Modern Islamist Movements: History, Religion, and Politics (32 page)

and Afghanistan – the subject of the next two chapters – have formulated, expressed, and applied their ideas. Bin Laden’s death is unlikely to have a significant negative impact on al-Qaida’s relative strength, because by design the organization is highly decentralized with leaders, cells, and affiliates throughout the world, who are backed by financing, a consistent religio-political ideology, and the desire to perpetuate attacks and continue expanding the organization.206

Wahhabism Multiplied

At least since the end of the Soviet war in Afghanistan in 1989, a new form of Wahhabism has come into existence, which is an anti-Saudi Wahhabi Islam as represented by such groups as al-Qaida and the Taliban; among many other goals, the Islamists who adhere to this form of Wahhabism would like to overthrow the Saudi government, and virtually every other government, and replace them with what the anti-Saudi Wahhabis believe to be genuinely Islamic governments.207 Two of the main grievances that the anti-Saudi Wahhabis have against the Saudi government are: (1) what the anti-Saudi Wahhabis believe to be that government’s strong political and economic relations with Western countries, whose policies and cultures the anti-Saudi Wahhabis believe are utterly antithetical to Islam, and (2) the perceived gap between the rich and poor in Saudi Arabia, which the anti- Saudi Wahhabis believe exists in Saudi Arabian society largely because of what they believe to be the greed, corruption, and narcissism of most or all of the members of the Saudi political leadership.208 Yet, the Saudi Arabian government, through its religious, political, and financial support of such groups as the mujahideen, which gave rise to the Taliban and al-Qaida, was actually backing the very groups which desired and continue to desire to overthrow the Saudi government and almost all other governments in the majority-Muslim world.209

While Saudi Arabia’s political leaders do not want the groups which they support to topple them, the Saudi government had at least three goals in supporting the mujahideen in Afghanistan. First, the Saudi government was strongly anti-Soviet, partly because the Soviet Union espoused an atheistic (and thus anti-Muslim) communist ideology with which the Saudis disagreed; in addition, the Saudis were political and economic allies of Western countries during the Cold War and had nothing to gain and much to lose if the Soviets had conquered Afghanistan or lands in any other part of the Middle East.210 Second, the Saudis wanted to increase their own influence in the Middle East, while limiting that of other countries in the region, such as Iran.211 Third, in addition to its own economic and political interests, the Saudi government had the ideal interest (that is, an interest based on

principle) of wanting to protect the Muslims of Afghanistan from Soviet domination, which would have led to the Soviets placing substantial strictures on the Afghan Muslims’ religious beliefs and practices.212 Related to the Saudi government’s support of the mujahideen in Afghanistan is its historic and continued support of mosques, Islamic schools, other educational institutions, and social service agencies in many countries inside and outside of the majority-Muslim world.213 While this use of soft power may help increase in modest ways the Saudi government’s political and economic influence in some parts of the world, the members of that government have an ideal interest in supporting such religious and educational organizations because they believe that Islam is the truest and best religion. Partly as a result of that, they want to encourage other Muslims to share their beliefs, while nurturing them and hoping that their work will encourage non-Muslims to convert to Islam.214

In any case, the Saudi government’s support of the mujahideen, which led to the rise of al-Qaida and the Taliban, created blowback – that is, the transformation of former allies into active enemies – for the Saudi govern- ment. Many of the same Islamists whom the Saudi government supported during the Soviet war in Afghanistan turned against the Saudi political leadership.215 The Saudi government has responded to this blowback through an accommodationalist/oppositionalist approach, which, among other char- acteristics, has involved attempts to accommodate – or show some flexibility toward – the Islamists who oppose them, on the one hand, and to oppose – or fight against – those very same Islamists, on the other.216 One of the benefits that Saudi governmental leaders believe they may experience by appearing to accommodate the Islamists is that such accommodations may make the Saudi leaders appear to other Muslims as truly genuine in their Islam inasmuch as they seem to be supporting the very groups that oppose the West and Israel.217 For example, there have been cases where, in speaking to Saudi citizens and other Muslims as target audiences, Saudi leaders have, at least subtly, suggested a level of empathy for some of the anti-Western and anti-Israeli ideology of certain Islamist groups.218

The flip side of this intentionally contradictory accommodationalist/ oppositionalist approach on the part of the Saudi government is its vehement opposition to the Islamists who oppose the Saudi government; indeed, some of these anti-Saudi Islamists operate within Saudi Arabia, while others operate outside of it.219 Saudi Arabia is an authoritarian state with a powerful central government and active intelligence and law enforcement services that operate primarily inside and, to some extent, outside the country.220 During the history of modern Saudi Arabia, Saudi regimes have taken drastic steps to pre-empt, respond to, and/or punish any individuals or groups – including Islamists – who have engaged in speech or acts that may have been hostile to the Saudi government. The members of that government have

done almost everything in their power to suppress such groups and, at the same time, maintain what members of the Saudi government believe to be the security and stability of the Saudi state.221

If the accommodationalist/oppositionalist policies and actions of the Saudi government with respect to Islamists seem confusing to some Western observers, it is because for the Saudi government this approach is intentionally contradictory; yet, it is precisely those often-simultaneous contradictions that, in the Saudi government’s view, can best preserve its own interests. More specifically, the Saudi government is trying to satisfy competing interests with respect to at least two vital constituencies who often have contradictory viewpoints regarding the Islamists. One of these constituencies consists of Western and other industrialized countries (who utterly oppose the Islamists), to whom the Saudis sell enormous amounts of oil, making astronomical profits in the process.222 The second constituency is comprised of Saudi and non-Saudi Muslims who may feel at least some empathy toward the Islamists and, at minimum, their pro-Palestinian and anti- Western ideals.223 To adapt a phrase, through its accommodationalist/ oppositionalist approach, the Saudi government is playing both sides against the middle, with that government being in the middle, hoping it can benefit from its apparently clever and at times perilous strategy of survival and statecraft. At the same time, the Saudi government is not the only one in the majority-Muslim world which has engaged in an accommodationalist/ oppositionalist strategy to serve its interests. Regimes in Pakistan have often used a similar strategy with respect to Islamist groups inside and outside that country, and it is to Pakistan that this study’s attention turns.

Notes

1 Natana J. DeLong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 17.

2 Ibid., 18.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid., 21.

13 Ibid., 22.

36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., 34.

(London: I.B. Tauris, 1997), 32.

40 Ibid., 23.

41 Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 96–103, 100–1, 107–11.

42 Ibid., 140–57.

43 Ibid., 158–62.

48 Ibid., 160–76.

49 Ibid., 185–91.

50 Ibid., 191–5.

51 Ibid., 192–210.

71 Ibid., 273.

72 Ibid., 275–6, 279.

73 Ibid., 279–80.

76 Ibid., 289.

79 Ibid., 289–90.

94 Ibid., 77–87.

(London: Bloomsbury, 1994), 175–8.

104 Ibid., 361–420.