petrodollars at work?

I’m suffering from a serious time crunch, and I won’t have time for writing until much later in the day.
I did find an interesting piece from the Washington Post which may shed some light on a serious error in logic committed by many Americans — that Shia Islam is “radical” and Wahhabi Islam is “moderate.” This took form over many years in response to problems which both countries had with Iran. The Saudis’ interest in promoting Wahhabism and the Americans’ interest in easy answers (i.e. “our enemy is radical; our ally is moderate”) led to a collusion of convenience.

In the United States, Saudi Arabia’s infrastructure of preachers and money started as a bulwark against the spread into American mosques of radical Shiism, which surged after Khomeini deposed the shah of Iran.
“Many countries in the West asked Saudi Arabia to get involved in these [Islamic] centers because at that time Saudi Arabia was considered moderate,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Faisal said in an interview in March. The Americans “felt comfortable with the presence of the Saudis,” he said.
Backed by Saudi money, this presence grew rapidly.

Without getting into how the Saudis got their money, there was a price to be paid for this American “comfort.”
It isn’t comfortable any more.
Considering the demise of the American melting pot in favor of multiculturalism, Saudi religious hegemony has grown and grown (metastasized is a better word):

Scholars of Islam find it difficult to precisely assess the impact of 40 years of Saudi missionary work on the United States’ multi-ethnic Muslim community — estimated at 6 million to 7 million. But survey data are suggestive.
The most comprehensive study, a survey of the 1,200 U.S. mosques undertaken in 2000 by four Muslim organizations, found that 2 million Muslims were “associated” with a mosque and that 70 percent of mosque leaders were generally favorable toward fundamentalist teachings, while 21 percent followed the stricter Wahhabi practices. The survey also found that the segregation of women for prayers was spreading, from half of the mosques in 1994 to two-thirds six years later.
John L. Esposito, a religion scholar at Georgetown University, said the Saudi theological efforts have resulted in “the export of a very exclusive brand of Islam into the Muslim community in the United States” that “tends to make them more isolationist in the society in which they live.”

What that means is that Muslim immigrants to the United States are likely to find themselves converted to the Wahhabist ideology. (In many cases with American taxpayer support.)
It’s a complex issue, and I wish I had more time.
But I am running very late.
AFTERTHOUGHT: Blogging demands posts. Posts demand thought. Thought demands time.
(I’m afraid it’s a serious conflict without any hope of resolution. If I’m lucky I’ll have time for a “throwaway post” later . . .)


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2 responses to “petrodollars at work?”

  1. nic Avatar

    Reading blogs requires time too. And I often feel duty bound to read your posts. So don’t feel bad about doing short and sweet ones:)

  2. Adam Avatar

    Shi’ism is too broad to be entirely painted as “radical” or “moderate.” Wahhabism however, is exclusive to Saudi Arabia and promotes theocracy.