The Seventh Well: Oil & Islam

by: rick eichhorn | published: 08 14, 2008

In March of 1938, oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia. The seventh well drilled on the Dammam Dome identified what became known as the Arab Zone—the largest known oil reserves in the world. Exports of crude oil began in that same year, resulting in the transformation of a barren desert wasteland into a bubbling oasis that fairly oozes wealth and power. In eighty years, a sand-strewn brawling ground of nomadic tribal conflict has become one of the most influential regions on Earth. Is it any wonder that the Earth is beginning to resemble that region. The most important way the world is emulating Saudi Arabia is in religion. The proliferation of mosques throughout the world has been financed in no small part by Saudi oil money.

The Saudis would eventually help establish at least 1,500 mosques abroad. They would also aid 2,000 Islamic schools, sponsor summer camps for children, supplement the salaries of many prayer leaders, and spend millions of dollars on Muslim research centers and endowed teaching positions at some of the world's top universities, including Harvard and Oxford.

So much money went out, from so many Saudi sources, that even Saudi leaders did not know how much was spent and exactly who was on the receiving end. Estimates on the total would be put in the tens of billions.

Without oil, and the resultant gushing of wealth throughout the Arab regions, would Islam have become so widely proliferated? Without the hundreds of millions of dollars, would Osama bin Laden have been able to create al Qaeda? There would still be Muhammad's edict, saying Allah demanded that every Muslim strive to make Islam the world's only religion, but would the ability exist to proselytize Islam as it is being done today by the Saudis. Would the resources exist to build and staff the madrassas and the mosques worldwide as they are by the Saudis?

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