O Intermitente
(So long, farewell, auf weidersehen, good-bye)

sexta-feira, dezembro 05, 2003

Are the Saudis funding schools devoted to fomenting radical Islamic ideology?

the King Fahd Academy in Bonn, provoked an uproar two months ago when German television reporters infiltrated its classrooms and videotaped a teacher inciting a holy war ?in the name of Allah? and advocating martial-arts training?including the use of crossbows?for young students. Local German officials announced their intention to shut the school down after receiving intelligence reports that Muslim militants from throughout Germany?some of them with suspected terrorist connections?were flocking to the area to send their children to the academy.

(...)

The German experience underscores a broader concern among U.S. and other Western intelligence officials about the role that Saudi-funded mosques and schools are playing in the fomenting of radical Islamic ideology. The Saudi government pumps tens of millions of dollars every year into such institutions around the world?including Islamic centers, mosques and schools named for King Fahd in Los Angeles, Moscow, Edinburgh and Malaga, Spain. These schools are known for spreading Wahhabism?the puritanical, hard-core brand of Islam that is the official Saudi state religion and, in its more extreme versions, can be difficult to distinguish from the radical Islamic thought preached by Osama bin Laden and his followers, some intelligence officials say

Já no seu ultimo livro, Bernard Lewis, tinha expressado a mesma preocupação. Devido aos seus vastos recursos, proporcionados pelo petróleo, a dinastia saudita é a principal patrocinadora de instituições islâmicas fora do mundo árabe sendo a doutrina professada nessas instituições o Wahhabismo. Dessa forma uma doutrina, à partida, marginal (e nalguns aspectos herética) no mundo árabe é, presentemente, a mais difundida.

Ainda acerca deste assunto aconselho a leitura de um artigo publicado no MEMRI acerca dos conteudos "menos próprios" da página do Islamic Affairs Department da Embaixada da Arábia Saudita em Washington, D.C.
posted by Miguel Noronha 12:33 da tarde