International propagation of the Salafi movement and Wahhabism

Common card · No. 300096

Starting in the mid-1970s and 1980s, 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 the 1990s). During the Cold War, the United States and the United Kingdom launched covert and overt campaigns to encourage and strengthen Islamists in the Middle East, North Africa, Central and Southern Asia. These Islamists 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 1957, in a meeting with the CIA's Frank Wisner and the Joint Chiefs...

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