The modern jihadi is a Wahhabi on steroids. Not only does Saudi Arabia export oil, but it does tanker-loads of quasi-totalitarian religious dogma and pipelines of jihadi volunteers. Since the end of the cold war, the local Muslim culture in the western Balkans has been moved away from Sufi Islam towards the radical bigotry of Wahhabi absolutism, which groups such as ISIS have taken to its logical conclusion. This is fertilised ground for jihadi ambition. Saudi spews out the corrosive poison that helps fuel religion-based fanaticism. There are no churches in Saudi Arabia, and permits to build Shia mosques are rarer than desert rain. It is uncertain whether the Saudi state and its Gulf allies finance groups such as ISIS, but their citizens do, encouraged by the Sunni supremacist discourse and tactical promiscuity of their rulers, fearful of being outflanked from the religious right. Previous generations of mainstream Sunni Arabs gave their allegiance to pan-Arab nationalists such as Gamal Abdel Nasser, tarnished paladins of a dead-end ideology. The potential disaster now facing the Arabs demands a new generation of Sunni leaders, able to defeat extremism within their own camp. That is something Saudi Arabia, whose Wahhabi absolutism is part of the genetic code of groups such as ISIS, cannot do. ft/cms/s/0/ab1b61c4-1cb6-11e4-b4c7-00144feabdc0.html#axzz39vif5LdK
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 21:03:57 +0000
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