(Newsweek) Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball - In early October, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder made an official visit to Saudi Arabia where he told Saudi officials that the teaching of hard-core jihadi ideology at the King Fahd Academy in Bonn "must be stopped." The Saudis pledged to curb extremism and fire any radical teachers, but they also told Schroeder that schools attended by the children of German diplomats and businessmen in Saudi Arabia could face similar harassment or even closure. As a result, the Schroeder government promised to back off from any plans to close the King Fahd Academy for "foreign-policy reasons." The Saudi government pumps tens of millions of dollars every year into Islamic centers, mosques, and schools named for King Fahd in Los Angeles, Moscow, Edinburgh, and Malaga, Spain, where they spread Wahhabism - the puritanical, hard-core brand of Islam that is the official Saudi state religion. A prominent Saudi dissident, Mai Yamani, says the Saudis are incapable of true reform and the Saudi royal family is "deeply connected" to the country's hard-core Wahhabi clerics. "The hard-liners are the state, fully embedded in its structure."
2003-12-05 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive