For instance, although Yemen has long had an al-Qaeda presence, it wasn't until the Saudis got involved in Yemeni civil war — in part to push back perceived Iranian influence — that ISIS gained a foothold in Yemen and began carrying out terrorist attacks targeting Shias.
Saudi Arabia is also helping drive young people into the arms of ISIS by contributing to a political climate in which Middle East citizens only have two choices: dictatorship or violent opposition to dictatorship. As long as those are the only two options, some number of people will choose the latter — thus helping to legitimize violent extremism. The Saudi regime fears that popular democratic movements could spread to its own country. To prevent this, it's fought those movements where they start, bankrolling Arab Spring counter-revolutions throughout the region.
The Saudis supported the military coup in Egypt that overthrew the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood government. It intervened militarily to put down a nascent uprising in neighboring Bahrain. It's helping to shore up the Jordanian monarchy, and it's cracking down hard on dissent of any kind at home.
By propping up Arab dictators, closing all avenues of public dissent, and eliminating other legitimate avenues of political engagement, the Saudis have validated the longstanding argument of violent extremists like al-Qaeda and ISIS that violence is the only way to effect change in the Middle East. The Saudis are forcing a choice between corrupt, repressive dictators and violent extremism.
Not because they love violent extremism, but because they fear that if Saudi citizens are offered a third choice — democracy — they'll choose that and eject the monarchy. As the exiled Middle Eastern pro-democracy activist Iyad el-Baghdadi explained in my recent interview with him , "The menu of ideas in the Arab world only has tyrants or terrorists.
It doesn't have a third option. It's a very narrow menu. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today to help us keep our work free for all. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.
By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. The Saudi Arabia problem: why a country at war with jihadists also fuels them.
Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. How Saudi Arabia promotes an ideology that drives extremism The Saudi government has for decades promoted a strict, fundamentalist, highly intolerant strain of Islam known as Wahhabism, which it spreads through its official state-sanctioned mosques and through the "madrassas" in this context, Islamic religious schools it established all over the world.
Why Saudi Arabia is stuck with an ideology that threatens even itself Since the spread of Wahhabism helped create and fuel ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the broader jihadist movement, which views the Saudi regime as an illegitimate apostate regime that should be brought down, you might wonder why the Saudi regime would keep promoting Wahhabism. How Saudi Arabia drives sectarianism, which drives extremism Saudi Arabia and Iran have for years been in a sort of proxy struggle for dominance of the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia erases the "third option" between "tyrants or terrorists" Saudi Arabia is also helping drive young people into the arms of ISIS by contributing to a political climate in which Middle East citizens only have two choices: dictatorship or violent opposition to dictatorship. Next Up In The Latest. Delivered Fridays. Thanks for signing up! Last month, a UK high court ruled that the government can continue selling arms to Saudi Arabia.
Britain has been heavily criticised for selling billions of pounds' worth of arms to the country, which has been fighting a proxy war in Yemen against Iran and the Houthi rebels. Skip to header Skip to main content Skip to footer. Home News World News. In Depth. A return to a "purer" form of Islam Wahhabism is a conservative movement within Islam's Sunni branch. Isis: what does the future hold for the terror group?
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Quizzes and puzzles. Behind the scenes. Penguin arrives in New Zealand after epic journey. Tall Tales. Popular articles. All the journalists in town assured me it was Saudi money. One finds similar situations in Indonesia and in other countries. As a consequence of this, and at the urging of a number of American Muslims, we decided to look at what the Saudis might be funding or promoting in the United States and then also to look at the effects — not necessarily Saudi inspired, but very often Saudi inspired — of extreme versions of Islamic law around the world.
Beginning in December , we collected over different titles of literature either on bookshelves or in libraries in American mosques across the country. We looked at more titles than that. Only if two of those things were true did we look further at the title.
We translated portions of 54 of these works. Whoever helps unbelievers against Muslims, regardless of what type of support he lends to them, he is an unbeliever himself. One could add many more things, for example, the use of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a source on matters Jewish. But what is going on here is much more than a variety of hateful sentiments.
That is who distributed this material, or at least that is who has their stamp on it. But it is an ideology that divides the world into the realm of Islam and the realm of the infidel, or the realm of war. So it trains the readers that they live behind enemy lines — they must be passing through, they cannot take abode here. You only have two reasons for being in the land of the infidel. One is to convert people to Islam.
The second is to acquire either money or skill which you can bring back with you to help you and others engage in jihad, and in this context, it is quite clear that they mean that in a military sense, because they go on to talk about tanks and bullets, and things of this kind. One of the things you certainly cannot do is become an American citizen, because no Muslim can be ruled an infidel.
That is the particular ideology which is being taught. You must not have any good contacts, warm relations with anybody — not only with unbelievers, but with any Muslim who is not of the Wahhabi type; they are also often denounced as apostates. That is the major theme of concern in that report.
If you ask more detailed questions, shariah means something different. I could give other examples. In the book, we look at Saudi Arabia and Iran as two places where these types of laws are entrenched and where people are also seeking to export them elsewhere. We look at Sudan, Nigeria and Pakistan, places where such laws have been introduced to a greater or lesser extent and are still being contested and lead to major conflict. Then we also look at Malaysia and Indonesia, two countries where the introduction of such laws has largely been successfully resisted.
A not-unrelated fact is, of course, that these countries, despite their defects, are both democracies. And we also discuss the role of the relation of Islam and the state in the Afghan Constitution. As far as the effect of these laws goes, again, we find every country obviously is different, but we also find a systematic pattern.
The effects of such laws are far more serious than the punishments of amputation or stoning to death of women accused of adultery. Those are certainly important, but often international attention focuses on those alone.
In practice, it is an attempt to push the status of women, the criminal code, religious freedom, the judicial system, educational systems, and, so far to a lesser degree, the economy — to push them into what is claimed to be a seventh-century model. Let me expand on this. The particular problems brought up are the following: a lack of due process stemming from vague and haphazard law and extra-judicial enforcement; cruel and unusual punishments such as amputation, removal of eyes, stoning and crucifixion ; the denial of equal rights under law to women, especially so in questions of marriage, divorce, inheritance, education and employment, but also because commonly the testimony of a woman is given less weight in court, either half that of a man, or occasionally a quarter in cases of rape, there is a major problem in punishing the perpetrator because you would need several female witnesses to counter the word of one man ; and the denial of equal rights under law to non-Muslims, making them second-class citizens, or worse.
But the greatest danger of these laws is to democratic principles and systems themselves. This is tied to a complex of things. Such laws, of course, can be applied and are applied to non-Muslims. But the particular focus here is that when you intertwine religion and the state in such a close fashion, all criticisms of the state become religious criticisms, and therefore, someone who criticizes a state policy or state laws can be hit with a charge that they are in fact opposing Islam.
If accused of apostasy, they may face the death penalty or they may get lesser punishments. This has happened in Nigeria, it has happened in Sudan, it has happened in Saudi Arabia, in Iran, and in Afghanistan — that critics of government policies are hit with apostasy or blasphemy charges for challenging Islam. This is the major danger, because the possibility of religious openness and the parallel possibility of political openness are severely undercut when debate and challenge and questions themselves become an offense, possibly even a capital offense.
So in terms of the spread of democracy, this, I think, is the major problem. Documenting it in detail, I have seen no analysis, country by country, of Saudi funding and material; principally the reports are largely anecdotal. But we can say the activities I have described are spreading and the Saudis are involved in many of them.
It is having a radicalizing effect in countries from Nigeria to Indonesia. These effects are very destructive both in the law itself and in the conflict it produces. And, of course, this is antithetical to stated U.
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