[Sndbox] Terror 101

[Charles]

Terror 101
Are the Saudis funding schools devoted to fomenting radical Islamic ideology?

		NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE

Dec. 3 —  An intense behind-the-scenes diplomatic struggle over a controversial Saudi-funded academy in Germany has shed new light on the close relationship between Saudi government officials and an international network of mosques and schools—some of which, Western intelligence officials say, have become breeding grounds for terrorism.

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			THE GERMAN SCHOOL, the King Fahd Academy in Bonn, provoked an uproar two months ago when German television reporters infiltrated its classrooms and videotaped a teacher inciting a holy war “in the name of Allah” and advocating martial-arts training—including the use of crossbows—for young students. Local German officials announced their intention to shut the school down after receiving intelligence reports that Muslim militants from throughout Germany—some of them with suspected terrorist connections—were flocking to the area to send their children to the academy.        But after expressing its own alarm, the German government quickly changed its tune. German Interior Minister Otto Schily recently praised the King Fahd Academy as an “important cultural institution” and denounced the media campaign against the school as a threat to Saudi-German relations.        The reason for the change, sources tell NEWSWEEK, was hardball diplomatic pressure from Riyadh. In early October, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder made an official visit to Saudi Arabia where he met with the ailing King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, the country’s de facto ruler. During the trip, Schroeder told Saudi officials that the teaching of hard-core jihadi ideology at the King Fahd Academy “must be stopped,” according to German press reports.        The Saudis pledged to curb extremism and fire any radical teachers. But they also quietly passed along another message to Schroeder: that schools attended by the children of German diplomats and businessmen in Saudi Arabia could face similar harassment or even closure if the King Fahd Academy was shut down. As a result, the Schroeder government promised to back off any plans to close the King Fahd Academy for “foreign-policy reasons,” a German official told NEWSWEEK. Hirsh: Iraq Rebalances Power in Washington        The German experience underscores a broader concern among U.S. and other Western intelligence officials about the role that Saudi-funded mosques and schools are playing in the fomenting of radical Islamic ideology. The Saudi government pumps tens of millions of dollars every year into such institutions around the world—including Islamic centers, mosques and schools named for King Fahd in Los Angeles, Moscow, Edinburgh and Malaga, Spain. These schools are known for spreading Wahhabism—the puritanical, hard-core brand of Islam that is the official Saudi state religion and, in its more extreme versions, can be difficult to distinguish from the radical Islamic thought preached by Osama bin Laden and his followers, some intelligence officials say.
			TERROR WATCH •  CURRENT COLUMN •  Archived Terror Watch Columns PREVIOUS COLUMNS 11/19: Case Decidedly Not Closed •  The Defense Dept. memo allegedly proving a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam does nothing of the sort 11/26: Payback? •  The central figure in an alleged back-channel Iraq peace proposal claims that law enforcement agencies are harassing him for going public        As a result, U.S. officials have become increasingly alarmed about the Saudi-funded institutions. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom two weeks ago held a public hearing on the issue and has asked Congress to launch a formal investigation into the Saudi role in financing schools that promote “hate, intolerance and other human-rights violations.”        Michael Petruzzello, a spokesman for the Saudi government in Washington, said the Saudis have already begun a crackdown on their own. “They have established as a matter of public policy—there will be no funding of schools that preach extremism,” he said. Inside Saudi Arabia, he said “hundreds” of radical teachers have been dismissed from the country’s schools. Elsewhere, the Saudis have asked U.S. officials for evidence of the promotion of radical militancy and when such evidence is provided the Saudis will take action, he said.        That process appears to be under way at the Saudi Embassy-funded Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in Fairfax, Va. According to a story in the Dec. 3 edition of The Wall Street Journal, the school has trained 75 people as Islamic religious advisors for Muslim-American soldiers in the U.S. military. It has also had extensive ties with Islamic radicals and has a published curriculum that calls for studying “the ruinous effect” of Christian beliefs, the Journal reported. “We have looked into this matter and we are in the process of shutting it [the institute] down,” a Saudi official said.        But as the experience in Germany shows, it is far from clear how committed the Saudis are to cracking down on state-sponsored institutions that have close ties to the country’s religious establishment and in some cases even bear the name of the country’s supreme monarch. At the recent hearing before the religious-freedom commission, a prominent Saudi dissident, Mai Yamani, daughter of that country’s former oil minister, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, said the Saudis are incapable of true reform. She described the Saudi royal family as “deeply connected” to the country’s hard-core Wahhabi clerics and says the family has given them vast power over the country’s schools and mosques in exchange for religious legitimacy. “Not only has the state embraced the hard-liners,” she said, “the hard-liners are the state, fully embedded in its structure.”

 

Charles Mims

http://www.the-sandbox.org

 

 

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