Author: Newsweek Web Exclusive
Publication: www.msnbc.com
Date: December 3, 2003
URL: http://www.msnbc.com/news/1000946.asp?0cl=c1
Are the Saudis funding schools devoted
to fomenting radical Islamic ideology?
An intense behind-the-scenes diplomatic
struggle over a controversial Saudi-funded academy in Germany has shed
new light on the close relationship between Saudi government officials
and an international network of mosques and schools-some of which, Western
intelligence officials say, have become breeding grounds for terrorism.
The German School, the King Fahd
Academy in Bonn, provoked an uproar two months ago when German television
reporters infiltrated its classrooms and videotaped a teacher inciting
a holy war "in the name of Allah" and advocating martial-arts training-including
the use of crossbows-for young students. Local German officials announced
their intention to shut the school down after receiving intelligence reports
that Muslim militants from throughout Germany-some of them with suspected
terrorist connections-were flocking to the area to send their children
to the academy.
But after expressing its own alarm,
the German government quickly changed its tune. German Interior Minister
Otto Schily recently praised the King Fahd Academy as an "important cultural
institution" and denounced the media campaign against the school as a threat
to Saudi- German relations.
The reason for the change, sources
tell NEWSWEEK, was hardball diplomatic pressure from Riyadh. In early October,
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder made an official visit to Saudi Arabia
where he met with the ailing King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, the country's
de facto ruler. During the trip, Schroeder told Saudi officials that the
teaching of hard-core jihadi ideology at the King Fahd Academy "must be
stopped," according to German press reports.
The Saudis pledged to curb extremism
and fire any radical teachers. But they also quietly passed along another
message to Schroeder: that schools attended by the children of German diplomats
and businessmen in Saudi Arabia could face similar harassment or even closure
if the King Fahd Academy was shut down. As a result, the Schroeder government
promised to back off any plans to close the King Fahd Academy for "foreign-policy
reasons," a German official told NEWSWEEK.
The German experience underscores
a broader concern among U.S. and other Western intelligence officials about
the role that Saudi-funded mosques and schools are playing in the fomenting
of radical Islamic ideology. The Saudi government pumps tens of millions
of dollars every year into such institutions around the world-including
Islamic centers, mosques and schools named for King Fahd in Los Angeles,
Moscow, Edinburgh and Malaga, Spain. These schools are known for spreading
Wahhabism-the puritanical, hard-core brand of Islam that is the official
Saudi state religion and, in its more extreme versions, can be difficult
to distinguish from the radical Islamic thought preached by Osama bin Laden
and his followers, some intelligence officials say.
As a result, U.S. officials have
become increasingly alarmed about the Saudi-funded institutions. The U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom two weeks ago held a public
hearing on the issue and has asked Congress to launch a formal investigation
into the Saudi role in financing schools that promote "hate, intolerance
and other human-rights violations."
Michael Petruzzello, a spokesman
for the Saudi government in Washington, said the Saudis have already begun
a crackdown on their own. "They have established as a matter of public
policy-there will be no funding of schools that preach extremism," he said.
Inside Saudi Arabia, he said "hundreds" of radical teachers have been dismissed
from the country's schools. Elsewhere, the Saudis have asked U.S. officials
for evidence of the promotion of radical militancy and when such evidence
is provided the Saudis will take action, he said.
That process appears to be under
way at the Saudi Embassy-funded Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences
in Fairfax, Va. According to a story in the Dec. 3 edition of The Wall
Street Journal, the school has trained 75 people as Islamic religious advisors
for Muslim-American soldiers in the U.S. military. It has also had extensive
ties with Islamic radicals and has a published curriculum that calls for
studying "the ruinous effect" of Christian beliefs, the Journal reported.
"We have looked into this matter and we are in the process of shutting
it [the institute] down," a Saudi official said.
But as the experience in Germany
shows, it is far from clear how committed the Saudis are to cracking down
on state-sponsored institutions that have close ties to the country's religious
establishment and in some cases even bear the name of the country's supreme
monarch. At the recent hearing before the religious-freedom commission,
a prominent Saudi dissident, Mai Yamani, daughter of that country's former
oil minister, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, said the Saudis are incapable of
true reform. She described the Saudi royal family as "deeply connected"
to the country's hard-core Wahhabi clerics and says the family has given
them vast power over the country's schools and mosques in exchange for
religious legitimacy. "Not only has the state embraced the hard-liners,"
she said, "the hard-liners are the state, fully embedded in its structure."
