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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

In addition to coldtea's point: Saudi is in some respects the bizarro version of the US. While we export American Idol and McDonalds, they build schools teaching extremist Islam all over the world. Many formerly more moderate countries have gotten much more theocratic in the last 20 years, and Saudi evangelism funded by oil money has played a huge role.

For example, when I visited Bangladesh in the early 1990's, seeing veiled women in the capital city of Dhaka was unusual. It's very common today.

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> Saudi is in some respects the bizarro version of the US

And that's the subject of another Adam Curtis documentary, The Power of Nightmares.

> For example, when I visited Bangladesh in the early 1990's, seeing veiled women in the capital city of Dhaka was unusual. It's very common today.

Why do you think SA has something to do with this?

BTW, this is true in some western countries as well (I'm thinking of France where veiled women are everywhere, it wasn't the case in the 80s). I wonder what explains this trend.

See: http://m.dw.com/en/petro-islam-on-the-rise-in-bangladesh/a-6...

Bangladeshi here. SA has to do everything with that. Mostly SA funded madrassas and mosques, and SA has huge influence over the govt. and the people since SA hires many foreign workers from Bangladesh. Before continuing the debate on there is no proof that SA has done that (from my experience, that is how it proceeds), the tremendous economic and religious influence of SA has forced people to stop talking about it. Several secular bloggers have been murdered because they criticized SA branded Islam.

On a related note, I never understand why some people are always so eager to give SA the benefit of doubt.

I don't think HN is the right place for this, there are plenty of studies on this sort of phenomena. In short: there are powerful network effects, which are influenced by various factors. Saudi money going directly to religious organizations abroad is one of them, and can be the catalyst for triggering a number of other processes. This is even more true in very problematic places, like Bosnia-Hercegovina during and after the war or French banlieues.

> Why do you think SA has something to do with this?

There were some leaked Saudi cables (from Wikileaks?), that showed how radical outfits in other countries count on Saudi largesse to further their agenda.

Same with Maldives.

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