The Felonious Theft of Emails And Subsequent Overblown Denialist Rhetoric Heralded As Great Breakthrough By Islamic Terrorists And Other Friends of The Climate Change Denial Movement
Escape_the_Cult_Now
Heralded As Great Breakthrough By Islamic Terrorists And Other Friends of The
Climate Change Denial Movement like Big Oil and Big Coal.
And who can blame them, given that many of them were relegated to the fringe
years ago?
I suspect that most mainstream media will not buy the overblown rhetoric. After
all, it is ridiculous to assert that stolen emails from a few climate
scientists somehow refutes decades of research by thousands of experts.
Rightists are in league with our fundamentalist Islamic terrorist enemies by
standing against the continued development of high tech alternatives to their
shamless addiction to muslim oil. It is the so-called Libertarians and
socialist Conservatives who are the biggest threat because they kow tow and
pander to their oil conglomerate masters, they are slaves. Oil Man deposed
despot George W. Bush held hands while on long romantic walks with Saudi King
Abdullah, allowing them free passage from the USA on 9/11, despite how the
attackers that day were Saudis. Radical rightist Republican Senator James
Inhofe has received over $1 million in "donations" from the oil industry in
return for his support of Muslim terrorism and the subsequent death of American
soldiers caused by AGW denial and support of Islamic oil. The right is
against choice and freedom, demanding that we continue on the course of
unsustainable oil gluttony; mainly because they are fat and shiftless, with
tiny
brains and low I. Q.s.
Fueling Terror
"...the hijackers, 15 hijackers who are Saudis, they studied this thinking --
destructive thinking -- in Saudi Arabia. They spent a few months in
Afghanistan.
But they lived their life, they studied this in government mosques. [..]
Government curriculum inspired what happened in New York." - PBS interview with
Ali Al-Ahmed, executive director of the Saudi Institute
Much has been reported about the complex system of terrorist financing and the
money trail facilitating the September 11 terror attacks. Individuals and
charities from the Persian Gulf--mainly from Saudi Arabia--appear to be the
most
important source of funding for terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda.
According
to an October 2002 Council on Foreign Relations report of an Independent Task
Force on Terrorist Financing, Osama bin Laden and his men have been able to
accumulate millions of dollars using legitimate businesses such as charities,
nongovernmental organizations, mosques, banks and other financial institutions
to help raise and move their funds.
How does it work? Take Saudi Arabia for example. This Gulf monarchy is a
rentier
state in which no taxes are imposed on the population. Instead, Saudis have a
religious tax, the zakat, requiring all Muslims to give at least 2.5 percent of
their income to charities. Many of the charities are truly dedicated to good
causes, but others merely serve as money laundering and terrorist financing
apparatuses. While many Saudis contribute to those charities in good faith
believing their money goes toward good causes, others know full well the
terrorist purposes to which their money will be funneled.
What makes penetration and control of money transactions in the Arab world
especially difficult is the Hawala system--the unofficial method of
transferring
money and one of the key elements in the financing of global terrorism. The
system has been going for generations and is deeply embedded in the Arab
culture. Hawala transactions are based on trust; they are carried out verbally
leaving no paper trail.
The Saudi regime has been complicit in its people's actions and has turned a
blind eye to the phenomenon of wealthy citizens sending money to charities that
in turn route it to terror organizations. Furthermore, Saudi government money
funneled into madrassas where radical anti-Americanism is propagated has been
instrumental in creating an ideological climate which generates terrorism.
Former CIA director James Woolsey described the Saudi-sponsored Wahhabism and
Islamist extremism as "the soil in which Al-Qaeda and its sister terrorist
organizations are flourishing."
Barrels and bombs
It is no coincidence that so much of the cash filling terrorists' coffers come
from the oil monarchies in the Persian Gulf. It is also no coincidence that
those countries holding the world's largest oil reserves and those generating
most of their income from oil exports, are also those with the strongest
support
for radical Islam. In fact, oil and terrorism are entangled. If not for the
West's oil money, most Gulf states would not have had the wealth that allowed
them to invest so much in arms procurement and sponsor terrorists
organizations.
Consider Saudi Arabia. Oil revenues make up around 90-95% of total Saudi export
earnings, 70%-80% of state revenues, and around 40% of the country's gross
domestic product (GDP). In 2002 alone, Saudi Arabia earned nearly $55 billion
in
crude oil export revenues. Most wealthy Saudis who sponsor charities and
educational foundations that preach religious intolerance and hate toward the
Western values have made their money from the petroleum industry or its
subsidiaries. Osama bin Laden's wealth comes from the family's construction
company that made its fortune from government contracts financed by oil money.
It is also oil money that enables Saudi Arabia to invest approximately 40% of
its income on weapons procurement. In July 2005 undersecretary of the Treasury
Stuart Levey testifying in the Senate noted ?Wealthy Saudi financiers and
charities have funded terrorist organizations and causes that support terrorism
and the ideology that fuels the terrorists' agenda. Even today, we believe that
Saudi donors may still be a significant source of terrorist financing,
including
for the insurgency in Iraq."
If Saudi Arabia is the financial engine of radical Sunni Islam, its neighbor
Iran is the powerhouse behind the proliferation of radical Shiite Islam. Iran,
OPEC?s second largest oil producer, is holder of 10 percent of the world?s
proven oil reserves and has the world?s second largest natural gas reserve.
With
oil and gas revenues constituting over 80 percent of its total export earning
and 50 percent of its gross domestic product, Iran is heavily dependent on
petrodollars. It is a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism and supporter of some of
the world?s most radical Islamic movements such as the Lebanese Hizballah.
Iran?s mullahs are fully aware of the power of their oil. Its supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned in 2002: ?If the West did not receive oil, their
factories would grind to a halt. This will shake the world!? As the world?s
demand for oil increases, Iran grows richer --Iran?s oil revenues have jumped
25
percent in 2005?and more than able to snub the U.S. and its allies in their
efforts to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.
The line between the barrel and the bomb is clear. It is oil wealth that
enables
dictatorial regimes to sustain themselves, resisting openness, progress and
power sharing. Some semi-feudal royal families in the Gulf buy their legitimacy
from the Muslim religious establishment. This establishment uses oil money to
globally propagate hostility to the West, modernity, non-Muslims, and women.
This trend is likely to continue. Both the International Energy Agency and the
Energy Information Agency of the U.S. Department of Energy currently project a
steady increase in world demand for oil through at least 2020. This means
further enrichment of the oil-producing countries and continued access of
terrorist groups to a viable financial network which allow then remain a lethal
threat to the U.S. and its allies.
Drying the swamp
There are many strategies proposed by counter-terrorism experts to obstruct
terrorist financing. Many of them are effective and, indeed, some of the steps
that have been taken since September 11, such as freezing bank accounts and
improving the scrutiny over international monetary transfers, contributed to a
reduction in Al-Qaeda's financial maneuverability. But the only way to deal
with
the problem strategically is to reduce the disposable income and wealth
generation capacity of terrorist supporters.
Hence, America's best weapon against terrorism is to decrease its dependency on
foreign oil by increasing its fuel efficiency and introducing next-generation
fuels. If the U.S. bought less oil, the global oil market would shrink and
price
per-barrel would decline. This would invalidate the social contract between the
leaders and their people and stem the flow of resources to the religious
establishment. It will likely increase popular pressure for political
participation, modernity and reformed political and social institutions.
Reducing demand for Middle East oil would force the petroleum-rich regimes to
invest their funds domestically, seek ways to diversify their economies and
rethink their support for America's enemies. Only then financial support for
terrorism could radically diminish.
Surfer
<kill...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>Fueling Terror
>
> "...the hijackers, 15 hijackers who are Saudis, they studied this thinking --
>destructive thinking -- in Saudi Arabia. They spent a few months in
>Afghanistan.
>But they lived their life, they studied this in government mosques. [..]
>Government curriculum inspired what happened in New York."
>- PBS interview with Ali Al-Ahmed, executive director of the Saudi Institute
>
Available here.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saudi/interviews/ahmed.html
<Start quote>
What is the role of the religious hierarchy in Saudi Arabia in
relationship to the government?
The religious hierarchy is a governmental institution. Their role is
to justify anything the government wants to do, using religious
authentication.
... You mean they're paid by the government?
Yes, they are. The religious institution in Saudi Arabia is paid and
hired and chosen by the government.
So there's no separation of church and state?
No separation between the Salafi institution and the Saudi government.
You say "Salafi institution." What does that mean?
Salafi is an understanding of Islam which starts in Saudi Arabia 200
years ago. And it is the official sect in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi
government adopts the Salafi understanding of Islam and implement it
on all Saudis.
Salafi to us is what we call Wahhabi? Is that the same thing?
Yes. Salafi is what you call in the West Wahhabi.
And so then Prince Bandar is right when he says to us, "There is no
Wahhabi sect, and this is a misunderstanding," that it's a
fundamentalist sect that leads to extremism?
Well, they don't say it's a sect. The Salafis do not say they are a
sect. They say they are a movement, a religious renewal movement. But
it is, in practically, a sect, because it differs from everybody else,
from Sunni Muslims and from Shi'a Muslims. And they have different
ideas about life, about God, about religion, about relationship
between men and among each other, which is totally different,
probably, from the general Islam [ideas].
... You say totally different. Why totally different? ...
It's intolerant toward other Muslims who are not Salafis. You can see
a book that is printed [by] a branch of Imam Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud
University in Washington area, and they printed this book where they
say that 95 percent of Muslims are claimant to Islam, ... [that] they
are not called Muslims. They are claimant to Islam, or claim to be
Muslims.
So the official religion of Saudi Arabia says that 95 percent of
people who say they're Islamic are just claiming to be Islamic?
Exactly. This is what is reflected in the textbook, and the books that
[are] printed by the government. ...
The government obviously controls defense and the army and the
economy, right?
Yes.
What does the religious side control?
The religious cleric in Saudi Arabia control the religious education.
And they control any religious material that is public, in media and
television. The Saudi television, government television, or government
books, or any books that you find in the library, only represent
Salafi understanding of Islam.
They control all education?
They don't control the education, but they control the religious
curriculums for all schools, and they control the women's education.
[Are they] in public schools? Is it private schools? Are there
parochial schools? How does it work?
They control all education. Saudi Arabia private and public schools,
their curriculum is prescribed by the government. The religious
curriculums are written and monitored and taught by Salafi Saudis
only. And a Sunni cannot teach the religion. Shi'a cannot teach
religious subjects in Saudi Arabia. It's against the law, especially
for a woman. A Shi'a woman cannot teach religious subject for history
in Saudi Arabia. And they are not even allowed to study history in
college, because history, according to the Salafi interpretation, is
much different.
Can you show me an example of what the teaching is in the schools?
Well, here, this is a book, Hadeeth, for ninth grade. Hadeeth is a
statement of Prophet Mohammed. This is a book that starts for ninth
graders. This is talking about the victory of Muslims over Jews. This
is a Hadeeth that I truly believe it's not true, as a Muslim:
"The day of judgment will not arrive until Muslims fight Jews, and
Muslim will kill Jews until the Jew hides behind a tree or a stone.
Then the tree and the stone will say, 'Oh Muslim, oh, servant of God,
this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.' Except one type of a
tree, which is a Jew tree. That will not say that." This is taught for
14-year-old boys in Saudi Arabia.
In middle schools...
In middle schools, yes. Official middle schools. This is a book
printed by Saudi government Ministry of Education.
In what year?
This is in the year 2000. So this is a current curriculum. Also,
curriculum talks about not only non-Muslims, but about Muslims, about
Saudi citizens, in the same manner. That they will burn in hell, that
they are paganist, that they will be destroyed in the day of judgment.
The government has taken some steps to curb some of these curriculums.
In 1993, there was a curriculum calling Shi'a derogatory terms ... and
it was pulled after almost an uprising. People left schools because of
that curriculum, and it was pulled. But the same writer, the same guy
who wrote those books, he still write these books or curriculums. ...
So this is the attitude towards Shi'a? You are a Shi'a?
Yes, I am a Shi'a, and the attitude toward Shi'a is that they ... are
not Muslims; they are not full Muslims, at best. Some clerics stated
[that] they should sometime be either killed or thrown away or
deported, and they should not be allowed even to work. There's a
cleric who wrote this in 1992, I think. He said that they should not
be allowed even to work in any government position, and all their
mosques should be controlled by the government. Their businesses
should be taken over. And there's another cleric who will say, "Shi'a
must be slaughtered," this word. And this guy is an official in the
government.
This year, there is an another fatwa by a government official, who is
still working for the government, who said the same thing: that jihad
should be waged against Shi'a. So the hate message ... that some
Salafi carries, started against it locally ... until it reached New
York.
What do you mean, it reached New York?
Well, when it was a local problem, the American media did not really
care much about it. But until Sept. 11, you saw how this faith of
hate, I call it, did to all of us, to New Yorkers and to the rest of
the world, honestly.
You're saying that the official government version of Islam inspired
what happened on Sept. 11?
Yes, I am saying that. Because the hijackers, 15 hijackers who are
Saudis, they studied this thinking -- destructive thinking -- in Saudi
Arabia. They spent a few months in Afghanistan. But they lived their
life, they studied this in government mosques. They studied this kind
of curriculum that I talked to you about. ... Government curriculum
inspired what happened in New York.
Prince Bandar says, to use his phrase, [that] this is bullshit.
Wahhabism, or what we call Wahhabism, is purely a religion that comes
from someone who made an alliance with his family many years ago. It
has done no harm to anyone, and it is only trying to go back to
basics.
I like Prince Bandar. But I think he has not been looking in his
backyard. I have books distributed that I picked up from the embassy
myself, that carries a message of hate against Saudi citizens who are
not Salafi, books that says Jews and Christians are free game for
violent acts. And these are books I picked up from the Saudi Embassy
in Washington D.C., where Prince Bandar works. ...
So it's no surprise then that the Saudi government and its clerics
would be supporters of the Taliban, for instance?
I'll ask you this. Tell me, how many Saudi clerics have condemned
Taliban, and how many Saudi clerics have condemned bin Laden? None.
And they cannot force them. Since Sept. 11, there have been no Saudi
official cleric that condemned Taliban by name, or condemned bin Laden
by name. They condemned terrorism, yes, but they didn't condemn bin
Laden. They didn't condemn Taliban.
Clerics, maybe. But the Saudi government has condemned what happened
on September 11. Prince Bandar says that the Saudi government has cut
the Taliban off over the last three years.
I don't know if he cut the Taliban off from the last years. I'm not
aware of such. But the Taliban Embassy was working in Riyadh, and it
had officials working in it. And they had no problems visiting Saudi
Arabia, and coming and going.
Yes, Prince Nayif condemned bin Laden, and other princes... Prince
Turki condemned bin Laden. They did not condemn that message. They
condemned bin Laden. ... Bin Laden learned this in Saudi Arabia. He
didn't learn it in the moon. That message that bin Laden received, it
still is taught in Saudi Arabia. And if bin Laden dies, and this
policy or curriculum stays, we will have other bin Ladens.
So this religious education is compulsory for all students in Saudi
Arabia?
Yes. Religious education in Saudi Arabia is compulsory, and you have
no choice but to study this. You're Salafi or you're not Salafi, you
have to study it, even if you don't believe in it -- which I don't
believe in most of it.
So the Shi'a have to learn this as well?
Shi'a have to learn this. And they not only they have to learn it,
they cannot teach their own understanding of Islam to their own
children in homes or mosques. ... even in private schools, it's a
Shi'a area are not allowed to teach different version of Islam, or
their own version of Islam.
So how are those Shi'a beliefs passed down?
Passed down through secret channels, secret books, tapes. This is the
only way Shi'a survives in Saudi Arabia. ...
If you go to school in Saudi Arabia, what do you learn about people
who are not followers of Wahhabi, of the prophet?
The religious curriculum in Saudi Arabia teaches you that people are
basically two sides: Salafis, who are the winners, the chosen ones,
who will go to heaven, and the rest. The rest are Muslims and
Christians and Jews and others.
They are either kafirs, who are deniers of God, or mushrak, putting
gods next to God, or enervators, that's the lightest one. The
enervators of religion who are they call the Sunni Muslims who ... for
instance, celebrate Prophet Mohammed's birthday, and do some stuff
that is not accepted by Salafis.
And all of these people are not accepted by Salafi as Muslims. As I
said, "claimant to Islam." And all of these people are supposed to be
hated, to be persecuted, even killed. And we have several clergy --
not one Salafi clergy -- who have said that against the Shi'a and
against the other Muslims. And they have done it in Algeria, in
Afghanistan. This is the same ideology. They just have the same
opportunity. They did it in Algeria and Afghanistan, and now New York.
In other words, the definition of people who are not believers in the
true believers in the right view of Islam is that they're basically
subhuman.
Exactly. If you don't believe in Salafi, you are not a human being.
You are something of a lower grade, that you can be persecuted or
hurt, and it is OK, accepted, in that ideology. It's accepted to be
killed, or maimed... The religious authority in Saudi Arabia control
the justice system. This is very important. ... All the judges in
Saudi Arabia are Salafi. ... And mostly Nejdi from the central region
in Saudi Arabia, which creates a lot of problems for the rest of Saudi
citizens. ...
What's the nature of the history that you learn in school in Saudi
Arabia?
Saudi Arabia, you learn Islamic history only. You don't learn history
of Europe, you know, of the Americas, of Asia. You only learn Islamic
history, and you learn the Saudi state history, and you learn what
they call the Salafi Da'wah, the Salafi movement ... in the West, the
so-called Wahhabi movement. And of course, doesn't teach you anything
about the world. It teaches you about Islamic history, and the Islamic
states, until today. But nothing about the rest of the Western world,
or Asia, or anything else. ...
Prince Bandar says that they are a government who are ahead of their
people. The people are more conservative than the government, and they
can't get too far ahead of the people. The people of Saudi Arabia are,
as he would put it, very fundamentalist, very strict, and very much in
favor of this view.
It's untrue. Yes, a lot of Saudis are conservative, you know. They
follow Islam. But there are a lot of Saudis who are liberals....They
want the government to move ahead. When it comes, for instance, to
women ID card...
Women ID card? What do you mean?
Women in Saudi Arabia do not own ID card. They are not human, either,
Because they are legally, from a legal point of view, Saudi women have
a legal standing of a car, because they are transferred from their
fathers to their husbands.
Property.
Property. And this is against Islam. This is against 95 percent, 98
percent of Islamic ... of Muslims who would think Saudi Arabian
government stand only next to Taliban when it comes to this point that
women have no legal weight. They cannot sign anything.
If a woman in Saudi Arabia is ill and she needs surgery, she can't
sign the papers. Her son who is 15 can do that. If he is sick, she
cannot sign for him. A woman who is 90 years old cannot accept a
proposal of marriage, or sign papers of marriage. Her grandson can.
And she cannot for herself, because again, she is not considered a
full-functioning human being.
We hear reports that when Sept. 11 happened, there was a quiet
celebration amongst many people in Saudi Arabia.
Yes. Saudi Arabia people celebrated. Not all, but there are people who
celebrated who were happy to see this, because there is general
dissatisfaction with the United States. But there are people who were
so happy to see it, and they still today, they are happy and they
support what happened in New York, because they are from the Salafi
school of Islam.
There are people who said, "Well, maybe American now will taste what
other people taste. They might reconsider their policy." And there are
people who condemned it, obviously. But the people who first, or most
supported what happened on Sept. 11 are followers of Salafi Islam. ...
Is bin Laden a folk hero of sorts in Saudi Arabia?
Bin Laden is a folk hero to a lot of Saudis who are followers of the
Salafi school of Islamists.
It would seem to me that he's a folk hero because he defies the United
States, or he defies the royal family, no?
Yes. He is a folk hero because he defies the United States, and
because he defies the royal family. And because he is a symbol of this
rich man who left all of this, and lost his relationship with the
royal family, who gave him millions and millions of dollars to stand
behind his message. ...
When I asked Prince Bandar about the Saudis involved in Sept. 11, he
said, "They're a very small minority in the country. They're like
Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, or the Weather Underground in the
United States," that it's a fringe group.
It's not really a fringe group, because these people were recruited
from Saudi Arabia just recently, less than two years ago. There are a
lot of them who are willing to do the same. And bin Laden in
Afghanistan has a few hundred Saudis with them, with him now,
fighting. Some of them have been killed already in the American
bombing. And these people receive support from the clerics, the
official clerics who get paid by the government. ...
It seems like the government then is sort of schizophrenic. On the one
hand, it embraces the United States. They sell us oil, they do our
bidding with OPEC, they invest in the United States. On the other
hand, you're saying they support a clergy that hates the United
States.
They do support the clergy that hates the United States, and I do not
know why, because it is not for the benefit of the royal family and
for Saudi Arabia. If Saudi Arabia needed to modernize, they should
sever this historic relationship between the House of Saud and the
House of Abd al-Wahhab. This has done tremendous harm to the nation.
... I really thought about why... the Saudi Arabia government. I
really thought hard about why also [they] insist on allying themself
with Abd al-Wahhab, the Salafi family who [founded] Salafis.
I think it is a ... a Nejdi thing. Nejd is the center of religion in
Saudi Arabia. This is where Salafi Islam started. And because all Saud
are Nejdis, they and Nejdis by nature -- and I'm originally Nejdi
myself -- are very racist people. And they think themselves of a
higher standing than others. ...
The chosen people?
The chosen people. And this is a racist thing, because the system in
Saudi Arabia is a monarchy that's based on tribal alliances and
religious alliances. And because it started from Nejd, religion has
been given to Abd al-Wahhab, and politics has been to Al Saud, and
they don't want to change that equation. ...
I'm a little confused. You're saying that there is unrest in Saudi
Arabia?
Saudi Arabia, there is different type of unrest. There is people who
are talking on the Internet, for instance. They find their freedom on
the Internet. Although the Internet [is] very, very tightly
controlled. ...
It's tightly controlled in Saudi Arabia?
Yes, in Saudi Arabia. It is probably one of the [only] country in the
world that controls Internet access. And they block websites that does
not fit with them, especially the political website, where people
express their views. And I am personally responsible for setting up
several chat rooms, or chat boards, for Saudis to be able to talk, and
say anything they want. And these sites are usually blocked, so we
have to move them all the time.
So the government blocks the Internet; requires a fundamentalist
religious education, even of Shi'a, of a peculiar brand of Sunni
Muslim belief.
Yes.
Women are not allowed to work?
They're allowed to work only in woman education and health care.
That's it?
That's it. That's why women unemployment rate is over 70 percent. And
that's not by choice, as they say. It is because many of them are not
able to find a job -- for years.
And for men, what is the overall unemployment rate?
I think they admitted to one million unemployed, the Saudis. But I
think the number is twice as that.
One million out of...
Fourteen million? Saudi work force now [is] maybe four, maybe six
million. One million is unemployed. This is according to the
government numbers. I believe the number is much higher.
And Prince Bandar would say to us, "Wait a minute. These dissidents
who you've talked to, they're not democrats. Like Saad Fagih, they
want a more restrictive fundamentalism. They want a more restrictive
fundamentalism than we have currently."
True. That opposition that Prince Bandar is talking about is not
democratic, and they are not advocating democracy. ... But people,
liberals in Saudi Arabia like myself and others, who want more
openness, who want a parliament, who want free press, who want more
freedom of religion, of human rights organization. I have asked them
to set up a human rights party in Saudi Arabia. They declined. I
didn't ask them to overthrow the government.
Who declined?
The government, the Saudi government.
Let me understand. Saad Fagih is a fundamentalist?
Yes. Victor Saad Fagih is a fundamentalist. He is a Salafi. He is
Salafi more than the government. I know Victor Saad, and I know his
ideas. He is more extreme than the official Salafi institution.
But he says he is not a backer of bin Laden.
...What does that mean, he is not a backer of bin Laden?
He doesn't believe in violence, he says.
I think he doesn't. I think he doesn't. My knowledge of him, he
doesn't believe in violence himself. But I haven't seen Victor Saad
also condemning it. He didn't condemn it.
So he and others look at bin Laden as, in a sense, a positive force
from their perspective?
Well, maybe Victor Saad Fagih see bin Laden as from a political point
of view, that bin Laden helps Saad Fagih. Bin Laden is the extreme,
and Saad Fagih looks much better next to bin Laden. And maybe that is
why Saad Fagih likes the presence of bin Laden. ...
Does it surprise you that the blind sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, was
invited to teach at a girls' school in Saudi Arabia?
No. In Saudi Arabia, because he's blind ... a lot of blind clerics are
allowed to teach, because they don't see the girls. ...
But he's a revolutionary. He's a fundamentalist's fundamentalist.
At that time, there was no clashes with the West. He didn't have
clashes with the West. He was just developing. But he carried that
Salafi understanding of Islam, and they wanted somebody, and they
wanted to bring him over, and they liked so many Muslim clerics,
seeing the lure of petrodollar, came to Saudi Arabia. They denounced
their own background because they wanted to live in a villa and drive
a Mercedes. They came from Egypt, they came from Syria, from Sudan.
And they became Salafi, because they like the dollar. ...
So it's really the fact that these fundamentalists had the backing of
all the Saudi money -- that they were able to spread this form of
Islam?
Yes, true. ...
So it's all the oil money, linked from the government, that has helped
to spread this form of Islam throughout
Yes. That's true. The Saudi government has systematically financed the
propagation of Salafi Islam, by spending hundreds of millions of
dollars on three out of seven universities in Saudi Arabia [that] are
religious universities. They built thousands of mosques around the
world, including the United States. They have given free scholarships
to non-Saudis, to come and study Salafi and become Salafi. They sent
2,000 Salafi clerics around the world every summer. They print books
by the millions in every languages to promote Salafi Islam. They have
conventions, conferences.
They spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars supporting the
Salafi thinking of Islam. They do not support Sunni Islam, they don't
support Shi'a Islam. And I noted that, in our report about religious
freedom in Saudi Arabia, they don't give money to other Muslims. If
they were interested in spreading Islam, they don't give other
Muslims. This is the government. ...
Are there any other excerpts you want to read to us from any of these
books?
It says here, it says number four: It is permissible in Islam to
destroy, burn, and vandalize the fortresses of kofar. American or
Christians are kofar. And everything that they destroy, everything
that they use ... against Muslims ... if the destruction was to
support Islam and destroy the kofar. This is very hard.
And Americans are kofar?
Yes. American. The United States of America.
Why is that?
Because you're non-Muslim. You're non-Muslim. You are kofar because
you have denials of God. This is what this [is].
And this is an official ... printed by the government?
This is an official book. This is printed, yes. This is for ninth
grade, printed by the year 2000. This says here, the minister of
education decided to teach this book, and print it on its own cost.
And this is the first page.
And it's distributed...
This is to school curriculum. It's taught. It's mandatory for ninth
graders in Saudi Arabia.
<End quote>
Background on Ali Al-Ahmed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Al-Ahmed
Bin Laden named nine hijackers on tape, not one
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/12/20/ret.bin.laden.translation/