"All those who protect and feed terrorists are as responsible as terrorists", said American president George Bush at the World Economic Forum in New York.
shrub's administration is and has been protecting terrorists in saudi arabia by protecting saudi arabia from exposure.
While condemning terrorism, the Saudi royal family spends millions that fall into the hands of Islamic extremists who foster conflicts throughout the world.
IN LATE 2001, NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organisation] peacekeepers intercepted a phone call from a Muslim charity worker in Sarajevo [capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the former Yugoslavia] to an Al Quaeda terrorist commander based in Afghanistan. In response, they raided an organisation linked closely to the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The raid netted computer files on crop duster aircraft, instructions on how to fake US State Department ID badges and credit cards, along with before and after photographs of New York's World Trade Centre, and maps of US government buildings and military installations. A second raid in Zenica yielded a cache of blank Western passports.
Authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina arrested six men suspected of involvement with Al Qaeda. All are now believed to be in the American detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
It wasn't the first time that individuals involved with Saudi humanitarian organisations have been linked to terrorism. The Bosnia and Herzegovina offices of Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, for example, are accused by the US Treasury Department of funnelling money earmarked for orphanages and mosques in Mogadishu, Somalia, to a local terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda. Al-Haramain is active in more than 50 countries.
Officials of the Saudi Arabia-based International Islamic Relief Organisation (IIRO) have also been implicated in terrorism around the world, according to testimony to the US Congress from ">Matthew Levitt, a former FBI agent who is now a senior fellow in terrorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The IIRO's Philippine office was headed for eight years by Osama Bin Laden's brother-in-law, Muhammad Jamal Khalifa, "through which he channelled funds to terrorist groups affiliated with Al Qaeda, including Abu Sayyaf," said Levitt. "IIRO is part of the Muslim World League, which is funded and supported by the Saudi government<."
Saudi Arabian officials claim that any involvement of these organisations with terrorism is the work of "rogue elements." But few people believe this claim. "All individuals running overseas charities are government appointed and the government watches every penny," a Saudi academic told Reader's Digest in the country's capital, Riyadh. The charities are in fact part of a vast effort to spread Islam. Over two decades, according to government publications, the Saudi royal family has spent billions of its oil wealth to finance some 1350 new mosques, 210 Islamic centres, and hundreds of universities in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. Much of the money comes directly from the Saudi king himself, Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud.
Unfortunately, this huge proselytising effort has propagated a version of Islam -- called "Wahhabism" -- whose message is that of jihad [holy war] against all "infidels". Saudis print millions of free educational textbooks that deliver this inflammatory message wherever there are Islamic communities. One book for ninth-year students declares, "The last hour will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews." Another announces, "It is allowed to burn or destroy the bastions of kufar (infidels)." [p 121 a]
Jihad is a duty, said the late Maneh al-Johani, secretary-general of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which has 55 outposts across the world. "If Muslim land is occupied you are obliged to free it. If you die you go to heaven."
No-one, not even its fiercest critics, suggests that a majority of Wahhabi Muslims are terrorists or potential terrorists. Nevertheless, Western analysts and many moderate Muslims agree that Saudi Arabia is exporting extremist messages that have contributed to bloody conflicts from North Africa to Kashmir.
The [Saudi] government looks the other way, meanwhile claiming to co-operate with the West in the war on terrorism.
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