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Saudi reigns

The Saudis are in the global saddle

Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi

Wednesday, 31st October 2007

The kingdom rides the rest of the world like a horse

Against such a background, vague claims by King Abdullah that Saudi authorities have arrested terrorist financiers count for little. As for the king’s allegation that UK authorities ignored Saudi warnings about the 7 July 2005 London Tube bombings, however, one wishes it were just bluff, but it is possible to believe the king. The Blair government was clearly hesitant to act preventatively against the rise of extremism among the Muslim communities.

For several years now the Saudis have quite rightly protested to the UK over the granting of sanctuary to Saad al-Faqih, who heads the so-called Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA). Al-Faqih is considered by Saudi reformers to be an advocate of a regime that would be more radical in its Wahhabism than the present one. Al-Faqih still lives in London and operates his satellite broadcasts — even though MIRA’s website was briefly shut down after 7/7. It resumed operation but without its discussion board, which acted as an al-Qa’eda communications asset for years.

The government’s weasel approach was again at work this week, in its ‘outreach to the radicals’ guise, when Muhammad Abdul Bari, chairman of the East London Mosque and secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), appeared as a guest at the Queen’s banquet for King Abdullah. Mr Bari supped with the sovereign just as a document was released by Policy Exchange, ‘The Hijacking of British Islam’, giving details of the dissemination of ultra-radical literature, inspired in Saudi Arabia, at his mosque.

But the main consideration in dealing with King Abdullah must be that Saudi Arabia remains appallingly different from other countries, including most other Muslim lands. Saudi political reformers — of whom there are far more than the West realises — refer to the countries from Kuwait to Yemen as ‘the crescent of normality’, because none of them features the bizarre abuses daily seen in the kingdom, and none so avidly promotes extremist Islam. All permit non-Muslims to practise their religions openly — Bahrain has a synagogue, and Oman has Hindu temples as well as Christian churches. All allow women to drive cars, go to university and dress as they wish.

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May 6th, 2008 11:31pm

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