Johann Hari says that the West’s oil consumption funds Saudi Arabia, who uses part of that money to fund fundamentalist Islam all over the world. I don’t know if Hari’s history is correct, but his column is interesting:
In his 18th-century oasis, Mohamed ibn Abd al-Wahhab Wahhab had a dream. He dreamed of an Islam stripped down to a cold list of mechanical rules, strictly enforced, severely upheld. He ordered whippings and beheadings of Muslims to “purify” the faith. He smashed up and burned down the worship places of the softer, more mystical Muslims all around him. And — his smartest move — he cut a deal. He met the chief of the desert bandits who lived in the nearby long stretch of sand called Najd — a man named Mohamed Saud — and offered him his allegiance, in return for enforcing his severe, new brand of Islam. The Saud ruling family and the Wahhabi doctrine have been locked in a stiff waltz ever since.
More than two centuries later, oil was discovered under the territory of these bandits, and billions of dollars began to soak into the Kingdom. True to their ancestor’s deal, the House of Saud used this black gold to promote the ideas of Wahhab, no longer merely on their own sands, but across the world.
By paying for thousands of schools, mosques and trained imams, they dispersed the ideas of one reactionary little preacher to every continent. It has been a corporate strategy that leaves Ronald McDonald looking like a puffing, obese slouch. Slowly, steadily, they are succeeding in eroding other, gentler forms of Islam. They are globalising Wahhabism — and your petrol purchases are paying for it.
