1400 years of Islamic History disagree.
They are not saying that Islamics are not bad guys. They are saying that they are being used and unleashed for political ends.
banks lend money to governments who want to spend it
so banks lend to governments who want or need to go to war
we all know that
(it is at least conceivable that a bank might encourage such borrowing, too)
but.. Islam has been waging wars against Christianity, Jews, Hindus, and everyone else on earth for its entire 1400 year history..... Islam has infiltrated, immigrated into, invaded, terrorized, conquered, and subjgated 56 non-Moslem countries so far.... and they’re a good part of the way to doing the same NOW with much of Europe, UK, and USA
so, while bankers are not completely innocent in history.... let’s get real about Islam... No Islam, no war and no allegedly nefarious banker involvement. Problem all solved.
Indeed.
The writer of the article might almost be taken to think that Wahhabism emerged from an Islamic vacuum. It’s doctrines were already there in Islam and its luminaries often coming from the most prestigious schools.
Any “cultural Muslims” aside, and not always then, it has rarely been a question of a change in doctrine or Islamic law that you need to convince Muslims of but rather merely attitudes towards what is appropriate to do with respect to doctrines that they already accept ... which is a much easier row to hoe. Both peaceful “moderates” and openly hostile “militants”, and “sneaky subersives” in between, reference the same “scholars”, which in that context means the recognized authorities and not merely guys in ivory towers.
The authorities are widely published, IIRC, in Arabic, English and French ... which are considered official languages. Indeed, most Muslims are not Arabs and do not read Arabic. Their books are for sale in mosque book stores all over the place.
Contrary to the popular belief those calling the dance for militant Islam are not drooling nut burgers but all too often are lucid, sane people who take a very formal legal approach to right and wrong and what their belief system demands of them. And indeed they are often trying to be “good people” as they are taught goodness is.
Now, and I say this as one who is in Christ and not as some secularist (which I’m not), the “good” they are taught is sometimes very evil; yet, that doesn’t mean that they are somehow trying to be evil.
Think about what Lewis wrote: that a tyrant whose conscience approved of what he was doing was meaningfully worse than one who was just an evil bastard. Militant Islam creates people whose consciences are not troubled by their violence out of people with ordinary consciences precisely because they think they are doing good.
This existed long before there was a United States. The very same thing we face today was at work in the Barbary coast pirates and had for long years before while Muslims raided Europeans to take slaves and loot riches. It informed how Timbuktu grew exceedingly rich by slavery as, to them, ordinary commerce. Time and again there were whole wars of internal conquest as true believers, violent to the man, would sweep aside the rule of more settled Muslims who had grown to like civil society (such as they knew it).
Wahhabism may formally have a recent history, but it drinks deep of those 14 centuries you mention. Indeed, it is the violence of THOSE finding new voice today and not some strange unprecedented doctrine.