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To: LaBelleDameSansMerci
The Abu Sayyaf took its name from Professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, an Afghan intellectual, who had preached an ultra-conservative Islamic ideology called Wahabi.

This is quite correct - but there is a little more to the story. The Wahabi are Saudi, in fact, were responsible for the accession to power of King Saud in the early part of the last century. It really does come back to them, like it or not. They still control the madrasas just as they did 100 years ago, and are still using that control to foment political and cultural recidivism.

It is doubly ironic that the imperial power the Wahabi used to rail at, Great Britain, was responsible in large part for their current position. We have taken the place of Britain in Wahabi demonology as the representatives of a culture that most threatens the control of the religious conservatives. We are a necessary external enemy, and nothing more.

43 posted on 06/03/2002 10:54:41 AM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Billthedrill
"...It really does come back to them, like it or not. ...

I don't know where you would get the idea that I wouldn't like it. Gee, I'd love it if we could pin it on the Saudis--and all the other fanatical mullahs, abdullahs and inmams. Perfect bad guys, if you ask me--straight out of central casting. But somebody, somewhere doesn't see it that way do they?

It's statements like this:

"...We are a necessary external enemy, and nothing more..."

---that make me think you are not being quite serious. I don't wish to sound rude, but wasn't it OUR Leader who got the wheels turning on The Axis of Evil? And axis, which rather pointedly does not include the Saudis. Is that all we really are--an external enemy, nothing more? Is that why we fought a gargantuan land engagement against Iraq a few years ago and continue to sanction and harrass that regime? Is that why we have troops stationed in Saudi Arabia?

There's something wrong with the picture. Technical difficulties, perhaps....

44 posted on 06/03/2002 11:13:09 AM PDT by LaBelleDameSansMerci
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