(National Post-Canada) Editorial - Both American and British intelligence agencies report receiving plenty of valuable information and assistance from Saudi security forces. And the Saudis themselves have reportedly killed or captured 23 of 26 of their own most-wanted al-Qaeda suspects in the past three years. What the Saudis have refused to do, however, is completely snuff out the conditions that lead to terrorism. Members of the Saudi royal family - which consists of 7,000 princes with 22,000 wives among them - are the world's leading exporters and funders of Islamic extremism in Arab and non-Arab nations alike. Saudi royals are almost certainly behind the Koranic schools in Pakistan where the London bombers imbibed the particularly intolerant brand of Sunni Islam - Wahhabism - that is the official faith of the theocratic Saudi kingdom. Likewise, the Saudis have funded nearly 80% of British mosques, two-thirds of those in continental Europe, and somewhere under half of those in North America - many of them radical. And they often pay for Wahhabi imams from the Arabian peninsula to emigrate to Western mosques, where they preach their anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, anti-Western theories to a generation of young Muslims. Until the king insists that his relatives stop funding hatred and teaching it in their schools, the war on terrorism will drag on.
2005-08-05 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive