9/11 forces change to Saudi's global religious mission

[rug]

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — For more than three decades, Saudi Arabia has used its vast oil riches to host foreign students in the kingdom, build schools and mosques abroad, distribute the Qur’an in different languages and send funds to Islamic organizations wherever Muslims are in need.

This global outreach was meant to secure Saudi leadership of Sunni Islam globally while proselytizing on behalf of the kingdom’s ultraconservative brand of Salafi Islam, Wahhabism.

But a decade after 9/11, this proselytization drive has seen major changes, scholars of the Salafi movement say.

Al Qaeda’s 2001 assaults against the United States and its violent insurgency in the kingdom from 2003 to 2006 forced the Saudi government to impose stricter controls on funding sent to Islamic groups abroad, tone down some of the harsher rhetoric of Wahhabism, and broaden its outreach to non-Salafi, mainstream Muslims, according to these experts.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/saudi-arabia/110902/911-forces-change-to-saudi-global-religious-mission

[darkstar3]

1. It's a start.

It's funny, really. A group of religious extremists reached the status of dispicable on a global scale, and by doing so, ensured that other similar extremists had to tone it the fuck down. And the world, by millimeters, becomes a better place.

Call it a victory for criticism of religion.