The recent terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have once again put Saudi Arabia's brand of Salafi Islam, known as Wahhabism, under the microscope. In both Europe and the United States, some observers are blaming Riyadh's austere religious tradition and state-funded proselytization for spreading an ideology that they believe inspired 9/11 and may have encouraged the more recent attacks.
Speaking with Berlin's Bild newspaper on Sunday, German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel called Saudi Arabia an important diplomatic partner but raised concern that "from Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi mosques are financed throughout the world," warning "we must make it clear to the Saudis that the time of looking the other way is over."
Several of the Islamic State group's Paris gunmen grew up or spent time in Belgium's Molenbeek, a neighborhood described by the Guardian as "Europe's jihadi central" that has also been linked to several other attacks. Some observers have sought to draw a line connecting those attackers and Saudi-inspired Salafism.
The Paris cell's mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, grew up in Molenbeek as the child of Moroccan immigrants. According to a local think tank analyst cited by the Washington Post, starting in the 1970s "Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries sent funding for rigid religious schools, setting up tension between Wahhabi mosques and the more moderate and largely Moroccan tradition."
The Grand Mosque of Brussels, considered "the largest and most influential mosque in the capital of the European Union," was gifted to Saudi Arabia's King Faisal in 1967. According to Politico Europe, the mosque's cultural center "encouraged clerics from the 1980s onwards to shift to fundamentalist Salafist teachings, including the placement of over 600 salafist teachers into schools." Belgian MP and former Doctors without Borders official Georges Dallemagne also points to this influence, arguing that "the very strong influence of Salafists... is one of the particularities that puts Belgium at the center of terrorism in Europe today."
One month after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Radio France Internationale reported that the French government was exploring new legislation to block foreign funding of mosques "from countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia" as part of "a cultural offensive against Salafist movements." Since last month's Paris attacks, several French mosques have been closed down, and one of France's senior imams told Al Jazeera that the interior ministry intended to shut down between 100 and 160 more due to takfiri messaging, preaching hatred, or operating without a license.
French police also reportedly searched the homes of two imams who work at the Geneva Mosque, the largest in Switzerland. The mosque was inaugurated in 1978 by Saudi Arabia's King Khalid, and the foundation that runs it today still "has close ties to Saudi Arabia" according to the Swiss public broadcasting organization's SwissInfo.
Meanwhile, in Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives have been under attack by the political opposition for maintaining cozy ties with Riyadh. On Thursday, former longtime mayor of London Ken Livingstone even went so far as to argue that "almost all Muslim fundamentalism has been funded by the Saudis and the Qataris, going back 70 years, spreading a particularly hate-filled Wahabi strand of Islam."
Even in tiny Iceland, the country's president has come out against the donation of $1 million from Saudi Arabia to a Rejkjavik mosque project. He knew about the donation in March but only took a position against it since the killings in Paris.
A similar script seems to be playing out following the ISIS-inspired terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California. Initially, several news outlets erroneously reported that one of the attackers was from Qatar, the only country other than Saudi Arabia where Wahhabism is the leading religious tradition.
Reuters revealed that one of actual attackers, Tashfeen Malik, spent time in Saudi Arabia, where her father became "conservative and hardline," according to a relative. Although she returned to her native Pakistan for university, the Washington Post reported that a friend said Malik "lost interest in her studies" and "would travel across town, nearly every day, to a madrassa ... that she thinks ... belongs to the Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam." A faculty member at her university reflected "I would call Tashfeen a Saudi girl" who "had just come to Pakistan for her degree." Saudi sources have downplayed the length and significance of her time in the kingdom, and her brother says Saudi authorities have now warned her family there not to speak to the press.
Writing in the New York Times on Tuesday, President Obama's former Special Representative to Muslim Communities Farah Pandith commented that she had traveled to 80 countries in this position and that "in each place I visited, the Wahhabi influence was an insidious presence" funded by "Saudi money."
It would be unrealistic, let alone unfair, to urge Saudi Arabia to abandon its most basic religious beliefs. However, there should be no justification -- under any religious tradition -- for words of religious incitement that dehumanize the other and erode the dividing line between religious piety and acts of violence.
Western countries must to encourage Saudi Arabia to finally remove intolerant passages from state-published textbooks, stop granting state privileges to well-known preachers of intolerance, and to release political prisoners such as Raif Badawi and Mikhlif al-Shammari whose only crime has been to call for religious pluralism and moderation.
Similarly, Saudi Arabia must also make a more serious contribution to airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, where Riyadh's role has dwindled to almost nothing since 2014. The Saudis should be expected to carry out or subsidize coalition airstrikes against ISIS with the same fervor that they used to spread Salafism beyond their borders.
