A Nation at Risk

Al-Obaid’s background bodes ill for the future of his country, as well as for our war on terror. From 1995 to 2002, al-Obaid was the head of the Muslim World League, an organization that in its origins, mission, and associations is bound up with Islamic extremism. One of its founders was Said Ramadan, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and father of the influential Swiss Islamist Tariq Ramadan. Its official goal is to “disseminate Islamic Dawah [proselytizing] and expound the teachings of Islam.” Since its founding in 1962, it has spent billions of Saudi government dollars to expand worldwide for the purpose of spreading Wahhabism.

But that’s not all: The Muslim World League has direct links to al Qaeda. Its branch in Peshawar, Pakistan, was led by Wael Jalaidan, “one of the founders of al Qaeda,” according to the U.S. Treasury Department. The Peshawar branch is where Wadih El-Hage, convicted for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, worked and where he met Abdullah Azzam, the mentor of Osama bin Laden and a cofounder of al Qaeda.

Moreover, the main arm of the Muslim World League is the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), a front for al Qaeda. According to Rachel Ehrenfeld, the author of Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed–and How to Stop It, the IIRO has used more than 70 percent of its funds to purchase weapons. The Egyptian magazine Rose al-Youssef described the IIRO as “firmly entrenched with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization.” As early as March 2002, the U.S. headquarters of both the Muslim World League and the IIRO were raided and closed by federal authorities. One of the officers of the now defunct Herndon, Virginia, branch was none other than Abdullah al-Obaid.

After his tenure at the Muslim World League, al-Obaid was named chairman of the Saudi National Commission for Human Rights, in which capacity he vigorously rejected the U.S. State Department’s designation of Saudi Arabia as a “country of concern” for religious freedom. Al-Obaid pointed out that his commission had not received a single complaint from anybody regarding violation of their religious freedom–which is just what you’d expect in a country that allows only one religion, Wahhabi Islam.

But what is most worrisome about al-Obaid’s appointment as education minister is that it sounded the death knell of the reform efforts of his predecessor, Muhammad Ahmad al-Rashid. That Saudi education policy is in need of reform there can be no doubt.

An official statement of Saudi government education policy was translated by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, in Jerusalem, and quoted in the center’s 2003 study of Saudi education. It asserts, for example:

The same study reviewed 93 books taught in grades 1 to 10 mostly in the years 1999-2002. According to the reviewers:

Partly under pressure from the West, including the U.S. administration and Congress, then-education minister al-Rashid tried to reform the system. During his tenure, a major study of the religion curriculum in state schools for boys was presented at the Second Forum for National Dialogue, in December 2003. The authors, both Saudis, were a former judge and a journalist. They reported that the curriculum denigrated and incited hatred of both non-Muslims and non-Wahhabi Muslims. The researchers made recommendations for moving away from this extremist line.

Some inside the royal family have spoken with apparent conviction of the need for reform. Crown Prince Abdullah himself told senior education officials in September 2004, “Watch your teachers. We want to serve the religion and the homeland, not terrorism.” Al-Rashid added, “Any element implementing an extremist policy will be uprooted from the educational system.”

Actions, however, speak louder than words. Last month–the very day after a meeting of the education ministers of the six Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia issued a call for reform of Islamic teaching in order to “spread a culture of moderation and tolerance”–Abdullah fired al-Rashid and replaced him with al-Obaid. And there are other signs that the extremists are holding their own.

In a remarkable column published in the Saudi daily Al Riyadh mere weeks later, on February 24, and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a lecturer in social science at King Saud University named Badria bin Abdallah Al-Bishr described her astonishment at discovering that her son’s teacher was one of the perpetrators of the December 30, 2004, car bombing of the Saudi Interior Ministry in Riyadh. She also recounted that after 9/11 her fifth grader was taught at school that Osama bin Laden was a hero, while her third grader was instructed to draw a picture of the two planes hitting the twin towers.

Especially since 2002, an intense internal battle has pitted reformers against hardliners inside the Saudi elite, and it looks like the Wahhabis have just won a round. The reformers are allowed cosmetic victories, like the public service campaign just announced by the Saudi government to educate the public about the dangers of extremism. Meanwhile, Wahhabis control what happens in the classroom.

As long as Saudi schools keep teaching hatred of “the other,” it will be obvious why Saudi Arabia remains the fount of terrorism–why 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis, and most of the prisoners at Guantanamo are Saudis, and most of the foreign terrorists in Iraq are Saudis.

In a recent speech to the National Defense University, President Bush urged that “Arab states stop their support for extremist education.” Maybe it’s time Crown Prince Abdullah heard that message directly from the president.

Olivier Guitta is a freelance writer specializing in the Middle East and Europe.