The Redhunter

Last month the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom(USCIR), described by Spruiell as "a watchdog group created by Congress eight years ago" released a study in which they essentially said that if the Saudis could not clean up their act the State Department ought to close the school.

The USCIR did not actually view material used at the northern Virginia school, but rather those textbooks used in Saudi Arabia. When criticized for this, their response was that to have contacted the school directly would have violated their mandate. Instead, they contacted the Saudi Embassy which was noncooperative.

In a Post article last month school administrators aaid that they had revised their material last summer. They did this by taking textbooks sent from Saudi Arabia and ripping out objectionable pages.

The Post, in turn, criticized the commission, pointing out that Fairfax County Supervisor Gerald Hyland (D) had asked to view material at the school and was "immediately" granted access. He viewed English-language material and found nothing objectionable. Further, they editorialize that it's unfair to ask the school to prove a negative; that they aren't teaching hate. They concluded that the commission "crossed a line".

To an extent the Post has a point. And if it was anyone but a Saudi school I'd be sympathetic to their arguments. But we are talking about Saudi Arabia here, a country not too different than the wost totalitarian nightmares of the twentieth century.

In their defense, Spruiell asks "suppose the school had given the commission a set of books with some pages ripped out: What would that prove?" and that

For now, let’s just accept the premise that a foreign government should not be exposing students in America to a religious curriculum that even a panel of Saudi royal advisers has concluded “encourages violence toward others, and misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the ‘other.’” How do we verify that such a curriculum is not being taught in schools operated by that foreign government?

One way to do it would be to ask the foreign government to provide unaltered copies of all its teaching materials for public review or else close down its school. The State Department is the only government agency with the authority to enforce such a policy. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem interested in this solution, and the only alternative it’s offering is more assurances that Saudi Arabia will get around to removing the hate from its textbooks — eventually.

Further, how does Supervisor Hyland know that he saw everything? And what about the material in Arabic?

What I Think is Going On

What the Wahabbists of Saudi Arabia are trying to do is infiltrate our societies and pull the wool over our eyes as to their true intentions. As the reedom House and the Institute for Gulf Studies shows, they are teaching their young people that "violence to spread Islam is...an obligation."

Walid Phares summed it up well in his 2005 book Future Jihad. He identified six methods, or tactics, that the Wahabbists use as part of their infiltration strategy

1) Economic jihad: Oil as a weapon - Because we need their oil, we collaborate with them. This give them the opening that they seek.

2) Ideological jihad: Intellectual penetration - The Wahabis have spend much time and money penetrating academia. Many if not most Middle East studies programs are funded by Saudi money. For their money the Saudis want and get a sanitized version of Islamic history.

3) Political jihad: Mollification of the public - One, reassure the public that there is nothing to worry about, and two, promote acceptance of Islam in general and their verison in particular. They want us to turn to their approved sources for information about Islam.

4) Intelligence jihad: Infiltration of the country - The first step is to control the Islamic community in the target country. They do this by trying to gain control of the mosques, Muslim community centers and the like. The next step is to encourage their members and sympathizers to join Western governments, intelligence agencies, police units, and military.

5) Subversive jihad: Behind enemy lines and protected by its laws - As long as they obey the laws of the target government, they are relatively safe. As Phares put it during an interview on NBC after 9-11: "The safest place on Earth to hide from the dragon is inside its belly."

6) Diplomatic jihad: Controlling foreign policy - "Arabists" in the US State Department have been a problem for some time. Because we listened to Saudi advice we became convinced that the Taliban weren't really so bad, we missed al Qaeda because they didn't want us to know the truth about how close OBL's philosophy was to Saudi Wahabism, we let Hezbollah take over Lebanon, and we stalled too long over Sudan and let a genocide develop.

What we have at the Saudi Islamic Academy and the controversy surrounding it are examples of 3, 4, and 5 in action.

Where are the Liberals?

Suppose we were talking about a school set up by apartheit-era South Africa. Can anyone doubt what the reaction of the left would be? Would anyone, right or left, accept assurances that whatever went on in the home country the material in a "South Africa Academy" school didn't teach racial bigotry?

Yet these are the people who lecture us daily on our own shortcomings, real and imagined. They're currently all up in arms over waterboarding, and would have anuerisms if they saw a Christmas scene on public property, yet most are utterly blind to the dangers of jihadism.

The Bush Administration Asleep

The Bush Administration, and traditional conservatives are equally to blame. Our relationship with Saudi Arabia is far too cozy.

This is the administration that says it's main foreigh policy goal is to promote democracy, yet also ignores the problem of Saudi Wahabbist infiltration.

What to do?

So let me say it outright: Saudi Arabia is our enemy.

A country can be our enemy and no, we don't have to attack them militarily. We can even trade with them and they can be our enemy.

But what we have to do is stop pretending like the Saudis are our friends. They need to sell us their oil as much as we need to buy it from them.

Here are a few quick policy suggestions:

1) Reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I wrote a long piece on this a few months ago, so won't repeat my arguments or recommendations here.

2) Start a human-rights campaign to expose abuses in Saudi Arabia and other similar Islamic states.

3) Set up a quid-pro-quo system in that if the Saudis want something from us they have to make an advance toward liberalism.

4) Shut down or limit as much as legally possible Saudi influence in the West. This should be done by shutting down the Saudi Islamic Academy and stopping Saudi funding of Middle East studies programs in academia.

5) Stop listening to Saudi advice on anything.

6) Fire or find a way to reduce the influence of "Arabists" and Saudi sympathizers in the State Department. The State Department seems to have it's own aganda much of the time, whereas in reality it is supposed to carry out the will of the president.

7) Fire Condi Rice. While I once, thought she held great promise, I'm done with her. Between our relationship with Saudi Arabia and her nutty insistance on another round of "peace talks" between Israel and the Palestinians I've had about enough.