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Report: Saudi Arabia spreading extremist ideology in US

By: Mohamed Ali

WASHINGTON: A key new report accused the Saudi rulers of spreading "hate propaganda" among Muslims inside the United States.

The report came a week before the Saudi government hosts an international counter-terrorism conference.

In documents distributed by the Saudi authorities, Muslims living in the US are being urged to "behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines," according to the report by the Center for Religious Freedom, an arm of the US human rights group Freedom House.

The 89-page report deals with more than 200 pieces of religious literature promoting Saudi Arabia's extremist Wahhabi ideology, produced or provided by various government ministries and other bodies and disseminated to mosques in the US.

It concludes that the writings reflect a "totalitarian ideology of hatred that can incite to violence."

The center examined literature, mostly in Arabic, available at mosques and Islamic facilities in Washington, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Oakland, Calif.

Among other things, the documents teach:

- that Muslims have a religious obligation to hate Christians and Jews, and should not help, befriend or imitate them, or take part in their festivals and celebrations;

- that Muslims living in the lands of unbelievers must behave as though on a mission behind enemy lines: they are either there to acquire knowledge or make money to be used later in the jihad against unbelievers, or they are there to convert some infidels to Islam. Any other reason for lingering in such countries is illegitimate, and anyone doing so is not a true Muslim and should be condemned; and

- that Muslims who do not follow the Wahhabi doctrines, and especially those who advocate tolerance, are infidels.

The report's author and center director Nina Shea wrote in the introduction that neither the First Amendment nor any other legal documents gives the Saudi government the right to spread hate ideology within US borders.

It was, furthermore, “committing a human rights violation by doing so.”

“Islam advocates moderation.”

Shea is also a member of the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a body established under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to give independent recommendations to the executive branch and Congress.

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