has been maintaining the Wahhabi hold. This included isolating Saudis from awareness of more tolerant mainstream perspectives within the Islamic faith. Over time, as isolating Saudi Arabia from other currents in the Islamic world has become less practical, the result has been the emergence of what analyst Muqtedar Khan described as "a policy of uniquely Saudi Islamic imperialism" (Khan 1).
If Saudi Arabia could not be kept apart from the mainstream of Islam, the mainstream of Islam would be pushed in the direction of Wahhabism. The Saudi government, and foundations funded by wealthy Saudis, have expended vast sums in what amounts to a missionary effort within the Islamic world, to fund mosques and madrassas (religious schools) run by Wahhabi clerics. One fruit of this policy, for example, has been the proliferation of extremist Wahhabi-oriented madrassas in Pakistan, whose graduates provided recruits for the Taliban and a continuing source of sympathy and support for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
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