By now, the word "Wahhabi" should be right up there with "al Queda" and "bin Laden" in the American vernacular, but it isn't. Wahhabism, the state religion of Saudi Arabia, is a radical form of Islam that interprets the Koran literally and mandates the destruction of all other belief systems and cultures. What we call terrorism is what happens when a Wahhabi Muslim acts upon his religious beliefs.
The mainstream Western media hasn't caught on yet to the fact that the Islamic world, which includes a seventh of the earth's population, is on the edge of revolution. Simply put, the Wahhabis are making a bid to control the Muslim world.
As it stands, a weak Saudi monarchy controls the world's richest oil reserves, yet presides over a stagnating, Stalinist economy. To hold its power over a state of Wahhabi Muslims increasingly ruled by their religious leaders, they've turned more and more power over to the Wahhabis, who control virtually every level of Saudi government. After oil, the number one export out of Saudi Arabia is the madrasas, the schools in which little more than Wahhabism is taught. These "schools" are the educational networks and channels of funding intended to give Saudi Wahhabi Muslims worldwide reach.
Where there is no money for education, the Saudis provide it. The madrasas have been exported to dozens of countries; there are over 40,000 of these Saudi-funded schools in Pakistan alone. You can also find them in Sudan, Chechnya, Indonesia and throughout the Muslim world.
Freezing terrorist assets, cutting off their weapons supplies and taking out terrorist masterminds is a futile exercise unless we also choke off the madrasa money. Simply put, the long-term battle over terrorism is really a battle for control of the minds of those Muslims under the age of 18, a group that currently accounts for 50 percent of the world's Muslim population.
Every day across the globe, these kids are being taught that the slaughter of the infidels is the highest form of worship they can give to Allah. Their definition of "infidel" doesn't differentiate between Christians, Jews or non-Wahhabi Muslims, which is why millions of non-Wahhabi Muslims have died at the hands of the Wahhabis over the last 200 years, including hundreds of thousands in the last decade alone.
Most Westerners mistakenly believe that US support of Israel is the chief source of unrest in the Middle East, and consequently we've focused much of our political and diplomatic attention on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while ignoring the fact that Israel wasn't even mentioned in the al Queda manual that lays out the group's beliefs and governs its actions.
The United States and its allies must come to understand that for the Wahhabis, terror is merely propaganda in their battle for control of young Muslims enamored with the glow of Western culture -- which is held just beyond their reach by the repressive regimes that control their lives. The Wahhabis understand that controlling the next generation means teaching Muslim youth that the other cultures of the world are idolatrous, immoral and licentious before the accelerating spread of globalization allows them access to the Internet, magazines, radios or cell phones. For the Wahhabis, September 11 was little more than an instructional display of their power before millions of potential recruits. For them, destroying the Buddhist temples in Afghanistan and annihilating the twin towers are parts of a 200-year-old murderous tradition that will only proliferate as the madrasa children become adults.
Because of this, there are only two ways America can combat future attacks on its soil: mass conversion to Wahhabism or the elimination of its leaders, their message of mass murder and the money that's spreading it around the globe at a frightening speed.
Like it or not, our efforts to combat terrorism will have little meaningful effect until the Wahhabis are removed from power in the Saudi government and cut off from the oil money that is spreading their poison throughout the world.
