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The Growing Power of Petro-Islam
Clearly King Abdullah and other senior members of his government are not unfriendly to Washington. But many other Saudis are. This is what some experts have called petro-Islam. The Saudis have used their vast profits to fund not Bada-Bing clubs but Wahhabist mosques around the world, even in the United States. Wahhabists—or Salafists, as members of the broader movement are called—believe in a strict interpretation of the Qur'an and a pure, self-contained Islamic state. Many also embrace the idea that integration into the West—or American society—is profane. This never represented mainstream Islam. In fact, the creator of Wahhabism, the 18th-century thinker Mohammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, was notorious among Muslims of his time for being something of an extremist himself. He vandalized shrines, and he was denounced by many Islamic theologians for his "doctrinal mediocrity and illegitimacy," as the scholar Abdelwahab Meddeb notes in "Islam and Its Discontents." The upshot is that Western consumers are paying hundreds of billions of dollars in oil profits to help educate and fund their own potential murderers.
None of this would have happened had it not been for the petro-dollar. The Saudis would have stayed obscure Bedouins and Wahhabism little more than a cult. But because of their oil wealth, the Saudis were able to spread Wahhabism's seed worldwide, making it far more mainstream than it would have been otherwise. As one Egyptian intellectual described it me, "It's as if Jimmy Swaggart had come into hundreds of billions of dollars and taken over most of Christianity."
Saudi Arabia was always the problem, and not just because 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi. It is because of the rise of petro-Islam in this troubled land. And as oil climbs in value, and research lags on alternative energy sources, this pathological family concern known as Saudi Arabia only grows. Even now no one is really doing anything about this critical problem. Bush was right when he said in his second inaugural address, "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." If only he had taken himself seriously on this trip. Perhaps next time he ought to insist on seeing a few dissidents.
© 2008
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Member Comments
Posted By: deride @ 02/29/2008 5:13:18 PM
Comment: Why are Saudis allowed to fund mosque set up all over the planet and other religions not allowed to do the same in there their country? Why is this lack of reciprocity allowed ? Why makes them so special? This must change or they must be banned from building mosque in non-muslim countries.
Posted By: renewableenergy2 @ 01/21/2008 3:01:48 AM
Comment: Hidden beneath the Rockies lies a big oil field! 2 trillion barrels
Let us say it is true. How come everyone is not running to exploit it, like they exploit any other economic and financial benefit?
The other aspect is how much energy, and at what cost ??? financial and ecological, is it going to take to heat the oil shale up and extract the oil.
I suggest conserving resources; we should use renewable energy, such as Solar and Wind energy etc. to heat up the shale.
Another issue is they are waiting for oil to reach $200 per barrel so the government can reduce the deficit and outstanding loans.
I hope that is the truth and that there are no hidden agendas.
Technological hurdles to extract oil from shale
"Despite all the attempts to develop a shale oil industry in the United States over the past 100 years, the fact remains that no proven method exists for efficiently moving the oil from the rock. There are a number of candidate processes possible, but none has demonstrated a practical capability to produce oil."
Experts with field experience who are bullish on the prospects for America's oil shale. But they recognize that, here and now, we are still not there yet technologically.
There are a number of problems yet to be solved before US oil shale can be recovered on any type of meaningful scale, let alone a mass scale. And getting the extraction technology right is only one monkey wrench in the works with US oil shale. There are others.
For example, there are questions of air quality regarding domestic oil shale operations. How badly would these operations pollute the air? Would the levels be acceptable? Shell isn't sure.
There are questions of water availability. During the extraction process, how much water would be required?
Experts are not sure. An early "guess" is two to three barrels of water per barrel of shale. This could be a conservative estimate. Either way, will the massive amounts of water necessary for heavy-duty shale extraction even be available in the first place, given that the Colorado River Basin is already running low?
You also need to account for the environmental and ecological damage and restoration to pre-drilling condition.
American technology and knowhow will find the answer ??? all you have to do is wave the dollar bill in front of corporate America and they will find the answer ???by hook and by crook???. Then the executives, the shareholders and the politicians will laugh all the way to the bank.
Yehuda Draiman
Posted By: enait @ 01/19/2008 9:50:26 AM
Comment: I am of the opinion that saudi Arabia is a puppet of USA,the rulers are engaged in luxiorus life there is no freedom of experession in the country,in such circumstances what an ordinary person can do?
ENAIT