate corruption in the land, and to achieve their goals on the ruins of the human race...'" (Note: MEMRI has a new section with streaming videos. The first is a compilation of excerpts from "Friday Sermons on Palestinian Authority Television".)"Columnist for Saudi Daily Al-Jazirah: Jews Use Blood for Baked Goods" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 421, 2002/09/19)
The ancient anti-Semitic blood libel and the "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are used as "proofs" of "the intentions of the Jews" in a recent article by columnist Dr. Muhammad bin S'ad Al-Shwey'ir, published in the Saudi state controlled daily Al-Jazirah: "Christian Europe showed enmity toward the Jews when it transpired that their rabbis craftily hunt anyone walking alone, [tempting] him to enter their house of worship. Then they take his blood to use for baked goods for their holidays, as part of their ritual. ... In the book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Precepts of the Talmud, by Shauqi Abd Al-Nasser, the 24th protocol appears; it represents the goal towards which the Jews strive with their tactics, their false media, and their treachery. The free world must take notice – primarily the West and America, where the intentions of the Jews have been revealed – as they gnaw away at the societies like the worm gnaws away at the wood until it is entirely consumed before signs [of the damage] are [visible]. [The West and America] must awaken, and must support the Muslims against them [i.e. the Jews] before it is too late." (See also: "Saudi Government Daily: Jews Use Teenagers' Blood for 'Purim' Pastries" (Special Dispatch No. 354, MEMRI, 2002/03/13))"Saudi Arabia recalls envoy who praised bomber" (Richard Beeston, The Times, 2002/09/19)
"Ghazi Algosaibi, a writer and poet, said that after a decade as Saudi Arabia’s top envoy in Britain he had been summoned home to take up a new post as Minister for Water. ... In April Dr Algosaibi wrote a poem dedicated to Ayat Akhra, a teenage Palestinian girl who blew herself up outside a supermarket, killing two Israelis. In the ensuing public dispute, he accused Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, of genocide, said that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was worse than the Nazi occupation of Europe and hinted that he would not mind if his own son joined the suicide bombers. ... Many of the ambassador's friends and colleagues in the diplomatic service defended him, insisting that he had represented his country well over the past decade. "He has been an outstanding ambassador to London with an extraordinary intellectual grasp and a very fine pen," Sir Andrew Green, the former British Ambassador to Riyadh, said." (See also: "Diplomat censured over bomb poem" (BBC News, 2002/04/18), "Saudi Ambassador to London: 'I Want Peace with Israel; I Long to Die as a Martyr; Stoning and Amputating Hands Are at the Core of Every Muslim's Belief'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 389, 2002/06/13) and "Saudi envoy: Israel occupation worse than Nazis" (Reuters/Haaretz, 2002/07/09), for examples of Algosaibi's "extraordinary intellectual grasp" and "very fine pen".)"Saudis May Change Stance on Iraq" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/09/15)
"The Saudi foreign minister said Sunday the kingdom would be "obliged to follow through" if the United States needed bases in the kingdom to attack Iraq under U.N. authority. The comments to CNN by Prince Saud al-Faisal would mark a significant shift in Saudi policy. In an interview last month with The Associated Press, Saud declared that U.S. facilities in the desert kingdom would be off limits for an attack on Iraq. When asked by CNN specifically if Saudi bases would be available to Washington, Saud said: "Everybody is obliged to follow through." Saud said, however, that he remained opposed in principle to the use of military force against Saddam Hussein or a unilateral American attack.""David Duke's Kinda Kingdom" (Deroy Murdock, New York Post, 2002/09/15)
"As a new study from the Saudi Institute and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies states, "Saudi officials disseminate hate literature openly in the United States." The Riyadh-funded Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America published Abdulla Al-Tarekee's "A Muslim's Relations with Non-Muslims - Enmity or Friendship." "The unbelievers, idolaters, and others like them must be hated and despised," Al-Tarekee writes. 'We must stay away from them and create barriers between us and them." He adds: "Qur'an forbade taking Jews and Christians as friends, and that applies to every Jew and Christian, with no consideration as to whether they are at war with Islam or not.'" (See also: "Saudis Spread Hate Speech in U.S." (Saudi Institute, 2002/09/09))"A Sense Of Betrayal" (Lisa Chedekel, The Hartford Courant, 2002/09/08)
A report from Saudi Arabia: "A year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Saudi Arabia is like the Red Sea, defying Western logic. Where we look for remorse, our longtime ally offers indignation. Where we expect introspection, there is a growing defensiveness. Where we thought we sensed a wind of change, there is a hardening around the old ways. Riyadh, the country's conservative capital, already is closing ranks against the West. Now cosmopolitan, reform-minded Jeddah - Osama bin Laden's hometown - also is slipping away. ... Americans see a country that took their petrodollars and poured them into radical Islamic schools and terrorist networks. The Saudis see a nation that has used them for its own gain, while scheming against the Muslim world - Palestinians, Aghans and now, Iraqis. ... And what of U.S. plans to pay tribute to the victims of Sept. 11? Even that points up a cultural difference. The Saudis bury their dead within hours, in unmarked graves, and discourage demonstrative mourning. "I feel for the families, of course," said Samar Fatani, a Jeddah mother of five who works for state-run Saudi radio. 'But people die every day, in earthquakes, in floods, in natural disasters. Did America think it was immune to all the dangers of the world?'""What, Saudis worry? Pass the caviar" (Tito Drago, Asia Times, 2002/09/03)
Found via Best of the Web Today: "The extravagant vacations of Saudi King Fahd and his royal retinue in Spain are disproportionate for a country suffering severe political and social problems. The 81-year-old king of Saudi Arabia, Fahd bin Abdul Aziz Al- Saud, accompanied by nearly all of his children and family members and an entourage of more than 3,000, has been vacationing on Spain's Costa del Sol since August 14. ... Chic restaurants and jewelry shops have cheerfully prepared for the Saudi visitors, who spent $90 million on their last stay, in 1999. During this year's visit, which is to be one month longer than the last one, they are expected to spend as much as $300 million. ... Several Spanish media outlets reported that a British agency has provided a large group of women to accompany the Saudi men during their vacations in Spain, on two conditions: the women must be young and blonde, and must be replaced every 15 days. Although prostitution is legal in Spain, procuring is punishable by law. Nevertheless, no authority or organization has moved against the British agency, even though the contract was made public." (See also: "Saudi King Vacations in Luxury" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/08/14))"Saudi Reactions to the Lawsuit by September 11 Families" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 416, 2002/08/30)
Excerpts from articles in Saudi newspapers on the lawsuit against Saudi and other Arab officials and organizations by the families of September 11 victims: "In an article titled "This is America," [Saleh Al-Shihi, a columnist for the Saudi daily Al-Watan] wrote: "This is America, the civilization that arose on the skulls of others. ... America, that erected the Statue of Liberty so as to plunder others by it; America, that established liberty in order to kill millions of people in its name, from the Indians to Afghan children..." ... A columnist for the Saudi daily Al-Riyadh, Abdallah Al-Kaid, wrote: 'The [Saudi] people are not to be blamed for the state of horror to which you [Americans] are subject in your country – a situation from which you will not escape... unless you concede the rights of the people and fight the evil among you and stop your aggression towards the world. ... We have no need to defend our good and clean name, as we are peace-loving people who never started a war against anyone throughout their history. As for you [Americans], no one needs proof of your crimes, written in history in ink as black as your history of murder and genocide.'""Saudi Foreign Minister Says Iraq Attack 'Unwise'" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/08/28)
I wonder if the Saudi Foreign Minister thinks it "gullible" to presume that Iraqis don't like to be gassed, executed or tortured to death?: "Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday it would be unwise for the international community to try to force Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and install its own replacement. Prince Saud al-Faisal said in an interview with the BBC that it was up to the Iraqi people to oust Saddam and it was gullible of people to think they knew better than the Iraqis what would be best for their country.""I'm With Dick! Let's Make War!" (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 2002/08/28)
"Making the case for going to war in the Middle East to veterans on Monday, the vice president said that "our goal would be . . . a government that is democratic and pluralistic, a nation where the human rights of every ethnic and religious group are recognized and protected." O.K., I'm on board. Let's declare war on Saudi Arabia! Let's do "regime change" in a kingdom that gives medieval a bad name. ... Once everyone realizes that we're no longer being hypocrites, coddling a corrupt, repressive dictatorship that sponsors terrorism even as we plot to crush a corrupt, repressive dictatorship that sponsors terrorism, it will transform our relationship with the Arab world. ... We haven't been hit at home by any of Saddam's Scud missiles. But the human missiles launched by Saudi Arabia have taken their toll.""Kabul Terror Lab Said Found at Ex-Saudi NGO Office" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/08/25)
"International peacekeepers said on Sunday Afghan police had found a store of chemicals in a house in Kabul formerly occupied by a Saudi non-governmental organization, and local media reports called it a terrorist laboratory. "Some containers and documents have been found by the police authorities," said Major James Kelly, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) In Kabul. "Reports suggest possibly 16 types of chemicals." ... The government-controlled Arman-e-Millie Daily newspaper carried a report from the official Bakhtar News Agency saying the discovery included 36 types of chemicals, explosive materials, fuses, laboratory equipment and some "terroristic guide books." ... It said the building had been used by an Arab national who headed the Saudi Al Wafa Humanitarian Organization during the rule of the former Taliban militia.""Saudis In $200M Deal With Devil" (Niles Lathem and William J. Gorta, New York Post, 2002/08/25)
"Saudi Arabian princes paid Osama bin Laden and the Taliban $200 million to spare targets in the oil-rich Gulf state, according to court papers. Recently revealed evidenced contained in a $1 trillion lawsuit, filed this month by the kin of 9/11 victims against members of the Saudi royal family, Saudi banks and Islamic charities, alleges the payoff funded al Qaeda terror training in Afghanistan. The deal was hammered out in two meetings between top Saudi princes, and officials from al Qaeda, Pakistan and the Taliban. ... Saudi officials, worried over attacks against U.S. servicemen in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, agreed to finance al Qaeda in exchange for a promise the group would not try to destabilize the Saudi government and would not carry out terror attacks in the kingdom, according to the suit.""Shilling for the House of Saud" (Matt Welch, National Post/Matt Welch, 2002/08/24)
"With each deteriorating week, as in the 49 previous weeks, a curious cadre of Americans has stood up to defend the oppressive House of Saud against its critics in the democratic United States. No, it is not the academic multiculturalists, or the effete bi-coastal elites - still favourite whipping boys, nearly a year later, of those agitating for the next U.S. war. The real apologists have far more influence and access to power than all that, earned through decades of high-profile government employment. They are the former U.S. ambassadors to Saudi Arabia, and they have carved out a fine living insulting their own countrymen while shilling for one of the most corrupt regimes on Earth. ... Like Walker, Cutler and Murphy, former Saudi ambassadors Wyche Fowler (1996-2001) and Charles "Chas" Freeman (1989-1992) can be counted on to deliver quotes consistent with Saudi foreign policy - opposed to invading Iraq, unequivocally impressed by the "Saudi Peace Plan," hostile toward Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the "Israeli lobby" in Washington, more sympathetic toward Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians than the Bush administration, and insistent that the Israel/Palestine conflict is the root cause of much of the Arab world's unrest.""The Saudis' Bad Press" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/08/16)
Taranto quotes two articles from Arab News: "For example, Nourah Abdul Aziz Al-Khereiji writes: "Is the vainglorious and headstrong United States taking the world to total destruction? Blind US actions against Arab and Muslim countries will undoubtedly halt global economic progress causing untold miseries the world over. ... Hasn't the US proven itself to be a terrorist country by resorting to methods of terrorizing peace-loving people in various parts of the world? Isn't its unilateral attempt to redraw the map of the Middle East an act of international terrorism?" ... Then there's Israel Shamir, who writes anti-Semitic screeds from Israel. In his latest, he suggests America and Britain were on the wrong side in World War II, faulting them for having dropped bombs on "Germans and French, for offending Jews." Offending? He refers to the "Judeo-American cult, probably the most violent and war-prone since Genghis Khan" and claims that "your average American Jew values his Jewish-ness well above his American-ness." Shamir concludes with the observation that "there are many good Jews, in Israel and in the US alike." How very reassuring." (See also: "Extension of terrorism by other means" (Nourah Abdul Aziz Al-Khereiji, Arab News, 2002/08/16 [?]) and "Take the money and run" (Israel Shamir, Arab News, 2002/08/16))"Saudi Arabia gives US the cold shoulder" (Michael Evans, The Times, 2002/08/15)
"Relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia have deteriorated so far that the Saudi Arabians are no longer considered allies, senior diplomatic sources said yesterday. Saudi Arabia, once the indispensable cornerstone of US policy in the Arab world, has refused to co-operate with the war on terrorism or support President Bush’s plans to overthrow President Saddam Hussein. According to the sources, it has handed over no Intelligence of any value about the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation, which has roots in Saudi Arabia. The final "stab in the back" for Washington was the decision to ban American bombers from attacking Iraq from Saudi airbases. That has soured relations to such an extent that the country from which America launched its 1991 invasion of Iraq is now being excluded from discussions about a post-Saddam era.""Saudi King Vacations in Luxury" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/08/14)
"Saudi King Fahd moved on to the next phase of his summer vacation Wednesday, taking his 12-aircraft entourage from Switzerland to Spain, where he has a mansion on the Mediterranean coast that is a replica of the White House. Dozens of luxury limousines and buses were on hand at Malaga airport to escort the monarch and his entourage to his residence in the southern resort of Marbella, the Spanish news agency Efe reported. ... Marbella city officials estimate that the Saudis will spend $6 million per day during their stay. The last visit, in 1999, generated $70 million for the local economy.""The Saudi Way" (Simon Henderson, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/08/12)
"A Jan. 9 story in U.S. News & World Report, entitled "Princely Payments," provided a lead which few have followed up. Two unidentified Clinton administration officials told the magazine that two senior Saudi princes had been paying off Osama bin Laden since a 1995 bombing in Riyadh, which killed five American military advisers. A Saudi official was quoted as saying, "Where's the evidence? Nobody offers proof. There's no paper trail." I followed the lead and quickly found U.S. and British officials to tell me the names of the two senior princes. They were using Saudi official money - not their own - to pay off bin Laden to cause trouble elsewhere but not in the kingdom. That is "the Saudi way." The amounts involved were "hundreds of millions of dollars," and it continued after Sept. 11." (See also: "Princely payments" (Linda Robinson and Peter Cary, usnews.com, 2001/01/14))"The Mideast Threat That's Hard to Define" (Youssef M. Ibrahim, The Washington Post Outlook, 2002/08/11)
Ibrahim thinks that the "Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath in Afghanistan may signal the peak of Wahabi influence, and a turning point in Arab attitudes toward such extremists": "The attack on the United States by al Qaeda may spell the beginning of the end of this brand of radical Islamic extremism, as people in the region deal with the harm Wahabi disciple Osama bin Laden has done to the reputation and welfare of Muslims around the world. The entire Saudi religious establishment is under pressure from both the royal family and the Saudi public. For the first time, artists, politicians and pundits are openly criticizing the clergy in Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia and throughout the world of Islam. The historic alliance between the Sauds and Wahabis may be coming apart - unless we in the United States intervene with unreasonable demands for instant reforms couched in barely disguised racial slurs. Instant anything in Saudi Arabia or the conservative world of Islam is impossible.""Saudis blame Jews for hostile views" (UPI, 2002/08/07)
An article on reactions in Saudi media to the Pentagon breefing at which Saudi Arabia was decribed as an enemy of the United States: "The mass circulation Okaz said the description of Saudi Arabia as an enemy to the United States "did not come as a surprise to us because all it's (the Pentagon's) members are either Jews or allies of the Zionist lobby." ... Al-Nadwa accused the Zionist lobby of waging a campaign against Saudi Arabia because it represents the religious center of Muslim nations. "Although it has failed to exploit the Sept. 11 attacks to sow dissent between the United States and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Zionist Lobby has not despaired from taking advantage of any chance to achieve its nasty objective," Al-Nadwa said. ... Okaz called the U.S. reactions to Sept.11 harsh and said ... "Accusing Muslim countries of supporting and financing terrorism and fundamentalist groups were all extreme reactions by the Americans who countered terrorism with terrorism," a reference to the United States response to the Islamist terrorist attacks on New York and Washington last Sept.11. Of 19 men believed to have carried out the attacks, 15 have been identified as Saudi." (See also: "Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies" (Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2002/08/06))"Our Enemies the Saudis (Continued)" (Michael Barone, usnews.com, 2002/08/07)
Barone on the report that the Saudis were depicted as enemies at a Pentagon briefing: "Ricks's article verges on the misleading in one respect. It suggests that the recognition that the Saudis are behaving like enemies of the United States is limited to certain members of the Bush administration and "neoconservative" writers. He cites two anti-Saudi articles published in the July 15 Weekly Standard and the August Commentary. He did not cite my own piece in the June 3 U.S. News entitled "Our Enemies the Saudis." The response to that piece was overwhelmingly positive–and not just from conservatives, neo and otherwise, but from moderates and liberals as well. You don't have to be a conservative to regard as an enemy a regime that exports terrorism and totalitarian ideas." (See also: "Our enemies the Saudis" (Michael Barone, usnews.com, from the 2002/06/03 issue and "Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies" (Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2002/08/06))"Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies" (Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2002/08/06)
"A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States. "The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy. "Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies," said the briefing prepared by Laurent Murawiec, a Rand Corp. analyst. A talking point attached to the last of 24 briefing slides went even further, describing Saudi Arabia as "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" in the Middle East.""Do We Still Need the Saudis?" (Romes Ratnesar, TIME, 2002/07/28)
"But while Saudis remain uninterested - or perhaps they're in a state of denia - in the level of Saudi participation in Sept. 11, the country seethes with open loathing for the U.S. and sympathy for bin Laden's cause. Signs of anti-Western militancy are rife throughout this vast kingdom, from the capital, Riyadh - where in June separate car bombs blew up a British banker outside his home and nearly killed an American expatriate - to Abha, a remote mountain city in the southern province of Asir, where four of the hijackers were raised and locals still celebrate all "the Fifteen," as the group is called. "Their friends are really proud of them," says Ghazi al Gamdhi, 22, a university student. 'They think the Fifteen were protecting Islam. Most of the guys here want to become heroes protecting Islam.'""Expat Brits live in fear as Saudis turn on the West" (Paul Harris et al., The Observer, 2002/07/28)
"The Western community is living in fear. It has become the target of a series of bomb attacks, carried out by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists who want to drive all non-Muslims out of the Arabian peninsula. But the terrified Westerners have received little help from the Saudi authorities. The secret police instead blame the Westerners for the attacks, locking up the innocent and forcing them to confess. Three have died. Seven are in jail. Others have been arrested, interrogated, tortured and released. The Saudi dream of quick cash and security has ended in a nightmare of a car bomb or an executioner's sword. ... The kingdom is now a key battlefield in the conflict between America and its allies and the forces of extremist Islam. It is a conflict that is now threatening to tear Saudi Arabia apart. Revolution is in the air. Demonstrators are taking to the streets. Bombs are planted in cars. And Westerners can only watch and hope they survive. Danger lies everywhere. Stephen, a Canadian engineer with a Saudi telecommunications company, no longer takes his family out for picnics in the desert. Twice in recent months he has been attacked by passers-by angry at the sight of a Western face outside the safe residential compounds. They screamed insults and threw rocks. 'I just feel very insecure,' he told The Observer.""Britons left in jail amid fears that Saudi Arabia could fall to al-Qaeda" (Martin Bright et al., The Observer, 2002/07/28)
"Saudi Arabia is teetering on the brink of collapse, fuelling Foreign Office fears of an extremist takeover of one of the West's key allies in the war on terror. Anti-government demonstrations have swept the desert kingdom in the past months in protest at the pro-American stance of the de facto ruler, Prince Abdullah. At the same time, Whitehall officials are concerned that Abdullah could face a palace coup from elements within the royal family sympathetic to al-Qaeda. Saudi sources said the Pentagon had recently sponsored a secret conference to look at options if the royal family fell. ... Anti-Abdullah elements within the Saudi government are also thought to have colluded in a wave of bomb attacks on Western targets by Islamic terrorists. ... British-based Saudi dissident Dr Saad al-Fagih said: 'There is now an undeclared war between the factions in the Saudi royal family.'""Human Development in the Arab World: A Study by the United Nations" (Nimrod Raphaeli, MEMRI, 2002/07/25)
A study of the Arab Human Development Report 2002: "While the report excludes Israel from its analysis it does not spare this country from severe criticism because of its "illegal occupation of Arab lands." It attributes all political, social, and economic dysfunctions in the Arab world to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The report asserts that "occupation casts a pall across the political and economic life of the entire region." With no empirical evidence or supporting data the report concludes that "in all these ways, occupation freezes growth, prosperity and freedom in the Arab world." ... It is hard to believe that poverty in oil-rich Saudi Arabia is the result of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Just a few days ago, the daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi tells the story of the poor people in Riyadh, the political capital of Saudi Arabia, who wait outside the palaces of the princes for the hope of a few drops of clean drinking water dripping from their faucets." (See also: "Study Warns of Stagnation in Arab Societies" (Barbara Crossette, The New York Times, 2002/07/02))"Still Hung Up on Sept. 11?" (Annie Naseem, Arab News, 2002/07/18)
The all-seeing Best of the Web Today notes the "tasteless headline of an Arab News commentary by one Annie Naseem, an expatriate (from which country, she doesn't say) who's quite content to stay in Saudi Arabia": "It's true that the Western media has filled us with horror-stories about the Middle East - and gone blue in the face doing so - but we who live here can see for ourselves and know what is true and what isn't. We can tell when something has been blown out of proportion. We're still here because we can see for ourselves that the sun still shines in Saudi Arabia - even post-Sept. 11!""Our Enemies, the Saudis" (Victor Davis Hanson, Commentary, from the July/August 2002 issue)
"But the point in any attempt to change our relationship is not so much to punish the Saudis for past hostility and duplicity as to create a landscape for real revolution in the Middle East - a reordering that might in its turn prevent a future clash of civilizations. ... Only by seeking to spark disequilibrium, if not outright chaos, do we stand a chance of ridding the world of the likes of bin Laden, Arafat, and Saddam Hussein. Just as a reconstituted Afghanistan eliminated the satanic Taliban and turned the region’s worst regime into a government with real potential, so too a new Iraq might start the fall of dominoes in the Gulf that could wipe away the entire foul nest behind September 11. Even should fundamental changes go wrong in Saudi Arabia, the worst that could happen would not be much worse than what we have now - thousands of our citizens dead, a crater in New York, millions put out of work, Israelis blown up weekly, and a half-billion people in the Arab world unfree, hungry, illiterate, and informed by the perpetrators of evil that America and Israel are at fault. As a student said to me shortly after September 11, 'What are we afraid of? Are they going to blow up the World Trade Center with thousands in it?'""A Few Saudis Defy a Rigid Islam to Debate Their Own Intolerance" (Neil MacFarquhar, The New York Times, 2002/07/12)
"Saudis abhor the term Wahhabism, feeling it sets them apart and contradicts the notion that Islam is a monolithic faith. But Wahhabi-inspired xenophobia dominates religious discussion in a way not found elsewhere in the Islamic world. Bookshops in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, for example, sell a 1,265-page souvenir tome that is a kind of "greatest hits" of fatwas on modern life. It is strewn with rulings on shunning non-Muslims: don't smile at them, don't wish them well on their holidays, don't address them as "friend." A fatwa from Sheik Muhammad bin Othaimeen, whose funeral last year attracted hundreds of thousands of mourners, tackles whether good Muslims can live in infidel lands. The faithful who must live abroad should "harbor enmity and hatred for the infidels and refrain from taking them as friends," it reads in part. Saudis in general, and senior princes in particular, reject the notion that this kind of teaching helps spawns terrorists. "Well, of course I hate you because you are Christian, but that doesn't mean I want to kill you," a professor of Islamic law in Riyadh explains to a visiting reporter.""Perfidious Belgium" (Paul Belien, The Spectator, from the 2002/07/13 issue)
"According to a recent inquiry ordered by a Belgian parliamentary commission, Brussels has become a major recruiting base for al-Qa'eda and a launch-pad for terrorist attacks on neighbouring countries. The commission investigated the failure of the Sûreté de l'Etat, the Belgian secret service, to screen Islamic terrorists. ... The inquiry of the Belgian parliamentary commission into the Sûreté de l'Etat revealed that it had allowed the Belgian Muslim community - numbering over 350,000 members, including more than 200,000 Moroccans, almost 100,000 Turks and 13,000 Algerians - to become heavily infiltrated by fundamentalist extremists. ... The report warns that the fundamentalist Muslims are creating a religious state within the Belgian state. The biggest mosque in Belgium, the Great Mosque of Brussels, built in the Cinquantenaire Park with Saudi money on a piece of land donated by the late King Baudouin to Saudi King Faisal in 1967, operates its own 'Islamic police', supervising certain Brussels neighbourhoods with a large concentration of Muslims. It even organises paramilitary training. The report refers to sermons at the Great Mosque calling Brussels 'the capital of the infidels', rejoicing in the attacks of 11 September, openly supporting Osama bin Laden, and admonishing the faithful to prepare for the jihad.""The West must stop kidding itself about Saudi Arabia" (Simon Henderson, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/07/11)
"According to a leaked British intelligence dossier, al-Qa'eda has been receiving large sums from bin Laden's Saudi supporters since last year to fund future terrorist attacks. A British official said last month that he hoped funds from Islamic foundations had been cut off, but he doubted whether the kingdom had the political and legal will. More worryingly, there is evidence that senior Saudi princes paid off bin Laden after his followers carried out a bombing in Riyadh in 1995. Officials estimate that "hundreds of millions of dollars" were transferred to al-Qa'eda to encourage it to place its bombs elsewhere. ... Would more democracy help? The Saudi business and technocratic middle class has always been disfranchised, but is not necessarily enlightened. In April, 126 Saudi academics and writers published an open letter saying: 'We consider the United States and its current administration a first-class sponsor of international terrorism, and it along with Israel form an axis of terrorism and evil in the world.'""Saudi envoy: Israel occupation worse than Nazis" (Reuters/Haaretz, 2002/07/09)
"Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Britain said on Tuesday that Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was worse than anything Europe experienced under Nazi Germany. He also defended Palestinian suicide bombers. Ghazi Algosaibi, who drew fire last April for writing a poem in praise of an 18-year-old female suicide bomber, said Israel was using its military might against civilians who were defending themselves with the only weapons available to them. "This is a war of occupation, far more severe than anything the Germans did when they occupied Europe in World War Two," he told academics and reporters after giving a speech at the University of Westminster in London. The Nazis systematically exterminated six million Jews during World War Two when Germany occupied much of continental Europe.""A Clash of Cultures and Religions" (Fox News, 2002/07/08)
A transcript of the July 5:th edition of Special Report With Brit Hume, featuring the Filipino evangelist and guest worker Dennis Moreno La Calle who "spent seven months in a Saudi prison for the crime of holding prayer sessions in his home.": "MORENO LA CALLE: And then they transferred me to the cell where we were separated as Christians from the others. And then this September 11 happened. They heard the news. And they were all shouting. ... The following day, we had a feast. People were just happy because there was good food in the prison. And then after a week, I think about two weeks, somebody else came. And they were hugging each other as if they were crying, and they were telling stories. And I said, "Who is he?" The guy just said, "Oh, it means it's an officer." I said, "Of whom?" I thought the officer of a government, but he said of bin Laden.
SNOW: OK, very briefly then, the Saudi government in its own way threw a feast in the prison after September 11?
MORENO LA CALLE: It's the warden. And the sergeants allowed the foods to be brought in that so we may have a feast. I didn't know. I'm really sorry that I partook in it."
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Articles
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"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)
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"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)
"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)
"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)
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Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.
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"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)
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