Oil money exports hardline ideology

Malise Ruthven: How the Saudis used oil money to export a hardline ideology that fuels Islamist terror

Since the 1970s, when rising oil revenues enabled the Saudis to export the Wahhabi brand of fundamentalist Sunni Islam, Saudi Arabia has been a major exporter of ideas and values that differ from those espoused by Osama bin Laden and his followers on issues of strategy, but not on the broader perspectives.

During its years of rivalry with Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt, the Saudi government nurtured leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood which President Nasser had forced underground after an attempt on his life in 1954. Those exiled from Egypt included Muhammad Qutb, the brother of Sayyid Qutb – the Brotherhood's leading intellectual. His writings have helped to inspire a wave of terror attacks, from the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981 to the more recent attacks on New York, Madrid and London.