In May, 2004, this was published in Yale Global

An insurgent movement within the Thai Muslim community has led to over 200 deaths in southern Thailand this year. The presence of the expensive, brand-new Yala Islamic College, primarily funded by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, is not unrelated to this violence, says this article in Singapore’s Straits Times. The 1,500-some students there dress in traditional Arab garb and are taught a strict version of sharia Islamic law in Arabic. Professors there come from further west, products of universities and schools in the Middle East and North Africa. With them, these teachers, including the president of the institution – a graduate of a hardline Wahhabi university in Saudi Arabia – bring a wave of radical Islamism that poses a threat to the mainly peaceful, moderate version practiced by most Thai Muslims. The Thai government, slow to recognize the security threat, now sees the college along with smaller "pondok" Islamic schools in the country as "breeding grounds for radical separatists." More Thai Muslims are studying abroad, mainly in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and the fear that they will return to their country inundated with terror training has officials in Bangkok increasingly concerned.

As reported by John Bradley in the Straights Times

When you enter the college's reception, you feel like you have suddenly been transported to the Gulf. The 1,500 students there dress in Arab-style clothes and are taught a strict interpretation of syariah law in the Arabic language.

The receptionist introduces himself, in perfect classical Arabic, as a graduate of Al-Azhar University in Cairo. The president, Dr Ismail Lutfi, is himself a graduate of a hardline Wahhabi institution, Riyadh's Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University.

Dr Lutfi, who says he is against violence, has thousands of followers installed in key Islamic posts throughout the south.

The south's largely unregistered pondoks (Islamic schools) - which offer religious education, a regular curriculum and training in Arabic and the local Yawi dialect - are meanwhile now recognised by the Thai government as breeding grounds for radical separatists.

...and this is the result:

PATTANI, Thailand – The open-air market in this southern Thai city falls eerily quiet on Fridays. Most vendors stay home, terrorized by leaflets threatening to kill or cut off the ears of anyone who works on the Muslim holy day.

After 20 months of insurgent violence, the no-work threat has driven another nail into what is becoming an economic coffin in Thailand's terrorized southern provinces...

..."Trade has dropped 70 to 80 percent. Shopkeepers complain loudly. It is very quiet at night and people from outside dare not to come to the area," said Panya Ongsakul, chairman of the three provinces' chamber of commerce.

Always among the country's poorest regions, per capita monthly income in Narathiwat is 2,120 baht ($51), less than half the national average. Many Muslim villagers are angry at the government, but also want them to quell the violence so they can continue what have traditionally been peaceful lives in this rural region of 1.8 million people...

This is how our moderate Saudi allies are helping the Thais recover from the Tsunami. Aren't they charitable?

William G. Ridgeway describes how Wahhabi oil money and influence are destroying liberalism in the Middle East:

Encroaching modernity has resulted in an increase in the place and power of Desert Islam in everyday society. Contrary to widespread Western beliefs about the trajectory of the Middle East as a hesitant but inevitable climb to liberal democracy, the region is actually going the other way – fast. Academics call this "Islamicisation", the spread of radical Shi'a and Wahhabi beliefs and practices throughout the region. Because of this trend, the Middle East one sees nowadays is nothing like it was, say, fifty years ago. Around the 1950s, about the time oil was being discovered in the Gulf, many Muslim nations were relatively liberal by today's standards. Alcohol flowed freely, women went uncovered and there was lively public debate about "Ataturk's way", the separation of Islam and state, modernisation, and dialogue with the West. The Middle East seemed to be going in the right direction.

Saudi oil changed all that...

...The combined possession of oil and Mecca quickly gave Saudis, previously an insignificant mob of goat-herders and woman-beaters, delusions of grandeur. Having no education other than what the mullahs told them, they didn't understand the world beyond the campfire, and they didn't like it.

Oil meant that the Saudis now had the means to change the world to more resemble them. The mountain would come to Mohammed. Their mission, their warped religion told them, was to change the world to be like them, except that they had Mecca and would thus be the most important women-beating goat-herders in the world...

...Totalitarian systems are not sustained at the top, but at the bottom, where a system of mutual surveillance prevails. The influence of Desert Islam on the region has engendered just such a totalitarian system, whereby a woman who refuses to wear the hijab is stigmatised, and possibly threatened with violence. Even in liberal Lebanon, where women have historically been highly expressive in their dress, the present generation is increasingly adopting the hijab and shaming those who don't. Some people see this trend as a reaction to the West and modernity. It is anything but. It is merely a succumbing to the encroaching influence of Saudi-funded Desert Islam, a totalitarian system expounded by highly rational modern means.

Totalitarian desert Islam has moved beyond the Middle East, to Central Asia, Africa, Europe, America and to Southeast Asia. The tragedy in Thailand is following a familiar trajectory.

What will happen next? Well, judging from the multitude of states where this has already happened:

• Everyone will ignore the problem for as long as possible.

• The Left, NGOs and Human Rights groups will blame the Thai government for provoking the "militants"

• The Thai government may be destabilized; there may be a bloody civil war.

• The Left, the world media and the NGOs will blame America and/or the Thai government for everything. Security forces governments will continue to blame individual terrorist groups, not their Wahhabi sponsors, for the violence.

• All governments around the world, America included, will hold hands with and support the oil-rich Wahhabis. The majority of the world's press will say "nothing to see here" and the majority of the world's population will listen.

• Slowly but surely, the majority of Thai women in the south will begin to wear the nunlike black abaya. Tourists may notice this, but they won't comment on it because statements like that are "racist" or "Islamophobic."

In some parts of Southern Africa, people practice the holistic science called "Muti". According to Muti beliefs, certain body parts can enhance your luck or health. Muti believers will torture children, harvesting their body parts while they're still alive because their screams are thought to enhance the power of the medicines. In the beliefs of Muti, body parts of living children are valuable because they have used up very little of their good luck.

I guess we’re lucky that the Muti aren't sitting on the world's largest oil supply. It would be pretty hard to look the other way while they destabilized governments worldwide and practiced their beliefs. Of course, if we can do it with the Wahhabis, there's no telling how far we could go.