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COMMENTARY
April 27, 2005
Hand-holding
We could summarize the less obtuse journalistic comments on President Bush's meeting with Crown Prince Abdullah at his (Bush's) Crawford, Texas ranch in this way: The United States wants cheap oil and democracy; the Sauds want dear oil and despotism; the Arabians (as opposed to their rulers) want dear oil and, maybe, democracy.On the oil, the problem is not one the Sauds can solve for us, until we (the consumers, in U.S. and elsewhere) succeed in breaking the OPEC cartel through which prices are manipulated within extreme limits of market reality. Destroying OPEC would force them, the extended Saud family and Arabians alike, to "get an economy", or starve. Unfortunately, our side has not formulated tactics to the proper practical end. Instead we accept the cartel, and ask that the price be manipulated for our benefit. A non-starter if any argument ever was. But our key goal in Saudi Arabia should instead be, the propagation of religious freedom. It is at the heart of a problem which, ultimately, oil merely exacerbates. And it requires a direct confrontation with the Saudi state and its fanatic, Wahabi ideologists. As Freedom House in Washington pointed out, 40 Pakistani Christians were being arrested in Riyadh, at the moment Crown Prince Abdullah was flying out. They had been caught praying in a private house, and will now be enjoying the ministrations of the country's Psychopathic religious police. But this was only a headline case. Millions of Shia, and non-Wahabi Sunni Muslims, suffer daily oppression just like the Christians, under the constant watch of these state-employed Wahabi thugs. When he flew out, the Crown Prince was fresh from a meeting with his Sharia-law chief justice, Saleh bin Muhammad Al-Luhaidan, who had recently ruled that any Muslim able to enter Iraq, required no permission to kill "American infidels". Al-Luhaidan's books are incidentally distributed throughout the U.S. by the Saudi embassy in Washington. The deputy interior minister, Mohamed Bin Naif, the man supposed to be in charge of fighting Al Qaeda domestically, is now widely suspected to be running Jihadis out of Saudi Arabia and into Iraq, in an operation that has found publicity because it enjoys the vocal encouragement, praise, and fatwahs of more than 20 prominent Wahabi clerics, each of them appointed by Crown Prince Abdullah's government. In the United States itself, a useful backdrop for the ranch summit was the conviction yesterday in an Alexandria, Virginia court of Dr. Ali Al-Timimi. It followed a wave of arrests that had secured nine conspiracy convictions for Wahabi Muslim "paintball enthusiasts" last year. But Al-Timimi's is the most interesting case, for here the awkward squads of non-Arabic speaking U.S. police and courts were trying to pin specific charges on their shadowy leader. And to the outrage of the liberal media, they actually succeeded! He is an interesting man. American-raised from an Iraqi family, with advanced degrees in biology and computer science, Al-Timimi has shown arntalent for remaining unemployed for long periods despite his qualifications -- frequently blaming this on anti-Muslim prejudices. He completed a third doctorate in computational biology while awaiting trial, with a thesis on "Chaos and Complexity in Cancer." Now, that's no slouch. He grew up almost unacquainted with Islam, in an Irish Catholic neighbourhood in suburban Washington; but was sent to Medina in Saudi Arabia at the age of fifteen to correct this defect. He returned to Medina after university, too, being under the spell of the Canadian Islamist incendiary, Bilal Philips. It was on his return to Saudi Arabia that he finished imbibing Wahabi doctrines and habits, including the "learned" habit of referring any matter for decision to 7th and 8th-century Koran and Hadiths, interpreted with complete disregard to intervening tradition by latern20th-century crazies. According to the jury, Al-Timimi was running the Virginia jihad network, and organizing "paintball" events that resemble terror-training camps in the Virginia countryside, from well before Sept. 11th, 2001. As a recruiter, he specialized in Taliban contacts. But Al-Timimi is much better known as an inspirational speaker on "Aqeedah" -- Islamic creed -- through Saudi-sponsored Islamist networks in Saudi-sponsored U.S. mosques. You can order about 500 hours of his tapes through his legal support website, together with bales of pamphlets and books, in Arabic, English, and even Chinese. Were you sufficiently patient you would then learn about a doctrine of almost pure hatred for "the Other", in almost any form in which that other might appear. Make no mistake, the hatred for Jews and Christians is exceeded by the hatred for errant Muslims, which is to say, any who do not follow the path of strict Wahabi Islam. It follows that our best allies against such people and their creed are also Muslims, who fear them more than we do, because they know them better. It follows that President Bush should be inviting Muslims like that to his ranch, not Muslims like Crown Prince Abdullah. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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