The President recently made a trip to Saudi Arabia on May 19th. The various events encompassed in this trip brought on a slew of controversy and have reaffirmed the fact that Trump is an incompetent world leader. With terrorism being one of Trump's campaign points, it is interesting to see where both the US and Saudi Arabia fit within the larger picture. It is a bit ironic that Saudi Arabia is one of our biggest allies, because 15 of the 19 terrorists involved with the 9/11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia and today Saudi nationals make up the second largest recruitment base for the Islamic State.
Additionally, Saudi Arabia has been known to support radical Islamist groups through many different channels. Specific leaks have also pointed out that Saudi Arabia is funding schools to disseminate their extreme teachings of Islam in Germany. Many of these terrorist organizations draw their beliefs from Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi version of Islam, which is very strict and holds that all those who don't practice their form of Islam are enemies. The tenets of Wahhabism are strict Shariah Law and promotes killing non-Muslims.
Now that we understand a little context behind Saudi Arabia's influence behind radical Islamist groups, it is easier to understand why it is ironic that Trump has been changing his tone around them. You would think that Trump would be against Saudi Arabia because of their links to terrorist groups, but even Trump's Muslim Ban did not target Saudi Arabia. While in Saudi Arabia, Trump not only received the highest civilian honor offered by the nation, but he also gave a compelling speech about Islam. In light of Trump's campaign and his first few months in office, we can understand that he does not truly understand Islam. His campaign was built on fear and ignorance toward the faith, but this speech took a completely different tone. As a matter of fact, the speech felt like it was copied and pasted from former President Bush's speech about Islam. The only difference was that Trump believed that Islamic majority countries should take the lead on fighting terrorism. The rest of the speech carried very similar tones, but overall it was a very strategic move by the Trump administration.
In the end, this trip was basically just to sell more guns to the Saudi government so that they can take a larger role in the fight against the Islamic State, but this deal may in fact be aiding these radical groups. Some American politicians believe that our relationship with Saudi Arabia is positive, but that is because not many people know the significance of Saudi's role in radical terrorist groups around the world. At this point it seems that Trump is trying to add more fuel to the fire and giving many terrorist groups exactly the boost they need. I just hope that these relationships can be brought to the forefront in the mainstream media so that it starts a larger conversation.
