Taleb: Wahhabi Saudis Are The Real Threat
Wednesday, 18 Nov 2015 10:03 AM
The United States is foolishly "ignoring the roots" of terrorism, spread and financed by Saudi Arabian clerics and preachers and their "promotion of intolerance," according to New York University professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
In a stern commentary for Politico, the professor in finance and risk engineering writes the nation's post-9/11 policy for fighting Islamic terrorists has been "missing the elephant in the room."
"Policymakers and slow-thinking bureaucrats stupidly let terrorism grow by ignoring the roots," Taleb writes, arguing the generation educated in Saudi Arabia after Sept. 11, 2001, was "indoctrinated into believing and supporting" Salafi fundamentalism, which holds to a return to the original ways of Islam — and "encouraged to finance it while we got distracted by the use of complicated weapons and machinery."
Taleb writes, worse yet, the Wahhabis, who adhere to the Salafi philosophy in Saudi Arabia, "have accelerated their brainwashing of East and West Asians" with their schools, "thanks to high oil revenues."
"So instead of invading Iraq, blowing up Jihadi John and individual terrorists, thus causing a multiplication of these agents, it would have been be easier to focus on the source of all problems: the Wahhabi/Salafi education and the promotion of intolerance by which a Shiite or a Yazidi or a Christian are deviant people," Taleb writes.
Taleb also takes a veiled swipe at President Barack Obama, condemning anyone who tries to "justify" the violence of Islamic State terrorists by comparing it "with some other Western event that can hark all the way to the Crusades …"
Obama earlier this year compared the atrocities committed by ISIS to those of Christians "in the name of Christ."
"For them, you cannot condemn ISIL without at the same time trying to be 'balanced,'" Taleb writes, using the alternate term for ISIS.
"Who are they fooling? This is the technique of bundling together problems that should be treated independently, and you need to learn to deal with such people by forcing them to discuss the problem of [ISIS] on its own."
And he takes another hit at U.S. policy regarding the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, writing if anyone belongs there, it's "the Salafi preachers and Wahhabi clerics … not just the people swayed by their teaching."
What the United States needs to do to "correct the profound Saudi problem" is to send them "our preachers, educating them in tolerance, explaining the very concept of the separation of church and state," and to encourage "Muslim preachers who promote religious tolerance," he writes.
"And if you find violence unavoidable, it should be directed at the Saudi and Qatari funders of violence, as well as the Salafi theorists, rather than the young performers," he writes.
In a stern commentary for Politico, the professor in finance and risk engineering writes the nation's post-9/11 policy for fighting Islamic terrorists has been "missing the elephant in the room."
"Policymakers and slow-thinking bureaucrats stupidly let terrorism grow by ignoring the roots," Taleb writes, arguing the generation educated in Saudi Arabia after Sept. 11, 2001, was "indoctrinated into believing and supporting" Salafi fundamentalism, which holds to a return to the original ways of Islam — and "encouraged to finance it while we got distracted by the use of complicated weapons and machinery."
"So instead of invading Iraq, blowing up Jihadi John and individual terrorists, thus causing a multiplication of these agents, it would have been be easier to focus on the source of all problems: the Wahhabi/Salafi education and the promotion of intolerance by which a Shiite or a Yazidi or a Christian are deviant people," Taleb writes.
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Taleb also takes a veiled swipe at President Barack Obama, condemning anyone who tries to "justify" the violence of Islamic State terrorists by comparing it "with some other Western event that can hark all the way to the Crusades …"
"For them, you cannot condemn ISIL without at the same time trying to be 'balanced,'" Taleb writes, using the alternate term for ISIS.
"Who are they fooling? This is the technique of bundling together problems that should be treated independently, and you need to learn to deal with such people by forcing them to discuss the problem of [ISIS] on its own."
And he takes another hit at U.S. policy regarding the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, writing if anyone belongs there, it's "the Salafi preachers and Wahhabi clerics … not just the people swayed by their teaching."
What the United States needs to do to "correct the profound Saudi problem" is to send them "our preachers, educating them in tolerance, explaining the very concept of the separation of church and state," and to encourage "Muslim preachers who promote religious tolerance," he writes.
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