In Kuwait, conservatism a launch pad to success

Young and well-educated, Sami al-Mutairi parked his royal blue luxury sedan behind a roadside sand berm and waited. He knew that carloads of American troops traveled the dusty road. Prosecutors say he cradled an AK-47 assault rifle in his hands.

A little more of the article, just to show the kind of disturbing picture it paints...

Al-Mutairi, 25, was from a large middle-class family, part of a major tribe in this gilded Persian Gulf state. He had a good government job as a social worker, and in college he had been known as an outspoken member of the liberal students group on the manicured campus of Kuwait University.

But shortly after he graduated in June 2001, something changed. He became more stridently religious and began echoing the ideology of another wealthy Arab: Osama bin Laden. ...

As al-Mutairi waited on the sun-soaked morning of Jan. 21, 2003, a silver SUV approached. He gripped his rifle and aimed. The slight man with the thick beard opened fire, prosecutors say, killing a U.S. Army contractor in the passenger seat and seriously wounding another American worker beside him.

...

It may be possible to understand how extremism brews in a squalid Palestinian refugee camp, but what accounts for the scions of middle-class Kuwaiti families who are choosing violence and martyrdom over a future in a nation with free education, abundant oil wealth and a four-hour workday?

...
"I remember when the Islamist movement in Kuwait was 50 people," Tareq al-Suwaidan said with a laugh. As a student living abroad in the '70s, al-Suwaidan, now an Islamist lecturer, helped found the Alliance.

In the 1960s and most of the '70s, men and women at Kuwait University dined and danced together, and miniskirts were more common than traditional hijab head coverings, professors and alumni say.

But the Islamists were both patient and shrewd.

...
Conservative policies have two major influences: the Muslim Brotherhood, an offshoot of the Egyptian movement of the same name, which has a violent past elsewhere but has evolved in Kuwait into a powerful business and social fraternity; and the more conservative Salafi movement, inspired by Saudi Wahhabi teachings, which calls for a return to the "true Islam" practiced in the 7th Century.

The message of the Islamists has penetrated all layers of society. In one subtle but critical step, the Islamists have proved adept at winning elected seats on local co-op societies--the network of unremarkable neighborhood shopping centers that are a staple of Kuwaitis' daily lives. Political scientists call it a strategic triumph in the expansion of the Islamist infrastructure.

With prominent perches like the co-ops, Islamists cut an alluring profile. Like having an Ivy League connection in the U.S., knowing the right Islamist in Kuwait can reap tangible rewards.

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