From the Stop-the-Presses Department. Someone should alert Condi Rice to this. Will she listen if our friends and allies the Saudis say it? From Arab News, with thanks to Jeff Lastname:
JEDDAH, 10 February 2005 “” Labor Minister Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi thinks extremist teachings, not unemployment, are the root causes of terrorism in Saudi Arabia.
Gosaibi blamed the spread of terrorism on the “indoctrination that teaches young people they can kill justifiably” and the training some extremists received in terror camps in Afghanistan.
“I don’t believe that terrorist movement has anything to do with unemployment,” the minister told reporters in Riyadh.
Unemployment has long been regarded as a major source of frustration in a region possessing one of the world’s youngest populations. Many also argue that economic hardships also drive young people from the region toward militancy.
“As you know Osama Bin Laden is a very rich man and all of his cronies are quite rich,” Gosaibi said.
I have pointed out Osama’s riches in just those terms to many enlightened types who are still stuck in Marxist and post-Marxist analytical straitjackets, and thus cannot conceive that human beings could have any motivation other than economic. They thereupon labeled me an “Islamophobe.” So I applaud Gosaibi’s honesty. Nonetheless, I doubt Gosaibi will actually face the real causes of jihad violence in the Qur’an and Hadith.