"Starting in the mid-1970s and 1980s, conservative/strict/puritanical interpretations of SunniIslam favored by the conservative oil-exporting Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, (and to a lesser extent by other Gulf monarchies) have achieved what political scientist Gilles Kepel calls a "preeminent position of strength in the global expression of Islam."[1] The interpretations included not only "Wahhabi" Islam of Saudi Arabia, but Islamist/revivalist Islam,[2] and a "hybrid"[3][4] of the two interpretations.
The impetus for the spread of the interpretations through the Muslim world was ‘the largest worldwide propaganda campaign ever mounted’ (according to political scientist Alex Alexiev),[5] "dwarfing the Soviets’ propaganda efforts at the height of the Cold War" (according to journalist David A. Kaplan),[5] funded by petroleum exports which ballooned following the October 1973 War.[6][7] One estimate is that during the reign of King Fahd (1982 to 2005), over $75 billion was spent in efforts to spread Wahhabi Islam. The money was used to establish 200 Islamic colleges, 210 Islamic centers, 1,500 mosques, and 2,000 schools for Muslim children in Muslim and non-Muslim majority countries.[8][9] The schools were "fundamentalist" in outlook and formed a network "from Sudan to northern Pakistan".[10] The late king also launched a publishing center in Medina that by 2000 had distributed 138 million copies of the Quran (the central religious text of Islam) worldwide. [11] Along with the millions of Qurans distributed free of charge came doctrinal texts following the Wahhabi interpretation.[12]
In the 1980s the Kingdom's approximately 70 embassies around the world were equipped with religious attaches whose job it was to get new mosques built in their countries and to persuade existing mosques to propagate the dawah wahhabiya". [13]
The Saudi Arabian government funds a number of international organizations to spread fundamentalist Islam, including the Muslim World League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, the International Islamic Relief Organization, and various royal charities.[Note 1]Supporting da'wah (literally `making an invitation` to Islam) -- proselytizing or preaching of Islam—has been called "a religious requirement" for Saudi rulers that cannot be abandoned "without losing their domestic legitimacy" as protectors and propagators of Islam.[14]
In addition to the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, other strict and conservative interpretations of Sunni Islam directly or indirectly assisted by funds from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf include those of the Muslim Brotherhoodand Jamaat-e-Islami Islamist organizations. While their alliances were not always permanent,[15] Wahhabism and forms of Islamism are said to have formed a "joint venture",[2] sharing a strong "revulsion" against western influences,[16] a belief in strict implementation of injunctions and prohibitions of sharia law,[6] an opposition to both Shiism and popular Islamic religious practices (the cult of `saints`),[2] and a belief in the importance of armed jihad.[4]
Later the two movements are said to have been "fused",[3]or formed a "hybrid", particularly as a result of the Afghan jihad of the 1980s against the Soviet Union,[4] and resulted in the training and equipping of thousands of Muslims to fight against Soviets and their Afghan allies in Afghanistan in the 1980s.[4]
The funding has been criticized for promoting an intolerant, fanatical form of Islam that allegedly helped to breed terrorism.[17] Critics argue that volunteers mobilized to fight in Afghanistan (such as Osama bin Laden) and "exultant" at their success against the Soviet superpower, went on to fight Jihad against Muslim governments and civilians in other countries. And that conservative Sunni groups such as the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan are attacking and killing not only non-Muslims but fellow Muslims they consider to be apostates, such as Shia and Sufis.[18] (Changes to Saudi religious policy as of 2017 have led some to suggest that "Islamists throughout the world will have to follow suit or risk winding up on the wrong side of orthodoxy".[19])"
"Although Saudi Arabia had been an oil exporter since 1939, and active leading the conservative opposition among Arab states to Gamal Abdel Nasser's progressive Arab nationalism since at least the 1960s,[20] it was the October 1973 War that greatly enhanced its wealth and stature, and ability to promote conservative Wahhabism.[21]
Prior to the 1973 oil embargo, religion throughout the Muslim world was "dominated by national or local traditions rooted in the piety of the common people." Clerics looked to their different schools of fiqh (the four Sunni Madhhabs: Hanafi in the Turkish zones of South Asia, Maliki in Africa, Shafi'i in Southeast Asia, plus Shi'a Ja'fari,[22] and "held Saudi inspired puritanism" (using another school of fiqh, Hanbali) in "great suspicion on account of its sectarian character," according to Gilles Kepel.[23] But the legitimacy of this class of traditional Islamic jurists had become undermined in the 1950s and 60s by the power of post-colonial nationalist governments. In "the vast majority" of Muslim countries, the private religious endowments (awqaf) that had supported the independence of the Islamic scholars/jurists for centuries were taken over by the state and the jurists were made salaried employees. The nationalist rulers naturally encouraged their employees (and their employees interpretations of Islam) to serve their employer/rulers' interests, and inevitably the jurists came to be seen by the Muslim public as doing so.[24]
Wahhabis—or as they preferred to be called Salafis or monotheists (Muwaḥḥidun)—were more strict in some practices than other Muslims—hijab covering not just hair but women's faces, separation of sexes). They also ban practices other Muslims permit, such as music, visiting tombs of saints, conducting of business during salatprayer times.[25][26][27][28] Critics also complained Wahhabis were too quick to declare other Muslims appostates (takfir).[29]
While the 1973 War (also called the Yom Kippur War) was started by Egypt and Syria to take back land won by Israel in 1967, the "real victors" of the war were the Arab "oil-exporting countries", (according to Gilles Kepel), whose embargo against Israel's western allies stopped Israel's counter offensive.[30]
The embargo's political success enhanced the prestige of the embargo-ers and the reduction in the global supply of oil sent oil prices soaring (from US$3 per barrel to nearly $12[31]) and with them, oil exporter revenues. This put Muslim oil exporting states in a "clear position of dominance within the Muslim world". The most dominant was Saudi Arabia, the largest exporter by far (see bar chart below). [30][32]
Years were chosen to shown revenue for before (1973) and after (1974) the October 1973 War, after the Iranian Revolution (1980), and during the market turnaround in 1986.[33] Iran and Iraq are excluded because their revenue fluctuated due to the revolution and the war between them. [34]
Saudi Arabians viewed their oil wealth not as an accident of geology or history, but directly connected to their practice of religion—a blessing given them by God, "vindicate them in their separateness from other cultures and religions",[35] but also something to "be solemnly acknowledged and lived up to" with pious behavior, and so "legitimize" its prosperity and buttressing and "otherwise fragile" dynasty.[36][37][38]
With its new wealth the rulers of Saudi Arabia sought to replace nationalist movements in the Muslim world with Islam, to bring Islam "to the forefront of the international scene", and to unify Islam worldwide under the "single creed" of Wahhabism, paying particular attention to Muslims who had immigrated to the West (a "special target").[23] In the words of journalist Scott Shane, "when Saudi imams arrived in Muslim countries in Asia or Africa, or in Muslim communities in Europe or the Americas, wearing traditional Arabian robes, speaking the language of the Quran — and carrying a generous checkbook — they had automatic credibility."[39]
Non-Wahhabi Muslim influence
For Saudi Wahhabis, working with non-Wahhabi grassroots groups and individuals had significant advantages, because outside of Saudi Arabia the audience for Wahhabi doctrine was limited to "religiously conservative milieus",[40] and the doctrine itself was "rejected by a large portion of Sunni ulamas."[41] (When Wahabis first took control of the Hejaz they made up less than 1% of the world Muslim population).[42] Saudi Arabia founded and funded transnational organizations and headquartered them in the kingdom—the most well known being the World Muslim League—but many of the guiding figures in these bodies were foreign Salafis (including the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization defined as Salafi in the broad sense),[43] not Saudi Wahhabis. The World Muslim League distributed books and cassettes by non-Wahhabi foreign Salafi luminaries such as Hassan al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), Sayyid Qutb (Egyptian founder of radical Islamist doctrine). Members of the Brotherhood also provided "critical manpower" for the international efforts of the Muslim World League and other Saudi backed organizations.[44] Saudi Arabia successfully courted academics at al-Azhar University, and invited radical Salafis to teach at its own universities where they influenced Saudis like Osama bin Laden.[45]
One observer (Trevor Stanley) argues that "Saudi Arabia is commonly characterized as aggressively exporting Wahhabism, it has in fact imported pan-Islamic Salafism", which influenced native Saudi religious/political beliefs.[45] Muslim Brotherhood members fleeing persecution of Arab nationalist regimes in Egypt and Syria were given refuge in Saudi and sometimes ended up teaching in Saudi schools and universities. Muhammad Qutb, the brother of the highly influential Sayyid Qutb, came to Saudi Arabia after being released from prison. There he taught as a professor of Islamic Studies and edited and published the books of his older brother[46]who had been executed by the Egyptian government.[47]Hassan al-Turabi who later became the "éminence grise"[48] in the government of Sudanese president Jaafar Nimeiri spent several years in exile in Saudi Arabia. "Blind Shiekh" Omar Abdel-Rahman lived in Saudi Arabia from 1977 to 1980 teaching at a girls' college in Riyadh. Al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was also allowed into Saudi Arabia in the 1980s.[49] Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, sometimes called "the father of the modern global jihad",[50] was a lecturer at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, after being fired from his teaching job in Jordan and until he left for Pakistan in 1979. His famous fatwa Defence of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation after Faith, was supported by leading Wahhabis Sheikh Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz, and Muhammad ibn al Uthaymeen.[51] Muslim Brethren who became wealthy in Saudi Arabia became key contributors to Egypt's Islamist movements.[46][52]
Saudi Arabia backed the Pakistan-based Jamaat-i-Islamimovement politically and financially even before the oil embargo (since the time of King Saud). Jamaat's educational networks received Saudi funding and Jamaat was active in the "Saudi-dominated" Muslim World League.[53][54] The constituent council of the Muslim World League included non-Wahhabis such as Said Ramadan, son-in-law of Hasan al-Banna (the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), Abul A'la Maududi (founder of Jamaat-i-Islami), Maulanda Abu'l-Hasan Nadvi (d. 2000) of India.[55] In 2013 when the Bangladeshi government cracked down on Jamaat-e Islami for war crimes during the Bangladesh liberation war, Saudi Arabia expressed its displeasure by cutting back on the number of Bangladeshi guest workers allowed to work in (and sent badly needed remittances from) Saudi Arabia.[56]
Scholar Olivier Roy describes the cooperation beginning in the 1980s between Saudis and Arab Muslim Brothers as "a kind of joint venture". "The Muslim Brothers agreed not to operate in Saudi Arabia itself, but served as a relay for contacts with foreign Islamist movements" and as a "relay" in South Asia with "long established" movements like the Jamaat-i Islami and older Ahl-i Hadith. "Thus the MB played an essential role in the choice of organisations and individuals likely to receive Saudi subsidies."
Roy describes the "MBs" and the Wahhabis as sharing "common themes of a reformist and puritanical preaching"; "common references" to Hanbalijurisprudence, while rejecting sectarianism in Sunni juridical schools; virulent opposition to both Shiism and popular Sufi religious practices (the cult of 'saints`).[2]Along with cooperation there was also competition between the two even before the Gulf War, with (for example) Saudis supporting the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria and Jamil al-Rahman in Afghanistan, while the Brotherhood supported the movement of Sheikh Mahfoud Nahnah in Algeria and the Hezb-e Islami in Afghanistan.[57]Gilles Kepel describes the MB and Saudis as sharing "the imperative of returning to Islam's `fundamentals` and the strict implementation of all its injunctions and prohibitions in the legal, moral, and private spheres";[58] and David Commins, as their both having a "strong revulsion" against western influences and an "unwavering confidence" that Islam is both the true religion and a "sufficient foundation for conducting worldly affairs",[16] The "significant doctrinal differences" between the MBs/Islamists/Islamic revivalists include the Brotherhood's focus on "Muslim unity to ward off western imperialism";[16] on the importance of "eliminating backwardness" in the Muslim world through "mass public education, health care, minimum wages and constitutional government" (Commins);[16] and its toleration of revolutionary as well as conservative social groups, contrasted with Wahhabism exclusively socially conservative orientation (Kepel).[58]
Wahhabi alliances with, or assistance to, other conservative Sunni groups have not necessarily been permanent or without tension. A major rupture came after the August 1990 Invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussien's Iraq, which was opposed by the Saudi kingdom and supported by most if not all Islamic Revivalist groups, including many who had been funded by the Saudis. Saudi government and foundations had spent many millions on transportation, training, etc. Jihadist fighters in Afghanistan, many of whom then returned to their own country, including Saudi Arabia, to continue jihad with attacks on civilians.[citation needed] Osama bin Laden's passport was revoked in 1994.[59] In March 2014 the Saudi government declared the Muslim Brotherhood a "terrorist organization".[60] The "Islamic State", whose "roots are in Wahhabism",[61] has vowed to overthrow the Saudi kingdom.[62] In July 2015, Saudi author Turki al-Hamad lamented in an interview on Saudi Rotana Khalijiyya Television that "Our youth" serves as "fuel for ISIS” driven by the "prevailing" Saudi culture. "It is our youth who carry out bombings. … You can see [in ISIS videos] the volunteers in Syria ripping up their Saudi passports.”.[63] (An estimated 2,500 Saudis have fought with ISIS.[64])
Influence of other conservative Sunni gulf-states
The other Gulf Kingdoms were smaller in population and oil wealth than Saudi Arabia but some (particularly UAE, Kuwait, Qatar) also aided conservative Sunni causes, including jihadist groups. According to the Atlanticmagazine “Qatar’s military and economic largesse has made its way" to the al-Qaida group operating in Syria, "Jabhat al-Nusra”.[65][66] According to a secret memo signed by Hillary Clinton, released by Wikileaks, Qatar has the worst record of counter-terrorism cooperation with the US.[66] According to journalist Owen Jones, "powerful private" Qatar citizens are "certainly" funding the self-described "Islamic State" and "wealthy Kuwaitis" are funding Islamist groups "like Jabhat al-Nusra" in Syria.[66]In Kuwait the "Revival of Islamic Heritage Society" funds al-Qaida according to US Treasury.[66] According to Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, (an associate fellow at Chatham House), “High profile Kuwaiti clerics were quite openly supporting groups like al-Nusra, using TV programmes in Kuwait to grandstand on it.”[66]
In mid 2017, tensions escalated between Saudi Arabia / UAE and Qatar, related to the way in which, and to what groups, Salafism is being propagated.[67]
Examples of the result of influence
Scott Shane of the New York Times gives the high percentage of Muslim supporting strict traditional punishments (citing a Pew Research study) as an example of Saudi Wahhabi influence in those countries.[39] The Pew Research Center study reports that as of 2011,
- 82% of Muslims polled in Egypt and Pakistan, 70% in Jordan, and 56% in Nigeria support the stoning of people who commit adultery;
- 82% of Muslims polled in Pakistan, 77% in Egypt, 65% in Nigeria and 58% in Jordan support whippings and cutting off of hands for crimes like theft and robbery;
- 86% of Muslims polled in Jordan, 84% in Egypt, and 76% in Pakistan support the death penalty for those who leave the Muslim religion.[68]
According to Shane the influence of Saudi teaching on Muslim culture is particularly and literally visible in "parts of Africa and Southeast Asia", more women cover their hair and more men have grown beards.[39]"
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