Creating Frankenstein: The Impact of Saudi Export of Ultra-Conservatism in South Asia (Part 1)
Introduction
Continued doubts about the longevity of the Saudi ruling family
are fuelled by its Faustian bargain with Wahhabism - a conser vative, intolerant,
discriminatory and anti-pluralistic interpretation of Islam.[1]
It is a bargain that has produced one of the largest
dedicated public diplomacy campaigns in history.
Estimates of Saudi Arabia’s
spending on support of ultra-conservative strands of Islam, including
Wahhabism, Salafism and Deobandism, across the globe range from $70 to $100
billion. Saudi largesse funded fund mosques, Islamic schools and cultural
institutions, and social services as well as the forging of close ties to
non-Wahhabi Muslim leaders and intelligence agencies in various Muslim nations.
In doing so, Saudi Arabia succeeded in turning s largely local Wahhabi and
like-minded ultra-conservative Muslim worldviews into an influential force in
Muslim nations and communities across the globe.[2]
The campaign is not simply a product of the marriage between
the Al Sauds and the Wahhabis. It is central to Saudi Arabia’s soft power
policy and the Al Sauds’ survival strategy. One reason, albeit not the only
one, that the longevity of the Al Sauds is a matter of debate, is the fact that
the propagation of Wahhabism is having a backlash in countries across the
globe, as well as on Saudi Arabia itself. More than ever before, Wahhabism, and
its theological parent, Salafism, are being put under the spotlight due to
their theological or ideological similarities with jihadism in general, and the
ideology of the Islamic State (IS) group in particular.
Speaking at a conference in Singapore, sociologist Farid
Alatas noted that madrassas -
often funded by Saudi Arabia or other Salafi and Wahhabi groups - fails to produce
graduates trained to think critically. “They have not been exposed to [Muslim]
intellectuals like Ibn Khaldoun,” Alatas said “That is the opportunity for
Salafis and Wahhabis” in the absence of Muslim scholars who would be capable of
debunking their myths he added. Alatas was referring to Abd al-Raḥman ibn Muḥammad
ibn Muḥammad ibn Abi Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan Ibn Khaldun, the 14th
century historian, who is widely seen as one of the fathers of modern
sociology, historiography, demography and economics.
Taking Wahhabism’s influence in Malaysia as an example,
Alatas pointed to the uncontested distribution of a sermon by the religious
department of the Malaysian state of Selangor, that asserted that women who
fail to wear a hijab invite rape and resemble a fish that attracts flies.[3]
Such attitudes fostered by Saudi funding, as well as Saudi
Arabia’s willingness to look the other way when its youth leave the kingdom to
join militant groups, undermine Saudi Arabia’s international image and its
efforts to create soft power. “It is often alleged that the Saudis export
terrorism. They don’t, but what they have done is encourage their own radicals
–a natural by-product of Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia’s conservative brand of Islam
– to commit their terrorist acts elsewhere. As the radicals leave, so does
Saudi money, which funds their violent activities,” said former U.S. Assistant
Secretary of State for East Asia, Christopher R. Hill.[4]
The estimated 2,500 Saudis who have joined IS constitute the group’s second
largest national contingent.[5]
The problem for the Al Sauds is not just that their image is
under attack and that their legitimacy is wholly dependent on their
identification with Wahhabism; it is also that the Al Sauds since the launch of
their Islamist campaign, have often been only nominally in control of it. As a
result, the Al Sauds have let a genie out of the bottle that now leads an
independent life and cannot be put back into the bottle. Wahhabi and
Salafi-influenced education systems played into the hands of Arab autocrats,
who for decades dreaded an education system that would teach critical thinking
and the asking of difficult questions.
Saudi funding of conservative Islamic learning neatly
aligned itself in Pakistan, which has an education system shaped by the
partition of British India into predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan.
This emphasis on religious nationalism, where minorities are perceived as being
inferior, involved a parochial definition of what it meant to be Muslim in
Pakistan.[6] The U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom (USCIRF) reported that Pakistani public school textbooks - circulated to at least 41
million children -
contained derogatory references to religious minorities. The perception of
minorities as threats was reinforced with the enhanced Islamisation of
textbooks in the decade from 1978 to 1988, in which General Zia ul Haq-ruled
Pakistan.[7]
“In public school classrooms, Hindu children are forced to
read lessons about ‘Hindus’ conspiracies toward Muslims’, and Christian
children are taught that ‘Christians learned tolerance and kind-heartedness
from Muslims.’ This represents a public shaming of religious minority children
that begins at a very young age, focusing on their religious and cultural
identity and their communities’ past history. A review of the curriculum
demonstrates that public school students are being taught that religious
minorities, especially Christians and Hindus, are nefarious, violent, and
tyrannical by nature. There is a tragic irony in these accusations, because
Christians and Hindus in Pakistan face daily persecution, are common victims of
crime, and are frequent targets of deadly communal violence, vigilantism, and
collective punishment,” USCIRF report concluded.[8]
“By imposing the harsh, literal interpretation of religion
exported and promoted by Saudi Arabia, we have turned Pakistan into a drab,
monochromatic landscape where colour, laughter, dancing and music are frowned
upon, if not entirely banned. And yet Islam in South Asia was once
characterised by a life-enhancing Sufi tradition that is now under threat. More
and more, we are following the example set by the Taliban,” added Pakistani
writer Irfan Husain.[9] A
Pew Research survey moreover concluded in late 2015 that 78 percent of
Pakistanis favoured strict implementation if Islamic law.[10]
Syed Imran Ali Shah whose father was murdered when he was a
child, was 16 when in 1999 he was admitted to Mercy Pak School in Peshawar, an
educational institution funded by Saudi-backed Mercy International Pakistan.
Zahid al-Sheikh, the brother of 9/11 mastermind Khalid al-Sheikh, was one of
the charity’s executives in the second half of the 1980s and the 1990s, a time
when Saudi Arabia joined the United States in financing the Pakistan-based
resistance against the Soviets in Afghanistan.[11]
Syed Imran says his radicalization was spurred by one of his teachers all of whom
were in his words Wahhabis. The teacher argued the importance of jihad in his
sermons.[12]
Jihad never figured in the school’s curriculum but students learned to believe
that the beliefs and practices of other sects were heresy. ”We teach students
the aqeedah (creed) of every sect and tell them as to how and where that
aqeedah is wrong so that we can guide them to the right aqeedah,” said Umer bin
Abdul Aziz of the Jaimatul Asar madrassa in Peshawar.[13]
Based on textual analysis of madrassa texts, scholar Niaz Muhammad warned that
“no one should claim that their statements about the madrassa curriculum have
nothing to do with sectarianism or other forms of religious militancy.”[14]
In a seminar moderated by Jordanian scholar Nadia Oweidat at
the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., on 3 May 2016, Ahmed Abdellahy,
a reformed, former Egyptian jihadist, described being educated in a school
system that divided the world into ‘us and them’. ‘Us’ were the Muslims who had
been victimised by ‘them’. Abdellahy said he was taught that: ‘they’, the
Christians, Westerners and “all the world is against us [Muslims] because we
are better than them.” Abdellahy said. He said this was an attitude engraved in
generations of children who were expected to accept it at face value. “When I
was going to school, the role of the school was to stop you from questioning,”
Oweidat added.[15]
The inability of Abdellahy’s school teachers to answer students’ probing
questions and a lack of available literature drove him to the Internet, where
militant Islamists provided answers.[16]
The current backlash of Saudi support for autocracy and
funding of the export of Wahhabism and Salafism, coupled with the need to
radically reform the kingdom’s economy, means that the Al Sauds and the
Wahhabis are nearing a crunch point, one that will not necessarily offer
solutions, but in fact could make things worse. It risks sparking ever more
militant splits, that will make themselves felt across the Muslim world and in
minority Muslim communities elsewhere, in multiple ways.
One already visible fallout of the Saudi campaign is greater
intolerance towards minorities and increased sectarianism in countries like
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia. In Pakistan, for example, a U.S.
Foreign Service officer, noted that in Saudi-funded “madrassas, children are
denied contact with the outside world and taught sectarian extremism, hatred
for non-Muslims, and anti-Western/anti-Pakistan government philosophy.”[17]
The recent shooting in the southern Philippines of Sheikh
Aaidh al-Qarni, a prominent Saudi Wahhabi cleric whose popularity is evident in
his following of 12 million on Twitter, further suggests that the backlash for
the kingdom is not just the Saudi government emerging as a target but also the
ulema[18]
- including ulema who are
not totally subservient to the Saudi government. Sheikh Aaidh al-Qarni is a
product of the fusion between Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood that
produced the Sahwa, a Saudi Salafist political reform movement. While
Philippine investigators are operating on the assumption that the Islamic State
(IS) group was responsible for the shooting, Saudi media were quick to report
that Saudi authorities had warned the Philippines days earlier that Iran’s
Revolutionary Guards were planning an attack.[19]
A key to understanding the Saudi funding campaign is the
fact that while it all may be financed out of one pot of money, it serves
different purposes for different parties. For the Wahhabi ulema, it is about
proselytization, about the spreading of Islam; for the Saudi government, it is
about gaining soft power. At times the interests of the government and the
ulema coincide, and at times they diverge. By the same token, the Saudi
campaign on some levels has been an unparalleled success, on others, success is
questionable and one could argue that it risks becoming a liability for the
government.
Problematic Soft Power
It may be hard to conceive of Wahhabism as soft power, but
the fact of the matter is that Salafism was a movement that had only sprouted miniscule
communities in the centuries preceding the rise of Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab,
and only started to make real inroads into Muslim communities beyond the
Arabian Peninsula 175 years after the death of the 18th century
preacher. By the 1980s, the Saudi campaign had established Wahhabi Salafism as
an integral part of the global community of Muslims, and sparked greater
conservative religiosity in various Arab countries as well as the emergence of
Islamist movements and organisations.[20]
The soft power aspect of it, certainly in relation to the power struggle
between Saudi Arabia and Iran, has paid off, particularly in countries like
Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh,
Pakistan and the Maldives, where sectarian attitudes and attitudes
towards minorities, particularly Shiites, and Iran are hardening.
In Indonesia, for example, where recently retired deputy
head of Indonesian intelligence and former deputy head of Nahdlatul Ulema (NU),
one of the world’s largest Islamic movements that prides itself on its anti-Wahhabism,
professes in the same breath his dislike of the Wahhabis and warns that Shiites
are one of the foremost domestic threats to Indonesian national security.
Shiites constitute 1.2 percent of the Indonesian population, including the
estimated 2 million Sunni converts over the last 40 years. A fluent Arabic
speaker who spent years in Saudi Arabia as the representative of Indonesian
intelligence, this intelligence and religious official is not instinctively
anti-Shiite, but sees Shiites as an Iranian fifth wheel. In other words, the impact of Saudi funding
and Salafism is such that even NU is forced to adopt Wahhabi language and
concepts when it comes to perceptions of the threat posed by Iran and Shiites.[21]
Wahhabi influence has meant that “the nature of South Asian
Islam has significantly changed in the last three decades,” said international
relations scholar and columnist Akhilesh Pillalamarri.[22]
Pillalamarri argued that “the result has been an increase in Islamist violence
in Pakistan, Indian Kashmir, and Bangladesh. While governments in South Asia
have not initially made the connection between Saudi Arabian money and the
radicalization of Islam in their own countries, it is now clear that
Wahhabism’s spread is increasing conservatism in South Asia…. As a result, many
South Asians are now Wahhabis or members of related sects that practice a form
of austere Islam similar to the type found in Saudi Arabia. One of these sects
is a conservative movement known as the Deobandi movement, long one of the largest
recipients of Saudi funding,[23]
which, while indigenous to South Asia, is influenced by Wahhabism,”
Pillalamarri said.[24]
He was referring to the Deobandi school of Islam, the most influential sponsor
of Islamic education in Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Pashtun belt founded in the
19th century.[25]
Many of the madrassas were initially Pakistani state
sponsored, particularly during Zia’s rule. The funding was part of Zia’s
Saudi-backed aim to Islamise the country as a whole. “The global Islamic
reassertion spearheaded by Saudi Arabia and Arab petro-dollars was making
itself felt in Pakistan.
There were unmistakable signs of the Saudi impact on
Zia’s locally honed ideological agenda,” says South Asia scholar Ayesha Jalal.[26] Zia would handout as gifts and awards the
writings of Sayyid Abul-A’la Maududi, a Saudi-backed scholar whose
Jamaati-i-Islami party advocated the creation of an Islamic state. Maududi, who
was arrested in 1977, was released from prison by Zia’s predecessor, Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto, at Saudi Arabia’s request. Maududi used his regained freedom to
back the coup that would topple Bhutto and bring Zia to power. Maududi was
reported to have met with Zia for 90 minutes before Bhutto was executed.[27]
Zia’s funding of the madrassas dried up when he suddenly
died in 1988 in a mysterious plane crash. “We then had to turn to charitable
donors at home and abroad for funds to meet our expenditure. How else do you
expect us to finance our expenditure?” says Pir Saifullah Khalid, the founder
of the Jamia Manzoorul Islamia seminary, a sprawling semi-circular complex of
multi-storey classrooms and hostel blocks with a courtyard in the middle, in
Lahore Cantonment’s Saddar area.[28]
The mushrooming of militant Deobandi, Wahhabi and Salafi
mosques, often Saudi-funded, has led Pakistani authorities to link scores of
madrassas to political violence.[29]
Hundreds have been closed in the past years. The Crime Monitoring Cell of the
police inspector general in Sindh has reported that in 2015, 167 madrassas were
closed, of the province’s 6,503 with a collective student population of
290,000. It was also reported that there were another 3,087 unregistered
madrassas that cater to approximately 234,000 students.[30]
Deobandis, like Wahhabis and Salafis, advocate theological
conservatism and oppose liberal ideals and values, and like its theological
cousins, run the gamut from those who are apolitical and focus exclusively on
religion, to militant Islamists who empathise with jihadists and see seizure of
power as the way to implement the Sharia and change social behaviour. These
various ultra-conservative sects, irrespective of their attitude towards
politics and violence, benefit from the fact that with the government’s failing
to invest in quality public education, madrassas have turned into institutions
of rote learning for the poor. These madrassas evade conveying understanding of
the Quran, and are a far cry from the institutions of religious and scientific
learning in the first centuries of Islam that produced intellectuals, scholars
and scientists.
The luminaries of modern-day, ultra-conservative madrassas,
include the likes of Sami ul Haq, the scion of a Deobandi cleric, and former
senator who founded the Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassah in the town of Akora
Khattak in Pakistan. Ul Haq is widely
seen as the father of the Taliban. Ul Haq argued in a book published in 2015
that the Afghan Taliban provided good government, Osama bin Laden was an “ideal
man” and that Al Qaeda never existed.[31]
Ul Haq had vowed not to stop his students from interrupting their studies to
join the Taliban and awarded Mullah Omar, the late Taliban leader, an honorary
degree. The 2007 plot that led to the killing of prominent Pakistani politician
and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was believed to have been hatched in
meetings in Akora Khattak.[32]
A senior Pakistani interior ministry official said that, all in all, “most of
the terrorist attacks during the last three years could be traced back to
madrassas.”[33]
The militancy among Pakistani Deobandis persuaded more than 100,000 of the
movement’s scholars to issue a
fatwa (religious ruling) denouncing violence and terrorism as un-Islamic in
2008.[34]
Columnist Pillalamarri dates the expansion of Saudi and
Wahhabi influence in Pakistan to the US-
Saudi sponsored jihadist resistance
against Soviet occupation in the 1980s that created the basis for the funding
of thousands of madrassas, that at the time often offered education, shelter
and food to the most impoverished who otherwise may not have had an opportunity
to go to school. “Initially, the mushrooming of Wahhabi and Deobandi groups
worked to produce mujahedeen [freedom fighters] to fight in the war against the
Soviets in Afghanistan. Later, elements of the Pakistani government, notably
the Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), saw
the spread of Wahhabism as useful in creating jihadist proxies to influence
Afghanistan and Indian Kashmir. As a result, despite the end of the
Soviet-Afghan war in 1989, the influence of Wahhabism continued to grow in
Pakistan,” Pillalamarri said.
Proselytization of Wahhabism was facilitated by an agreement
in the 1970s between the Pakistani and Saudi governments to promote the Arabic
language and Islamic literature in Pakistan.[35] The influx of sectarian, anti-Shiite Wahhabi
materials grew exponentially with the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) concluded that “Saudi patronage has played
a particularly important role in promoting jihadi madrasas and jihadi culture
in Pakistan.”[36]
Saudi-sponsored non-governmental organisations like the
Muslim World League, which fell under the auspices of the kingdom’s grand mufti
but was populated by Muslim Brotherhood operatives and aimed to spread
Wahhabism beyond the kingdom’s borders, opened offices across the globe,
including South Asia. Wahhabi texts, including translations of the Quran, and
the writings of Maududi and Sayed Qutb, were distributed in Muslim communities
in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, the United States and Europe. Wahhabi imams
(religious leaders) were dispatched to build madrassas with Saudi curricula
offering free education to the poor. Wahhabi beliefs were at the same time
exported when migrant workers returned home from the kingdom grateful for the
opportunity to earn money to support their families.
Once back from the kingdom, many of the workers prayed in
Saudi-funded mosques and adopted Wahhabi and/or Salafi practices. “People go to
the Middle East and come back thinking a certain way. There's Wahhabi money
flowing in,” states International Relations scholar Amena Mohsin, whose maid in
Bangladesh returned from a visit to her village fully covered. “It gives her an
increased status. In that area, near Chittagong, by and large everyone supports
the Hefazat-e-Islam, a conservative group opposed to Bangladesh’s secular
education and women’s rights policy,” she adds.[37]
Hefazat was founded in 2010 by attendees of Wahhabi mosques in Bangladesh.[38]
Evident Risks
The
risk embedded in the ultra- conservatism of Wahhabism and Salafism is further
evident in Bangladesh, a secular Muslim state, with militant Islamists waging a
brutal and murderous campaign against liberal and secular intellectuals,
bloggers, and publishers, and carries out attacks on Christians, Hindus and
Shiites. The attacks were largely the work of Islamic State and Al Qaeda
operatives, but were built on the nurturing of a radical, intolerant
environment by Saudi-funded institutions and Bangladeshi workers who had
returned from the kingdom with a far more conservative and black-and-white
worldview.
Saudi
influence was also discernible in Bangladesh’s gradual move away from
secularism, which was a pillar of the country’s first constitution after it
broke away from Pakistan and became independent in 1971. The kingdom only
recognised Bangladesh after the assassination of the country’s founder
Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman in 1975. President Ziaur Rahman two years later removed
secularism from the constitution, paving the way for the establishment of
formal diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. Military leader General Hussain
Muhammad Ershad completed the process in 1988 by making Islam the state
religion.[39] The kingdom reportedly
funded Jamaat-e-Islami, a leading Islamist party, whose leaders were charged
with war crimes during the country’s war of independence. Several Jamaat leaders were sentenced to
death. Saudi Arabia lobbied unsuccessfully in 2013 to stay the execution of
Jamaat leader Abdul Quader Molla, but refrained from doing so in 2015 in the
case of Muhammad Kamaruzzaman and the party’s general secretary, Ali Ahsan
Mohammad Mujahid. Analysts said the kingdom was willing to sacrifice its
Bangladeshi political allies in a bid to ensure the country’s support in its
regional power struggle with Iran.[40]
The cooperation with ISI and other Pakistani government
agencies and officials turned Saudi Arabia from a funder into a player in
domestic Pakistani affairs. Adel al Jubeir who at the time was an official of
the Saudi embassy in Washington, told U.S. diplomats at a lunch in Riyadh
during a 2007 visit to the kingdom by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf: “We
in Saudi Arabia are not observers in Pakistan, we are participants."[41] US Charge D ’Affaires in Riyadh, Michael G.
Foeller, reporting in a cable to the State Department on the Musharraf visit, noted
that “the Saudis have an economic hold on Nawaz Sharif…. Sharif was reportedly
the first non-Saudi to receive a special economic development loan from the SAG
[Saudi Arabian Government], with which to develop a business”.[42] He was at the time in the kingdom in exile.
Sharif has since become Pakistan’s Prime Minister.
The degree to which Saudi paranoia about Shiites dictated
the kingdom’s efforts to influence
Pakistani politics through check book
diplomacy was evident in State Department reporting on Saudi-
Pakistani
relations in the waning years of the first decade of the 21st
century. One cable, detailing discussions in 2009 between U.S. Acting Assistant
Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister
Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, quoted the UAE official as saying,
“Saudi Arabia
suspects that [then Pakistani President Asif Ali] Zardari is Shia, thus
creating Saudi concern of a Shia triangle in the region between Iran, the
Maliki government in Iraq, and Pakistan under Zardari.” Feltman noted that, in response, there was a
pattern of Saudi Arabia withholding pledges in international frameworks for
financial support of Pakistan.[43]
A State Department cable a year earlier in 2008 quoted the
Pakistani Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington, D.C., Sarfraz Khanzada, saying
that Saudi-Pakistani relations were "under strain" because the Saudis
had no confidence in Zardari. Khanzada said Saudi financial assistance to
Pakistan had dropped sharply. The Saudis had not provided "a single
drop" of oil on promised concessionary terms. Instead, they had given
Pakistan a single $300 million check, considerably less than in previous years.
"Beggars can't be choosers," Khanzada had said, adding that the Saudis
were "waiting for the Zardari government to fall."[44]
Pakistan’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Umar Khan Alisherzai, told U.S.
diplomats in 2009 that “we have been punished by Saudi Arabia because our
president talks to the Iranians.”[45]
Then Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef went
a step further, advising U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke that the Saudis view “the
Pakistan Army as the strongest element for stability in the country.” Bin Nayef
described the Pakistani military as the Saudis’ “winning horse” and Pakistan’s “best
bet.” The Saudi official said that instability in Pakistan or tension between
Pakistan and India posed a threat to Saudi Arabia’s stability, because of the
800,000 Pakistani and one million Indians employed in the kingdom.[46]
Author and former Pakistani ambassador to the United States
Hussain Haqqani estimated that Saudi Arabia donated more than $2 billion to the
Islamist resistance against the Soviets.[47]
The investment, alongside that of the United States and others, fundamentally
changed Pakistani society and the country’s power structure. ISI, supported by
Saudi Arabia and the United States, exploited its role as the recruiter,
trainer and operations manager of the Afghan mujahedeen to expand and
legitimise ISI’s role as a key arbitrator of Pakistani politics by manipulating
the government’s allies and intimidating its opponents.[48]
Moreover, direct Saudi funding as well as support by the
Muslim World League of Jamaat-e-Islami -
the Pakistani wing of a movement founded in 1941 by theologian and philosopher
Abul Ala Maududi -
became a launching pad for Saudi-backed ultra-conservatism into then still
communist Central Asia.[49]
The movement’s Afghan wing was headed by figures who would
play key roles in the ultimate defeat of the Soviets and the rise of Wahhabi-influenced
conservatism and Islamism in the country. Burhannudin Rabbani, the theology
professor, twice became President of Afghanistan. Rabbani’s students included
Ahmad Shah Massoud, a legendary Tajik military commander in the fight against
the Soviets and Afghanistan’s subsequent civil war, who was killed by Al Qaeda
on the eve of 9/11; and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a two-time Prime Minister, whose
Hezb-e-Islami party received the lion’s share of Saudi funding for the
mujahedeen.[50]
Hekmatyar, the instigator of Afghanistan’s civil war in the
1990s, that in Kabul alone killed more than 50,000 people, was best known for
his targeting of those Muslims denounced as idolaters – just like the Wahhabis
at the beginning of the 20th century. Hekmatyar spent "more
time fighting other mujahedeen than killing Soviets,” quipped journalist and
author Peter Bergen.[51]
Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf, a Saudi-funded Wahhabi Islamic Law scholar, politician
and warlord, who split with Rabbani and Hekmatyar to form his own group of
mujahedeen, is believed to have facilitated Osama Bin Laden’s return to
Afghanistan in 1986[52]
after the Saudi was expelled from Sudan and assisted Masood’s assassins.[53]
Then Pakistani leader Zia-ul-Haq encouraged Saudi charities
to build mosques and madrassas for the large number of Afghans fleeing the war
to Pakistan as well as for Pakistanis themselves. With little prospect of
employment, refugee camps became recruitment centres for Saudi-funded
mujahedeen. Volunteers from across the globe were welcomed to train alongside
the mujahedeen’s refugee recruits funded by the Muslim World League.[54]
To help Pakistan alleviate the cost of hosting large numbers
of Afghan refugees, Saudi Arabia hired hundreds of thousands of Pakistani
migrant workers whose remittances boosted Pakistan’s economic growth. Many of
the workers eventually returned home imbued with Wahhabism’s conservative
values. The same was true for Pakistani troops enlisted to assist in fortifying
the kingdom’s security in a deal mediated by the United States. “Pakistani
workers in the Gulf and their families became either sympathetic or indifferent
to Islamization. The expatriate workers were also influenced by Islamist
missionaries backed by Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi establishment during the course
of their stay in the Gulf states,” Haqqani, the former Pakistani ambassador,
noted.[55]
Read further Part 2
[1]
David Commins, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia, London: I. B. Tauris,
2009.
[2]Sohail
Nakhoda, Keynote: Workshop on Islamic Developments in Southeast Asia, Institute
of Southeast Asian Studies, 15 November 2015; Prince Ghazi Bin Muhammad Bin
Talal, “What Has Broken? Political, Sociological, Cultural and Religious
Changes in the Middle East over the Last 25 Years”, S R Nathan Distinguished
Lecture, Middle East Institute, 17 November 2015,
https://mei.nus.edu.sg/themes/site_themes/agile_records/images/uploads/What_has_broken_v.8,_As_Given,_14.11.15.pdf.
[3]Farid
Alatas, Reviving Islamic Intellectualism, Presentation at RSIS Conference on
Islam in the Contemporary World, 28 April 2016,
https://www.rsis.edu.sg/event/conference-on-islam-in-the-contemporary-world/.
[4]Christopher
R. Hill, The Kingdom and the Power, Project Syndicate, 27 April 2016,
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/us-saudi-arabia-strained-relationship-by-christopher-r-hill-2016-04.
[5]Ashley
Kirk, Iraq and Syria: How many foreign fighters are fighting for Isil? The
Telegraph, 24 March 2016, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/29/iraq-and-syria-how-many-foreign-fighters-are-fighting-for-isil/.
[6]Sara
Mahmood, Pakistan’s Public Education System: Narratives of Intolerance, The
Diplomat, 13 May 2016, http://thediplomat.com/2016/05/pakistans-public-education-system-narratives-of-intolerance/.
[7]U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom, Teaching Intolerance in
Pakistan, 2016,
http://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/USCIRF_Pakistan_FINALonline.pdf
[8]
Ibid. U.S. Commission
[9]
Irfan Husain, Death of diversity, Dawn, 14 May 2016, http://www.dawn.com/news/1258146/death-of-diversity
[10]
Pew Research, The Divide Over Islam and National Laws in the Muslim World, 27
April 2016, http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/04/27/the-divide-over-islam-and-national-laws-in-the-muslim-world/
[11]
Nick Fielding and Yosri Fouda, Masterminds of Terror: The Truth Behind the Most
Devastating Terrorist Attack the World Has Ever Seen, Gloucestershire:
Mainstream Digital, 2011, Kindle edition
[12]
Umar Farooq, Moosa Kaleem, Nasir Jamal, Ghulam Dastageer and Saher Baloch,
Concealed Truth: What is wrong with madrassas? Herald, 1 May 2016, http://herald.dawn.com/news/1153383
[13]
Ibid. Farooq et al.
[14]
Ibid. Farooq et al.
[15]
New America Foundation, A Conversation With A Former Muslim Extremist, 3 May
2016, https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/a-conversation-with-a-former-muslim-extremist/.
[16]Ibid.
New America Foundation
[17]
US Consulate Lahore, Extremist Recruitment on the Risein southern Punjab, 13
November 2008, Wikileaks, https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08LAHORE302_a.html.
[18]Joel
Guinto, Philippines probes attack on IS-targeted top Saudi cleric, Agence
France Presse, 1 March 2016,
https://news.yahoo.com/philippines-probes-attack-targeted-top-saudi-cleric-061519615.html.
[19]Al
Hayat, الفيليبينتكشفأسماءإرهابيينخططوالاستهداف
«السعودية (Philippines
identifies terrorists targeting Saudi), 1 March 2016,
http://www.alhayat.com/Articles/14243379/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D9%8A%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A8%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%AA%D9%83%D8%B4%D9%81-%D8%A3%D8%B3%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D8%A5%D8%B1%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%A8%D9%8A%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%AE%D8%B7%D8%B7%D9%88%D8%A7-%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%AA%D9%87%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%81--%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%B9%D9%88%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%A9-
[20]Ibid.
Commins
[21]
Interviews with the author in January and February 2016.
[22]
Akhilesh Pillalamarri, The Radicalization of South Asian Islam: Saudi Money and
the Spread of Wahhabism, Georgetown Security Studies Review, 20 December 2014, http://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2014/12/20/the-radicalization-of-south-asian-islam-saudi-money-and-the-spread-of-wahhabism/#_edn9
[23]
Sushant Sareen, The Jihad Factory: Pakistan's Islamic Revolution in the Making,
New Delhi: Hindustan Publishing Corporation, 2005, p. 282
[24]
Akhilesh Pillalamarri, The Radicalization of South Asian Islam: Saudi Money and
the Spread of Wahhabism, Georgetown Security Studies Review, 20 December 2014, http://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2014/12/20/the-radicalization-of-south-asian-islam-saudi-money-and-the-spread-of-wahhabism/#_edn9
[25]
Luv Pirri, The Past and Future of Deobandi Islam, CTC Sentinel, 3 November
2009, https://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/the-past-and-future-of-deobandi-islam
[26]
Ayesha Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan, A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics,
Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014, p. 218.
[27]Haqqani
2005
[28]Ibid.
Farooq et al.
[29]Ibid.
Farooq et al.
[30]
Crime Monitoring Cell, Update Details of Registered Madaris in Sindh Province,
Home Department, Government of Sindh, undated
[31]
Sami ul Haq, Afghan Taliban War of Ideology: Struggle for Peace, Islamabad:
Emel Publications, 2015.
[32]Qaiser
Sherazi, “Conspiracy hatched at Akora Khattak: FIA”, The Express Tribune, 26
May 2010,
http://tribune.com.pk/story/16267/conspiracy-hatched-at-akora-khattak-fia/.
[33]Ibid.
Farooq et al.
[34]Darul
Uloom, Fatwa Against Terrorism, 26 February 2008,
http://noblesseoblige.org/2008/02/26/.
[35]
International Crisis Group, Pakistan, Madrassahs, Extremism and the Military,
29 July 2002,
http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/asia/south-asia/pakistan/Pakistan%20Madrasas%20Extremism%20And%20The%20Military.pdf
[36]Ibid.
International Crisis Group
[37]Samanth
Subramanian, “The Hit List, The Islamist war on secular bloggers in
Bangladesh”, The New Yorker, 21 December 2015,
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/21/the-hit-list.
[38]Ibid.
Pillalmarri
[39]Shahidul
Alam, “Tolerating Death in a Culture of Intolerance”, Economic & Political
Weekly, 21 March 2015,
http://www.shahidulnews.com/tolerating-death-in-a-culture-of-intolerance
[40]
Interviews with author of Bangladeshi journalist and political analyst, 3
January 2015.
[41]
The Guardian, “US embassy cables: Saudi influence in Pakistan”, 1 December
2010, http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/130876.
[42]Ibid. The Guardian
[43]The
Guardian, “US State Department, US embassy cables: Saudis fear 'Shia triangle'
of Iran, Iraq and Pakistan”, 3 December 2010, http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/201549.
[44]
The Guardian, “US State Department, US embassy cables: Pakistani relations with
Saudis 'strained'”, 1 December 2010,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/173954.
[45]
The Guardian, “US Embassy Riyadh, State Department cables: Saudis distrust
Pakistan's Shia president Zardari”, 1 December 2010,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/231326.
[46]
The Guardian, US State Department, US embassy cables: Saudi royals believe army
rule better for Pakistan, 1 December 2010,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/207396.
[47]Hussain
Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, Washington: Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, 2010.
[48]Ibid.
Haqqani
[49]Ibid.
Haqqani
[50]
Peter Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, New
York: Free Press, 2002.
[51]Ibid.
Bergen
[52]
Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, London:
Vintage Books, p. 116-117.
[53]John
Lee Anderson. The Lion's Grave, London: Atlantic Books, 2002, p. 224.
[54]Ibid.
Haqqani
[55]
Ibid. Haqqani
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