The Saudi royal family endorses a sect of Islam known as Wahabism. This (from what I understand) is very conservative, and repressive to women. SA funds the construction of mosques, provided they have Wahabi Imams in charge. Is this of any consequence as far as terrorism is concerned? It would seem suicidal for the SA royal family to do this. So, is there hard evidence connecting the regime to acts of terror?
If you want to fund acts of terrorism, subsidising the construction of mosques in return for laying down the rules about who can be appointed as imam would be a fairly roundabout way of going about it.
The US has managed to fund or support many terrorist movements without building any mosques at all. I dare say the Saudis could manage it too, if they were so minded.
The Saudis are widely seen as a supporter of ISIS, but there is (SFAIK) no evidence that this support takes the form of funding. But if the Saudis did want to fund ISIS they could, and presumably would, do so without building mosques for the purpose.
Seen as a supporter of ISIS by who? ISIS bombed two mosques in Saudi Arabia last month, and ISIS has expressed its desire to take over Saudi Arabia. They’re not friends.
A quick google will bring up lots of articles making that claim. I do not assert that the claim is correct; just that it is made, and that nobody making it seems to think that SA is supporting ISIS by building mosques, which is the relevance of the claim to the present discussion.
Well, some might argue that the current Saudi campaign in Yemen is itself a form of (state) terrorism. Seeing how it targets civilian areas and heritage sites, and includes naval blockades and other ways of “restricting imports of food and fuel,” which, by the end of this year, will lead to a massive humanitarian crisis, where “at least one in five households face extreme food consumption gaps resulting in very high acute malnutrition or excess mortality” - etc., etc.
A quick google search will bring up lots of articles proving that the moon landings were faked so that’s not evidence.
As I say, I’m not myself asserting the truth of the allegation.
My point is just that nobody is asserting that SA is supporting ISIS by building mosques, and the question raised by the OP is whether SA’s funding of mosques is “of any consequence” so far as support of terrorism is concerned.
My answer is (a) funding the construction of mosques would be an unnecessarily roundabout way for anyone to fund terrorism, and (b) those who claim (whether rightly or wrongly) that SA is supporting terrorism do not claim that it does so by funding the construction of mosques.
Well, not necessarily. It makes it easier to funnel money to operatives.
The OP’s title doesn’t really summarize the question(s) he seems to be asking in the text.
Historically it believed that lots of Saudi citizens, including a few really rich ones, supported terrorism through donations to Islamic charities that were fronts or middlemen for various terrorist organizations.
It’s also not clear what the OP thinks the “Saudi royal family” is. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of princes and princesses. They’re all royal. OTOH, there are the 20 or so guys (all guys) at the top who actually make decisions on behalf of the government since they *are *the government.
It’s a pretty good bet that at least some of the far-flung corners of the family have supported those suspect charities. It’s also pretty clear none of the sitting Kings has ever written a check made out to “ISIS”.
So Ralph, what are you really trying to ask? And for what timeframe? Now, or the 1990s?
First, don’t underestimate the Saudis. As far back as my childhood (40 odd years ago), there were countless predictions that the Saudi royal family was weak, under siege, and would surely be overturned any moment. And yet, here we are: the Shah is gone, Qadaffi is gone, Saddam is gone, the Assads may soon be gone, and the Sauds still rule.
They’re smarter than they look. The figured out a long time ago that the best way to handle the angry young men in their country is to send them to make trouble in OTHER countries!
They certainly succeeded in that respect, at least as far as the UK is concerned.
Back in my misspent student days in Edinburgh, the casino which we used to visit occasionally of a weekend was invariably filled with drunken Saudi “students” who labored under the misapprehension that all the female members were prostitutes.
I would stop short of describing their behavior as inspiring terror, however.
I am asking about the present time. The question is simple: has anyone found evidence that funds donated by the SA royal family have gone to terrorist organizations.