As I show in my forthcoming book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, which you can preorder here now, the history of Islam is full of non-Muslims who thought that they could use the warriors of jihad for their own purposes. History is littered with the broken bodies of short-sighted people who thought they could ride this wave. But this never works well for the non-Muslims in the end.
“Saudi prince denies Kushner is ‘in his pocket,’” by Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, March 22, 2018:
…Discussing his reform efforts at home, including giving women the right to drive and have more rights outside the home, Mohammed said he has worked hard to convince conservative religious leaders such restrictions are not part of Islamic doctrine.
“I believe Islam is sensible, Islam is simple, and people are trying to hijack it,” he said. Lengthy discussions with clerics, he said, have been positive and are “why we have more allies in the religious establishment, day by day.”
Asked about the Saudi-funded spread of Wahhabism, the austere faith that is dominant in the kingdom and that some have accused of being a source of global terrorism, Mohammed said that investments in mosques and madrassas overseas were rooted in the Cold War, when allies asked Saudi Arabia to use its resources to prevent inroads in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union.
Successive Saudi governments lost track of the effort, he said, and now “we have to get it all back.” Funding now comes largely from Saudi-based “foundations,” he said, rather than from the government….