Saudi radicalism springs from deep source

A toy store may be an unlikely window into the extreme environment that created anti-West hijackers. But in Saudi Arabia – home to 15 of the 19 hijackers from the Sept. 11 attacks – the doll lineup hints at how the deep currents of puritanical Islam shape this nation.

You won't find Barbie on the shelves here. The doll is outlawed as a symbol of Western immorality. Despite official pro-American policies, fleets of gas-guzzling, US-made cars on the streets, and Western-style shopping in one gleaming mall after another, Saudi Arabia is a nation where all citizens are officially adherents of the hardline Wahhabi branch of Islam, and the punishment for forsaking Islam is death.

It is a nation born of a brutal religious history, infused with a powerful sense of holy war and a view of the world that divides humanity into believers and "infidels." It's a view that has changed little since Sept. 11, experts say – and could yield more militants.

"Segments of Saudi society have never been so radical as they are now," says Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi exile who runs the Virginia-based Saudi Institute. A handful of "radical teachers" have been "infected by bin Laden," he says, "so we are going to have another young generation of bin Ladens."

For some here, the banning of Western cultural icons is the tip of a radical iceberg that indicates a level of intolerance that helped create the militant views of the Saudi hijackers.

"Banning Barbie is an act of radicalism," argues a Saudi analyst in Jeddah, who asked not to be named. In one sense, it's "as dangerous as killing an American GI or or putting a bomb under the General Motors dealership. It creates the same environment, and in Saudi Arabia, it has religious roots."

"If you want to understand the roots of this hate, this killing, this disregard for human rights, you have to go back to the roots of Saudi Arabia, when the idea was that only we are right," says the Saudi analyst. "The Ikhwan [religious warriors that helped the ruling Al-Saud family consolidate the state 250 years ago] were fighting with the notion that 'We are good Muslims who will go to Heaven, and all others will die.'"

Though a few radical sheikhs have praised the Sept 11 attacks, most religious leaders in Saudi Arabia denounced them. Crown Prince Abdullah warned Islamic scholars in the aftermath that it was "their duty to be careful.... I advise you not to get emotional or provoked by anyone."

Radical views can drive equally unforgiving political ideas – and create holy warriors. Saudi Arabia – and the CIA – encouraged young men to go to Afghanistan to wage jihad, or "holy war," against the Soviets in the 1980s. And it didn't prevent hundreds from joining the ranks of native son Osama bin Laden in the late 1990s.

"Some went to Chechnya, some fought fellow Muslims [in Afghanistan] – and some were sent to Manhattan," says the Jeddah analyst, who has long followed militant Islamic groups.

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