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mujahedeen. After the Soviet withdrawal, the Afghan Arabs as they were
termed returned to their home countries and created havoc especially in
Algeria and Egypt. So long as the repercussions of Saudi-supported
extremism stayed away from its shores, the US was mostly indifferent
towards Wahhabi Islam and its negative and harmful impact upon societ-
ies, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
The September 11 attacks altered the American view and the magni-
tude of the attacks transformed the Western perception of the Kingdom
and its complicity in the radicalization of Muslim societies across the
world. The criticisms against the al-Saud soon became a backlash against
Islam itself. Mainstream American scholars and media began highlighting
the philosophical incompatibility and incongruity between Western
liberalism and Saudi-Wahhabi conservatism on a host of issues such as
freedom, democracy, governance, human and gender rights (Cox and
Marks 2003 ). Indeed, the roots of some of the Islamophobia in the West
can be directly traced to the September 11 terror attacks (Zúquete 2008 ).
Partly to rehabilitate the Kingdom in the eyes of the West, in February
2002, the then Crown Prince Abdullah tossed his ideas with noted jour-
nalist Thomas Friedman which gradually developed into Abdullah Plan
(Friedman 2002 ). Unlike the earlier ones, this plan offered a conditional
normalization between Israel and the wider Islamic world. A modified and
diluted version was adopted in the Arab summit held in Beirut in March
- Among others it offered to consider “the Arab-Israeli conflict
ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security
for all the states of the region” and “establish normal relations with Israel
in the context of this comprehensive peace” (UNGA 2002 ). While hailed
by a number of world leaders, the Arab Peace Plan of 2002 did not elicit
the necessary support from Israel and hence has primarily remained an
academic exercise (Israel, MFA 2002 ; Teitelbaum 2009 ; Podeh 2014 ).
Moreover, there were noticeable absentees in the Beirut summit; if Yasser
Arafat was confined to his Ramallah compound by the Israeli military,
King Abdullah of Jordan and President Mubarak of Egypt were absent to
show solidarity with the Palestinian leader and both countries were repre-
sented by their prime minister (Jeffery 2002 ). Hence, although President
George H. W. Bush ‘praised’ the initiative,^1 his 2004 statement which
outlined the American support for a two-state solution had no reference
to Abdullah Plan or Arab Peace Initiative (Freedman 2005 ).
(^1) The New York Times, 22 February 2002, quoted in (Teitelbaum ( 2009 ).
P. R. KUMARASWAMY AND MD. M. QUAMAR