With Friends Like Saudis, We Don't Need Enemies

The Hill

October 24, 2001

It was apparently easy enough to trace the terrorists who struck on Sept. 11 first to Osama bin Laden and then to Afghanistan. There is even reason to believe that it may be possible to track down the origins of the anthrax spores that have begun appearing in mailboxes around the country.

But what about the ideas that are motivating these people, that have allowed bin Laden to convince his followers that they ought to sacrifice their lives for some greater good?

Some would trace the motivation right back to Islam. After all, these folks say publicly and privately that what they are doing is being done in the name of their God and the religion they follow.

But we have been told time and again since Sept. 11 that bin Laden and his terrorist cohorts, enablers and financiers cannot logically base their actions on anything even faintly resembling orthodox Islam.

We've heard it from President Bush and from Muslim clerics. We are being told repeatedly that Islam and the Koran don't countenance such actions and that it would be wrong to suggest that they do. The problem is that the Koran and the doctrines constructed by those who interpret it can be read in many different ways, and more than a few fanatics are using it to justify a holy war against the West and all we represent.

Still, it is perfectly true that most Muslims see their religion differently. They are neither bloodthirsty themselves nor enemies of all who follow different paths. There are 6 million or 7 million practicing Muslims in our own country and most of them are both peaceful and loyal.

It remains a fact, however, that bin Laden and the millions of Muslims who seem to agree with him base their beliefs and actions on their interpretation of their chosen religion. They may be misreading the religion they profess to represent, but in some ways this is less important than the fact that they actually seem to believe that what they are doing is divinely sanctioned. It is this belief that makes them so dangerous.

It is true, of course, that political and ideological extremists in the past have sometimes demonstrated a similar willingness to sacrifice themselves to make a point, to create a "better" world, or to defeat those they despise. But the Muslim extremists with whom the world is now being forced to contend seem to base their whole strategy on the belief that their followers will readily sacrifice their lives in the name of their God and the hope that they'll be rewarded in another life.

The great American conservative Richard Weaver observed several decades ago that "ideas have consequences," and this would seem to me to be what Osama and his buddies are proving today. These are not people motivated simply by a desire for power but by a belief system that commits them to total war against those whose values they find repugnant.

It is said that they recruit among the poor of the Third World, but the peculiar fanaticism they represent is lavishly financed and supported by people who are neither poor nor stupid. The underlying religious fanaticism motivating bin Laden's troops is disseminated by the rulers of Saudi Arabia who no doubt think they can buy a little security by subsidizing the very ideas that may end up destroying them.

If Weaver was right, and we trace the ideas that motivate these fanatics, we end up not in Iraq or the Sudan but in Saudi Arabia. It has been the rulers of this "friendly" Middle Eastern state who have fostered and financed a perverted and fanatical version of Islam that leads directly to bin Laden and the World Trade Center.

A virulent form of Islam known as Wahhabism after its founder, Abdul Wahhab, arose in the late 18th century, captured the imagination of the Saudi ruling family and is today the state religion of not only Saudi Arabia but other Gulf states as well.

Mainline Islam may be a peaceful and great religion, but the Saudi-financed Wahhabis are trying their best to turn it into something else. If anyone had any doubts, Sept. 11 proved that their ideas do have consequences.

The Wahhabis are totalitarians at heart and dedicated to imposing their version of Islam on their fellow Muslims while preaching a holy war against everyone else. Bin Laden is a Wahhabi and so are his followers. It is said that Wahhabis, financed by Saudi gold, control 80 percent of the mosques in this country. If Iraq is brewing viruses that find themselves into the hands of the terrorists, the Saudis are brewing a more noxious mix of ideas that poison their minds and are thus far more dangerous.

And these folks are our "friends."

David Keene is the chairman of the American Conservative Union and a managing associate with the Carmen Group, a Washington, D.C.-based governmental-affairs firm.