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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Investor Clouseau who wrote (20202)	11/30/2002 5:59:12 PM
From: lorne	Respond to of 27666

Author: Bin Laden Is No Enemy of Saudi Royals Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2002 Editor's note: See part one of interview, There Is Light at the End of the Terror Tunnel. When Stephen Schwartz, author of “The Two Faces of Islam,” hears Saudi spokesmen downplay allegations of Saudi ties to terrorism because of a reputed rift between that regime and Osama bin Laden, he gets upset. “Bin Laden has never launched an attack against the Saudi regime, the regime is not named in the terror leader’s ‘fatwah,’ and the architect of 9-11 has never called for the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy,” he tells NewsMax.com. Schwartz further notes that, according to his research, it has been Saudi money that has promulgated the Wahhabism message throughout the region. Wahhabism is the most extreme form of Islam, which accounts for about 40 percent of Muslims in Saudi Arabia. "Bin Laden is a Wahhabi,” Schwartz says. “So are the suicide bombers in Israel. So are [bin Laden’s] Egyptian allies, who exulted as they stabbed foreign tourists to death at Luxor. So are the Algerian terrorists. And so are the Taliban-styled guerrillas in Kashmir who attacked the Indian parliament last year. “Although bin Laden never had any formal religious training, he grew up in Saudi Arabia, a Wahhabi state; his father was a Wahhabi.” Known as the death cult, Wahabbis are supremacists with very strong notions, Schwartz explains. 'Can't Wait to Die' “Leaders of the West are thought to be stupid, decadent and morally weak. The radical Wahhabis say that the Westerner is ‘afraid to die,’ while they ‘can’t wait to die.’” Schwartz reads much into how the Saudis reacted to 9-11. He looks especially at the inexplicable non-actions of the crown prince. “He should have gone immediately to Washington,” he opines. The author indicates that sincere condolences, assurances of total cooperation and a willingness to detail whatever connections there were to Saudi Arabia should have quickly followed. “Nine-11 should have been a wake-up call that brought focus on what Saudi Arabia had done to religion,” Schwartz says. State of Confusion Typically, Schwartz tells Newsmax, the U.S. State Department has “been a bastion of wrong thinking” before, during and after the 9-11 crisis. He describes it as looking for al-Qaeda in all the wrong places, such as evolving as a natural offshoot of the poverty and oppression of Arab regimes, or some simple-minded backlash against America’s global economic dominance or its support for Israel. Instead, says Schwartz, the phenomenon of and explanation for Osama bin Laden and his followers are best found by delving into the tenets of Wahhabism. It is that theme, exactly, which surfaces so strongly in "The Two Faces of Islam," a searching history of Islam that distinguishes its traditions of tolerance and pluralism from the radical Wahhabi sect that now struggles for control of the Muslim world. And there’s nothing simple about it. According to Schwartz, the profound philosophical and religious differences that mark the radical sect have insidiously grown and matured into their dangerous form over the past 1,500 years. What is unfortunate maintains Schwartz is “that our government made the decision that it was more important to maintain good relations with the Saudis than to push them on this.” That recalcitrance may be changing in light of the recent disclosures of money connections between the Saudi royals and terrorists. The Bush administration, according to recent reports, is now demanding a strict accounting – an accounting that Schwartz believes is very late in coming. worldtribune.com