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The Wahhabi Code: How the Saudis Spread Extremism Globally
An eye-opening, look at the source of the current wave of Saudi Arabian-sponsored terrorism, how it spread, and why the West did nothing. Here is the truth about ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and more.
Lifting the mask of international terrorism, Terence Ward reveals a sinister truth. Far from being “the West’s ally in the War on Terror,” Saudi Arabia is in reality the largest exporter of Wahhabism—the severe, ultra-conservative sect of Islam that is both Saudi Arabia’s official religion and the core ideology for international terror groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Boko Haram.
Over decades, the Saudi regime has engaged in a well-crafted mission to fund charities, mosques, and schools that promote their Wahhabi doctrine across the Middle East and beyond. Efforts to expand Saudi influence have now been focused on European cities as well. The front lines of the War of Terror aren’t a world away; they are much closer than we can imagine.
Terence Ward, who has spent much of his life in the Middle East, gives his unique insight into the culture of extremism, its rapid expansion, and how it can be stopped.
Lifting the mask of international terrorism, Terence Ward reveals a sinister truth. Far from being “the West’s ally in the War on Terror,” Saudi Arabia is in reality the largest exporter of Wahhabism—the severe, ultra-conservative sect of Islam that is both Saudi Arabia’s official religion and the core ideology for international terror groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Boko Haram.
Over decades, the Saudi regime has engaged in a well-crafted mission to fund charities, mosques, and schools that promote their Wahhabi doctrine across the Middle East and beyond. Efforts to expand Saudi influence have now been focused on European cities as well. The front lines of the War of Terror aren’t a world away; they are much closer than we can imagine.
Terence Ward, who has spent much of his life in the Middle East, gives his unique insight into the culture of extremism, its rapid expansion, and how it can be stopped.
192 pages, Hardcover
Published October 9, 2018
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March 6, 2021
Connecting the dots between terrorism and the spread of hardliners
Imagine for a moment, a scenario where a gang of radical thugs living in a desert proceeded to raid the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, kill hundreds of its citizens, eventually destroy 98% of its rich historical sites, and turn the center of Islam from a cosmopolitan and high tolerance society into the epicentrum of their radical views.
Meanwhile, thanks to unbelievable luck they strike the largest oil reserves in the world under their occupied lands, and they get to use the petro-dollar to buy their ways into a massive PR campaign and billions of dollar worth of funding worldwide to spread their radical interpretation as the only true path, ignoring (nay, destroying) the 1400 years of evolution that had previously made Islam as an advanced, sophisticated, and diverse religion. Any competing views get demonised, and any protests are labeled apostasy of Islam since they control the two holy cities (and hence becomes the de facto emperor of Islam).
This, in essence, is Wahhabism in a nutshell.
This book tells the comprehensive history of Wahhabism that began with Muhammad Abdul Wahhab (1703-1792), whom founded the puritanical sect that bears his name. As the author, Terence Ward, says, Wahhab “stressed the absolute sovereignty of God , tawhid or “God’s unity,” and rejected any veneration of saints, holy figures, or even the Prophet Muhammad [PBUH].” With this thinking he began to evangelizes the Arabian Peninsula during the eighteenth century where he calls for a return to the "purity" of the Salaf, the practices of the first generation of Muslims in the year 622.
By contrast, before the Wahhabi revolution Islam had experienced more than a thousand years of evolution that have produced the Golden Age of Islam, with all the scientific discoveries, healthy intellectual debates among different schools of thoughts, equality and prosperity across the Muslim World from Cordoba to Cairo to Baghdad to Damascus to Samarkand. Even the holy city of Mecca, the book remarks, used to be the center of the Sufi universe, "where music, dance, and ecstatic prayer celebrated the divine and faithful gathered at shrines and graves of saints."
But this were all changed after World War 1. When the great war first broke out British agents encouraged Arab revolts from within the Ottoman Empire (its opponent in the war) including Ibn Saud (1875-1953) whom joint forces with the descendants of Muhammad Abdul Wahhab to conquer the lands in Arabia (historically the insignificant backyard of the Ottoman Empire, before the discovery of oil). An Anglo-Saud friendship treaty was soon signed, and the treaty insisted that Ibn Saud respect Britain's Gulf protectorates (Qatar, Kuwait, and the Emirates) but it conveniently neglected to mention about the Sharifate of Mecca to the west. Hence, with Britain's blessing, Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi ally were left free to attack, occupy, and plunder the Holy City.
Mecca and Medina were at the time protected by Sharif Hussein bin Ali, heir of the Hashemite family that had ruled Mecca and Medina for 700 years and 37 generations. And true to the Arab revolt, Sharif Hussein had also allied with Britain and proclaimed the great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman thanks to the persuasion of Lawrence of Arabia.
In return, the British promised him full support for the Arab independence movement, and even offered him the title of “King of the Arabs.” But once the war ended, the British and the French created the Sykes-Picot agreement to divide the Arab lands of Palestine, Iraq, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon into their own colonial states. Feeling that the Arab cause has been betrayed, Sharif Hussein refused to ratify the treaty.
And thus, by letting the Saud-Wahhabi clan to invade, plunder, and occupy Mecca, Medina and the Hejaz, the British backstab Sharif Hussein once again, and practically chose a more obedient servant to guard the oil wells. Ibn Saud was later awarded a knighthood for his loyalty and service to the British crown, while Sharif Hussein had no choice but to flee into exile and eventually died in Jordan. Some Arabs point to the British support of Ibn Saud (instead of the Hashemite family) as the pivotal act that led to the crisis within Islam now.
After the state of Saudi Arabia was declared, Wahhabism was proclaimed as the official religion, where rigid sharia law is imposed in the kingdom. And in less than 100 years the Saudi-Wahhabi partnership destroyed the countries’ rich and mystic past, including 400-500 historical sites. The Prophet's (PBUH) house, for example, was destroyed, homes of the Prophet's wives are now parking lots and public toilet, while the house of the Prophet's loyal companion Abubakr is now a site of a hotel.
Moreover, in the 1970s thanks to the abundant flood of oil revenues Saudi's Ministry of Religious Affairs proclaimed Dawa Wahhabiyya (the Wahhabi Mission) and the royal family unleashed charities to fund Wahhabi schools, missionaries, and mosques across the world. Within 3 decades, Ward observed, the Saudis have launched 5 projects to spread Wahhabism:
1. Pakistan 1977, when General Zia ul-Haq seized power he imposed sharia law and gave freedom in the country to create countless Saudi-funded Wahhabi madrasas across the country to fill the gap of a collapsed education system and indoctrinate young children. They also targeted refugee camps full of Afghans fleeing from the Soviet invasion (this is where the Taliban were born).
2. Afghanistan 1994, 50 of the indoctrinated Afghan refugees and their leader Mullah Omar launched out offensives to take back Afghanistan, taking Kabul in 1996. By 1997 Saudi employees were travelling there for free as tourists on government-paid holidays with their families, to "witness the true Islam." In 1998 Mullah Omar was invited on Hajj by the Saudi monarch, and ordered to destroy Bamiyan Buddhas, which they did in March 2001, to comply with Wahhabi's "no-icon" vision. The free tourism program ended abruptly on 11 September 2001.
3. Al Qaeda's global jihad financed by Wahhabi funders, which began in Afghanistan and climaxed with the 9/11 attack. 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, including Osama bin Laden.
4. ISIS. It began with US invasion on Iraq in 2003. The Shia-majority country was ruled by Sunni Saddam Hussein and his cronies, and after US invasion Shia Nouri Al Maliki became Prime Minister. The Sunni ex-Saddam loyalists were captured and radicalized in the many Iraqi prisons under US watch. And after their release, these loyalists turned into a Saudi-funded fighters against Shia government in Iraq and Shia Assad in Syria. Ward remarks, “when ISIS fighters entered newly captured Syrian towns and Iraqi villages, they burned the old secular schoolbooks. Starting with a clean slate, they gave the shell-shocked students fresh new textbooks, all imported from Saudi Arabia."
5. The spread of Wahhabism in the world, with Saudi money and Wahhabi-trained imams installed in Western Europe, from Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Marseilles to Birmingham. The Wahhabi mission also operates across the Middle East and North Africa, in Central Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Indonesia (which is comprehensively discussed in chapter 12), and other places in Europe such as Kosovo, Bosnia, Albania. As the book remark, "Support has come from the Saudi government; the royal family; Saudi charities; and Saudi-sponsored organizations including the World Muslim League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, and the International Islamic Relief Organization, providing the hardware of impressive edifices and the software of preaching and teaching.” Over the next 4 decades since the 1970s, in non-Muslim-majority countries alone, Saudi Arabia have built 1359 mosques, 210 Islamic centers, 202 universities, and 2000 schools.
Curiously, the final US Senate report on 9/11 attack excluded 28 pages of evidence about Saudi Arabia's connections to the hijackers. As Ward remarks, “[t]he pages revealed what we have known for a long time: Saudis officials had assisted some hijackers with funds once they came to America. After all, two hijackers had the phone number of the Aspen office of the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud."
Now what could possibly be the explanation for that censorship? The answer remains the same as for the British in the early 20th century as in today: oil. Today, thanks to their massive oil leverage the royal House of Saud plays the dangerous double game of becoming an ally of the West while simultaneously allowing funding into terrorist networks, in which Ward commented “[i]n Palermo, Sicilians pay for “protection” the same way.”
This book is surprisingly short for having such an abundant information (only 136 pages long), but it is very concise and so full of enlightening information that I’ve probably highlighted around 70% of the entire book. And there is no way of covering all the nuggets without over-exceeding the word count for this review. For example, after a thorough introduction of the rise of Wahhabism, it digs deeper into how exactly Wahhabi donations are being made, it links the Wahhabi money to the most unthink of connections such as the Mumbai attack 2008 or Boko Haram or the destruction of the many UNESCO heritage sites in Timbuktu (known as the city of 333 saints from its ancient Sufi tradition), and perhaps the most eye opening one for me is the connection between the House of Saud and Erdoğan in Turkey (which explains a lot of his behaviour and his supporters’ behaviour).
The book is not perfect, however, as I discovered in chapter 8 where the author shows a little too much affection for Ayatollah Khomeini (very respectfully paint him as the brilliant and compassionate leader of the Iranian revolution, while in truth he’s no different than the rigid Wahhabis). Ward also portray Shia as a non-violent followers of Ali, “the true heir of the succession”, while in reality nothing was set in stone and both Sunni and Shia have their fair share of violence. Hence, a small grain of salt is needed to put the objectivity of his views in its right place.
Nevertheless, it is still a very important piece of puzzle to read in order to understand the big picture of global terrorism, the never ending war in the Middle East, the rise of Islamic hardliners around the world, and the dynamics of global politics that come with it. And it is especially useful to learn the many contexts from the book, in order for me to fully understand the recent breaking news that MBS has been proven guilty by the US investigators of killing journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, but with no further action has been taken so far by both the US and Turkey.
Imagine for a moment, a scenario where a gang of radical thugs living in a desert proceeded to raid the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, kill hundreds of its citizens, eventually destroy 98% of its rich historical sites, and turn the center of Islam from a cosmopolitan and high tolerance society into the epicentrum of their radical views.
Meanwhile, thanks to unbelievable luck they strike the largest oil reserves in the world under their occupied lands, and they get to use the petro-dollar to buy their ways into a massive PR campaign and billions of dollar worth of funding worldwide to spread their radical interpretation as the only true path, ignoring (nay, destroying) the 1400 years of evolution that had previously made Islam as an advanced, sophisticated, and diverse religion. Any competing views get demonised, and any protests are labeled apostasy of Islam since they control the two holy cities (and hence becomes the de facto emperor of Islam).
This, in essence, is Wahhabism in a nutshell.
This book tells the comprehensive history of Wahhabism that began with Muhammad Abdul Wahhab (1703-1792), whom founded the puritanical sect that bears his name. As the author, Terence Ward, says, Wahhab “stressed the absolute sovereignty of God , tawhid or “God’s unity,” and rejected any veneration of saints, holy figures, or even the Prophet Muhammad [PBUH].” With this thinking he began to evangelizes the Arabian Peninsula during the eighteenth century where he calls for a return to the "purity" of the Salaf, the practices of the first generation of Muslims in the year 622.
By contrast, before the Wahhabi revolution Islam had experienced more than a thousand years of evolution that have produced the Golden Age of Islam, with all the scientific discoveries, healthy intellectual debates among different schools of thoughts, equality and prosperity across the Muslim World from Cordoba to Cairo to Baghdad to Damascus to Samarkand. Even the holy city of Mecca, the book remarks, used to be the center of the Sufi universe, "where music, dance, and ecstatic prayer celebrated the divine and faithful gathered at shrines and graves of saints."
But this were all changed after World War 1. When the great war first broke out British agents encouraged Arab revolts from within the Ottoman Empire (its opponent in the war) including Ibn Saud (1875-1953) whom joint forces with the descendants of Muhammad Abdul Wahhab to conquer the lands in Arabia (historically the insignificant backyard of the Ottoman Empire, before the discovery of oil). An Anglo-Saud friendship treaty was soon signed, and the treaty insisted that Ibn Saud respect Britain's Gulf protectorates (Qatar, Kuwait, and the Emirates) but it conveniently neglected to mention about the Sharifate of Mecca to the west. Hence, with Britain's blessing, Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi ally were left free to attack, occupy, and plunder the Holy City.
Mecca and Medina were at the time protected by Sharif Hussein bin Ali, heir of the Hashemite family that had ruled Mecca and Medina for 700 years and 37 generations. And true to the Arab revolt, Sharif Hussein had also allied with Britain and proclaimed the great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman thanks to the persuasion of Lawrence of Arabia.
In return, the British promised him full support for the Arab independence movement, and even offered him the title of “King of the Arabs.” But once the war ended, the British and the French created the Sykes-Picot agreement to divide the Arab lands of Palestine, Iraq, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon into their own colonial states. Feeling that the Arab cause has been betrayed, Sharif Hussein refused to ratify the treaty.
And thus, by letting the Saud-Wahhabi clan to invade, plunder, and occupy Mecca, Medina and the Hejaz, the British backstab Sharif Hussein once again, and practically chose a more obedient servant to guard the oil wells. Ibn Saud was later awarded a knighthood for his loyalty and service to the British crown, while Sharif Hussein had no choice but to flee into exile and eventually died in Jordan. Some Arabs point to the British support of Ibn Saud (instead of the Hashemite family) as the pivotal act that led to the crisis within Islam now.
After the state of Saudi Arabia was declared, Wahhabism was proclaimed as the official religion, where rigid sharia law is imposed in the kingdom. And in less than 100 years the Saudi-Wahhabi partnership destroyed the countries’ rich and mystic past, including 400-500 historical sites. The Prophet's (PBUH) house, for example, was destroyed, homes of the Prophet's wives are now parking lots and public toilet, while the house of the Prophet's loyal companion Abubakr is now a site of a hotel.
Moreover, in the 1970s thanks to the abundant flood of oil revenues Saudi's Ministry of Religious Affairs proclaimed Dawa Wahhabiyya (the Wahhabi Mission) and the royal family unleashed charities to fund Wahhabi schools, missionaries, and mosques across the world. Within 3 decades, Ward observed, the Saudis have launched 5 projects to spread Wahhabism:
1. Pakistan 1977, when General Zia ul-Haq seized power he imposed sharia law and gave freedom in the country to create countless Saudi-funded Wahhabi madrasas across the country to fill the gap of a collapsed education system and indoctrinate young children. They also targeted refugee camps full of Afghans fleeing from the Soviet invasion (this is where the Taliban were born).
2. Afghanistan 1994, 50 of the indoctrinated Afghan refugees and their leader Mullah Omar launched out offensives to take back Afghanistan, taking Kabul in 1996. By 1997 Saudi employees were travelling there for free as tourists on government-paid holidays with their families, to "witness the true Islam." In 1998 Mullah Omar was invited on Hajj by the Saudi monarch, and ordered to destroy Bamiyan Buddhas, which they did in March 2001, to comply with Wahhabi's "no-icon" vision. The free tourism program ended abruptly on 11 September 2001.
3. Al Qaeda's global jihad financed by Wahhabi funders, which began in Afghanistan and climaxed with the 9/11 attack. 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, including Osama bin Laden.
4. ISIS. It began with US invasion on Iraq in 2003. The Shia-majority country was ruled by Sunni Saddam Hussein and his cronies, and after US invasion Shia Nouri Al Maliki became Prime Minister. The Sunni ex-Saddam loyalists were captured and radicalized in the many Iraqi prisons under US watch. And after their release, these loyalists turned into a Saudi-funded fighters against Shia government in Iraq and Shia Assad in Syria. Ward remarks, “when ISIS fighters entered newly captured Syrian towns and Iraqi villages, they burned the old secular schoolbooks. Starting with a clean slate, they gave the shell-shocked students fresh new textbooks, all imported from Saudi Arabia."
5. The spread of Wahhabism in the world, with Saudi money and Wahhabi-trained imams installed in Western Europe, from Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Marseilles to Birmingham. The Wahhabi mission also operates across the Middle East and North Africa, in Central Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Indonesia (which is comprehensively discussed in chapter 12), and other places in Europe such as Kosovo, Bosnia, Albania. As the book remark, "Support has come from the Saudi government; the royal family; Saudi charities; and Saudi-sponsored organizations including the World Muslim League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, and the International Islamic Relief Organization, providing the hardware of impressive edifices and the software of preaching and teaching.” Over the next 4 decades since the 1970s, in non-Muslim-majority countries alone, Saudi Arabia have built 1359 mosques, 210 Islamic centers, 202 universities, and 2000 schools.
Curiously, the final US Senate report on 9/11 attack excluded 28 pages of evidence about Saudi Arabia's connections to the hijackers. As Ward remarks, “[t]he pages revealed what we have known for a long time: Saudis officials had assisted some hijackers with funds once they came to America. After all, two hijackers had the phone number of the Aspen office of the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud."
Now what could possibly be the explanation for that censorship? The answer remains the same as for the British in the early 20th century as in today: oil. Today, thanks to their massive oil leverage the royal House of Saud plays the dangerous double game of becoming an ally of the West while simultaneously allowing funding into terrorist networks, in which Ward commented “[i]n Palermo, Sicilians pay for “protection” the same way.”
This book is surprisingly short for having such an abundant information (only 136 pages long), but it is very concise and so full of enlightening information that I’ve probably highlighted around 70% of the entire book. And there is no way of covering all the nuggets without over-exceeding the word count for this review. For example, after a thorough introduction of the rise of Wahhabism, it digs deeper into how exactly Wahhabi donations are being made, it links the Wahhabi money to the most unthink of connections such as the Mumbai attack 2008 or Boko Haram or the destruction of the many UNESCO heritage sites in Timbuktu (known as the city of 333 saints from its ancient Sufi tradition), and perhaps the most eye opening one for me is the connection between the House of Saud and Erdoğan in Turkey (which explains a lot of his behaviour and his supporters’ behaviour).
The book is not perfect, however, as I discovered in chapter 8 where the author shows a little too much affection for Ayatollah Khomeini (very respectfully paint him as the brilliant and compassionate leader of the Iranian revolution, while in truth he’s no different than the rigid Wahhabis). Ward also portray Shia as a non-violent followers of Ali, “the true heir of the succession”, while in reality nothing was set in stone and both Sunni and Shia have their fair share of violence. Hence, a small grain of salt is needed to put the objectivity of his views in its right place.
Nevertheless, it is still a very important piece of puzzle to read in order to understand the big picture of global terrorism, the never ending war in the Middle East, the rise of Islamic hardliners around the world, and the dynamics of global politics that come with it. And it is especially useful to learn the many contexts from the book, in order for me to fully understand the recent breaking news that MBS has been proven guilty by the US investigators of killing journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, but with no further action has been taken so far by both the US and Turkey.
February 8, 2019
This small book should be read by every adult in the world. It clearly explains what our politicians either don’t understand or refuse to acknowledge because it turns everything upside down that justifies their actions and inactions concerning Saudi Arabia and Islamic terrorism. (The only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars is because it badly needed a copy edit.)
April 22, 2020
Short, painfully colloquial, and a bit light on any hard-hitting opinions, 'The Wahhabi Code' is a useful introduction for those whose understanding of Islam and terrorism comes only from the evening news.
July 23, 2021
It's a bit hard to know what to think about Saudi Arabia. Certainly they have been in a unique situation for around the last 60-100 years with vast wealth, a feudal political system and a fundamentalist version of Islam being rigidly enforced. I found Ward's book really interesting especially in terms of explaining how Saudi Arabia has been exporting Wahhabism throughout the world and their clever (and effective) use of "soft power". Sometimes I found myself wondering how objective and well informed the author is....after all he comes from a western tradition ...and yes he grew up in Saudi Arabia but in a kind of walled off slice of America, modelled on Arizona-style suburbia) with (as he puts it lawns, swimming pools and snack bars). But he's obviously spent a lot of his life in Saudi Arabia and been a consultant on Middle Eastern affairs, so I assume that he's pretty well informed. Most of what he says I think I already knew, though maybe the import and the scale of the missionary effort of the wahhabists had not really sunk in with me.
Also, I was not aware that there had been some efforts by Muslims from the other three main streams of more moderate Islam to reject the Wahabi creed.In addition I had not really focused on the fact that the Wahhabi sect was really relatively recent....founded about 200 years ago. (I found myself thinking that the Puritans were a similar fundamentalist offshoot of Christianity ...but maybe without the harsh executions etc....On the other hand,19 of the "witches of Salem" were hung for their "sins").
I think Ward makes his points very well that the Saud family have appropriated power in Saudi Arabia in an alliance with the Wahhabi religious sect and have massively financed the spread of these doctrines internationally through the funding of schools, preachers, literature etc. He also makes a strong case that most of the violence of Islam can be traced back to Saudi Arabia via direct support or financing or through the offshoot schools. I lived in Malaysia in the 1980's where there was a fairly mild stream of Islam but over the years it has become more strident and fundamentalist.....with more than hints of corruption of the previous Prime Minister via "loans" from Saudi Arabia.
I also did some work in Saudi Arabia and must say that I was impressed with the calibre of the men that I worked with (no women of course). But these guys were hard working, smart and friendly. But it was not a relaxed atmosphere...full of prohibitions and discrimination against immigrant workers. (I witnessed some poor immigrant worker at the airport struggling in a massive queue, to get out of the country, being abused and sent to the back of the queue simply because he had overstepped an invisible line on the floor). And there was the undercurrent that everyone was being watched by secret police.
The current Crown Prince gets some attention from Ward....both as a proselytiser of Wahhabism and as a mover and shaker who was going to modernise Saudi Arabia and curb the power of the religious leaders. But all of this was prior to the assassination of Adnan Kashoggi in the Turkish Embassy with apparent direct links (according the the US intelligence report) back to the Crown Prince. It remains to be seen whether or how he will survive the taint associated with this brutal murder.
Perhaps, more important might be the move away from oil to sustainable energy. Though here, I suspect the Saudis are ahead of the game and have been moving steadily into the production of petrochemicals as a way of diversifying and adding value to their oil reserves.
This is not a long book and reads (more or less as the author sets it out) as a briefing document for his interested and intelligent Italian niece. It is mildly scary, assuming what he says to be correct ...and he doesn't really touch on the use of the Israeli hacking software enabling Saudi Intelligence to tap the phones of dissidents abroad. (Is this any worse than the Israeli's, Americans, or Russians are doing? I'm not sure but it's certainly not nice). Not a great book but certainly very interesting. I give it 3.5 stars.
Also, I was not aware that there had been some efforts by Muslims from the other three main streams of more moderate Islam to reject the Wahabi creed.In addition I had not really focused on the fact that the Wahhabi sect was really relatively recent....founded about 200 years ago. (I found myself thinking that the Puritans were a similar fundamentalist offshoot of Christianity ...but maybe without the harsh executions etc....On the other hand,19 of the "witches of Salem" were hung for their "sins").
I think Ward makes his points very well that the Saud family have appropriated power in Saudi Arabia in an alliance with the Wahhabi religious sect and have massively financed the spread of these doctrines internationally through the funding of schools, preachers, literature etc. He also makes a strong case that most of the violence of Islam can be traced back to Saudi Arabia via direct support or financing or through the offshoot schools. I lived in Malaysia in the 1980's where there was a fairly mild stream of Islam but over the years it has become more strident and fundamentalist.....with more than hints of corruption of the previous Prime Minister via "loans" from Saudi Arabia.
I also did some work in Saudi Arabia and must say that I was impressed with the calibre of the men that I worked with (no women of course). But these guys were hard working, smart and friendly. But it was not a relaxed atmosphere...full of prohibitions and discrimination against immigrant workers. (I witnessed some poor immigrant worker at the airport struggling in a massive queue, to get out of the country, being abused and sent to the back of the queue simply because he had overstepped an invisible line on the floor). And there was the undercurrent that everyone was being watched by secret police.
The current Crown Prince gets some attention from Ward....both as a proselytiser of Wahhabism and as a mover and shaker who was going to modernise Saudi Arabia and curb the power of the religious leaders. But all of this was prior to the assassination of Adnan Kashoggi in the Turkish Embassy with apparent direct links (according the the US intelligence report) back to the Crown Prince. It remains to be seen whether or how he will survive the taint associated with this brutal murder.
Perhaps, more important might be the move away from oil to sustainable energy. Though here, I suspect the Saudis are ahead of the game and have been moving steadily into the production of petrochemicals as a way of diversifying and adding value to their oil reserves.
This is not a long book and reads (more or less as the author sets it out) as a briefing document for his interested and intelligent Italian niece. It is mildly scary, assuming what he says to be correct ...and he doesn't really touch on the use of the Israeli hacking software enabling Saudi Intelligence to tap the phones of dissidents abroad. (Is this any worse than the Israeli's, Americans, or Russians are doing? I'm not sure but it's certainly not nice). Not a great book but certainly very interesting. I give it 3.5 stars.
December 8, 2018
I highly recommend reading Terence Ward’s new book, “The Wahhabi Code.” The book will open the reader’s eyes and minds to the purposeful worldwide export of ultra conservative Islam called, Wahhabism. For decades the doors to this extreme religion have opened wider in order to accommodate the strategic dissemination of religious propaganda and fear mongering. This intentional reality which Ward proposes presents the global community with the prospect of a bleak future. We learn that Qatar and Saudi Arabia continue to play a duplicitous role in pretending to be everyone’s friend, while at the same time continuing campaigns of cruelty and evil. The enforcement of blockades in Yemen which restricts civilian access to food and medicine is a prime example.
Ideologically, historians suggest that civil societies welcome diverse communities. Typically, Christians, Muslims, Jews have lived in relative peace and harmony. Sadly, at other times there has been war. Intense battles of nation states (religious) to win the hearts and minds of the people. Now, it is clear, that the goal of the Wahhabist is to weaponize religious beliefs. Reviewing Ward’s insights, it is not hard to grasp the potential of unchecked worldwide spiritual incarceration. Ward suggests that Wahhabist believe any “non-believers” are deviant, decadent and dangerous heretics that deserve no mercy.” In other words, we are all expendable in order to further Wahhabist goals, e.g. 9/11. Now more than ever, we are not sure “who” to fear and “what” may be on the horizon.
Ward has produced a well written explanation of the sinister plot the Wahhabist have in mind for us. The book reminds us that too many people throughout millennia have risked death, hidden themselves, changed their names, pretended to be something they’re not or fled to escape tyrannical religious leaders. In today’s modern world why would anyone feel obligated and entitled to subjugate someone, diminish human individuality, sully human dignity, while punishing and physically harming individuals for their spiritual beliefs? Difficult judgments need to be made. How will the world hold the Wahhabist accountable?
Michael F Luck PhD.
Ideologically, historians suggest that civil societies welcome diverse communities. Typically, Christians, Muslims, Jews have lived in relative peace and harmony. Sadly, at other times there has been war. Intense battles of nation states (religious) to win the hearts and minds of the people. Now, it is clear, that the goal of the Wahhabist is to weaponize religious beliefs. Reviewing Ward’s insights, it is not hard to grasp the potential of unchecked worldwide spiritual incarceration. Ward suggests that Wahhabist believe any “non-believers” are deviant, decadent and dangerous heretics that deserve no mercy.” In other words, we are all expendable in order to further Wahhabist goals, e.g. 9/11. Now more than ever, we are not sure “who” to fear and “what” may be on the horizon.
Ward has produced a well written explanation of the sinister plot the Wahhabist have in mind for us. The book reminds us that too many people throughout millennia have risked death, hidden themselves, changed their names, pretended to be something they’re not or fled to escape tyrannical religious leaders. In today’s modern world why would anyone feel obligated and entitled to subjugate someone, diminish human individuality, sully human dignity, while punishing and physically harming individuals for their spiritual beliefs? Difficult judgments need to be made. How will the world hold the Wahhabist accountable?
Michael F Luck PhD.
December 26, 2018
I read this book with interest and reviewed it for The Markaz Review:
http://ow.ly/QsGM30n6op1
NEW BOOK TRACES ROOTS OF SAUDI-FUNDED EXTREMISM
A REVIEW OF THE WAHHABI CODE: HOW SAUDIS SPREAD EXTREMISM GLOBALLY (ARCADE 2018, HARDBACK, $24.99)
By Jordan Elgrably
This is a multiple-choice quiz:
—Which country is the most responsible for terrorism worldwide:
A) Saudi Arabia
B) Iran
C) North Korea
D) The United States
E) none of the above
You probably caught that that was a trick question. (Guest speakers addressed it on Dec. 20th in Los Angeles, when The Markaz and the L.A. World Affairs Council presented a public forum, Ending Saudi Extremism with author Terence Ward, moderated by Ani Zonneveld, the president of Muslims for Progressive Values.)
The Saudi sect of Wahhabism—an extreme and merely 200-year-old iteration on Islam—exercises a dangerously pervasive influence on imams and believers, because it is the primary conduit for would-be jihadis who are being inculcated with rarefied us-versus-them ideas in madrasas and mosques worldwide—we’re talking about feeding the base for Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Harem and ISIS.
Irony of ironies, the Saudis are not the only ones producing extremists these days, for here in the U.S., anti-abortion, pro-death penalty, pro-NRA Evangelical Christians support Donald Trump, and violent right-wing Jewish settlers in the West Bank are driving Israel’s toxic 51-year-old Occupation. And these days, in a bizarre geopolitical twist, these three forces are aligned.
Would you believe?
Both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have been shielding Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from international condemnation for the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Each insists that government relations, business deals and the anti-Iran alliance are far more consequential than the murder of the Washington Post contributor at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul on October 2nd. The Post suggests that Trump is “soft-pedaling” Khashoggi’s killing because strategic relations are more important to American interests than are human rights.
Here’s a radical proposition for you: If world opinion were informed and the United Nations had cojones, what we ought to do is resettle together the world’s Wahhabis along with the American Evangelicals and Israel’s settler population, let’s say either along Lake Constance in southern Germany, or on the outskirts of Montevideo, Uruguay. That would keep them out of harm’s way and probably force them to actually join the 21st century, in which level-headed Muslims, Christians and Jews get along harmoniously.
Meanwhile, we can read Terence Ward’s The Wahhabi Code to understand why young Muslims are fighting a war on behalf of the Saudi royal family without realizing they’re working for a corrupt monarchy. (In France they got rid of corrupt monarchs over 200 years ago. Come on, guys, remember the Bastille.)
terence wardWard, an American who grew up in Iran and Saudi Arabia and speaks Arabic as well as Persian, quotes many sources in a book obviously born of experience and a great deal of Weltschmerz (world-weariness). He notes columnist Fareed Zakaria on Saudi Arabia, who asserts it is the country central to the spread of radical Islamic terrorism. “For five decades,” Zakaria suggests, “[it] has spread its narrow, puritanical, and intolerant version of Islam—originally practiced almost nowhere else—across the Muslim world.” Speaking as an American Muslim of Pakistani heritage, Zakaria adds that, “Saudi Arabia bears significant responsibility for the spread of a cruel, intolerant, and extremist interpretation of Islam—one that can feed directly into jihadi thinking.” He suggests that “globalized Wahhabism” has attempted to destroy “much of the diversity within Islam, snuffing out the liberal and pluralistic interpretations of the religion in favor an arid, intolerant one.”
Indeed, Wahhabism has eaten away at the religious diversity of Islam, attempting to silence or destroy more creative Muslim traditions, from Ismaili to Druze to Sufi to Yezidi to Alavi.
Ward and many of his sources argue that it is Saudi Arabia—not Iran—that is funding global terrorism.
“It is my deeply held conviction that when Europeans and Americans learn to pronounce the word Wahhabi,” Ward writes, “one and a half billion Muslims will be exonerated and freed from the cloud of guilt cast by a new breed of populist politicians who profit by spreading slander and fear.
The truth is that this severe, ultra-conservative Wahhabi sect of Islam has served both as Saudi Arabia’s official religion and the core ideology for international terror groups…”
Saudi influence and lobbying prevents much criticism from penetrating mainstream Western media. As Ward asks, why haven’t more journalists reported that Taliban and ISIS destruction of monuments from Afghanistan to Syria are inspired by the Wahhabi doctrine of Saudi Arabia, nurtured by Saudi-funded madrasas throughout the Muslim world? Why does Saudi Arabia continue to get a free pass?
In The Wahhabi Code, professor Ahmed Karima of Sharia Law at Egypt’s Al-Ahzar University, proclaims, “If the world is looking forward to uprooting terrorism, it has to stand up against Wahhabism because they are the root of all sedition and conflict.”
But as Ward discovers, Saudi Arabia spends some $1.3 million per month on PR firms and lobbyists in Washington, to line up the US against Iran and support Saudi Arabia’s criminal war in Yemen.
“The American and European multi-cultural dream is built on integration, collaboration, and equal rights under citizenship,” Ward argues. “The Wahhabi mission rejects the very cornerstones of these principles…It is time to realize that Wahhabism has been tearing apart the social fabric of the Middle East and the Muslim world.”
When Prince Mohammed bin Salman came to the world’s attention in 2017, he appeared to be a progressive who promised new religious and political reforms and wanted to fund expanded cultural outreach. But as The Wahhabi Code points out, Saudis are successfully funding “soft power” efforts “because it works…Their well-targeted funds, charities, and missionary efforts are turning entire nations into hotbeds of fundamentalist Islam (notably in Kosovo, Bosnia, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Maldives, Somalia, Chechnya and now Indonesia).”
Jumping off from the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris that left more than 130 people dead, Ward weaves together the brief but violent history of Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism, charting its tentacles of expansion throughout the Muslim world, and among Muslim populations in Europe and the United States. He footnotes his sources throughout more than a dozen chapters and provides a bibliography.
Ultimately Ward proves himself a friend of the Muslim world, whose only wish is to call attention to moderate Islam as the religion of peace it was originally intended to be.
http://ow.ly/QsGM30n6op1
NEW BOOK TRACES ROOTS OF SAUDI-FUNDED EXTREMISM
A REVIEW OF THE WAHHABI CODE: HOW SAUDIS SPREAD EXTREMISM GLOBALLY (ARCADE 2018, HARDBACK, $24.99)
By Jordan Elgrably
This is a multiple-choice quiz:
—Which country is the most responsible for terrorism worldwide:
A) Saudi Arabia
B) Iran
C) North Korea
D) The United States
E) none of the above
You probably caught that that was a trick question. (Guest speakers addressed it on Dec. 20th in Los Angeles, when The Markaz and the L.A. World Affairs Council presented a public forum, Ending Saudi Extremism with author Terence Ward, moderated by Ani Zonneveld, the president of Muslims for Progressive Values.)
The Saudi sect of Wahhabism—an extreme and merely 200-year-old iteration on Islam—exercises a dangerously pervasive influence on imams and believers, because it is the primary conduit for would-be jihadis who are being inculcated with rarefied us-versus-them ideas in madrasas and mosques worldwide—we’re talking about feeding the base for Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Harem and ISIS.
Irony of ironies, the Saudis are not the only ones producing extremists these days, for here in the U.S., anti-abortion, pro-death penalty, pro-NRA Evangelical Christians support Donald Trump, and violent right-wing Jewish settlers in the West Bank are driving Israel’s toxic 51-year-old Occupation. And these days, in a bizarre geopolitical twist, these three forces are aligned.
Would you believe?
Both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have been shielding Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from international condemnation for the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Each insists that government relations, business deals and the anti-Iran alliance are far more consequential than the murder of the Washington Post contributor at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul on October 2nd. The Post suggests that Trump is “soft-pedaling” Khashoggi’s killing because strategic relations are more important to American interests than are human rights.
Here’s a radical proposition for you: If world opinion were informed and the United Nations had cojones, what we ought to do is resettle together the world’s Wahhabis along with the American Evangelicals and Israel’s settler population, let’s say either along Lake Constance in southern Germany, or on the outskirts of Montevideo, Uruguay. That would keep them out of harm’s way and probably force them to actually join the 21st century, in which level-headed Muslims, Christians and Jews get along harmoniously.
Meanwhile, we can read Terence Ward’s The Wahhabi Code to understand why young Muslims are fighting a war on behalf of the Saudi royal family without realizing they’re working for a corrupt monarchy. (In France they got rid of corrupt monarchs over 200 years ago. Come on, guys, remember the Bastille.)
terence wardWard, an American who grew up in Iran and Saudi Arabia and speaks Arabic as well as Persian, quotes many sources in a book obviously born of experience and a great deal of Weltschmerz (world-weariness). He notes columnist Fareed Zakaria on Saudi Arabia, who asserts it is the country central to the spread of radical Islamic terrorism. “For five decades,” Zakaria suggests, “[it] has spread its narrow, puritanical, and intolerant version of Islam—originally practiced almost nowhere else—across the Muslim world.” Speaking as an American Muslim of Pakistani heritage, Zakaria adds that, “Saudi Arabia bears significant responsibility for the spread of a cruel, intolerant, and extremist interpretation of Islam—one that can feed directly into jihadi thinking.” He suggests that “globalized Wahhabism” has attempted to destroy “much of the diversity within Islam, snuffing out the liberal and pluralistic interpretations of the religion in favor an arid, intolerant one.”
Indeed, Wahhabism has eaten away at the religious diversity of Islam, attempting to silence or destroy more creative Muslim traditions, from Ismaili to Druze to Sufi to Yezidi to Alavi.
Ward and many of his sources argue that it is Saudi Arabia—not Iran—that is funding global terrorism.
“It is my deeply held conviction that when Europeans and Americans learn to pronounce the word Wahhabi,” Ward writes, “one and a half billion Muslims will be exonerated and freed from the cloud of guilt cast by a new breed of populist politicians who profit by spreading slander and fear.
The truth is that this severe, ultra-conservative Wahhabi sect of Islam has served both as Saudi Arabia’s official religion and the core ideology for international terror groups…”
Saudi influence and lobbying prevents much criticism from penetrating mainstream Western media. As Ward asks, why haven’t more journalists reported that Taliban and ISIS destruction of monuments from Afghanistan to Syria are inspired by the Wahhabi doctrine of Saudi Arabia, nurtured by Saudi-funded madrasas throughout the Muslim world? Why does Saudi Arabia continue to get a free pass?
In The Wahhabi Code, professor Ahmed Karima of Sharia Law at Egypt’s Al-Ahzar University, proclaims, “If the world is looking forward to uprooting terrorism, it has to stand up against Wahhabism because they are the root of all sedition and conflict.”
But as Ward discovers, Saudi Arabia spends some $1.3 million per month on PR firms and lobbyists in Washington, to line up the US against Iran and support Saudi Arabia’s criminal war in Yemen.
“The American and European multi-cultural dream is built on integration, collaboration, and equal rights under citizenship,” Ward argues. “The Wahhabi mission rejects the very cornerstones of these principles…It is time to realize that Wahhabism has been tearing apart the social fabric of the Middle East and the Muslim world.”
When Prince Mohammed bin Salman came to the world’s attention in 2017, he appeared to be a progressive who promised new religious and political reforms and wanted to fund expanded cultural outreach. But as The Wahhabi Code points out, Saudis are successfully funding “soft power” efforts “because it works…Their well-targeted funds, charities, and missionary efforts are turning entire nations into hotbeds of fundamentalist Islam (notably in Kosovo, Bosnia, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Maldives, Somalia, Chechnya and now Indonesia).”
Jumping off from the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris that left more than 130 people dead, Ward weaves together the brief but violent history of Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism, charting its tentacles of expansion throughout the Muslim world, and among Muslim populations in Europe and the United States. He footnotes his sources throughout more than a dozen chapters and provides a bibliography.
Ultimately Ward proves himself a friend of the Muslim world, whose only wish is to call attention to moderate Islam as the religion of peace it was originally intended to be.
April 17, 2019
Prior to reading this book, I was totally confused on so many levels regarding Islam and Muslims. So many sects, in so many differing nations which one would expect to be without religious conflict; and, all the violence reported concerning them all.
This book offers quite an understanding of the who, where, when and why; all in easy to understand context. It also does a great job in linking it all to the political and international issues and confusion it is all embroiled in, and has been for millennia.
I purchased an extra copy and donated it to our county library for its circulation library (as compared to its fundraising efforts). Hoping others will do so as well, all in an effort to better inform the largely uninformed majority of Americans.
Highly suggest this read.
This book offers quite an understanding of the who, where, when and why; all in easy to understand context. It also does a great job in linking it all to the political and international issues and confusion it is all embroiled in, and has been for millennia.
I purchased an extra copy and donated it to our county library for its circulation library (as compared to its fundraising efforts). Hoping others will do so as well, all in an effort to better inform the largely uninformed majority of Americans.
Highly suggest this read.
March 15, 2021
I have been wanting to learn about this, so I thought this book would be a good introduction. It is like an extended New Yorker article. I respect the experiential knowledge the author has, but I feel like this could have been fleshed out a great deal more, and I wouldn't have to seek out many other books to give me a clearer picture.
Lastly, the editing job was terrible. Since when are spelling and grammar issues are de rigueur in a published work? About once or twice a page there was a glaring error.
Lastly, the editing job was terrible. Since when are spelling and grammar issues are de rigueur in a published work? About once or twice a page there was a glaring error.
January 4, 2023
So informative, so well researched, this book is a must read for anyone looking for greater knowledge on the history of terrorism. There was so much I didn't know and this well written book provide some much desired clarity. I highly recommend it.
March 25, 2020
while i am not at all fond of the conversational formal gimmick of the book, it is a short, easy and compelling read.
August 1, 2021
As long as the oil flows and multi-billion dollar defence contracts are made, the world/West will look the other way.
August 27, 2022
A outline of the role of Saudi Arabia's role in spreading Islamism via the Wahhabi sect throughout the world.
February 15, 2021
It is a good book, reminding you of some the events and things that the Saudis have done recently which has contributed in terrorist attacks in the West and other places, but I do agree that there was no need to be in the shape of a dialogue with the writer’s nephew. Also it has some minor errors such as saying Fareed Zakari is Pakistani. He is in fact Indian by roots. You will learn why certain people wear clothes in certain ways in Europe: Saudi funded mosques. It’s a “heads up” for the United States.
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