Expert: Saudi Arabia grappling with Frankenstein it created
Malaysia among nations to which Saudis exported ultra-conservatism that has resulted in intolerance towards religious and sexual minorities.
Only in recent years have more and more people come to know of Saudi Arabia’s export of Wahabism and Salafist Islamic ideas and ideals, including to Malaysia.
Now, Middle-East expert Dr James M Dorsey argues, Saudi Arabia finds that it has created a Frankenstein monster over which it has lost control.
The money, ideology and propaganda tools have helped create organisations that have become not only too militant but also out of its control, and a country – Pakistan – that is suffering from the fallout.
But, Dorsey, a senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, says it was not all one-way, as many governments were eager to cooperate because of the financing they received.
“In waging its campaign, Saudi Arabia was not alone. It benefitted from governments eager to benefit from Saudi largesse and willing to use religion opportunistically to further their own interests that cooperated with the kingdom wholeheartedly to the ultimate detriment of their societies.”
He adds: “The impact and fallout of the Saudi campaign is greater intolerance towards ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, increased sectarianism and a pushback against traditional as well as modern cultural expressions in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mali and Bosnia Herzegovina.”
In a paper presented at the two-day 2016 Exeter Gulf Conference programme at the University of Exeter which ended on Aug 23, Dorsey suggested that the Saudi campaign may be coming to the end of its usefulness.
Dorsey, who is also co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture and an author, believes that a cost/benefit analysis from a Saudi government perspective finds the programme wanting.
He says identification of Saudi-backed ultra-conservatism with jihadists such as the Islamic State has thrown the very ideology that legitimises the rule of the Al Sauds into question.
He notes the debates in countries such as the Netherlands and France about banning Salafism. And its soft-power, which it had cultivated through financial aid and the spreading of its brand of Islam, says Dorsey, will be increasingly undermined.
In the paper, he talks about Saudi government policy and actions of senior members of the ruling Al Saud family and how they played their roles in the export of ultra-conservatism.
He says: “Saudi export and global support for religiously driven groups goes far beyond Wahhabism. It is not simply a product of the Faustian bargain that the Al Sauds made with the Wahhabis. It is central to Saudi Arabia’s efforts to position itself internationally and flex its muscles regionally as well as on the international stage and has been crucial to the Al Sauds’ survival strategy for at least the last four decades.”
Dorsey adds: “For the Saudi Government, support of puritan, intolerant, non-pluralistic and discriminatory forms of ultra-conservatism – primarily Wahhabism, Salafism in its various stripes, and Deobandism in South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora – is about soft power and countering Iran in what is for the Al Sauds an existential battle, rather than religious proselytisation.”
He says because the scope of the Saudi campaign was about soft power and geopolitics and not just proselytisation, it involved the funding of construction of mosques and cultural institutions; networks of schools, universities and book and media outlets, and distribution of not only Wahhabi literature in multiple languages but also of works of ultra-conservative scholars of other stripes.
“It also involved forging close ties, particularly in Muslim majority countries, with various branches of government, including militaries, intelligence agencies and ministries of education, interior and religious affairs to ensure that especially when it came to Iran as well as Muslim minority communities like the Ahmadis and Shiites, Saudi Arabia’s worldview was well represented.
Dorsey said to bolster its campaign the Saudi Government created various institutions including the Muslim World League and its multiple subsidiaries and Islamic universities in Medina, Pakistan and Malaysia.
In virtually all of these instances, the Saudis were the funders, he says, although the executors were others, often with agendas of their own. But, the Saudi Arabian leadership lost oversight over many of these institutions and groups, with the result that some funds also ended up with groups linked to militant or terror groups.
“In many ways, the chicken is coming home to roost. The structure of the Saudi funding campaign was such that the Saudis ultimately unleashed a genie they did not and were not able to control, that has since often turned against them, particularly with a host albeit not all militant Islamist and jihadist groups, and that no longer can be put back into the bottle.”
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