Hillary Clinton made an unexpected but nonetheless pertinent observation on Monday. Speaking in Cleveland, Ohio, after the Orlando atrocity, Mrs Clinton referred to the pressing need to prevent radicalisation in the US and Europe and to counter IS recruitment efforts on the two continents. "For starters," she said, "it is long past time for the Saudis, the Qataris and the Kuwaitis and others to stop their citizens from funding extremist organisations. And they should stop supporting radical schools and mosques around the world that have set too many young people on a path towards extremism".
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Few mainstream American politicians have talked openly about the phenomenon of Wahhabist ideology, much less the need to counter efforts by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to export it to the west. The official US government attitude appears to be that the virulently anti-western ideology of groups like IS and the al-Nusra Front is a wicked aberration conceived in isolation. In fact, IS has been heavily influenced by Wahhabism, the variant of Islam that is effectively the state religion of Saudi Arabia. The ideological sway that Wahhabism now exerts over mainstream Sunni Islam, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world, testifies to the success of the export strategy.
Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are believed to have spent billions of dollars since 1973 promoting Wahhabism world-wide. The money has gone towards wholly or partly financing mosques, colleges, Islamic centres and schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic countries in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia. The messages imparted by the clerics, preachers, and instructors at these institutions have become increasingly extreme, and while they may not support terrorist attacks per se, their rhetoric provides fertile soil for those who do. More crucially, their hostile attitudes towards women, homosexuals, Shia Muslims, Christians and Jews promote intolerance and the rejection of democratic and liberal values.
People like James Woolsey – a former director of the CIA – have drawn attention to what they consider to be the clear nexus between "theocratic totalitarianism" and salafi-jihadist movements like IS. But the US and European governments have been loath to acknowledge such links, probably because they value their strategic alliances with Sunni allies like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, Turkey and Pakistan highly. Indeed, the bizarre situation has arisen where the Obama administration is fighting to prevent Congress enacting a bill that would allow relatives of the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to sue the Saudi government.
The evidence is growing that Wahhabist ideology creates the conditions in which terrorism flourishes. It is now clear, for example, that the jihadists responsible for the Paris and Brussels attack in March attended Saudi-funded mosques and were indoctrinated in Salafi ideology.
In singling out Saudis and Quatari citizens (rather than their governments) for financing radical schools and mosques around the world, Ms Clinton was being disingenuous. But she's right about the need to stop the funding.
