On a rare occasion I will run personal emails I received from readers of my column. Excerpts from the email with some edits to avoid libel are as follows:
“Your article ‘Revisiting counterterrorism strategy’ (March 24) cannot be complete without reference to the true source of jihadist ideology… We both know that this is the ideology of Daesh (better name MICE-militant caliphate extremists).
You are disingenuous when you write:
“The answer lies in demanding that nations’ leaders quit their political posturing with empty rhetoric and ineffective security measures and tackle the issue as if we are experiencing a viral epidemic. Stamp out the symptoms of violent radical ideology by delivering a fatal blow to the nerve center of Daesh operations in Syria and Iraq while at the same time examine the causes of radicalism and treat it intelligently.”
Extremist Muslims must be dealt with by moderate Muslims. Those boots are not going to be worn by Americans…
I have attached a fax I have sent to the US Senate…
The nature of the relationship between America and KSA will soon be drastically changing…”
The reader who wrote this email is an academic associated with an American university. While everybody is entitled to their opinion, no matter how wrongheaded that opinion may be, the reader’s statements are a pretty good example of how individuals are spoon-fed propaganda reflective of a specific ideology that is just as bad as the garbage that Daesh puts out on the Internet.
The most disturbing aspect of this email is that an individual charged with teaching university students possesses extremist ideology and likely exposes his students to outlandish accusations. Worse, the ideology expressed in this email is about as deep and well sourced as the Wikipedia entry or anti-Muslim website where he copied and pasted it from. Providing evidence to support an argument has never been the strength of extremists whether they are Daesh or Saudi/Muslims haters.
Even the academics — who should know better — fall victim to intellectual dishonesty because they are too lazy to take the time to really understand Saudi and Muslim history.
Somehow, according to this reader’s worldview, Saudi ideology leaps off the page of textbooks with nobody to blame but Saudis. The reader’s position is that guy in South Asia who can’t read Arabic or is the imam of a local village without the benefit of a university education in Islamic studies, but teaches hundreds of children his own version of Islam, is somehow free from responsibility of “exporting” terrorism.
According to the Kingdom’s critics, as a born and bred Saudi, I am a Salafist Wahhabi. Western politicians and every street corner expert thinks they know what is in our hearts as Muslims and identify us as Wahhabi. Seriously, just how do people arrive at this conclusion?
No one country is 100 percent responsible for terrorism. The United States can’t shoulder the entire blame because it left a vacuum in Iraq that led to the creation of Daesh. Nor do European countries should assume full responsibility, although Europe has a long history of marginalizing ethnic minorities and religious groups. By the same token, Saudi Arabia can’t be held responsible for the misuse of its Islamic curriculum by untrained and unqualified teachers.
As a Saudi I would be wrong to dismiss criticism of my country, but I prefer that criticism come from well-researched facts and not emotions or from ideologues.
