Anyone with half a brain cell knows that Saudi Arabia shares the same ideology as ISIS and al-Qaeda. Anyone knows that only last year candidate Donald Trump rightly condemned Hilary Clinton’s proximity to the Saudi Arabian ruling clan while at the same time supposedly being a champion of women’s rights. Yet here he was in the capital of jihadism on his visit abroad as President lecturing Muslims on the need to combat extremism in a land were public floggings and executions are a norm. Where campaigners for freedom of speech are met, if they’re lucky, with prison sentences.

But for a moment let’s put aside Trump’s brass-necked and sickening hypocrisy. Early in his speech he regurgitated this myth about the founding of the Kingdom that demands unpacking:

“King Abdulaziz, the founder of the Kingdom who united your great people. Working alongside another beloved leader — American President Franklin Roosevelt — King Abdulaziz began the enduring partnership between our two countries.”

Firstly, the notion that AbdulAziz ‘founded’ the Kingdom is mythic nonsense. The British actually founded the Kingdom and AbdulAziz was merely their puppet. When AbdulAziz expanded into the Ha’il region (in the north) it was because the British drove him there because the then rulers, the Rashidis, rejected the British Empire’s advances to be another puppet. The British even sent in reinforcements for AbdulAziz to capture the region. Continue reading →