Steven Miller of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies posted some interesting information from a 2011 study the foundation commissioned to collect and analyze what Saudi clerics are saying online. It’s at best a mixed bag.
To a large extent, the campaign to undercut al Qaeda in Saudi religious discourse appears to have worked, according to the FDD study. Calls for violence accounted for just a small portion of the total content of the social media data — only 5 percent.
You knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you?
But apparent success of the Saudi campaign, as suggested by the data above, obfuscates a key point: the clerics do not condemn jihad per se, just al Qaeda’s jihad.
The Grand Mufti, highest Saudi religious authority, teaches that individuals should wage jihad against the infidels only when told to do so by the royal family. Other clerics still teach that “jihad means fighting the infidels” (not some self-improvement quest, as the propagandists at CAIR and their sympathizers claim) “until they become Muslim or agree to live under Muslim protection,” and that waging jihad or supporting those who do so is the duty of Muslims.
The bottom line:
The data from the FDD study suggests that the Saudi government’s efforts to restrict or reduce the amount of militant online content have been somewhat effective. This indicates that when the Saudis are sufficiently motivated, they can temper the radicalism that has long percolated in the kingdom. But the data also shows that the Saudi campaign has not been able to eliminate radicalism, even, and perhaps most significantly, at the highest levels of the Saudi religious establishment.
For some reason, I’m not surprised.
