Saudi Interior Minister: jihadists employed in service of West

Where are we? Why don't we tell these people who we are? Why don't we argue with them, discuss things with them? Why don't we respond to everything they say?

I recall that after 9-11 The Saudi's actually had the audicity to run a radio ad here in the states claiming that they had nothing to do with 9-11. What struck me was the fact that somebody over there felt they needed to run a radio ad here to distance themselves from 9-11.

Saudia Arabia is a good example of why you don't gravel after religious authority to support a political instituation. Their government basically bought the backing of Islamic fundamentalists for their government by letting them run their education department. It is the Saudi's that provide most of the money for the mosques here in the States. They also have built schools and even a college. Considering their textbooks in Saudia Arabia... I'd love to know what they are actually teaching students, especially at the college level, here in the States.

My brothers, the danger is even greater. Even those people have become tools in the hands of the enemies. Unless we face reality with truth, courage, and evidence, and if we do not stop all the transgressors, who try to distort Islam with their claims of reform and their corrupt progress - this will be dangerous

Now who do you think he is talken about those who try to reform???

Now I,m really confused so is he saying the true mulsums like all this killing and stuff??

CAUSE WE JUST CAN,T HAVE NONE OF THAT??

Part of the American Tribe
Spider Killer
Squirrel Hunter

GOD BLESS THE USA AND HER FIGHTING FORCES AND ALL WHO FIGHT WITH HER GIVE THEM STRENGTH, WISDOM, SIGHT, AND COURAGE TO DESTROY ALL ISLAMIC TERRORIST AND ALL WHO SUPPORT THEM AMEN

So much of what we see coming out of the Islamic world, and almost everything from their religious authorities, is bizarre conspiracy. This guy (I watched the video and recommed you all follow memri.org) is saying the OBL is an agent, and he clearly means of American intelligence, that America created Al Qaeda, all the usual idiocy. The need to lie to oneself appears overwhelming in Saudi Arabia.

The picture that emerges, to me, is a people lost in a maze of lies that protect their false image of their religion and prophet. All their delusions spring from this. Attacking Islam, as did the Pope, and courageous intellectuals here and there, is the most powerful weapon against these people. Any time Islamic relgious authorities, and for that matter political authorities who are hardly separate, are fighting a rearguard action to protect their mental fiefdom from the truth, is time they cannot spend plotting their expansion.

The news can get depressing, and it is easy to feel as though we stand no chance against Islam. It is worth remembering that few words can send anyone who is heavily invested in the Islamic worldview into a tailspin of irrational justifications and doublethink. They are weaker than they appear.

We are not living on a planet of our own.

True. People like this live in another universe, where day is night and right is wrong. The scary part is that there are plenty of people like this suffering from these delusions who run that place and we're supposed to call them allies. Considering how easy it was for the US to remove the blood Baath regime in Iraq why would this nut believe the US needed a Bin loser to topple the Saudi regime? The US could easily overrun Saudi Arabia if it chose to. But then again rational thinking in a place like that is in short supply.

We are not living on a planet of our own.

Actually, it is regrettable that this isn't true. Then these idiots wouldn't be causing so much trouble on this planet.

Seriously though, this baloney is what you get when a corrupt royal family gets a "mandate from heaven" via Wahabbi crazies. The royals there were allowed to reign for promoting Wahabbism while the clerics promised to "protect" the royal family from criticsm. What a wonderful deal for both parties. Too bad the rest of the world has to suffer from this "heavenly mandate".

The news can get depressing, and it is easy to feel as though we stand no chance against Islam. It is worth remembering that few words can send anyone who is heavily invested in the Islamic worldview into a tailspin of irrational justifications and doublethink. They are weaker than they appear.

Very well put! Islam is weak; always has been weak! They're "mighty jihad warriors" on the battlefield are weak and can't shoot straight; never could!

Once in a very great while, they come up with an Atta -- but only after WE TRAIN THEM IN OUR SCHOOLS!

They mangage to get nuclear weapons now and again because WE ALLOW THEM INTO OUR SCHOOLS AND GIVE THEM THE ACCESS THEY MUST HAVE SO THAT THEY CAN STEAL THE INFORMATION THEY NEED RATHER THAN ACTUALLY DEVELOP IT THEMSELVES!

They manage to obtain access to ship to shore communications and a host of other DoD things because we are hell bent on EMPLOYING THEM.

Islam only has "power" because our so-called Western Leaders (puke) continue to empower them by not forcefully makeing them to stand down.

When the islamics screw up and shoot themselves, WE FIX 'EM UP AND ENABLE THEM TO TAKE ANOTHER STAB AT THINGS!

Remember the recent war with Lebanon and Israel? Israel was about to smash Hizballah and Hamas despite the reluctance of Olmert to "actually win."

It was a disaster for the islamic "might jihad warriors" who ran away and hide behind women and children as they always do.

The problem for the Western Leaders was how to save these cowards from themselves!

Like masked superhero with a red cape, Condi Rice showed up and saved the day for the islamics with UN Security Council Resolution 1701!

Israel pulled out from Lebanon; Hizballa and Hamas moved in. UNIFIL has allowed Iranian and Syrian convoys to rearm "them might jihad warriors" once again.

The strength of the islamic warriors in the field is not their numbers, it is not their superior ability to fight, it is not their technological innovation.

They have none of it and they know it.

Their ability rests in the implementation of the only secret weapon they have, that actually works!

"Western Leaders" hell-bent on ensuring their survival!

Moonbats are in charge of our energy supplies.

DO SOMETHING.

We have learned that speach from the middle east means absolutely nothing. It is used simply as a foil to gain time to do something else.

We know that we are looking at Theocracies that are rooted in the 6-7th centuries. They believe lies that they make up. These people are not like us. They are not little scrawny folks dressed up in funny looking bedsheets.

We need to stop acting like that dingbat female major keeping a muslim from drinking cranberry juice during ramadan.

Next time I hear a lib say "We are above all that" I will try my best to change his mind.

God willing, of course.

"ZEIG HEIL" , shouts.

Oops, Prince Turki warned me about shooting off my mouth and revealing what we truly want to do (cut off appendages of everyone we can) while we are following the tenets (named after George Tenet, the U.S. dhimmi who helped us a lot) of islam.

Never mind.

A feint within a feint within a feint...

Saudi Arabia is the holy see of islam. It is the head of the global snake of jjihad. Attack the head with ideas, intellectual fortitude and factual historic and contemporary truth, and the hissing snake recoils. Attack their jihad as we would any large institutionalized gangsterism, and we take away their military ability to strike into the heart of civilization. Close down madrassas in the west, turn way down the volume of hate at their mosques, and call to prayers, aggressively deport the wrong doers, and dismantle the street gangs of jihad. This war is winnable, go for the head of the islamic snake.

If they want to cherish their freedoms in the west, they must obey our laws and stop causing disturbances to our way of life. If they hate our freedoms, they do not belong among us and must leave by force. Concentrate jihadis inside their own lands, so they will all look like Gaza, fighting each other to the death. Make the disease attack its own immune system to kill its host body, isolate it with quarantine. Force them to solve their own problems by introspection, self examination, and change from their primitive philosophy based upon a primitive desert nomad's vision of what god is all about. Modernize or die. Their siren songs of self pity are not constructive, ignore them. They must dismantle the large organized crime network they created 1400 years ago called jihad. Saudi Arabia is the host body.

Observations on Arabs
Rants and Raves
by Steve Browne

Since the beginning of the Iraq phase of this conflict of civilizations, I've experienced the teeth-grinding frustration of watching both pro- and anti- Iraq sides make the exact same mistake - that of supposing that these people are bascially Americans in funny costumes. In this respect, George Bush and Michael Moore are equally clueless, as was Jill Carroll apparently.

I went to live and work in Saudi Arabia in 1998, and I "made my year" as expats there put it. That phrase means that I actually stuck out the whole year, instead of "running" from my contract, an occurrence so common that you only have to say "he did a runner" to explain why someone isn't showing up for work anymore. And while my experience wasn't nearly as unpleasant as Jill Carroll's, I could have told her a thing or two before she went to Iraq armed with her overflowing good will.

In the case of the Kingdom, I went there with a certain sympathy for Arab grievances, a belief that America had earned a lot of hostility from "blowback" from our ham-handed interventionist foreign policy and support for Israel etc.

I came back with the gloomy opinion that over the long run we are going to have to hammer these people hard to get them to quit messing with Western Civilization. And by the way, among "rational, fair-minded" non-interventionist libertarians, not a damn one of them has asked me, "What in your experience caused you to change your mind?" Instead what I get are gratuitous insults followed by insufferably condescending lectures about how wrong I am.

So, with the caveat that one of the first things I learned was that the term “Arab” covers a lot of territory, here are some observations and some tentative conclusions about Arabs, more specifically about Arabs from the oil states about why we have misunderstood each other to the point that we are fighting a war with some of them and are pissing off the rest of them. I suspect that many of these also apply to Iranian Islamists, but I have never been there and note that Iranians are not Arabs and have a different cultural history.

1) They don’t think the same way we do.

No, I mean THEY REALLY DON'T THINK THE SAME WAY WE DO. Yes, yes, I know we are all human and share the same human nature (perhaps the most disastrous mistake of Marxism was the denial of this elementary fact). But within the scope of that shared human nature, there are a lot of different ways to be human. We Americans have a basically open attitude to our fellow human beings and sometimes forget this. Combined with the fact that most Americans are linguistic idiots, we tend to assume that anyone who learns to speak English learns to think like us.

2) When you meet them in just the right circumstances, they are a very likable people.

Arabs are often easy to like, but difficult to respect - as opposed to Israelis, who are often difficult to like but impossible not to respect. From their nomadic heritage they have a tradition of generosity and hospitality to guests that warms the heart. This does not in the least affect the fact that no friendship with you is ever going to remotely equal the obligations they have for their family, tribe or the community of the Believers.

3) Their values are fundamentally different from ours, their self-esteem is derived from a different source.

And you know what? Theirs is PHONY. Yes I know, I’m making a cultural value judgment, the cardinal sin when I was a grad student in Anthropology. With us, the most important sources of self-esteem are useful work and the love of a good woman. Being good at something that requires skill (even a hobby) and being of primary importance to somebody just because you are who you are. Work for them, is something to be avoided. The basic forms of work: making stuff, growing stuff and moving stuff around, is taken care of by a class of indentured servants, usually non-Arab Muslims from the Third World, and even today, by outright slaves. The Kingdom is a modern country, they abolished slavery in 1967, but old expats have reported seeing slave auctions as late as 1981. The point being, in a slave society, work is not honorable (as De Tocqueville pointed out) and cannot be a source of self-worth.

“Of conjugal love they know nothing.” (Thomas Jefferson on the French aristocracy.) In a land of arranged marriages, where the whole society is geared towards a strict segregation of the sexes and women are at least semi-chattels, romantic love is rare – and greatly desired. In the Kingdom I found a few students with a consuming interest in romantic poetry, whom I had to teach very discretely. Most of them were just obsessed with sex however. And interestingly, when visiting the West or the fleshpots of Bahrain, they are said to have a tendency to fall in love with the prostitutes they patronize.

Without honorable work, romantic love or any accomplishments not overshadowed by those the West, their sense of self-worth comes from being the possessors of the One True Religion. And Allah doesn’t seem to be delivering on his promises of being exalted above the unbelievers these days.

4) Not only can they not build the infrastructure of a modern society, they can’t maintain it either.

The very concept of "maintenance" is foreign to them. This is what drives the foreign instructors in the Gulf absolutely mad. The per capita richest countries in the world resemble Eastern Europe or Latin America in the tackiness and run-down appearance of the buildings and streets. An electronics technician new to the Kingdom once told me how his first job was to inspect a junction box in the desert. He had to pry it open with a crowbar as it had evidently not been opened since it had been installed several years earlier.

This is expressed in the inshallah philosophy, “If God wills it.” A Palestinian friend of mine explained to me that even the weather forecaster will qualify his prediction, “It will rain tomorrow. Inshallah.” Or, “I will meet you tomorrow, inshallah.” (But God understands that I am a very unreliable person.)

5) They do not think of obligations as running both ways.

With us, contractual and moral obligations tend to be equal and reciprocal. They don’t see it that way. The obligations of the superior to the inferior do not equal those of the inferior to the superior. Obligations within a family or clan outweigh all others. That is why we had to take care not to sit members of the same clan near each other during exams. If one asks another for help, he has to give it. In spite of promises to the school and even when the clansman is a total stranger. Obligations to other believers outweigh all obligations to unbelievers and especially when the believers are fellow-Arabs. And in contracts with unbelievers, the obligations of the Believer to the kaffir are not equal to the obligations of the kaffir to the Believer.

6) In warfare, we think they are sneaky cowards, they think we are hypocrites.

In our civilization, when two men get down, either seriously or just “woofing”, what do they say? Some variation of “I’m going to kick your ass.” Am I right? Here’s what I heard in the Kingdom, “Hey, don’t f**k with me, or someday you get a knife in the back.” I’m not saying that wouldn’t happen to you in the West, but most men would be ashamed to make a threat of that nature. We don’t understand that direct shock battle is not necessarily the law of nature. When overwhelming force is brought to bear on them, they become cringing and obsequious. To put it bluntly, they lie their heads off to get you to turn your back on them. Try to see it from their point of view – how else do you expect them to act when you have the overwhelming force? You expect them to meet you on equal terms when the situation is so unequal? What other tactics are available but prevarication and delay followed by a sneak attack?

Folks, what we call “terrorism” is quite close to the historically normal way of warfare among these people.

7) In rhetoric, they don’t mean to be taken seriously and they don’t understand when we do.

Thus an ultimatum is often not taken seriously and the reality comes as a surprise. Remember the “Mother of all Battles”? Like many other Mediterranean peoples, Arabs don’t seem to mind making a scene in public and have a high blown sense of drama. Paul Harvey once described how he had spent the Suez Crisis hiding under the bed in his hotel room because of the blood-curdling radio broadcasts, before he learned that Arabs talk like that when they’re arguing over a taxi. “This is my taxi and I will defend it to the death!” “You lie, it’s mine and rivers of blood will flow in the street before I give up my taxi!”

An Arab will scream at you, get into your personal space and sometimes kick dirt on your shoe – and they react with utter surprise when an American up and decks him. “What did I do?” To say the least, this makes negotiations difficult.

8) They don’t place the same value on an abstract conception of Truth as we do, they routinely believe things of breathtaking absurdity.

I cannot begin to tell you of some of the things I’ve heard from Gulf Arabs or read in the English language press in the Kingdom. “The Jews want Medina back.” (Medina was a Jewish city in the time of the Prophet.) The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been turned into an immensely popular miniseries on Egyptian TV. The Blood Libel (the medieval myth that Jews need the blood of non-Jewish babies to celebrate Passover) is widely reported in the Arab press, and widely believed. Allah will replenish the oil beneath Arabia when it runs out.

9) They do not have the same notion of cause and effect as we do.

This involves some seriously weird stuff about other people being responsible for their misery because they ill-wished them. I’ve read in the English-language press of the Kingdom serious admonitions against using Black Magic to win an advantage in a dispute with a neighbor. The columnist did not deny the efficacy of Black Magic, he just said it’s forbidden to use it. On one occasion I was trying to explain the concept of "myth" to them and I used the example of the djinn. I wasn't getting through to them at all and was concerned that I had mangled the pronunciation of the word when it dawned on me that the reason they didn't understand what I was getting at, was that they had no doubt that the djinn were real.

10) We take for granted that we are a dominant civilization still on the way up. They are acutely aware that they are a civilization on the skids.

Anyone who looks at the surviving architecture of Moorish Spain can tell that Islamic civilization has seen better days. There was a time when cultural transmission between Islam and the West went overwhelmingly from them to us. (Note the recent discoveries of Sufi symbols engraved on the structural members of European cathedrals.) Now the situation is reversed, and it is humiliating for them.

11) We think that everybody has a right to their own point of view, they think that that idea is not only self-evidently absurd, but evil.

In the West, and America more than anyplace else, we have internalized the notion that everyone has a right to their own opinion, and that said opinion is perfectly valid for them. When we meet a people who think that that idea is insane and evil, we are sometimes left in the absurd position of defending their idea as “perfectly valid for them”. Doesn’t work that way for them, God’s Truth is laid out in some detail in the Koran, and not to believe it is a sin.

12) Our civilization is destroying theirs. We cannot share a world in peace. They understand this; we have yet to learn it.

Another culturally-imposed blindness we have is the notion that everybody can get along with enough good will. There is absolutely no evidence to support this and a great deal to oppose it. Can the subjugation of women coexist with Western Civilization with Western media ubiquitous throughout the world? Can a pluralistic and tolerant society be governed by Islamic law? Can a modern economy exist where interest is forbidden and many forms of business risk-taking are considered gambling, and thus forbidden? Can a society that educates its young men by a process of rote recitation produce critically thinking, technically educated men to build and operate a modern economy? Can you even teach elementary concepts of maintenance to a people who believe that anything that happens is inshalla (As God will it)? To compete, or even just survive in the world they must become more like us and less like themselves – and they know this.

Close down madrassas in the west, turn way down the volume of hate at their mosques, and call to prayers, aggressively deport the wrong doers, and dismantle the street gangs of jihad. This war is winnable, go for the head of the islamic snake.
Posted by: Battle_of_Tours at October 4, 2006 10:05 AM

This makes too much sense for our "leadership" so these things go undone. And I'd jail the wrong doers rather than deport them,lest they return in the future.

I read Browne's essay yesterday and thought it was right on. This point struck me as the essence of it all:

"Without honorable work, romantic love or any accomplishments not overshadowed by those the West, their sense of self-worth comes from being the possessors of the One True Religion."

To the Middle Eastern mind, the West is not only the USA. It is just possible that dirty dealings are going on by the EU with people like OBL.

My take on this was not another attack on America. It had a ring of truth about it, and I was left wondering if our friends particularly in Paris, might not be stirring the pot more than we ever thought.

It would be a useful diversion to have the US fight a vague enemy, so time consuming and also so expensive. Creating instability in Saudi Arabia would play into the hands of the French and the Russians if it led to a division with the US and SA.

Remember that everybody is after the oil. We need to have an open mind regarding the complexities of the ME situation.

Look at where Arafat went for treatment - Paris. Look at the involvement between France and countries like Libia and Iran, as well as Lebanon. Look at how anti-Semitic the EU is generally, but France is particularly.

How many times have we been stabbed in the back by the French and Russia? I think that OBL is getting western support, but not as some have interpreted it, from the US.

Europe's goal as is Russia's and China's is to bring down the USA. What better method?

Well regards to OBL, I, personally, don't know what to believe anymore! At first, I too thought that the notion that 9/11 could be a conspiracy was utterly ludicrous. Not saying that it is a conspiracy, but right now, I think anyhting is possible! This is a thought shared by many westerners too, mind you, so its not only a mindless-arab theory. :)
I think the Browne essay had many poignant statements about the modern-day arab or gulf person. But his deep analysis of this situation is in my opinion quite flawed. Most of his abservations could be very true, but pointing to Islam as the cause is where he is sorely mistaken. Almost all of these negative attitudes he observed are due to basically 2 reasons: sudden enormous wealth with the ensuing culture shock, and deep-rooted, *arab-bedouin* backward traditions, and NOT Islamic teachings. This is where many westerners go wrong, understandably so.
What am I talking about? Simple, for evidence of my statement I direct your attention a bit further to the east, the Far-East. Lo and behold what do we have here? Muslims working together in harmony with others; a surging dynamic economy and an active industrious people.

Kalam

You've missed news accounts of a Malay insurrection in Thailand, the demolition of a 100 year old Hindu temple in KL and the posthomous conversion of a Hindu commander of Malaysia's armed forces to Islam, the persecution of Christians in Sulawesi and Hindus in Lombok by Muslim in Indonesia, and a whole bunch of recent stories. There is no place in the world that Muslims co-exist peacefully with Infidels - not Balkans, not Palestine, not India, not East Indies, not North Africa, not Europe. The reason: Islam!

" He was an agent of foreign intelligence agencies, and he still is - him and those who support him. Who established Al-Qaeda?"

Wow, the 9-11 conspiracy theorists are going to eat that up with a spoon.
The stock market was in the process of crashing with trillions of dollars in dirivatives on the line, and then bitta'boom! Good old Osama (an agent of foreign intelligence agencies) steps in. All markets are shut down and rebooted.

" These people have been tempted by the West, and have been employed in its service."

It is things like this which often makes me think we should instead have gone for Iran and Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of 911, in addition to Afghanistan.

That should be clearer.

Saying your own agent is someone else's when some embarassment is or will become public soon is a standard intelligence service trick. Musharraf said that Omar Saeed Sheikh was British intelligence recently. He has been alleged to have been ordered by Pakistan's ISI General Ahmed to have wired money to 9-11 hijackers before 9-11.

Sheikh was involved in the Daniel Pearl kidnapping and murder and was the one who met him at Pearl's hotel in Jan 2002. Pearl was investigation possible Pakistan connections to 9-11. Christina Lamb was forced out of Pakistan in Nov 2001 for investigating the same thing.

Recently, Putin played a similar game by claiming some Americans, presumed by some to have meant a Harvard prof were CIA agents. See David Warsh for a discussion of this case at Economic Principals.

The Saudis are trying the same trick? Trying to claim Osama is in service of West? This is only a possibility, of course. We are considering hypotheses above and below. Saudis are reported as were and still are funding the Taliban and al Qaeda by Frontline.

In the Lawrence Wright book, "Al Qaeda and 9-11" on page 288 a trip by Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Turki, now ambassador to US with General Rana then head of Pakistan ISI to visit Mullah Omar is decribed. Turki is the sole source for the meeting and says he asked for the surrender of bin Laden, this was before 9-11 but after the embassy bombings. Turki says Omar said no and insulted him. Of course, we are not saying that Turki has any involvement in the recent statement reported from Nayef nor that any of the above are more than speculation or hypotheses.

from above:

These people have been tempted by the West, and have been employed in its service. We are familiar with their relations with foreign elements. We are fighting them and will continue to fight them, and we will cut off their tongues.
...............

Wow--and these are the "moderates" we're supposed to be working with. Irrational, paranoid and threatening violence.

.................

Treehugger, thanks for posting the obsevations by Steve Browne. The interesting thing is that many of these same factors applied to Europe if you go back far enough--the "magical" thinking, the lack of logic and reason, the disdain of productive work, the prohibitions on romantic love.

These aspects were all common during the Dark- and early Middle Ages. This began to change with the Rennaissance and Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. None of these changes have been embraced by the Muslim world.

Of course, there are some Muslim individuals (especially a few in the West) who have embraced hard work, science, or choosing their own spouse. But this hasn't made a dent in the retrogressive philsophy of Islam and the Muslim world in toto. And now many Muslims are trying to impose their irrational, pre-modern philosophy *on us*.

Treehugger l really enjoyed your post.. l wonder when there are several generations of arabs born and raised in the US,has their thinking of manual work or plain work ethics come close to a Western person?
lwould think the only way for them to live truly in a modern world, they would have to leave islam. islam is from the dark ages. democracy and islam are like oil and water, the two cannot mix.

But they forgot to mention, Islam was a religion of PEACE!