The Vilest of "Friends"

Islam had and likely still has the potential to be a force for good in the world, a religion of peace and understanding between peoples. Its original intent may very well have hinged largely on that goal, but readings and interpretations of its precepts and instructions to the faithful have been undermined since its inception, by rampant sectarianism, breeding suspicion and tribal-derived blood feuds among various clans.

One can only hope that there are as many imams, ayatollahs, mullahs and other Islamic clerics teaching their impressionable and believing flock the humanitarian, "peaceful" elements of Islam as there are those fundamentalists whose interpretations of Islamic exegesis extends no further than the alienness of others, the corrupt influence of infidels, the hated presence of Jews and Christians, demanding a Muslim response in jihad.

Yet most Islamic countries appear to have stultified into a national inheritance of distance from the commonality of humanity. Too many of those theocratically-informed nations are wedded to the perception that Islam is the one, the true, the only religion, and all others are unworthy impostors despite Islam's derivation in part from Judaic and Christian precepts of spiritual belief and the imperative of moral behaviours.

The school textbooks commonly used to educate the young and inform them of their place in the world and their obligations to their society and their religion form the basis of their understanding of others. In the Palestinian Territories, in Egypt and Syria, school children are taught to fear and to hate the infidels and the Jews. People brought into such an apprehension of others are unlikely to be open to inclusive social relationships, however at a remove.

They do, however, form a likely cadre of future fundamentalist jihadists. Saudi Arabia's school textbooks continue to speak of Jews and Christians as apes and swine, and to teach the young of a global Jewish conspiracy to inherit the world. And to anticipate that on "Judgement Day" the "rocks or the trees" will call out to Muslims to kill Jews. An estimated five million students in Saudi Arabia are taught this hateful eschatology.

Muslims are taught that homosexuality is cured by a death sentence. That Jews, wherever they live, are bent on sedition and undermining established authority to prosecute their own hateful agendas. That Zionism controls western secular clubs like the Rotary and Lions and Masonic clubs through secret agents established throughout the world, whose aim is to undermine civilization and control the world economy.

The result is radicalization of youth, wherever they live, who attend Saudi-Arabian-funded mosques and madrases not only established within the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan, but in North America as well; in cities like New York and Toronto, Montreal and Atlanta. Let alone European cities. Already thus prepared for personal sacrifice against the enemies of Islam, these youth are ripe for further indoctrination into jihad.

Because this hateful ideology to separate and create suspicion and hatred for the other teaches that the killing of Islam's enemies - real or imagined - is sanctioned by Allah, and by his worldly representatives, it is accepted on authority. This is not done covertly, this subversion of the humanity of young people, but openly, and by state authority. Moreover, a state authority that purports to be a friend of the West.

The Saudi royal family remains on close personal terms with the American hierarchy of oil interests, including most notably, the family of the current president of the United States. The single most influential, wealthiest country in the Middle East, the ally of the United States, assiduously preaches hatred against that country.

So much for the power of oil wealth, and the subversion of humanistic religious dictates.