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IslamQA: Is Saudi Arabia an Islamic country?

Why do you call Islamic countries imaginary? KSA, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia (and many more) are ideal Islamic countries with Sharia court and all.

There are many reasons to doubt the extent to which Islam is followed in so-called Muslim countries. For example, in the Quran, God says that He is at war with usurers (those who charge interest on money). The Saudi government earns billions of dollars every year through usury by lending its oil earnings to the United States government and earning interest on this money. This is interest paid by American taxpayers to the Saudi government. This arrangement is known as the petrodollar system and it is one of the main reasons why the United States can spend trillions of dollars destroying Middle Eastern countries without facing any serious repercussions: the Saudis bankroll the United States’ military, and through only selling their oil for US dollars, they keep the price of the US dollar high, in this way enabling the US government to print hundreds of billions of dollars of money every year and forcing the rest of the world to accept it. (See the scholarly book The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets by David E. Spiro, published by Cornell University Press). Any country that has tried to escape the US-Saudi dollar system has been bombed and destroyed: Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan. Syria was to be next. Iran and Russia are the remaining two countries that are trying to escape the US-Saudi dollar system and if you read the news, you can see that they are high on the US agenda for countries that have to be bombed.

Saudi Arabia follows many of the commandments of the Quran (such as cutting the hands of thieves), while stealing money by the billions of dollars through usury (since usury is legalized stealing as any Islamic economist and classical Christian thinker will tell you).

Saudi Arabia enforces zakat (one of the most important parts of Islamic law) but allows usury (one of the most important prohibitions in Islamic law, banning it in name, allowing it through all kinds of loopholes, and as mentioned, the government itself is one of the world’s biggest usurers). This is like giving charity with one hand while stealing with another. Saudi Arabia is like the example of a rich man who prays at the mosque and gives charity but who is also completely corrupt in his private life. It is true that Saudi Arabia spends billions of dollars on beneficial Islamic projects to convince millions of shallow and uninformed Muslims inside and outside the country that it represents authentic, true Islam.

Yemen does not enforce zakat nor does it ban usury. Its legal system is a mixture of Islamic, Egyptian and Napoleonic.

In general, a country that does not ban usury but cuts the hands of thieves allows the biggest thieves to thrive while only going after the smallest ones. That’s the type of “Islamic government” we have today; it is largely a show designed to appease the uneducated masses.

The Malaysian and Indonesian governments might be the closest in following Islam, but I have not studied them deeply so I cannot speak about them.

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Muhammad Talha
Muhammad Talha
1 year ago

Informative!