Saudi cash seduction is Faustian pact

The Australian ^ | April 29, 2008 | Merv Bendle

[forkinsocket]

THE revelations over the past week that Griffith University aggressively pursued funds from the Saudi Arabian embassy to finance its Islamic studies unit illustrates a major problem facing all liberal democracies confronted with the vast reservoir of petro-dollars controlled by the Saudi Government.

"Saudi Arabia today remains the location where more money is going to terrorism, to Sunni terror groups and to the Taliban than any other place in the world," according to testimony given by Stuart Levey, the head of the US Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, at a US congressional hearing on April 1, 2008. This money is channelled through complex networks of private, government and charitable organisations.

Saudi Arabia also funds the ideological war within global Islam in support of Wahhabism, the sectarian and fundamentalist form of Islam that serves as the Saudi state religion.

Although a minority tendency within Islam, Wahhabism's enormous financial muscle allows it to overwhelm traditional forms of Islam. This is especially the case among the Muslim diaspora in Western countries, where petrodollars fund the educational, social and cultural infrastructure used to promote Wahhabism and related forms of Islamic fundamentalism.

The funding available for these activities is stupendous. One investigation estimated that the Saudi Government and related organisations spent $70 billion between 1979 and 2003 on "international aid", with two-thirds of this being used to infiltrate institutions and promote Wahhabism, and anti-Western, anti-Israeli propaganda.

Another reliable estimate indicates that by 2005 the Saudis had spent some $90 billion to export Wahhabism globally, or twice the estimated rate of $1 billion per annum spent by the Soviet Union on propaganda during the Cold War.

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[WesternPacific]

I attended Griffith University Mt. Gravatt campus as part of my Doctoral studies in 1999-2001. There were many practicing Muslim students on campus at that time. I believe Australia, although not as bad as England, does have a Muslim/Islam problem. Hopefully they can control it before all is lost.