Dr.
Yousaf Butt is a senior advisor to the British American Security Information
Council and director at the Cultural Intelligence Institute. The views
expressed here are his own.
LONDON
-- The horrific terrorist attacks on the Charlie Hebdo weekly in Paris have led
to speculation as to whether the killers -- the brothers Chérif and Saïd
Kouachi -- were lone wolves or tied to masterminds in ISIS or its rival,
Al-Qaeda. Although Al-Qaeda in Yemen has taken credit for the attack, it is
unclear how closely the affiliate actually directed the operation. No matter
which organizational connections (if any) ultimately prove to be real, one
thing is clear: the fountainhead of Islamic extremism that promotes and
legitimizes such violence lies with the fanatical "Wahhabi" strain of
Islam centered in Saudi Arabia. And if the world wants to tamp down and
eliminate such violent extremism, it must confront this primary host and
facilitator.
Perversely,
while the Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awad Asiri took part in a "Je
suis Charlie" solidarity rally in Beirut following the Paris attacks, back
home the Saudi blogger Raif Badawi received the first 50 of 1,000 lashes he is
due each Friday over the next 20 weeks. His crime? Running a liberal website
promoting the freedom of speech. (Thankfully, in recent days it seems the Saudi
authorities have buckled to international pressure and suspended the sentence.)
It
would be troublesome but perhaps acceptable for the House of Saud to promote
the intolerant and extremist Wahhabi creed just domestically. But,
unfortunately, for decades the Saudis have also lavishly financed its
propagation abroad. Exact numbers are not known, but it is thought that more
than $100 billion have been spent on exporting fanatical Wahhabism to various much
poorer Muslim nations worldwide over the past three decades. It might well be
twice that number. By comparison, the Soviets spent about $7 billion spreading
communism worldwide in the 70 years from 1921 and 1991.
This
appears to be a monumental campaign to bulldoze the more moderate strains of
Islam, and replace them with the theo-fascist Saudi variety. Despite being well
aware of the issue, Western powers continue to coddle the Saudis or, at most,
protest meekly from time to time.
More
on Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism.
