David Commins: belief

Transcript context

…Do they get soft power from it? I think they do. I think they do. My sense is that the scholarship on Wahhabi soft power is beginning to sharpen the focus on particular case studies in Nigeria, in Indonesia, in Central Asia. The finding so far is that the Wahhabis are in competition with other Muslim religious tendencies from Iran, from Turkey, even from Kuwait. Just as Catholic and Protestant missionaries competed around the world for converts, what they regarded as true Christianity, the Wahhabis are competing. Of course, they’ve had a ton of money, behind their proselytizing, from I would say from the early 1980s until about 2015. It seems that King Salman has really put the lid on that. I’ll be curious to see the follow-up studies that were really based on research in the period, roughly 2005 to 2015. I haven’t seen a lot about recent developments, but I think that by curtailing financial support for at least Saudi religious institutions to proselytize, that Saudi influence will diminish. It’ll leave a residue for sure, but it will diminish. In general, who do you think has been winning that ideological competition of the different branches of Islam? Which would have greater soft power today than say 20, 25 years ago?…

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