The Saudis Fight Terror, but Not Those Who Wage It

[JohnLocke]

The Saudis Fight Terror, but Not Those Who Wage It
By Neil MacFarquhar -- The New York Times
Saturday, June 6, 2004
----
KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia — A recent fatwa posted on a popular Islamic Web site in Saudi Arabia explains when a Muslim may mutilate the corpse of an infidel.
The ruling, written by a Saudi religious sheik named Omar Abdullah Hassan al-Shehabi, decrees that the dead can be mutilated as a reciprocal act when the enemy is disfiguring Muslim corpses, or when it otherwise serves the Islamic nation. In the second category, the reasons include "to terrorize the enemy" or to gladden the heart of a Muslim warrior.
The religious ruling was evidently posted to address questions about the conflict in Iraq, but is not limited by geography. In fact, in each of two gruesome attacks in Saudi Arabia last month that left 25 foreigners and 5 Saudis dead, a Western corpse was dragged for some distance behind a car. One was the body of an American engineer in Yanbu on May 1, the other a British businessman in Khobar last weekend.
(...)
"We are still using soft language when we talk about the problem of Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia," said Suleiman al-Hattlan, a Saudi columnist and author. "We have not addressed the ideology of these groups, which is the same one the government is promoting. They attack just the individuals."
Both the government and its critics point out that Saudi Arabia has come a long way since the attacks against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, when the interior minister would barely acknowledge that most of the 19 attackers were Saudis.
(...)
Fanatical prayer leaders were either jailed, dismissed or sent for re-education. And a "national dialogue" on Saudi society was inaugurated by Crown Prince Abdullah. Last week the kingdom announced that it was shutting down independent charities, which are often accused off funneling money to terrorists.
But the attempt by some to expose and uproot the ideological and theocratic influences used to justify attacks was suppressed by the religious establishment, which helped the Saud family consolidate its rule when the kingdom was founded more than 70 years ago.
Instead, the official line became that the terrorists were infected with an alien ideology, imported by those who fought in Afghanistan or Chechnya, and that the religion espoused by Saudis is a peaceful one.
"The problem is that the official religious establishment does not admit that there is a problem inside Wahhabism itself," said Abdullah Bjad al-Otaibi, a former radical turned reformer, referring to the militant form of Islam that predominates here.
(...)
----
Read the rest here.
----
Excellent article.

[JohnLocke]

1. These people are our enemies and should betreated as such.

That we subsidize these barbarians is inexcusable, particularly when the president ridiculously puffs and bluffs about Cuba's human rights abuses.

[JohnLocke]

2. Yes, this doesn't mention IP, but it's applicable nevertheless.

[Classical_Liberal]

4. I don't think it is applicable. It is about Saudi ARabia

and Islamic Fundamentalism. Nothing to do with I/P.

[madrchsod]

3. saudi arabia is rotting

from the inside out..wahhabism is a bloody stain on islam. the sooner the people realize what a horrid place they live in the better off the world will be. for all the hundreds of billions they have people still can find no work and the poor are denied basic rights....
see i do agree with you on some issues....lol