{"id":66893,"date":"2017-06-12T16:01:13","date_gmt":"2017-06-12T23:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=66893"},"modified":"2017-06-12T16:01:35","modified_gmt":"2017-06-12T23:01:35","slug":"saudi-arabia-is-destabilizing-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/06\/12\/saudi-arabia-is-destabilizing-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Saudi Arabia is Destabilizing the World"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"uBlogsy_next_prev\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>\u00a0written by <span class=\"uBlogsy_author_name\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" title=\"Stephen Kinzer\" href=\"http:\/\/ronpaulinstitute.org\/archives\/featured-articles\/?author=Stephen+Kinzer\">stephen kinzer<\/a>\u00a0 Courtesy The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<article class=\"uBlogsy_post uBlogsy_bottom_border\">\n<div class=\"post-attributes\">\n<div class=\"post-date uBlogsy_font_style40\">sunday june 11, 2017<a><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"printer-icon\" src=\"http:\/\/ronpaulinstitute.org\/images\/icons\/printer.png\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<section class=\"uBlogsy_post_body\">Just a few months ago, the governor of Indonesia\u2019s largest city, Jakarta, seemed headed for easy re-election despite the fact that he is a Christian in a mostly Muslim country. Suddenly everything went violently wrong. Using the pretext of an offhand remark the governor made about the Koran, masses of enraged Muslims took to the streets to denounce him. In short order he lost the election, was arrested, charged with blasphemy, and sentenced to two years in prison.This episode is especially alarming because Indonesia, the world\u2019s largest Muslim country, has long been one of its most tolerant. Indonesian Islam, like most belief systems on that vast archipelago, is syncretic, gentle, and open-minded. The stunning fall of Jakarta\u2019s governor reflects the opposite: intolerance, sectarian hatred, and contempt for democracy. Fundamentalism is surging in Indonesia. This did not happen naturally.<\/p>\n<p>Saudi Arabia has been working for decades to pull Indonesia away from moderate Islam and toward the austere Wahhabi form that is state religion in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis\u2019 campaign has been patient, multi-faceted, and lavishly financed. It mirrors others they have waged in Muslim countries across Asia and Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Successive American presidents have assured us that Saudi Arabia is our friend and wishes us well. Yet we know that Osama bin Laden and most of his 9\/11 hijackers were Saudis, and that, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in a diplomatic cable eight years ago, Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Fair Use Excerpt. Read the rest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/opinion\/2017\/06\/10\/saudi-arabia-destabilizing-world\/ivMeb7TWGk1fQaVjZWWKGP\/story.html?event=event25?event=event25\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0written by stephen kinzer\u00a0 Courtesy The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity sunday june 11, 2017 Just a few months ago, the governor of Indonesia\u2019s largest city, Jakarta, seemed headed for easy re-election despite the fact that he is a Christian in a mostly Muslim country. Suddenly everything went violently wrong. Using the pretext [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}