From 1982 to 2005 (the reign of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia), over $75 billion is estimated to have been spent in efforts to spread Salafiyya Islam. The money was used to established 200 Islamic colleges, 210 Islamic centers, 1500 mosques, and 2000 schools for Muslim children in Muslim and non-Muslim majority countries.[11][12]
The schools were "fundamentalist" in outlook and formed a network "from Sudan to northern Pakistan".[13]
By 2000 Saudi Arabia had also distributed 138 million copies of the Quran worldwide.
[14]
In the 1980s, religious attaches in the Kingdom's ~70 embassies around the world worked to "get new mosques built in their countries and to persuade existing mosques to propagate the dawah salafiyya".[1][15]
The Saudi Arabian government funds a number of international organizations to spread fundamentalist Islam, including the Muslim World League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, the International Islamic Relief Organization, and various royal charities.[Note 1] Supporting proselytizing or preaching of Islam (da'wah), has been called "a religious requirement" for Saudi rulers that cannot be abandoned "without losing their domestic legitimacy" as protectors and propagators of Islam.[16]
In the words of journalist Scott Shane, "when Saudi imams arrived in Muslim countries in Asia or Africa, or in Muslim communities in Europe or the Americas, wearing traditional Arabian robes, speaking the language of the Quran — and carrying a generous checkbook — they had automatic credibility."[17]
In addition to the
Shiism and popular Islamic religious practices (the cult of `saints`),[8] and a belief in the importance of armed jihad.[10]
Later the two movements are said to have been "fused",[9]
or formed a "hybrid", particularly as a result of the
Soviets and their Afghan allies in Afghanistan in the 1980s.[10] (The alliance was not permanent and the Muslim Brotherhood and Osama bin Laden broke with Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. Revivalist groups also disagreed among themselves -- Salafi Jihadi groups differing with the less extreme Muslim Brotherhood, for example.[19]
)
The funding has been criticized for promoting an intolerant, fanatical form of Islam that allegedly helped to breed radicalism.[20] The volunteers mobilized to fight in Afghanistan (such as Osama bin Laden) who became "exultant" at their success against the Soviet superpower, went on to fight Jihad against Muslim governments and civilians in other countries.[21]
Western Europe
Belgium
According to Hind Fraihi, a Moroccan-Belgian journalist, Saudi-trained imams and literature from Saudi Arabia glorifying jihad and advocating Islam versus non-Muslims thinking was “part of the cocktail” (other factors being "economic frustration, racism, a generation that feels it has no future”) leading to the
ISIL terror cell in Belgium committing terrorist acts in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016. (Altogether 162 people were killed in the attacks.) .[17]
In the capital Brussels, as of 2016, 95 percent of the courses offered on Islam for Muslims used preachers trained in Saudi Arabia, according to European Network Against Racism.[22] In February 2017 the Belgium Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (OCAD/OCAM, which evaluates terrorist and extremist threats in and to Belgium) voiced concerns over the spread of Saudi-backed Salafism in Belgium and the rest of Europe, stating “An increasing number of mosques and Islamic centres in Belgium are controlled by Wahhabism. This is the Salafist missionary apparatus.”[23]
A 2017 proposal to construct a large mosque in Helsinki to "unite all Finnish Muslims", has met with resistance from among others the incoming mayor of the capital (Jan Vapaavuori). This was because it is being funded by Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and may introduce "Sunni-Shia hate politics into Finland", as both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are Sunni ruled and have cracked down on Shia protestors.[24]
The German government has expressed concern that religious organizations from the Middle East may be supporting German Salafists through the construction of mosques, training facilities, and the utilization of radical preachers.[25]
In Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland where plans to build a new, larger mosque had been underway for more than a decade, there has been controversy over funding of the mosque. Following the 2015 Paris terror attacks, the President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson announced that he was "shocked to the point of paralysis" to learn from Saudi Arabian Ambassador, that Saudi Arabia planned to donate $1 million to the building of a mosque. Grímsson expressed concern that Saudi Arabian financing of the mosque would fuel radical Islam in Iceland.[26]
According to a report by Anthony Glees, [Note 2] extremist ideas being spread allow with donations from Saudi and Arab Muslim sources to British universities.[clarification needed] Eight universities, "including Oxford and Cambridge", accepted "more than £233.5 million from Saudi and Muslim sources" from 1995 to 2008, "with much of the money going to Islamic study centres".[27]
Over the past decade, Saudi Arabia has been the largest source of donations from Islamic states and royal families to British universities, much of which is devoted to the study of Islam, the Middle East and Arabic literature.
A large share of this money went toward establishing Islamic study centers. In 2008, Prince
Oxford has been the largest British beneficiary of Saudi support. In 2005, Prince Sultan, the late crown prince, gave £2 million (SR 12 million) to the Ashmolean Museum
. In 2001, the King Abdul Aziz Foundation gave £1 million (SR 6.1 million) to the Middle East Center.
There are many other donors. Oxford's £75 million (SR 454.6 million) Islamic Studies Center was supported by 12 Muslim countries. Ruler of
Qaboos bin Said al Said
, gave £3.1 million (SR 18.8 million) to Cambridge to fund two posts, including a chair of Arabic.
In June 2017, following the London Bridge terror attack, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn stated that the "difficult conversations" Prime Minister Theresa May called for should start with "Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that have funded and fuelled extremist ideology".[29]
A July 2017 report by the Henry Jackson Society, commissioned by the government of the UK, stated that Middle Eastern nations are providing financial support to mosques and Islamic educational institutions, which have been linked to the spread of extremist material with "an illiberal, bigoted Wahhabi ideology".[30][31] The report said that the number of Salafi mosques in Britain had increased from 68 in 2007 to 110 in 2014.[32]
Eastern Europe/Balkans
Historically parts of the
Bosnia, Salafism is getting established particularly in the remote villages.[34]
Albania
A Muslim-majority country, Albania had been under anti-clerical communist control for 45 years when the
Eastern bloc fell in 1991. The pro-Islamic Democratic Party was elected to power in 1992, and the government of Sali Berisha "turned to Saudi Arabia for financial support," and for assistance in "re-Islamizing" the country. Thirty NGOs and Islamic associations worked toward re-Islamization of Albania, including thirteen of the organizations formed a `Coordination Council of Arab Foundations.` Saudi Arabia sponsored `Al Haramein` and `Musafaq` (which were based in Britain) foundations which "vied" with Islamic organizations from Libya, Sudan, Iran and Turkey in "instumentalization of humanitarian aid as a means of proselytization." At least the Saudi and Sunni Islamist groups preached for creation of an Islamic society influenced by Salafiyya doctrines. Saudi NGOs built 200 mosques and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia donated one million copies of an Albanian-language version of the Quran.[35]
According to Olivier Roy and Antoine Sfeir, the "organized project undertaken by preachers and Islamic NGOs" was to "expunge indigenous Albanian ideas about Islam, before replacing it with a version of the faith more in conformity with the Wahhabi model. ... Islam in its most radical form was taught as the only true faith, while tolerance was seen as an indication of weakness. ... Hatred of the West was raised to the status of a creed."[35]
One of the first Islamists to come to Albania was Muhammad al Zawahiri, (the brother of
Ayman al Zawahiri, the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad movement and Osama bin Laden's key lieutenant) as an accountant for the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO). (Unbeknownst to Albanians, in addition to helping with relief and spreading correct Islam, IIRO was charged with the task of helping other members of Islamic Jihad find jobs within "charitable organizations building mosques, orphanages and clinics." By the mid-1980s, the Tirana cell of Islamic Jihad numbered 16 members, including a specialist in false identity documents, a recruit wanted on suspicion of involvement in the attempted assassination. This was later exposed during an investigation carried out by the American and Albanian secret services,[35][36] In June 1998 three Egyptian Islamist accused of terrorist activities were arrested in Albania, with further arrests in September after the 1998 United States embassy bombings
. )
How successful the proselytizing has been is unclear. Roy and Sfeir believe that with NGO work in the 1990s "Islamists gained an important foothold",[35] however, a 2012 Pew Research study found that only 15% of Muslims surveyed considered religion "a very important factor" in their lives—the lowest percentage in the world amongst countries with significant Muslim populations.[37][38]
Bosnia
During the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina (where the approximately 43% of the population that was Muslim formed the largest religious group) received aid from Saudi groups — International Islamic Relief Organization, Saudi High Commission for Relief, Muwaffaq Foundations — as well as from non-Saudi Islamic groups. A 1996 report by the CIA stated that "all of the major and most of the minor Islamic charities are significant players in the former Yugoslavia", particularly in aiding Bosnian Muslims, delivering food, clothing, and medicine; supporting orphanages, schools, hospitals, agricultural, and refugee camps; and constructing housing, infrastructure. According to the Saudi Embassy to the US, the Saudi Joint Committee for Collection of Donations for Bosnia donated $500 million in aid to Muslims for medical care, refugee camps, education during the Bosnian War, and later reconstruction projects for mosques and religious schools.[39]
In just one year (1994) Saudi nationals alone gave $150 million through Islamic NGOs for aid to Bosnia. However, a "growing body of reporting indicates that some of these charities are being used to aid Islamic extremist groups that engage in terrorism."[40]
Aid to the local Bosnian Islamist party (the SDA) gave it leverage to undermined competing local secular and more traditional Muslim groups.[41] The SDA prohibited consumption of alcohol and pork, "brought Muslim religious instruction into the schools, opened up prayer rooms, and used the leverage of its distribution of aid to pressurize the population to adopt Muslim names, to wear the veil, and grow beards."[41][36] A 1992 conference on the protection of human rights in Bosnia brought together representatives from 30 Muslims countries. It passed resolutions declaring "without ambiguity that the aim of the Bosnian conflict was the extermination of Bosnia's Muslims."[41]
"
Hisbah
("enjoin good and forbid wrong") including attempting to impose the veil on women and the beard on men. In addition they engaged in
causing disturbances in the ceremonies of [Sufi] brotherhoods they deemed to be deviant, .... smashing up cafes, and ... [organizing] sharia marriages to Bosnian girls that were not declared to the civil authorities.[42]
Rather than spreading strict Islamic practice, these activities were so unpopular with the Bosnian public and media they were condemned by the SDA.[42] According to Gilles Kepel, as of 2003, the only thing left of their presence were "a few naturalized Arab subjects married to Bosnian women."[42]
From the end of the Bosnian War to 2007, Saudi-financed organizations spent about $700 million in Bosnia, "often in mosques", according to analysts quoted by the New York Times.[43] "More than half a dozen new madrasas", (religious secondary schools), have been built throughout the country, as have dozens of mosques. In the capital and largest city Sarajevo, Saudi Arabia financed the King Fahd Mosque, a $28 million complex including a sports and cultural center.[43] According to a former Bosnian intelligence agent (Goran Kovacevic) interviewed by a public television network in the US, (PBS), the mosque is well financed and "the most radical mosque in the whole Bosnia-Herzegovina. ... All those guys that actually performed some kind of terrorist activity in Bosnia-Herzegovina were part of that mosque".[44] In October 2008, eight people were injured when men in hoods attacked participants at a gay festival in Sarajevo, dragging some people from vehicles and beating others while they chanted, “Kill the gays!” and “Allahu Akbar!”[43]
Salafi charity organizations also physically influenced Bosnian religious culture following the war. Saudis have helped restore some of the hundreds of mosques and monuments Serb nationalist forces destroyed during the war. While this assistance was badly needed and greatly helpful to thepersecuted Bosniaks, it involved removing the Islamic calligraphy that adorned many Balkan Muslim tombstones, which Salafis considered idolatrous and unIslamic. Critics complain that the graveyards were "often all that was left" of the local Bosnian heritage.[45]
Kosovo
One country where Saudi Arabia has been particularly successful in spreading conservative Salafism where once Sufi local Islamic beliefs held sway is Kosovo.[46]
Following the NATO bombing campaign of 1999 that helped Muslim Kosovo gain independence from Orthodox Christian Serbia, the Saudi government[47]
and private sources began to provide aid.[48][47]
Saudi citizens donated $20 million to Kosovo in cash as well as food and medical supplies, and the Saudi Red Crescent sent medical volunteers.[48]
The Saudi Joint Committee for Collection of Donations for Kosovo and Chechnya sent $45 million for humanitarian relief services (medical care, refugee camps, education, and later reconstruction of mosques and schools) to Kosovo according to the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in the US.[39]
240 mosques have been built in Kosovo since the 1999 war.[46] The Saudi Joint Committee for Relief of Kosovo and Chechnya built approximately 100 mosques in rural areas, some with Quranic schools adjacent, and sent 388 foreign teachers to spread "their interpretations of Islam".[49]
Saudi-sponsored charities sponsored education, classes not only in religion but English and computers, often paying salaries and overhead costs. Families were given monthly stipends. All this was appreciated in the "poor and war ravaged" country but local Kosovar imams complained that stipends were given "on the condition that they attended sermons in the mosque and that women and girls wore the veil". “People were so needy, there was no one who did not join,” according to one Kosovo politician (Ajnishahe Halimi).[46]
According to a critical article by journalist Carlotta Gall,
corps of extremist clerics and secretive associations funded by Saudi Arabia and other conservative Arab countries in the Persian Gulf region using an obscure, labyrinthine network of donations from charities, private individuals and government ministries ... [They] transformed this once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe into a font of Islamic extremism and a pipeline for jihadists.[46]
Conservatives came to dominate the Islamic Community of Kosovo, the national Islamic organization.[46]
Part of the Salafi influence can be found in more conservative practices, such as the refusal by some women to shake hands with or talk to male relatives. But threats — or acts — of violence against academics, journalists and politicians have also occurred. One imam in the city of Gjilan, Enver Rexhepi, was "abducted and savagely beaten by masked men" in 2004 after clashing with a Saudi trained student (Zekirja Qazimi) over whether to continue the long-standing practice of displaying the Albanian flag in his (Rexhepi's) mosque. (Qazimi believed the depiction of the dragon on the flag idolatrous.)[46]
Kosovo also had "the highest number" of Muslims per capita of any country in Europe leave to fight for
Islamic State, "including two suicide bombers, 44 women and 28 children".[46]
After two Muslims from Kosovo killed themselves in suicide bombings in Iraq and Turkey, Kosovo intelligence began an investigation of "sources of radicalism." The Saudi charity Al Waqf al Islami and twelve other Islamic charities were shut down, and 40 people arrested.[46]
Saudi aid has also affected the architecture of Islam in Kosovo, leading to the dismantling of centuries-old Ottoman mosques whose ornamentation was offensive to Salafism, including the Hadim Suleiman Aga mosque and Library in Djakovica, Kosovo.[50]
Among the destroyed buildings are "a historic library in Gjakova and several 400-year-old mosques, as well as shrines, graveyards and Dervish monasteries".[46]
According to Carlotta Gall, as of 2016 "Kosovo Central Bank figures show grants from Saudi Arabia averaging €100,000 a year for the past five years", a reduction from the decade earlier, (although payments can be diverted through another country" to obscure their origin and destination"). Picking up the slack in financing "hard-line" Islam have been donors in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — each of which average "approximately €1 million a year" in donations.[46]
Poland
Although the majority Catholic country has an Islamic population of roughly only 0.1%,[51] its indigenous Muslim population of Lipka Tatars (1,916 per 2011 census)[52] only nominally adheres to Sunni Islam. [citation needed] However, together with an immigration of refugees and foreign students from Muslim majority countries, the Salafiyya movement started taking roots in the country, whilst coming in conflict with the Tatar's local practicing of the faith. A Saudi donor Shaykh Abdullatif al Fozan (ranked 51 in 2013 on the Forbes' list of richest Arabs[53]) sponsored (4,000,000 euro)[54] the construction of the "Center of a Muslim Culture" in Warsaw. The building is fully equipped; has a store, a restaurant, library, prayer hall and even a gym. While officially promoting (Sunni) Islam, the Center adheres to Salafi principles. Originally, it was meant to be built as a "Centre of Arabic Studies" adjacent to the University of Warsaw, but the University's staff refused the offer.[55]
Saudi leaders have endeavoured to influence, trade, resources in Sudan, Kenya and EthiopiaSomalia which has also resulted in a regional rivalry between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shia Muslim Iran. According to the Guardian, spread of Salafism, is a, "key concern of the west, and of many local players as well".[56]
Sudan
Khatmiya) who were each attached to a political party,[58]
had great influence among the masses of Muslims. Saudi funding, investment, and labor migration from Sudan has all worked over time to change that.
Saudi provided funding for the Muslim Brotherhood[59] whose local leader, Hassan al-Turabi, enjoyed "close relations" with "some of the more conservative members of the Saudi royal family".[60]
In the fall of 1977, an Islamic bank with 60% of its start up capital coming from Saudi Arabia opened a branch in Sudan.[61] By the mid-1980s this bank (Faisal Islamic Bank of Sudan) was second biggest in Sudan in terms of money held on deposit.[62] Shortly after another similar bank (Al Baraka Bank) was founded. Both provided rewards for whose affiliated with Hassan al-Turabi's Islamist National Islamic Front—employment and wealth as a reward for young militant college graduates and low interest loans for investors and businessmen unable to find loans elsewhere.[62]
In 1983 Saudis persuaded then-President Gaafar Nimeiry to institute sharia law[59] including interest-free Islamic banking. The traditional Sudanese banking system was abolished and afterwards
any enterprise that needed capital had to be part of Turabi's network to gain access to financial markets. Over time, this has concentrated economic power in the old families from the "Three Tribes" who were loyal to the new regime"[63]
and who have "transformed themselves into Islamists."
The influx of Sudanese labor migrants to Saudi as truck drivers, electricians, factory workers and sales clerks, was also significant. By 1985, according to one source, about 2/3 of the professional and skilled Sudanese workers were employed outside the Sudan, many in the Gulf States.[64] (As of 2013 there were 900,000 Sudanese migrant workers in Saudi Arabia.)[65]
Looking at the change in religious practices of a village in northern Sudan over a five-year period from 1982 to 1988, anthropology researcher Victoria Bernal found labor migration of villagers to Saudi Arabia "were catalysts for change, stimulating the rise of `fundamentalist` Islam in the village". Returning migrants "boldly" critiqued the Islamic authenticity of local practices such as "mourning rituals, wedding customs and reverence for holy men in particular." More well-to-do villagers were "building high brick or cement walls around their homes", women began wearing ankle-length robes. Traditional wedding rituals with singing and mixing of genders were called into question.[59]
According to Victoria Bernel, "Adopting fundamentalist practices" had become a "way to assert one's sophistication, urbanity and material success."
As Hassan al-Turabi and his National Islamic Front grew in influence and in 1989 a coup d'état by Omar al-Bashir against an elected government negotiating to end the war with the animist and Christian South established Sudan as the first Sunni Islamist state. Al-Turabi became the "power behind the throne" of the al-Bashir government from 1989 to 1999.[68] The revivalist tenure in power was not as successful as its influence on banking or migrant workers. International organizations alleged war crimes, ethnic cleansing, a revival of slavery, torture of opponents, an unprecedented number of refugees fleeing country,[69] and Turabi and allies were expelled from power in 1999. The jihad in the south ended unsuccessfully with the south seceding from Sudan (forming South Sudan) taking with it nearly all of Sudan's oil fields.[70] Turabi himself reversed earlier Islamist positions on marriage and inequality in favor of liberal positions, leading some conservatives to call him an apostate.[71][72] Al Jazeera estimates that as of 2012 10% of Sudanese are tied to Salafi groups, (more than 60% of Sudanese are affiliated with Sufism), but that number is growing.[73]
Egypt
Muslim Brethren who became wealthy in Saudi Arabia became key contributors to Egypt's Islamist movements.[74][75] Many of Egypt's future ulama attended the Islamic University of Madinah in Saudi which was established as an alternative to the Egyptian government-controlled Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, who later became the grand mufti of Egypt, spent four years at the Islamic University.[76] Tantawy demonstrated his devotion to the kingdom in a June 2000 interview with the Saudi newspaper Ain al-Yaqeen, where he blamed the "violent campaign" against Saudi human rights policy on the campaigners' antipathy towards Islam. "Saudi Arabia leads the world in the protection of human rights because it protects them according to the sharia of God."[77]
Saudi funding to Egypt's al-Azhar center of Islamic learning, has been credited with causing that institution to adopt a more religiously conservative approach.[78][79]
Algeria
Political Islam and salafist "Islamic revivalism" became dominant and the indigenous "popular" or Sufi Islam found in much of North Africa greatly weakened, in large part because of the 1954-1962 Algerian War—despite the fact the victorious National Liberation Front (FLN) was interested in socialism and Arab nationalism, not political Islam.
Diminishing indigenous Islam was the dismantling of Sufi mystical brotherhoods and the confiscation and redistribution of their land in retaliation for their lack of support for the FLN during the fight against the French.[80] Strengthening revivalism was a campaign of Arabization and Islamization by the government (FLN) to suppress the use of the French language (which was still dominant in higher education and the professions), to promote Algerian/Arab identity over residual French colonial culture. To do this Egyptians were recruited by the Algerian state to Arabize and de-Frenchify the school system. Like Saudi Arabia, Algeria saw an influx of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members hired to teach Arabic and eager to escape government suppression. While the leftist FLN Algerian government was totally uninterested in Islam as a foundation for conducting worldly affairs (as opposed to building a national identity), the Muslim Brotherhood teachers very much were, and many of the generation of "strictly Arabphone teachers" trained by the Brothers adopted the beliefs of their teachers and went on to form the basis of an "Islamist intelligentsia".[81]
In addition, in the 1980s, as interest in Islam grew and devotion to the ruling
fellow travelers" of the Muslim Brotherhood, supporters of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies, and had little interest in serving the secularist FLN government.[82]
Also in the 1980s, several hundred youth left Algeria for the camps of Peshawar to fight jihad in Afghanistan. As the FLN government was a close ally of the jihadists' enemy, the Soviet Union, these fighters tended to consider the fight against the Soviets a "prelude" to jihad in Algeria.[83]
When the FLN followed the example of post-Communist Eastern European government and held elections in 1989, the main beneficiary was the massively popular
invaded Kuwait, despite the adamant fear of and opposition to Saddam Hussein by the Gulf oil states.)[85]
After the FLN saw how unpopular it was and canceled the elections, a bloody civil war broke out. The Salafist-jihadis returning to Algeria supported the FIS and later provided military skill in the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA).[83]
The
Abdul-Aziz al-Sheikh who has endorsed opposition to international regulations requiring photographs for passports show a person's forehead and ears even if they are a woman. Abdelmalek Ramdani—the most prominent Salafist imam in Algeria—lives in Saudi Arabia, and prominent Salafist preachers—including Ali Ferkous, Azzedine Ramdani and Al Eid Cherifi—received religious training in Saudi Arabia.[87]
Nigeria
The
Tijan Sufi orders.[90] It is very active in education and Da‘wa (propagation of the faith) and in Nigeria has many institutions all over the country and is influential at the local, state, and even federal levels.[88]
As per Joshua Meservey of the Hudson Institute, who quantifies the rise of Salafism in Africa by basing himself on diverse scholarship, when it comes to West Africa in particular, in Ghana and Burkina Faso Salafis are said to represent more or so half of the country’s urban Muslim population, in Cameroon around 10% of Muslims are Salafis with numbers going up to 20% in some regions, while in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, as of 2014 some 60% of the youth was said to be Salafi.[91]
Central Asia and Caucasus
Scholar Vitaliĭ Vi͡acheslavovich Naumkin argues that even before the fall of Communism, Saudi Arabia had substantial influence on Islam in Central Asia because of its prestige as the location of the holy places of Hejaz, its financial resources and because of the large number of Central Asian pilgrims (and their descendants) who had gone to Saudi on hajj and decided to stay.[92]
During the Soviet–Afghan War, thousands of Soviet Central Asians were drafted into the Soviet Army to fight their co-religionists (and sometimes fellow ethics), the Afghan Mujahideen. As Islam and Central Asian peoples had been repressed by the Soviets—often brutally[93]—many were "deeply affected by the dedication" of their putative enemies. "Hundreds of Uzbek and Tajik Muslims travelled secretly to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to study in madrasahs or to train as guerrilla fighters against the Soviets in Afghanistan." Many of these were influenced by the idea of armed jihad taught at Deobandi madrasahs in Pakistan where "places specifically for Central Asian radicals, who arrived without passports or visas and received a free education and a living allowance."[93] Salafism also made headway with the help of Saudi funding and Saudi-trained preachers.
In the late 1980s, at the same time as the Soviets were starting to withdraw from Afghanistan there was "an explosion of interest" in Islam in Central Asia. "Thousands of mosques were built, Qurans and other Islamic literature were brought in from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and distributed free among the population."[93]
In Central Asia the label "Wahhabism" has evolved from its original meaning of followers of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, to become 'agitprop invective' and a ‘polemic foil in sectarian arguments' used by authoritarian governments against Islamic "reformists and ‘troublesome Muslim opponents’", or even against "any and all expressions of nontraditional Islam’. They tend to equate "Wahhabism" with local Sufi-influenced traditional religious culture.[94]
Afghanistan
Saudi and Islamist forces helped the Afghan Mujahideen in their struggle against the Soviets, with Saudi Arabian government providing approximately $4 billion in aid to the mujahidin from 1980 to 1990.[95]
Saudi Arabia and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf became "important backers" for Islamic schools (madrassas) for Afghan refugees in Pakistan which appeared in the 1980s near the Afghan-Pakistan border.[96] In 1988, the Muslim World League stated that it had opened 150 Quran study centers and 85 Islamic schools for Afghan refugee students in Peshawar, a short distance across the border in Pakistan.[97]
Many were radical schools sponsored by the Pakistan
Deobandi school of the Pakistani sponsors and the Salafism supported by Saudi financers.[98][99]
Many of the Taliban were graduates of these schools.[100] (Eight Taliban government ministers came from one school, Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqania.[101]) While in power, the Taliban implemented the "strictest interpretation of Sharia law ever seen in the Muslim world."[102][103]
After the Taliban came to power the Saudis helped them in a number of ways. Saudi Arabia was one of only three countries (Pakistan and United Arab Emirates being the others) officially to recognize the Taliban as the official government of Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks, (after 9/11 no country recognized it). King Fahd of Saudi Arabia “expressed happiness at the good measures taken by the Taliban and over the imposition of shari’a in our country," During a visit by the Taliban's leadership to the kingdom in 1997.[104]
According to Ahmed Rashid, "Wahhabi" practices might have influenced the Deobandi Taliban. One example was the Saudi religious police, according to Rashid.
`I remember that all the Taliban who had worked or done hajj in Saudi Arabia were terribly impressed by the religious police and tried to copy that system to the letter. The money for their training and salaries came partly from Saudi Arabia.`
The taliban also practiced
public beheadings common in Saudi Arabia. Ahmed Rashid came across ten thousand men and children gathering at Kandahar football stadium one Thursday afternoon, curious as to why (the Taliban had banned sports) he "went inside to discover a convicted murderer being led between the goalposts to be executed by a member of the victim's family."[105]
Another activity Afghan Muslims had not engaged in before this time was destruction of statues. In 2001, the Taliban dynamited and rocketed the nearly 2000-year-old statues Buddhist Bamiyan Valley, which had been undamaged by Afghan Sunni Muslim for centuries prior to then. Mullah Omar declared "Muslims should be proud of smashing idols. It has given praise to Allah that we have destroyed them."[106]
Uzbekistan
The leadership of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) has been influenced by the Salafi and Deobandi traditions. IMU head, Juma Namangani, (who was killed in November 2001) was indirectly influenced by outside Islamic revival when serving in the Soviet army in Afghanistan fighting Afghan mujahideen. He was radicalized by the experience and returning to his home in the Fergana Valley wanting to fight on the side of the Islamic revival not against it. He associated with local Islamists of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP) and the local Islamic revolutionary party Adolat (transl. Justice),[93] and became a founder of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.[93]
In 1995, Namangani traveled to Saudi Arabia to undergo "religious and intelligence training from Saudi intelligence".[107]
According to journalist Ahmed Rashid, the IMU
is believed to have been funded by Saudis, Pakistanis, Turks, Iranians, and Osama bin Laden. Namangani was one of the most important “foreign Taliban” commanders in northern Afghanistan during the recent fighting there. He led a pan-Islamic force of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Pakistanis, Chechens, and Uighurs from Xinjiang province in China. They fought on the side of the Taliban in Afghanistan, but their long-range goal was to establish an Islamic state throughout Central Asia.[93]
Caucasus
Salafi proselytising has been particularly successful in the ex-Soviet Muslim-majority areas such as Dagestan and Chechnya for a number of reasons, according to Robert Bruce Ware.
Salafi funding, institutions, and missionaries are particularly useful because they fill the gap left by the collapse of the
USSR, where traditional Islamic leaders were relatively unknowledgeable, and accustomed to surviving by subservience;[108]
Salafiyya fills the ideological void left by the collapse of socialism;[108]
the Salafi adversarial role toward the non-Muslim government (i.e. Russia's) fills the traditional role of Islam toward the Russian government and
it takes advantage of public resentment against the existing corrupt and incompetent governments which traditional Islamic leaders are tainted by;[108][109]
advocacy of sharia law and organized Salafi enforcement of it plays into the desire for protection against post-Soviet criminal predation and the arbitrary brutality of the police.[108]
Azerbaijan
Although 85% of Azerbaijanis are members of the Shiite branch of Islam,[110] (which Salafis strongly oppose), and Muslims in Azerbaijan have a tradition of secularism, Salafism has made headway among the 15% of the country that identify themselves as Sunni Muslims and primarily inhabit the northern and western regions,[110] specifically those of Dagestani ethnicity (Avars, Lezgins, Tsakhurs, Rutuls) in areas bordering Dagestan.
Salafism was proselytized and catalyzed starting with the dissolution of the Soviet Union by missionaries and funds from Arab countries such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia,[110] and Salafists mainly from Chechnya and Dagestan. In 1997, the Azerbaijani branch of the Kuwaiti Revival of Islamic Heritage society, built the Abu Bakr mosque in Baku, the capital. It became "one of the most successful mosques" in Azerbaijan, with 5000 people typically attending Friday prayer (compared to 300 for an average Azerbaijan mosque)[111] and the "myriad" of social opportunities it provided created an "attractive network for its relatively young believers," and was "a great impetus for the Salafi movement".[110] Its Imam for many years (Gamat Suleymanov) was a graduate of the Islamic University of Madinah of Medina Saudi Arabia.[111]