Dore Gold Exposes the Saudi Terror Nexus

Dore Gold believes that the Bush Administration is not conducting a war against Muslims or the Islamic faith. The war on terror targets not Muslims, but Islamists -- those that politicize their Islamic faith through violence. The dual approach of that war -- military and economic pressure -- only begins the fight against Islamic Fundamentalism. "But by and large, the West's campaign has overlooked a critical component of terrorism -- that is, the precise source of the terror, the ideology that motivates individuals and groups to slaughter thousands of innocent people, and perhaps even to take their own lives." In a sentence, that is the crux of Gold's latest Mid-East contribution -- a work that began as his Master's Thesis at Columbia University and became an expose of Saudi Arabia's ties to terrorism.

"Hatred's Kingdom" is unquestionably meticulous, particularly in its discussion of the origins and modern-day manifestations of Islamism-Wahhabism. Indeed, the author deserves credit for presenting a novel approach to comprehending Islamism. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 are primarily not the product of recent factors, like the American presence on Saudi soil, American policy towards Iraq, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The notion of using jihadist violence as a legitimate means of religious expression stretches further back than the latter part of the 20th century and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network; after the use of jihad halted following the Moslem conquests of the 7th century, the notion later appeared in 18th century Arabia. There, in 1744, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab formed an alliance with the head of the Saudi clan, Muhammad ibn Saud. The religious movement that sprang out of this alliance is known as Wahhabism, which primarily stresses the Islamic tenet of tawhid, the belief in the oneness of God. Since its formation, Wahhabism has launched three waves of intense violence -- the first two against non-Wahhabi Muslims (turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively), and the third against mushrikun, polytheists (1950's-today).

It is this third and most recent wave of violence that is most familiar to us. Still, the frequency of the new terrorism should not be confused for spontaneity. On the contrary, the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center proved that efficient terrorist masterminds had carefully schemed out 9/11. The cruel sophistication of the attacks reflected a gradual indoctrination of ideology, not a sudden transformation.

That indoctrination was bred in the universities of Saudi Arabia and nurtured in the madrasas, traditional schools for the study of Islam, of the Persian Gulf region. Under King Fahd, the Saudis pored millions of dollars into these madrasas, as well as notorious charities like the Muslim World League. These charities actually served as channels for funding Islamic terrorist groups like Hamas. During terror sweeps of the West Bank in 2002, Israeli forces discovered incriminating documents detailing the Saudi money trail.

The founding of the Muslim World League spans some forty years. In response to Nasser's pan-Arabism of the 1960's, which threatened the foundations of the Saudi kingdom, King Faisal turned to Wahhabi Islam to counterbalance the threat of Nasser's Arab socialism. In 1962, the Saudi ulama, the Wahhabi religious establishment, created the Muslim World League, an international organization dedicated to the spread of Islam. During the coming decades, the ulama would flex control over the Saudi education system, and ultimately shape the Kingdom's Wahhabi character.

The global reach of the ulama in promoting active Wahhabism found a perfect match in the Afghan guerilla war against the Soviets in 1979. The Saudis established regional branches of the Muslim World League and the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group that Nasser drove out of Egypt and that found refuge in Saudi Arabia. An offshoot of these offices was a Services Center (Maktab Khadamat al-Mujahideen) that trained new recruits for the Afghan struggle and coordinated monetary contributions. In 1989, Osama bin Laden, a Saudi national, took over the organization and transformed it into al Qaeda.

Three months after Dore Gold published "Hatred's Kingdom," a series of simultaneous terrorist attacks, attributed to al Qaeda, were launched at a foreigners' residential compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In the course of her National Review Online interview with Gold following the attacks, Kathryn Jean Lopez asked Gold a question that dealt with the bombings' aftermath, but could have applied to the thesis of his book: "Ultimately, how should the U.S. deal with the Saudis?"

Indeed, a definitive solution to the Saudi terror nexus, and the author's rushed, choppy writing style, are the book's weak points. Still, Gold's thorough research is unquestionable -- at times, footnotes appear per sentence, while the body of the expose is followed by an Appendix of documents that expose Saudi culpability in financing global terror. Thus, the heavy emphasis on sources and documentation produce a scholarly work rather than an opinion-dominated work often topping best-sellers lists. In fact, when the author does offer his opinion in the book's conclusion, the reader senses that Gold does not have much to offer. For starters, Gold rejects a military strike on the Saudis because it would not solve the ideological motivation for terrorism.

"The greatest pressure on Saudi Arabia to adhere to established standards against incitement and hatred will come not from international courts but from the wider court of international opinion," he writes. For Saudi reforms, the author points to the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, which the West offered the Soviet Union as a means of inducing minimal standards of behavior in exchange for enhanced trade rights and military confidence-building measures. That the Soviets gradually behaved by a standard more acceptable to the West, says Gold, provides hope for the Saudis' compliance. In the meantime, the anti-Western rhetoric of Saudi textbooks and religious sermons must be exposed to the public consciousness.