Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamic Terrorist Network Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamic Terrorist Network America and the West’s Fatal Embrace Edited by Sarah N. Stern saudi arabia and the global islamic terrorist network Copyright © Sarah N. Stern, 2011 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-11208-7 All rights reserved. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-29425-1 ISBN 978-0-230-37071-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230370715 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Stern, Sarah N. Saudi Arabia and the global Islamic terrorist network : America and the West’s fatal embrace / edited by Sarah N. Stern. p. cm. 1. Saudi Arabia—Foreign relations—1982– 2. Terrorism—Government policy—Saudi Arabia. 3. Islam and state—Saudi Arabia. 4. Islam and politics—Saudi Arabia. 5. Saudi Arabia—Relations—United States. 6. United States—Relations—Saudi Arabia. 7. Saudi Arabia— Relations—Western countries. 8. Western countries—Relations—Saudi Arabia. 9. Muslims—Western countries—Politics and government. I. Stern, Sarah, 1953– DS244.63.S276 2011 363.32509538—dc22 2011014814 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: November 2011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Transferred to Digital Printing in 2012 For Buddy, for whom none of this would have happened without his enduring love, patience, confidence, and support. To my wonderful children, Bezalel and Deborah, Noam and Ali, Rachel and Jeremy, the continuously unfolding delights of my life A special thanks to my agent, Don Gastwirth, who never stopped believing in me, and to EMET’s Senior Research Fellow, Kyle Shideler for his hours of arduous work on this project All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. — Edmund Burke Contents Preface ix 1 Cutting Free from the Oil Noose 1 R. James Woolsey 2 The Scandal of U.S.-Saudi Relations 11 Daniel Pipes 3 Who Is Behind the Muslim Mainstream Organizations? 27 Steven Emerson 4 Sharia- Compliant Finance: Saudi Arabia’s Trojan Horse 41 Frank Gaffney 5 The Stealth Saudi Jihad into the American Mind 55 Sarah N. Stern 6 The Stealth Curriculum 65 Sandra Stotsky 7 The Saudi Penetration into American NGOs 81 Kyle Shideler and Ilan Weinglass 8 The Saudis on J Street 105 Lenny Ben-David 9 All Politics Is Local: Co- workers of the Truth Fight Jihad in Fairfax 115 James Lafferty 10 Their Oil Is Thicker Than Our Blood 123 Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld 11 The Impact of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on Europe 153 Bat Ye’or viii CONTENTS 12 The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Defamation of Religions, and Islamaphobia 171 Deborah Weiss 13 The “Green Corridor,” Myth or Reality?: Implications of Islamic Geopolitical Designs in the Balkans 187 Srdja Trifkovic 14 Canada— Islamism’s Happy Hunting Ground 211 David Harris 15 The Way Forward: Looking Backward and Looking Inward 235 Sarah N. Stern and Kyle Shideler Epilogue 249 Index 253 Preface For more than 30 years, spanning successive American administrations from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama, we have been hearing Saudi Arabia described over and over again as our “moderate ally” in the Muslim world. That plaudit has expanded more recently to “our moderate ally in the war on terrorism.” On December 6, 2010, with gratitude to that ignoble personage of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, a story appeared on the front page of The New York Times. Referring to the U.S. secretary of state, it reported that “a classified memo sent by Mrs. Clinton last December made it clear that residents of Saudi Arabia and its neighbors, all allies of the United States, are the chief financial supporters of many extremist activities. ‘It has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority,’” the cable said, concluding that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”1 What the WikiLeaks cables brought to the front pages of the Times, many of us have known about for quite some time. In June 2007, Stuart Levey, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence with the United States Treasury, said in an ABC news interview, “If I could snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia.”2 Why is it, when American young men and women have been answering the call to duty and asked to perhaps make the ultimate sacrifice in a war that these Saudi-f unded groups, including al-Q aeda, the Taliban, Hamas, and Laskar e-T aliba, have waged on our civilization, that successive admin- istrations have continuously whitewashed Saudi Arabia? What does this do to us as a nation when the highest officials in our land are continuously prevaricating and acting as spin doctors for the Saudi royal family? What does it say about our sense of morality to continue to send our young people into harm’s way, knowing full well that the root of this war that radical Islamists wage against Western civilization has at its core both the teaching and the funding that spread this hatred against America and the West throughout the globe? x PREFACE Is it because the Saudis have common values with us in the West: respect for democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and religious freedom, which are all fundamental principles of the United States and Western democracies? Hardly. In March 2002 the world was horrified at the news that in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, a religious school for girls had suddenly caught ablaze, trapping eight hundred young women inside. Eyewitnesses said that many students were trampled to death as they tried to storm the gate. The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, or mutaween (the religious police), prevented some of the girls from leaving the school because they felt that they were not dressed modestly enough according to Sharia law. Fifteen girls were caught inside as they slowly suf- focated from the fumes and burned to death.3 On December 23, 2006, the mutaween beat up a mother, her daughter, and her daughter’s driver, then abducted the women, using their car. After the car broke down, they locked the women in the trunk and abandoned the car. The mutaween claimed that the women were behaving promiscu- ously because they had been sighted in a car with a man they had not been married to.4 In Saudi Arabia, women are routinely beaten by their husbands, which is permissible and even encouraged under Sharia,5 and killed by families in public stonings for bringing dishonor, even after they had been raped. It is absolutely never entered into the realm of possibility that a man can be, even partially, responsible for the crime of rape. In August 2008, according to a story in United Press International, an eight-y ear-o ld Saudi girl in Riyadh sought a divorce from a man in his fif- ties. According to child protection organizations, Saudi children are often married off against their will in return for large dowries.6 As I write these words in January 2011, the presiding judge of a courtroom in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, Saoud bin Suleiman al- Youssef, has been searching for a hospital that would, in accordance with Sharia law, agree to break the spine of a 22-y ear-o ld man, Abdul-A ziz al-M utairi, who was convicted of accidentally damaging another man’s spine in a fight two years ago.7 Today, there are scores of brave bloggers and dissenters languishing in prisons because they dared to speak out against the Saudi regime. Saudi Arabia, a vast, parched expanse of land stretching from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, is home to Wahhabism, one of the most extreme forms of Islam, reflective of the desert’s harsh terrain. This particularly puritanical form of Islam is based on the eighteenth-c entury teachings of Sheikh Mohammad ibn Abd al-W ahhab. Saudi Arabia’s 22.7 million peo- ple are constantly subjected to harsh, discriminatory, and abusive policies. PREFACE xi According to the State Department’s most recent annual report on human rights, Saudi Arabia is described as possessing “no right to change the government peacefully; disappearances; torture and physical abuse; poor prison and detention center conditions; arbitrary arrest and incom- municado detention; denial of public trials and lack of due process in the judicial system; political prisoners; restrictions on civil liberties such as freedoms of speech (including the Internet), assembly, association, move- ment, and severe restrictions on religious freedom; and corruption and lack of government transparency. Violence against women, violations of the rights of children, and discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, sect, and ethnicity were common. The employment sponsorship system limited the rights of foreign workers and remained a severe problem.”8 Amnesty International’s most recently reported abuses include that of a 27- year- old man who was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and 500 lashes for the crime of being a homosexual.9 Domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to abuse because their employers often confiscate their passports. Women migrant domestic workers are particularly vulner- able to sexual abuse and beatings.10 There had been a reported discovery of the mutilated body of an Indonesian woman, Kikim Komalasari, found in the town of Abha.11 In August 2010 a Sri Lankan woman alleged that her Saudi employer hammered 24 nails into her head.12 There is no free- dom whatsoever to criticize the government or to talk openly to the foreign press or to blog. There are frequent arbitrary and incommunicado tortures and arrests and the use of floggings and amputations as punishment and executions, which include public beheadings with a sword. There is absolutely no freedom of assemblage, of the press, of religious minorities, women’s rights and no due process. According to Human Rights Watch, on October 26, 2010, the General Court in Qubba in north- ern Saudi Arabia imposed the sentence of five hundred lashes in public and five years in prison on Fahd al- Jukhaidib, Qubba correspondent for Al- Jazeera, a daily national newspaper. He was charged with “incitement to gather in front of the electricity company” for reporting that citizens were coming there to protest.13 In a Saudi Sharia court, a woman’s testimony carries half the weight of a man’s. She cannot represent herself in court but must be represented by a male relative. She cannot leave her home without being fully wrapped in the abaya,14 nor can she drive or vote. If a man wants to divorce a woman all that is necessary is for him to utter the words, “I divorce you in accordance with the laws of Allah.” Religious minorities can be arrested, tortured, and detained with- out trial. No expression of dissent is tolerated by the Saudi government,