The article printed below explains how one of the United State's closest allies is exporting a terrorist theology throughout the entire world using American oil money to do so.
By Benjamin Mann Washington D.C., Sep 14, 2011 / 02:36 am (CNA/EWTN News)
“The Saudi government has given over its textbooks to the clerical Wahhabi extremists that it partners with to maintain control of the
country,” said Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, in a Sept. 13 interview with CNA. As a consequence, the texts continue to teach students that “the Jews and the Christians are enemies” of Muslims, and that “the struggle of this (Muslim) nation with the Jews and Christians will continue as long as God wills.”
While describing Jews as “apes” and Christians as “swine,” the middle- school and high-school books command death for apostates from Islam,
while encouraging violence against non-Muslims who refuse to make a “covenant” or come“under protection” of the Muslims. Wrestling with the unbelievers by calling them (to Islam) and fighting them,” teaches the 12th-grade text “Hadith and Islamic Culture,” used in the 2010-2011 school year by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Education.
In a report released on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Shea notes that “some Saudis themselves have acknowledged the problem posed by the nation’s curriculum.”
“Nevertheless, the encouragement of violence and extremism remains an integral part of Saudi Arabia’s national textbooks, particularly those
on religion. FIVE MILLION million Saudi students are exposed to them in Saudi classrooms each year.” “Moreover, as the controlling authority of the two holiest shrines of
Islam, Saudi Arabia is able to disseminate its religious materials among the millions of Muslims making the hajj each year. Hence, these teachings can have a wide and deep influence,” the report noted.
Shea said that the Saudi government's uneasy truce with extremist elements – which she compared to a “protection racket” – dates back to 1979, when an “Al Qaeda prototype” attempted to seize Mecca's Grand Mosque and overthrow the country's monarchy. The event “very much shook up the Saudi monarchy,” particularly since it came during the same year as the Iranian revolution and the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan. “All of those things made the Saudi monarchy very insecure,” Shea
explained. “They ended up in a grand bargain with the clerics, to maintain peace in the kingdom and stop the threats against their own
rule.” “They gave them the Islamic affairs ministry, to export their creed
around the world and they gave them the education ministry, to indoctrinate Saudis themselves.” After the 9/11 attacks, “we all learned that in fact Saudis were being
radicalized, and attacking us and others.” Shea said that U.S. diplomats “made a few complaints, but there was no sustained diplomacy – not on the par that's needed to see this change.”
"There's no hope in sight for reform of the Saudi textbooks, because there isn't that kind of pressure from the United States" Shea reported.
“I think that the diplomats, frankly, are very uncomfortable talking about religion. They don't know how to analyze it, and they are really
blind to it. There is a reluctance, by diplomats, to talk about religion. (As though) somehow they're 'criticizing Islam' if they say that.”
“I think that they're afraid to anger the Saudis.”
Diplomatic pressure would succeed if applied, Shea says, because of the oil-rich kingdom's sensitivity to criticism and its need to
maintain a good relationship with the U.S.
“The Saudis do care about their reputation. And seeing the United States as the guarantor of their own security.
The Saudi clerics' Wahhabist interpretation of Islam continues to spread throughout the Muslim world. “It's not just confined to Saudi Arabia. They're posted online, these
textbooks, and also shipped around the world to Muslim communities by the Saudis – free of charge, using their vast oil wealth. And it's
radicalizing societies.”
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