Petro-Islam

Petro-Islam or Oil Islam is a neologism used to refer to the international propagation of the extremist and fundamentalist interpretations of Sunni Islam derived from the doctrines of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a Sunni Muslim preacher, scholar, reformer and theologian from Uyaynah in the Najd region of the Arabian Peninsula, eponym of the Islamic revivalist movement known as Wahhabism. This movement has been favored by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states of the Persian Gulf. Its name derives from source of the funding, petroleum exports, that spread it through the Muslim world after the Yom Kippur War. The term is sometimes called "pejorative" or a "nickname". According to Sandra Mackey the term was coined by Fouad Ajami. It has been used by French political scientist Gilles Kepel, Bangladeshi scholar Imtiyaz Ahmed, and Egyptian philosopher Fouad Zakariyya, among others. During the Cold War, the United States and the United Kingdom launched covert and overt campaigns to encourage and strengthen Muslim fundamentalist groups in the Middle East and southern Asia. These groups were seen as a hedge against potential expansion by the Soviet Union, and as a counterweight against nationalist and socialist movements that were seen as a threat to the interests of the Western nations. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the current de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, said in 2018 that international propagation of the Salafi movement and Wahhabism occurred "when allies asked Saudi Arabia to use its resources to prevent inroads in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union." According to some estimates, since the 1960s, the Saudis have funneled over US$100 billion into funding schools and mosques all over the world with the mission of spreading puritanical Wahhabi Islam. According to political scientist Alex Alexiev, the impetus for the international propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism by Saudi Arabia was "the largest worldwide propaganda campaign ever mounted", David A. Kaplan described it as "dwarfing the Soviets' propaganda efforts at the height of the Cold War".

Usage and definitions The use of the term to refer to Wahhabism, the dominant interpretation of Islam in Saudi Arabia, is widespread but not universal. Variations on or different uses of the term include:

Use of resources by Saudi Arabia "to project itself as a major player in the Muslim world": the distribution of large sums of money from public and private sources in Saudi Arabia to advance Wahhabi doctrines and pursue the Saudi Arabian foreign policy. Attempts by the Saudi rulers to use both Islam and its wealth to win the loyalty of the Muslim world. Diplomatic, political, economic, and religious policies promoted by Saudi Arabia. The type of Islam favored by petroleum-exporting Muslim-majority countries, particularly the other Gulf monarchies (United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, etc.), not just Saudi Arabia. A "hugely successful" enterprise made up of a "colossal ensemble" of media and other cultural organs that has broken the "secularist and nationalist" monopoly of the state on culture, media and, "to a lesser extent", education; and is supported by both Islamists and socially conservative business "elements", who opposed the Arab nationalist ideologies of Nasserism and Baathism. More conservative Islamic cultural practices (separation of the sexes, wearing of the hijab or a more complete hijab) brought back (to other Muslim states, such as Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.) from Gulf oil states by migrant workers. A term used by secularists, particularly in Egypt, to refer to efforts to require the enforcement of sharia (Islamic law). An Islamic interpretation that is "anti-woman, anti-intellectual, anti-progress, and anti-science... largely funded by the Saudis and Kuwaitis."

Background

One scholar who spelled out the idea of petro-Islam in some detail is Gilles Kepel. According to Kepel, prior to the 1973 oil embargo, religion throughout the Muslim world was "dominated by national or local traditions rooted in the piety of the common people." Clerics looked to their different schools of fiqh (the four Sunni Madhhabs: Hanafi in the Turkish zones of South Asia, Maliki in Africa, Shafi'i in Southeast Asia, plus Shi'a Ja'fari, and "held Saudi inspired puritanism" (using another school of fiqh, Hanbali) in "great suspicion on account of its sectarian character", according to Gilles Kepel. While the 1973 War (also called the Yom Kippur War) was started by Egypt and Syria to take back land won by Israel in 1967, the "real victors" of the war were the Arab "oil-exporting countries", (according to Gilles Kepel), whose embargo against Israel's western allies stopped Israel's counter offensive. The embargo's political success enhanced the prestige of those who embargoed and the reduction in the global supply of oil sent oil prices soaring (from $3 per barrel to nearly $12) and with them, oil exporter revenues. That put Muslim oil-exporting states in a "clear position of dominance within the Muslim world." The most dominant was Saudi Arabia, the largest exporter by far (see bar chart). Saudi Arabians viewed their oil wealth not as an accident of geology or history but connected to religion, a blessing by God of them, to "be solemnly acknowledged and lived up to" with pious behavior. With its new wealth, the rulers of Saudi Arabia sought to replace nationalist movements in the Muslim world with Islam, to bring Islam "to the forefront of the international scene", and to unify Islam worldwide under the "single creed" of Wahhabism, paying particular attention to Muslims who had immigrated to the West (a "special target").

Influence of "petro-dollars" According to scholar Gilles Kepel, (who devoted a chapter of his book Jihad to the subject – "Building Petro-Islam on the Ruins of Arab Nationalism"), in the years immediately after the 1973 War, 'petro-Islam' was a "sort of nickname" for a "constituency" of Wahhabi preachers and Muslim intellectuals who promoted "strict implementation of the sharia [Islamic law] in the political, moral and cultural spheres." In the coming decades, Saudi Arabia's interpretation of Islam became influential (according to Kepel) through

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