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Why should we be concerned? In a recent column in The New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman explained “Nothing has been more corrosive to the stability and modernization of the Arab world, and the Muslim world at large, than the billions and billions of dollars the Saudis have invested since the 1970s into wiping out the pluralism of Islam — the Sufi, moderate Sunni and Shiite versions — and imposing in its place the puritanical, anti-modern, anti-women, anti-Western, anti-pluralistic Wahhabi Salafist brand of Islam promoted by the Saudi religious establishment.”

The recent release of the “Saudi cables” by WikiLeaks has led to an increasing number of worrisome facts about the Saudi Arabian government and their influence on the world stage as an agent of religious extremism. It seems the Saudis have been funding Islamic schools and other organizations that promote Wahhabism around the world in places like India and Canada.

At first glance it may not seem so problematic that a foreign government is helping to create places of worship and to educate youth in another country’s jurisdiction. But an obsession with spreading and promoting a particular strain of Islam that is diametrically opposed to equal rights for other sects and religious groups should be seen as deeply unsettling to all, for obvious reasons.

An obsession with spreading and promoting a particular strain of Islam that is diametrically opposed to equal rights for other sects and religious groups should be seen as deeply unsettling to all, for obvious reasons.

From Mali to Nigeria, Pakistan to Syria, Egypt to Libya, Canada to France, extremism and violence are often linked to the particular Wahhabist ideology and belief system that emanates out of Saudi Arabia.