And there are counter pressures, always worth remembering that when a problem emerges into visibility, those closest to it are already working on solutions.
Other nations are also looking at ways to promote more moderate views. The International Herald Tribune reported recently that Spain has begun discussions on a proposal that would see the government funding mosques in order to free them from financial dependence on "outside" sources. Spanish investigators say the terrorists who blew up trains in Madrid on March 11, killing 191 people, "attended mosques that had ties to Wahhabism."
Publicly, the proposal is being presented mainly as an egalitarian measure intended to offer all of Spain's major religions the same treatment given the Catholic Church, which has received state funding under a supposedly temporary agreement reached with the Vatican in 1979. But officials in the interior and justice ministries say the proposal is also motivated by a desire to seal off Spanish mosques from the influence of extremists in other countries.
The Christian Science Monitor reported last month on efforts by the Morrocan government to "rein in" radical preachers of Wahhabism and to promote the "modernization of religious education." But critics of this plan say it's unlikely to work.
"It's not enough to control mosques to control [Wahhabism]," argues Mr. Darif. "The problem of the mosques is a fake problem. If we could put an end to this Islamist rise through the control of mosques, we would have done it [way before]." The key issue today is how to control clerics without discrediting their state-sanctioned speech and frustrating the population. If you exercise too much control, "you loose the commitment, the charisma. It is a problem posed to all religions. There's an equilibrium that has to be found," says Mohamed Tozy, a university professor and an expert on political Islam.
Stanley A. Weiss, chairman of Business Executives for National Security (a non-partisan group that promites US national security), wrote Tuesday in The International Herald Tribune about Indonesia, which he believes is a key location in the battle of "ideas" between moderate and extremist Islam. Indonesia, the largest Muslim democracy in the world, is another country where Saudi Arabia has spent millions of dollars to promote Wahhabism.
Weiss argues that education which helps create employment in poor Muslim countries is one of the best ways the US can fight the spread of extremist ideas, a suggestion also made in the report of the 9/11 commission. But Weiss says the US is not spending near enough to help countries in this situation.
Muslim nations must make education a priority, and the United States must help. The final report of the Sept. 11 commission called on Washington to "offer an agenda of opportunity that includes support for public education and economic openness." But American resources currently don't match the rhetoric. William Frej, director in Indonesia for the US International Agency for Development, said, "Americans think they spend something like 10 percent of their budget on foreign aid, when the real figure is less than 1 percent."
Finally, the Independent recently profiled Saudi Arabia itself and finds a country "racked by fundamentalism and political unrest." But, the Times writes, there is also hope for the future, as the pressures exerted on the Saudi government by foreign sources, and the need to "save the economy and meet the challenges of the modern world" have finally given reformers a stronger voice. Those reformers are arguing that the best way to "marginalize the militants" is to give Saudis a greater say in the running of their own country.
