Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
Boy Slap, are people mad at you. But you are on to something which people are loath to admit. This is about religion.
Religion is often the expression of unresolved economic, political, or social contradictions. The wave of militant Islam did not emerge in a vacuum - it grew out of the conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s that simultaneously de-legitimized 'traditional' structures of power (Arab nationalism, colonialism, etc) and radicalized new ideologies of resistance. It's not a coincidence that all of the major militant Islamist organizations, with the exception of the Muslim Brotherhood, emerged after this period. And they've been gaining strength because those same unresolved problems inherited from the early post-Cold War period are still largely present. Discontent is what keeps movements like ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah active.

Cast over Saudi policy is the long shadow of remaining religiously legitimate in the context of Wahhabism - and that means rejecting to a large extent Western values. Hard to maintain that legitimacy while flowing the wealth earned from selling oil to the West in vast quantities; hence the schizophrenic nature of Saudi behavior. The seizure of the Grand Mosque pushed the Saudi elites to the right - and so has the Arab Spring but to a more limited extent. Until this central problem is resolved at the core of the Saudi state, I expect the issue of Saudi sponsored terrorism to persist.