Do you dislike the Saudis? If so why?
I consider them no better or worse than most other governments, but they are greatly responsible for the negative image of Islam that the rest of the world has about us, and for this reason they deserve to be denounced, as I will explain below. This is not a criticism of the Saudi people, it is a criticism of the actions of the Saudi government at the highest levels.
The impression that some people have that Saudi Arabia is an “Islamic” country following an authentic version of Islam that others should look up to is something of a fairy tale promoted by Saudi propaganda. It is true that Saudi Arabia spends billions of dollars on Islamic projects throughout the world to create the image of being a defender of Islam and Muslims, but as I explain below, it probably earns many times as much through usury (ribā) alone, something the Saudi government was very eager to hide until it came out in the 1980’s. Saudi Arabia’s support for various Islamic projects is not necessarily hypocritical, they may really believe they are doing God’s work and there are many good and admirable Saudi people involved with these projects. But that does not change the fact that everything the government does is completely tainted with usury. Is God so desperate to need the services of usurers? It is utterly hypocritical for a Muslim to turn a blind eye on this.
The version of Islam the Saudi government propagates is the highly intolerant Wahhabi interpretation of Ḥanbalī Islam that was severely denounced by the muftis of Mecca in 1743 from all the four major schools of Islam, including the Ḥanbalī mufti.
Recently the Saudi crown prince admitted that they spread Wahhabism in Afghanistan and Pakistan at the request of Western powers:
The Saudi-funded spread of Wahhabism began as a result of Western countries asking Riyadh to help counter the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told the Washington Post.1
The result was the Taliban. Taliban means “students”, these were the graduates of the madrasas founded in Pakistan by Saudi Arabia. These madrasas were designed to spread Wahhabism as part of a Pentagon operation known as Operation Cyclone. This operation was meant to breed jihadis and help them take over parts of Afghanistan, using Pakistan as a staging ground, in order to cause the Soviet Union to invade the country. The creator of this plan was Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Jewish-American military strategist. The plan resulted in the deaths of somewhere between 562,000 to 2,000,000 innocent Afghan men, women and children. Professor Andrew Bacevich writes:
What judgment to render on all this is a matter of perspective. Asked in 1998 if he had any regrets about having helped instigate Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in many respects the god-father of Operation Cyclone, reacted with astonishment. "Regret what?" he replied. "That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?"
The interviewer pressed the point. Hadn't subsequent rise of radical Islamism tarnished that victory? Not in Brzezinski's view. "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?"
The Saudis on the outside were promoting their “one true” version of Islam, while behind the scenes they were helping carry out a US plan for causing endless war in Central Asia in order to help weaken Russia. Unless they were incredibly naive, they knew that millions of innocent people could die in this plan to corrupt and prostitute the concept of jihad in order to weaken Russia’s southern borders for the benefit of the United States. They should be held responsible for every innocent Afghan and Pakistani man, woman and child that died because of this evil plan that continues to cause death and destruction in these countries to this very day. (See America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History by professor Andrew J. Bacevich).
But it does not end there, as I explain here, the Saudis are also responsible for bankrolling the US military through the petrodollar system. (See The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets by the American scholar David E. Spiro) The Saudi government earns billions of dollars every year by charging interest (ribā) on money it lends to the American government, in return the American dollar’s value is kept at a fixed, high price, enabling the US government to continually print dollars without the currency losing its value, enabling the US government to spend trillions of dollars destroying Muslim countries without suffering any great financial consequences.
In addition to the above, almost every terrorist attack in the world today is carried out by people influenced by Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi propaganda, which teaches its followers to view the world as if it is in a state of perpetual war. The Wahhabis are supposed to be the only true Muslims who have the God-given right to carry out any atrocity they want against both Muslims and non-Muslims in this “war” whose end will only come once the Wahhabis are in control of the world.
So the Saudi question is complicated. Most Saudi citizens will probably be as shocked as anyone else if they learned about these things. The Wahhabi Islam I describe above is not the Islam followed by most Saudi citizens, they mostly follow a reasonably moderate Islam like most other Muslims. Wahhabism is a tool used by the government to justify its rule, to shut down criticism and to breed a class of ultra-intolerant propagandists that serve the government’s interests.
The Saudi government is involved in good and bad things. The good should not make us turn a blind eye toward the bad. It is very hypocritical for Muslims to say they stand for truth and justice while letting this government get away with its actions. No one is so holy as to be above criticism, and the rulers of the cities of Mecca and Medina should be held to the highest possible standards because anything evil they do will reflect on all other Muslims.
Footnotes
- RT, “Spread of Wahhabism was done at request of West during Cold War – Saudi crown prince”. [archived link]