Saudis Confront Extremist Ideologies

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Saudis Confront Extremist Ideologies
Anti-Terror Forum Is Latest Sign of Changing Attitudes


By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 6, 2005; Page A18

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 5 -- As it faces an armed revolt from within, Saudi Arabia is gradually confronting a painful issue that was long taboo: whether the religious traditions of the kingdom have promoted Islamic terrorism.

Radical clerics, accustomed to preaching violence against unbelievers, are being watched more closely. The government says about 2,000 have been removed from their mosques in the past three years.

Religious charities that once funneled billions of dollars to promote extremist ideologies around the world are being regulated for the first time. In schools, reformers are wrestling for control of textbooks and classrooms that have long taught intolerance and hostility toward non-Muslims.

While changes are visible, some old attitudes persist. In November, 26 imams signed a statement urging Muslims to join the insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq. Some Saudi leaders denounced the call to arms, but the clerics were not punished.

This week, in another sign of shifting attitudes in the country that produced al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Saudi government is hosting a major anti-terrorism conference, attended by delegations from more than 50 countries, including the United States.

The official goal is to share information about better ways to catch terrorists, but Saudis are also using the event to try to convince the world that they are serious about addressing the problem, both at home and abroad.

"We are fighting terrorism, those who support it and those who condone it," Crown Prince Abdullah, the country's de facto ruler, said in an opening address to delegates on Sunday. "We will continue to do so until we eliminate, with the help of God, this evil."

The tone and introspection are a marked change from a few years ago, when Saudi officials complained that they were being unfairly maligned for fostering the Islamic extremism embraced by groups such as al Qaeda.

For months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Saudi leaders refused to acknowledge that most of the hijackers were Saudi citizens. Some senior members of the royal family said Arabs were incapable of carrying out such a well-organized plot and suggested that "Zionists" -- meaning Israelis -- were responsible.

Saudi officials also turned a blind eye to threats at home. In November 2002, Prince Nayef, the interior minister, declared in an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper that there were no al Qaeda cells inside the kingdom and repeated the allegation that Israel was behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

A major turning point in Saudi attitudes came six months later, on May 12, 2003, when al Qaeda sleeper cells that had been present in the kingdom for more than a year blew up three residential compounds for foreign workers in Riyadh, killing more than 20 people and wounding more than 200.

Since then, al Qaeda has engaged in a bloody revolt against the Saudi government, killing more than 90 people -- many of them Westerners -- in a series of bombings and kidnappings that have shaken the country.

In response, the government has rushed to upgrade its internal security forces and rounded up thousands of al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers. It has also increased its cooperation with the United States and other countries to fight international terror networks.

But the attacks have forced the country to come to grips with a long-suppressed question: whether the conservative Islamic beliefs that the kingdom was founded upon -- known as Wahhabism -- have opened the way for the emergence of al Qaeda and other groups that practice terrorism.

The Saudi monarchy has historically drawn its legitimacy from the blessing of Wahhabist clerics. The oil boom of the mid-20th century enabled the Saudi government to spend huge amounts of money to promote Wahhabist precepts abroad by establishing mosques and schools.

Some radical offshoots of the doctrine vigorously oppose the economic or military influence of non-Muslim countries -- notably the United States and Israel -- in the Middle East and have justified terrorism as a weapon against them. Reformers inside the kingdom say the royal family's biggest challenge in the fight against terrorism is to gain more control over the Wahhabist religious establishment, a powerful group that has resisted outside influences for generations.

Khalil Khalil, a professor of Islamic studies in Riyadh who has ties to the royal family, said the country's rulers were taking gradual but decisive steps in that direction. "It's a tough mission, but it is possible," he said. "Is the government going to be successful? I have no doubt, no doubt.

"Take it from me: I've been very critical," he said, "but I've seen a major shift in Saudi Arabia. The policymakers have said, 'Enough is enough.' They realize there is a danger and that it is like a cancer that is spreading in the Saudi national body."

Addressing the root causes of terrorism, including Islamic extremism, are supposed to be a major focus of the conference here. But it remains to be seen whether Saudi organizers will allow a public airing of their domestic problems.

Prince Saud Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, told reporters the conference was a serious effort to improve international anti-terrorist collaboration.

"Our efforts are aimed at ending this scourge from the region, not to improve our image in any society," he said. "No one can blame Saudi Arabia, saying it didn't do its due diligence when it comes to terrorism."

Frances Fragos Townsend, President Bush's homeland security adviser, led a U.S. delegation to the conference and praised Saudi efforts to tackle underlying social and religious problems that contribute to radicalism. She said she was struck by the degree to which official Saudi clerics have spoken out against terrorism and violence.

"It's really quite extraordinary that religious leaders are entering this dialogue and offering both wisdom and guidance in regards to this," she told a small group of reporters. The world cannot defeat terrorism unless Saudi Arabia achieves "victory over extremism and terrorism on its own soil," she said.

Some critics say the Saudi government is sincere in its desire to fight terrorism but is still too reluctant to take on Wahhabist clerics who preach intolerance of other religions.

"They just cut the head and left the root deep in the earth," said Mansour Nogaidan, a former Islamic radical who once served time in prison for firebombing a Riyadh video store that sold Western movies. "The terrorism is just the logical consequence for the religious extremist views in society. These views are held very deeply."

Nogaidan said in an interview that he changed his views while in prison and had received death threats for arguing publicly that Muslims should accept Jews, Christians and Buddhists as equals. He said the government had talked tough about confronting Islamic extremism, but failed to take concrete steps.

For example, he said the government's assertion that it fired 2,000 clerics for preaching hatred was dubious and that most had returned to their mosques.

"There is no real will to solve this problem," he said. "The officials, they don't know what extremism is."

U.S. officials have expressed strong concerns about Saudis and other foreigners going to Iraq to fight. The Saudi government has sealed its borders and said the number of people who had made it into Iraq to join the insurgency was small.

But many in the kingdom said they worried that the fighters would return to Saudi Arabia and join the al Qaeda insurgency here.

"I have very deep fears because young people fighting in Iraq are getting very good training to use weapons," said Abdullah Bejad Oteibi, a former Saudi radical who is now a writer and outspoken reformer in Riyadh. "I know many people who have gone to fight there. The most important thing is that they get addicted to fighting, and they will come back wanting to fight."







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