East Africa Saudi leaders have endeavoured to influence, trade, resources in
Sudan,
Kenya and
Ethiopia Somalia which has also resulted in a regional rivalry between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shia Muslim Iran. According to
the Guardian, spread of Salafism, is a, "key concern of the west, and of many local players as well".
Sudan Sudan, a poor country with a majority Muslim Arab population whose coastline lies just across the
Red Sea from the
Hijaz province of Saudi Arabia, has had close relations with the kingdom since the
Arab Oil Embargo. However, the dominant interpretation of
Islam in Sudan was very different from that of Saudis or Muslim Brotherhood. Popular local Islam of the
Sufi or mystical brotherhoods (the
Ansar and the
Khatmiya) who were each attached to a political party, had great influence among the masses of Muslims. Saudi funding, investment, and labor migration from Sudan has all worked over time to change that. Saudi provided funding for the Muslim Brotherhood whose local leader,
Hassan al-Turabi, enjoyed "close relations" with "some of the more conservative members of the Saudi royal family". In the fall of 1977, an Islamic bank with 60% of its start up capital coming from Saudi Arabia opened a branch in Sudan. By the mid-1980s this bank (
Faisal Islamic Bank of Sudan) was second biggest in Sudan in terms of money held on deposit. Shortly after another similar bank (Al Baraka Bank) was founded. Both provided rewards for whose affiliated with Hassan al-Turabi's Islamist
National Islamic Front—employment and wealth as a reward for young militant college graduates and low interest loans for investors and businessmen unable to find loans elsewhere.and who have "transformed themselves into Islamists." The influx of Sudanese labor migrants to Saudi as truck drivers, electricians, factory workers and sales clerks, was also significant. By 1985, according to one source, about 2/3 of the professional and skilled Sudanese workers were employed outside the Sudan, many in the Gulf States. (As of 2013 there were 900,000 Sudanese migrant workers in Saudi Arabia.) Looking at the change in religious practices of a village in northern Sudan over a five-year period from 1982 to 1988, anthropology researcher Victoria Bernal found labor migration of villagers to Saudi Arabia "were catalysts for change, stimulating the rise of `fundamentalist` Islam in the village". Returning migrants "boldly" critiqued the Islamic authenticity of local practices such as "mourning rituals, wedding customs and reverence for holy men in particular." More well-to-do villagers were "building high brick or cement walls around their homes", women began wearing ankle-length robes. Traditional wedding rituals with singing and mixing of genders were called into question. Saudi helped found the African Islamic Center (later the
International University of Africa) to help train African Muslim preachers and missionaries "with the
Salafist view of Islam." As
Hassan al-Turabi and his National Islamic Front grew in influence and in 1989 a coup d'état by
Omar al-Bashir against an elected government negotiating to end the war with the animist and Christian South established Sudan as the first Sunni Islamist state. Al-Turabi became the "power behind the throne" of the al-Bashir government from 1989 to 1999. The revivalist tenure in power was not as successful as its influence on banking or migrant workers. International organizations alleged war crimes, ethnic cleansing, a revival of slavery, torture of opponents, an unprecedented number of refugees fleeing country, and Turabi and allies were expelled from power in 1999. The jihad in the south ended unsuccessfully with the south seceding from Sudan (forming
South Sudan) taking with it nearly all of Sudan's oil fields. Turabi himself reversed earlier Islamist positions on marriage and inequality in favor of liberal positions, leading some conservatives to call him an apostate. Al Jazeera estimates that as of 2012 10% of Sudanese are tied to Salafi groups, (more than 60% of Sudanese are affiliated with Sufism), but that number is growing.
Egypt Muslim Brethren who became wealthy in Saudi Arabia became key contributors to Egypt's Islamist movements. Many of Egypt's future
ulama attended the
Islamic University of Madinah in Saudi which was established as an alternative to the Egyptian government-controlled
Al-Azhar University in Cairo.
Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, who later became the grand mufti of Egypt, spent four years at the Islamic University. Tantawy demonstrated his devotion to the kingdom in a June 2000 interview with the Saudi newspaper Ain al-Yaqeen, where he blamed the "violent campaign" against Saudi human rights policy on the campaigners' antipathy towards Islam. "Saudi Arabia leads the world in the protection of human rights because it protects them according to the
sharia of God." Saudi funding to Egypt's al-Azhar center of Islamic learning, has been credited with causing that institution to adopt a more religiously conservative approach.
Algeria Political Islam and salafist "Islamic revivalism" became dominant and the indigenous "popular" or Sufi Islam found in much of North Africa greatly weakened, in large part because of the 1954-1962
Algerian War—despite the fact the victorious
National Liberation Front (FLN) was interested in socialism and Arab nationalism, not political Islam. Diminishing indigenous Islam was the dismantling of Sufi mystical brotherhoods and the confiscation and redistribution of their land in retaliation for their lack of support for the FLN during the
fight against the French. Strengthening revivalism was a campaign of Arabization and Islamization by the government (FLN) to suppress the use of the French language (which was still dominant in higher education and the professions), to promote Algerian/Arab identity over residual French colonial culture. To do this Egyptians were recruited by the Algerian state to Arabize and de-Frenchify the school system. Like Saudi Arabia, Algeria saw an influx of Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood members hired to teach Arabic and eager to escape government suppression. While the leftist FLN Algerian government was totally uninterested in Islam as a foundation for conducting worldly affairs (as opposed to building a national identity), the Muslim Brotherhood teachers very much were, and many of the generation of "strictly Arabphone teachers" trained by the Brothers adopted the beliefs of their teachers and went on to form the basis of an "Islamist intelligentsia". In addition, in the 1980s, as interest in Islam grew and devotion to the ruling
National Liberation Front (FLN) party and secular socialism waned in Algeria, the government imported two renowned Islamic scholars,
Mohammed al-Ghazali and
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to "strengthen the religious dimension" of the "nationalist ideology" of the FLN. This was less than successful as the clerics supported "Islamic awakening", were "
fellow travelers" of the
Muslim Brotherhood, supporters of Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies, and had little interest in serving the secularist FLN government. Also in the 1980s, several hundred youth left Algeria for the camps of
Peshawar to fight
jihad in Afghanistan. As the FLN government was a close ally of the jihadists' enemy, the
Soviet Union, these fighters tended to consider the fight against the Soviets a "prelude" to jihad in Algeria. When the FLN followed the example of post-Communist Eastern European government and held elections in 1989, the main beneficiary was the massively popular
Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) political party which sought to establish
sharia law in Algeria. "Islamist intelligentsia" formed its leadership, FIS second in command,
Ali Belhadj, was a state school teacher and a prime example or this. and the Front's other co-leader
Abbassi Madani received much aid from Saudi Arabia and other oil monarchies. (This did not prevent him from coming out in support of
Sadam Hussein—along with most other Islamists—when Saddam
invaded Kuwait, despite the adamant fear of and opposition to
Saddam Hussein by the Gulf oil states.) After the FLN saw how unpopular it was and canceled the elections, a bloody civil war broke out. The Salafist-jihadis returning to Algeria supported the FIS and later provided military skill in the
Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA). In June 2010, a group of Salafist clerics attending an official function along with the minister of religious affairs showed their rejection of modern political systems as an illegitimate innovation or "
bid‘ah" by refusing to stand for the national anthem. Izala is funded by Saudi Arabia and led by the World Muslim League. It fights what it sees as the
bid’a, (innovation), practiced by the
Sufi brotherhoods, specifically the
Qadiri and
Tijan Sufi orders. It is very active in education and
Da‘wa (propagation of the faith) and in Nigeria has many institutions all over the country and is influential at the local, state, and even federal levels. == Central Asia and Caucasus ==