International propagation of the Salafi movement and Wahhabism by region

Following the embargo by Arab oil exporters during the Arab–Israeli October 1973 War and the vast increase in petroleum export revenue that followed, the international propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism within Sunni Islam and throughout the Muslim world, favored by the conservative oil-exporting Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies, achieved a "preeminent position of strength in the global expression of Islam." The Saudi interpretation of Islam not only includes Salafism and Wahhabism but also Islamist and revivalist interpretations of Islam, and a "hybrid" of the two interpretations (until 1990s).

During the Cold War following World War II, the United States and the United Kingdom launched covert and overt campaigns to encourage and strengthen Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East, North Africa, and southern Asia. These Islamic fundamentalists 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. In a 2018 interview with The Washington Post, Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, said that Saudi Arabia's international propagation of the Salafi movement and Wahhabism was "rooted in the Cold War, when allies asked Saudi Arabia to use its resources to prevent inroads in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union."

From 1982 to 2005 the Saudi government, in an effort to spread the Salafi-Wahhabi brand of Islam across the world (dawah Salafiyya), spent over $75 billion via international organizations affiliated with the House of Saud and religious attaches at dozens of Saudi embassies, to establish/build 200 Islamic colleges, 210 Islamic centers, 1,500 mosques, and 2,000 schools for Muslim children in Muslim-majority countries and elsewhere.According to diplomat and political scientist Dore Gold, this funding was for support for Saudi approved Islam in Non-Muslim countries alone. Mosque funding was combined with persuasion to propagate the dawah Salafiyya; schools were "fundamentalist" in outlook and formed a network "from Sudan to northern Pakistan". Supporting proselytizing or preaching of Islam has been called "a religious requirement" for Saudi rulers that cannot [or could not] be abandoned "without losing their domestic legitimacy" as protectors and propagators of Islam.

Other strict and conservative interpretations of Sunni Islam assisted by funding from the Gulf monarchies include the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami (until the break between the Muslim Brotherhood and Gulf monarchies in the 1990s). While their alliances were not always permanent, they were said to have formed a "joint venture", sharing a strong "revulsion" against Western influences, a belief in strict implementation of Islamic law (sharīʿa), an opposition to both Shia Muslims and popular Islamic religious practices (the veneration of Muslim saints and visitations of their tombs), and a belief in the importance of armed jihad. A "fusion", or "hybrid", of the two movements came out of the Afghan jihad, where thousands of Muslims were trained and equipped to fight against Soviets and their Afghan allies in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The funding has been criticized for promoting an intolerant, fanatical form of Islam that several political scientists and scholars of international relations consider to be the core cause of Islamic extremism and religiously-motivated terrorism worldwide, along with the Islamist ideology and practice of excommunication (takfīr). In 2013, the European Parliament identified Wahhabism as the main source of global terrorism. Critics argue that some Arab volunteers who mobilized to fight in Afghanistan subsequently formed or joined militant organizations that waged insurgencies against governments and carried out attacks against civilians in other Muslim countries. They further argue that some groups that emerged from or were associated with these networks — including the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria, the Islamic State, and various al-Qaeda branches — targeted not only non-Muslims (kuffār) but also Muslims whom they regarded as apostates, including Shia Muslims and Sufi ascetics. As of 2017, changes to Saudi religious policy have led some to suggest that "Islamists throughout the world will have to follow suit or risk winding up on the wrong side of orthodoxy".

Background

Religion in Saudi Arabia is dominated and heavily influenced by the Salafi brand of Sunni Islam and its Wahhabi ideology, a political and religious ideology named after Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an 18th-century Sunni Muslim preacher, scholar, and theologian from the Najd region in central Arabia, founder of the Islamic revivalist and reformist movement known as Wahhabism. Despite being opposed and rejected by some of his contemporary critics amongst the religious clergy, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab charted a religio-political pact with Muhammad bin Saud to help him to establish the Emirate of Diriyah, the first Saudi state, and began a dynastic alliance and power-sharing arrangement between their families which continues to the present day in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Al ash-Sheikh, Saudi Arabia's leading religious family, are the descendants of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, and have historically led the ulama in the Saudi state, dominating the state's clerical institutions.

Although Saudi Arabia had been an oil exporter since 1939, and active leading the conservative opposition among Arab states to Gamal Abdel Nasser's progressive and secularist Arab nationalism since the beginning of the Arab Cold War in the 1960s, it was the October 1973 War that greatly enhanced its wealth and stature, and ability to advocate Salafi missionary activities.

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". Muslim clerics looked to their different schools of Islamic jurisprudence (the four legal schools in Sunni Islam, plus the Ja'fari school in Shia Islam): Hanafi in the Turkic lands, the Middle East, and South Asia; Maliki in the Sahara; Shafi'i in Southeast Asia and the Horn of Africa; Hanbali in parts of the Arabian Peninsula. The first three schools "held Saudi inspired puritanism" (the Hanbali school) in "great suspicion on account of its sectarian character," according to French political scientist Gilles Kepel. But the legitimacy of this class of traditional Islamic jurists had become undermined in the 1950s and 60s by the power of post-colonial nationalist governments. In "the vast majority" of Muslim countries, the private religious endowments (awqaf) that had supported the independence of the Islamic scholars/jurists for centuries were taken over by the state and the jurists were made salaried employees. The nationalist rulers naturally encouraged their employees (and their employees interpretations of Islam) to serve their employer/rulers' interests, and inevitably the jurists came to be seen by the Muslim public as doing so.

Western Europe Belgium According to Hind Fraihi, a Moroccan-Belgian journalist, Saudi-trained imams and literature from Saudi Arabia glorifying jihad and advocating Islam versus non-Muslims thinking was “part of the cocktail” (other factors being "economic frustration, racism, a generation that feels it has no future”) leading to the ISIL terror cell in Belgium committing terrorist acts in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016 (in which a total of 162 people were killed). In the capital Brussels, as of 2016, 95 percent of the courses offered on Islam for Muslims used preachers trained in Saudi Arabia, according to European Network Against Racism. In February 2017 the Belgium Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (OCAD/OCAM, which evaluates terrorist and extremist threats in and to Belgium) voiced concerns over the spread of Saudi-backed Salafism in Belgium and the rest of Europe, stating “An increasing number of mosques and Islamic centres in Belgium are controlled by Wahhabism. This is the Salafist missionary apparatus.”

Finland

A 2017 proposal to construct a large mosque in Helsinki to "unite all Finnish Muslims", has met with resistance from among others the incoming mayor of the capital (Jan Vapaavuori). This was because it is being funded by Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and may introduce "Sunni-Shia hate politics into Finland", as both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are Sunni ruled and have cracked down on Shia protestors.

Germany

The German government has expressed concern that religious organizations from the Middle East may be supporting German Salafists through the construction of mosques, training facilities, and the utilization of radical preachers.

Iceland

In Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland where plans to build a new, larger mosque had been underway for more than a decade, there has been controversy over funding of the mosque. Following the 2015 Paris terror attacks, the President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson announced that he was "shocked to the point of paralysis" to learn from Saudi Arabian Ambassador, that Saudi Arabia planned to donate $1 million to the building of a mosque. Grímsson expressed concern that Saudi Arabian financing of the mosque would fuel radical Islam in Iceland.

United Kingdom

According to a report by Anthony Glees, extremist ideas being spread allow with donations from Saudi and Arab Muslim sources to British universities. Eight universities, "including Oxford and Cambridge", accepted "more than £233.5 million from Saudi and Muslim sources" from 1995 to 2008, "with much of the money going to Islamic study centres".

A 2012 article in Arab News reportedOver the past decade, Saudi Arabia has been the largest source of donations from Islamic states and royal families to British universities, much of which is devoted to the study of Islam, the Middle East and Arabic literature. A large share of this money went toward establishing Islamic study centers. In 2008, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal donated £8 million (SR 48.5 million) each to Cambridge and Edinburgh for this purpose, Al Eqtisadiah business daily reported yesterday. Oxford has been the largest British beneficiary of Saudi support. In 2005, Prince Sultan, the late crown prince, gave £2 million (SR 12 million) to the Ashmolean Museum. In 2001, the King Abdul Aziz Foundation gave £1 million (SR 6.1 million) to the Middle East Center. There are many other donors. Oxford's £75 million (SR 454.6 million) Islamic Studies Center was supported by 12 Muslim countries. Ruler of Oman, Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said, gave £3.1 million (SR 18.8 million) to Cambridge to fund two posts, including a chair of Arabic. Ruler of Sharjah [in the UAE], Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi, has supported Exeter's Islamic studies center with more than £5 million (SR 30 million) since 2001. Trinity Saint David, part of the University of Wales, has received donations from the ruler of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

In June 2017, following the London Bridge terror attack, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn stated that the "difficult conversations" Prime Minister Theresa May called for should start with "Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that have funded and fuelled extremist ideology".

A July 2017 report by the Henry Jackson Society, commissioned by the government of the UK, stated that Middle Eastern nations are providing financial support to mosques and Islamic educational institutions, which have been linked to the spread of extremist material with "an illiberal, bigoted Wahhabi ideology". The report said that the number of Salafi mosques in Britain had increased from 68 in 2007 to 110 in 2014.

Balkans and Eastern Europe