Center for Democracy & Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, CDHR

Invites You to a Timely Conference

Steps to Undermine Muslim Extremism: The Saudi Angle

March 25, 2010 at The Heritage Foundation

10:30-12:30 followed by lunch

The Heritage Foundation, Lehrman Auditorium 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE

(Metro Red Lineto Union Station)

As the birthplace of Islam and home to its two holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia plays a major role in the lives and perceptions of the estimated 1.5 billion Muslims throughout the world. Similarly, Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest producer and exporter of petroleum for which the Saudi government receives large amounts of cash, as well as political and religious concessions from Muslim and non-Muslim governments and other institutions. In addition, Saudi Arabia is strategically located across the Persian Gulf from the most unpopular regime in the Muslim World, the Iranian theocracy. Given these facts, Muslim and non-Muslim governments, businesses and other institutions are intensely competing to befriend and praise the Saudi government for its domestic development and role in facilitating regional and global political, religious, and economic crises. As skilful manipulators of domestic, regional and global turmoil, the autocratic and theocratic Saudi establishments are busy exporting their dreaded and lethal Wahhabi religious ideology to every corner of the planet.

Prior to September 11, 2001 (9/11), the Saudi monarchs were mostly known for their pricy willingness to keep the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in check. The costly 9/11 attacks on the US exposed the Saudi monarchy and its institutions for what they are: religious expansionist with global objectives. 15 of the 19 religiously indoctrinated terrorists who attacked the US and killed thousands of its innocent citizens on 9/11 were Saudi nationals, as was the mastermind and financier of the vicious attack, Osama bin Laden. The attacks of 9/11 drew worldwide attention to Saudi Arabia, its domestic, regional, and global policies and activities. The findings have been astonishing.

Not only have the ruling Saudi dynasty and its “pre-modern based institutions” been found active in exporting their lethal Wahhabism ideology, but they are also the largest suppliers of suicide bombers, according to a multitude of media accounts, NGOs, and governments’ agencies. Despite the Saudi government’s claims of undermining the root causes of religious extremism and its by-product, terrorism, its high-powered religious clerics share Al-Qaeda’s global objectives. Their goal is to establish global Muslim communities in religiously tolerant societies and use their economic and religious influence to support these communities until they become formidable decision-making forces as currently seen in many parts of Europe and now budding in the U.S.

To underscore the looming Saudi instigated Islamist threats and explore alternative policy recommendations for U.S. decision makers specifically and the international community at large, the Center for Democracy & Human Rights in Saudi Arabia and The Heritage Foundation invite you to attend this timely and unique conference. 

When: Thursday, March 25, 2010, 10:30 am – 12:30 pm

Featured Speakers:

Opening Remarks by James Phillips, Senior Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation

Moderator: Ali Alyami, Executive Director of the Center for Democracy & Human Rights in Saudi Arabia

Lee Smith

Journalist who has written for, among others, Tablet, The Weekly Standard,The New York Times,The New Republic

Author, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations (Doubleday, 2010)

Ahmed Subhy Mansour, Ph.D

President, Ahl AlQuran International Islamic Center, former professor at Al-Azhar University, a pioneer in advocating re-interpretation of Muslims’ religious text books, author of 24 books and relentless critic of the concepts of Jihad, bigotry and dictatorship in Muslim thought

Farzana Hassan

President, Muslim Canadian Congress

Author, Islam, Women, and the Challenges of Today: Modernist Insight and Feminist Perspectives

Jack Pearce

Former Assistant Chief of the United States Justice Department Antitrust Division

Former Deputy General Counsel of the White House Office of Consumer Affairs

RSVP:http://www.heritage.org/press/events/ev032510a.cfmor call (202)675-1752

                                           OR

grant@cdhr.info   (202)558-5552