Word: saudi
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...downfall has not heralded a new Middle East. The primary concern of Arabs across the region today is the emerging civil war in Iraq and its potential breakup as a state, which threatens to spread a virus of instability across the region. Pro-Western Sunni regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan are increasingly concerned about growing Iranian influence in post-Saddam Iraq, while Turkey is concerned about the creation of a de facto Kurdish mini-state in northern Iraq that may spur greater agitation by Turkey's own Kurdish minority. President Bush's belated acknowledgement that things...
...While the U.S. and Ethiopia have backed the Somali government and the warlords that operate under its umbrella on the banner of fighting al-Qaeda, the Islamists have allegedly rallied financial and military support from such quarters as Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria and Iran by painting themselves as victims of an Islamophobic Western conspiracy. And Osama bin Laden certainly helped Ethiopia and the Somali government make their case for U.S. support when, in October, he warned Western governments to stay out of Somalia...
...forms varied, of course. There was the strain of Islamic Wahhabism incubated in Saudi Arabia, exported to Afghanistan and wreaking havoc in Iraq. There was Shi'ite theocracy, centered in Tehran, made more terrifying by the apocalyptic worldview of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the West, the dominant form of Christianity was Fundamentalist Protestantism, gaining new converts and, fused with the Republican Party, flexing powerful political muscles. And in the Vatican, the conservatism of John Paul II found its natural successor in the austere and more thoroughgoing orthodoxy of the new Pope, Benedict XVI. There seemed no stopping this cultural surge, just...
...insurgency against occupying infidel troops became a civil war between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims. The dynamic within Islam in the Middle East shifted from one that pitted Islam against the West to one that pitted Islam against itself. Evidence emerged of Iranian support for Shi'ite militias, alongside Saudi financing of Sunni terror. Suddenly, the monolith was over - and the old divisions within Islam became as important as Islam's differences with Christians and Jews and secularists. Islam was revealed as having no single answer - no more than Christianity has one single answer, no more than any faith...
...King Abdullah's fear appeared to be confirmed by the month-long war in Lebanon in summer of 2006. The war turned Hizballah and Iran into regional power brokers, and brought jubilant Shi'ites into the streets in Iraq, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Traditional Sunni powers such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt found themselves pushed to the sidelines, unable to influence events. Even al-Qaeda was caught off-guard as it watched Hizballah steal some of its thunder. The reaction of Sunni rulers and radicals was swift: They denounced Hizballah's campaign as an Iranian-sponsored Shi'a power...