Mark Steyn in his new book America Alone:
“What gives the jihad its global reach? It’s not difficult to figure out: Wahhabism is the most militant form of Islam, the one followed by all nineteen of the September 11 terrorists and by Osama bin Laden. The Saudis, whose state religion is Wahhabism, export their faith and affiliated local strains in lavishly endowed schools and mosques all over the world and, as a result, traditionally moderate Muslim populations from the Balkans to South Asia have been dramatically radicalized.
“That kind of operation doesn’t come cheap. So who pays for it?
“You do. After September 11, George W. Bush told the world, ‘You’re either with us or with the terrorists.’ [...] why should anyone take the president’s demand to choose sides seriously when America itself refuses to: the United States is both ‘with us’ and ‘with the terrorists.’ American taxpayers are in the onerous position of funding both sides in this war. In the five years after September 11, the price of oil rose from $12 a barrel to hit an all-time high of $70 – so, if you sell oil, your revenues are five times what they were. And there’s nothing like bigger oil windfalls to drive powerful despots down ever crazier paths. ‘Looking at it another way,’ wrote Frank Gaffney in his book War Footing, ‘Saudi Arabia – which currently exports about ten mbd [million barrels of oil a day] – receives an extra half billion dollars every day.’ Where does that extra half-bil go? It goes to the mosques and madrassas that the Saudis fund in every corner of the planet. Oil isn’t the principal Saudi export, ideology is – petroleum merely bankrolls it.”