Daash and Saudi Arabia – the failed experiment

Ironically this new Brits-on-tour army has managed to do what no one has done for about 1300 years – unite most of the Muslim and Christian world in opposition. And no one is more opposed, ironically, than Saudi Arabia, which has beefed up security on its border and is engaged in various way in destroying ISIS.

Saudi Arabia is a close ally of Britain and a keen customer of its killing machines, and like most of the Arab states said to be hostile to lunatic elements like ISIL. Yet they are part of the problem; like many Islamists, including those in Britain, the Saudis are happy to condemn ISIL in what they do but not their basic ideology – largely because it mirrors their own.

Indeed many Islamists are using ISIL to make themselves look moderate in comparison.

Anyone can condemn the beheading of civilians, but it is harder to condemn the very ideas that inspire this mania – the absolute rejection of secularism and the freedom of the individual, including the freedom to leave Islam (punishable by death in Saudi Arabia).

The Saudi hostility to ISIL could even be described in Freudian terms as the narcissism of small differences. ISIL is dangerous to them because for those raised in the Saudi version of Islam the Islamic State’s even more extreme interpretation is not a huge leap.

As for those young British-born jihadis whose minds have been poisoned – who is to blame for that? Well, the Saudis can take a fair share of the blame, for they fund hard line madrasas across the world and have radicalised millions from Indonesia to Pakistan to Britain with their version of Islam. 

There would be a certain poetic justice if the Saudis were overthrown by the very intolerance they have helped to promote.