"When the history of the twentieth century was written the
decision to place the House of Saud on the Throne That Sits Over the Oil might
well look like the greatest foreign policy error of the Western powers, because
the Sauds had used their unlimited oil wealth to build schools (madrassas) to
propagate the extremist, puritanical ideology of their beloved (and previously
marginal) Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and as a result Wahhabism had grown from
its tiny cult origins to overrun the Arab world. Its rise gave confidence and
energy to other Islamic extremists. (...) Islam moved a long way away from its
origins while claiming to be returning to its roots. The American humourist
H.L. Mencken memorably defined puritanism as ‘the haunting fear that someone,
somewhere may be happy’, and very often the true enemy of the new Islam seemed
to be happiness itself. And this was the faith whose critics were the bigots? (...)
He knew, as surely as he knew anything, that the fanatical
cancer spreading through Muslim communities would, in the end, explode into the
wider world beyond Islam. If the intellectual battle was lost – if this new
Islam established its right to be ‘respected’ and to have its opponents
excoriated, placed beyond the pale and, why not, even killed – then political
defeat would follow."
Rushdie, Joseph Anton, 2013 pp. 345-346
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