Saudi Hate Literature

After completing a study of over 200 different “tracts” published and distributed by the Saudi Arabian government, the Human Rights Group Freedom House recently released a report titled: Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology fill American Mosques. The tracts counsel Muslims to hate Christians and Jews, kill fellow Muslims that convert from Islam to any other religion, and to “behave as on a mission behind enemy lines” while living in the United States. Even moderate Muslims who practice tolerance are considered traitors deserving of death.

Freedom Houses’ director for the Center of Religious Freedom, Nina Shea, points out that “When a government agitates hatred and intolerance, when it counsels people in an authoritative voice to kill other people, that’s a human rights violation. That’s not protected by First Amendment or free speech.”

Although Abdulmohsen Alyas, a spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, officially denounced hate speech, intolerance and extremism on behalf of the Saudi government, the tracts were easily traced to the Saudi Embassy in Washington and the Saudi Education Ministry and air force by the seal or name printed on the cover of the tracts. Despite Mr. Alyas’ distancing his government from ideas espoused in the literature, those ideas are a part of the teachings of the Wahhabi sect of Islam which is the official religion of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia has come under ever increasing scrutiny as a sponsor of world terrorism after 9-11. The links between the Saudi government, Wahhabi ideology and terrorist financing are multitudinous. From web sites that promote violence to charitable organizations that are used as fronts to finance that violence, the FBI and other investigative branches of government are finding that the road nearly always passes through Saudi Arabia if it does not, in fact, end there. Even the royal family has come under pressure for building Mosques in the US and other parts of the world as a means of spreading Wahhabi teachings, which are based on the most strict reading of the Koran.

Return