Tbh, I think that whilst the September 11 bombings might have actually helped the Saudi government&#x27;s monetary interests through increased trade as a key Western ally, they certainly hurt their religious ones.<p>On the one hand Saudi-funded madrassas find themselves under a lot more scrutiny and a lot more difficulty in even opening in the West. On the other, those people most subject to the appeal of hardline Sunni Islamism the Saudis favour are also likely to be impressed by the success achieved by a charismatic radical whose principal religious objective is driving the House of Saud and their infidel allies out of their holy land, someone whose fatwas explicitly mention &quot;appropriation of Saudi Arabia&quot; as the worst of America&#x27;s crimes. Especially when the ensuing &quot;War on Terror&quot; results in the House of Saud being drawn into an ever-closer alliance with the infidel American and firmly stuck on the wrong side of the clash of civilizations from the point of view of jihadis regardless of how much austerity their morality police impose and how many beheadings they carry out ostensibly in the name of strict religious observance.<p>Obviously al Qaeda appeals to the religious interests of some Wahhabist extremist Saudis like fifteen of the actual hijackers, and I&#x27;m sure there are plenty of individual Saudis who like to play both sides by becoming fat and rich as business magnates with government connections whilst funnelling some of those profits to extremist organizations just in case that happens to be their ticket to paradise. But I&#x27;m really not seeing the motivation for the actual Saudi government or intelligence services funding an organisation which actually represents a bigger existential threat to them than it does to the US, precisely because it appeals to segments of their public.<p>Of course, there&#x27;s no secret they directly funded Osama Bin Laden before he fell out with them over their backing of American intervention in Gulf War, back in the 1980s when he was fighting the Soviet Union with the Afghan muhadjeen. But so did the other enemy he devoted the latter parts of his life to rallying the Islamic world against...