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Comment by baliansa | Hacker News Reader

This article comes from someone who clearly doesn't understand Saudi Arabia. It keeps on portraying Saudi Arabia as an extremism exporter while it is a very moderate country, just turn on their media (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Broadcasting_Cente...) and you will see a very different nation from what is portrayed here. Saudis have suffered a lot in the War on Terrorism, the number of Saudis who died in the Al-Qaeda insurgency is unbelievable, but no, Saudis are behind Al-Qaeda and they export terrorism. The authors are ignoring the fact that alternative, Iran, is a direct supporter of Hezbollah and many other militant groups in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. If you wanna keep on avoiding the reality and not participate in solving the Middle East's mess then it is your right to do so, but at the very least keep a fair view and stop calling us an extremism exporter.

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Everyone please stop voting this person down, I don't completely agree with the post but it's a commonly held view in SA and is given politely and respectfully. I think it deserves addressing in the same spirit.

The SA government doesn't support Al Qaeda of course, but the government does heavily fund extensive networks of religious schools and charities that push a very intolerant and view of non-Muslims and non-Wahhabi sects of Iskam, to the point of preaching violence and repressive treatment. In countries like Pakistan these schools are recruiting and training grounds for violent groups. Whether this is a deliberate policy by the SA government or just the result of poor governance and oversight of these organisations and their funding is an open question, but the result has been a dramatic radicalisation of Islam in many of these countries, far more so than in Saudi Arabia itself. I think many Saudis would be shocked to discover how much Saudi money is being diverted to fund terrorism and preach violent Jihad and intolerance of others.

To your point on Iran, yes hey are in some ways an even bigger concern. Where Saudi Arabia is funding extremism largely by accident, Iran is doing so deliberately. Still, that is a question for dealing with Iran which is a separate issue. Unless you are arguing that it's OK for Saudi Arabia to fund radicals and terrorists because Iran does it? But I don't think that's what you mean.

"Where Saudi Arabia is funding extremism largely by accident..."

It's pretty hard to believe that the Kingdom hasn't figured out this is happening and are completely helpless to stop it. They either can't or won't, but they certainly know who is doing it and the extent it is occurring.

Terrorism finance is a very complex subject which I'm only peripherally knowledgeable about. I'm sure they know it's happening, but they're just not able or willing to address it. Wahabism is a very strict and intolerant ideology to start with, so preaching things we might consider unacceptable are quite acceptable to them. The problem from their point of view is much smaller than it is from ours.

However where the ideology being supported and promulgated does go beyond what they would consider acceptable, they just don't have and are basically incapable of the level of oversight and monitoring required to identify and address it. That occurs to far down the funding and management chain for them to be equipped to deal with it. So in reality their choices are switch off the whole thing - billions of dollars in funding for education, health and charitable causes across the Muslim world on which extensive programmes and hundreds of thousands livelihoods depend - or live with the downside while making ineffectual efforts to control it. From their point of view these programmes are doing vastly more good than harm. It's just a matter of relative priorities.

I will freely admit that I don't understand the politics of Saudi Arabia.

But is it not a known fact that the 9-11 operators were a) Saudi, and b) backed by the Saudi government?

I'm certainly happy to be proven wrong, but if I'm correct here, that seems a lot to me to fit in with the concept of "exporting terrorism".

> But is it not a known fact that the 9-11 operators were a) Saudi, and b) backed by the Saudi government?

a) yes, b) no. Saudi government's relations with Osama bin Laden and his network went sour in about 1990.

By "Saudi government" if that person means wealthy princes related to the current ruling dynasty, then the answer of course is yes.

The Al-Qaeda connection isn't the only reason people perceive Saudi Arabia as exporting extremism. When Saudi Arabia starts treating all its people in a humane way, maybe we'll revisit this argument, but while women are enslaved and people are tortured and killed based on religious nonsense (amongst the many atrocities committed there), you cannot claim that Saudi Arabia is moderate. That's insane and frankly, it shows you have no idea what moderate even means in this context. If state condoned slavery, murder, rape, and torture are your idea of moderate, then it's time to crack open a dictionary and work on your language comprehension.

>It keeps on portraying Saudi Arabia as an extremism exporter while it is a very moderate country

What is your definition of moderate? Moderate compared to what country?

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