Persian Gulf rulers promoting Takfiri ideologies: Iraqi official

A top Iraqi official says Persian Gulf Arab states are cultivating the rise of the Daesh group as a way of bolstering their own failing governments.

Iraqi National Security Adviser Faleh al-Fayad warned on Wednesday that "some regimes have been devoting resources to defending those ideologies."

“Some rich Persian Gulf countries have been using the measures of their wealth to giving legitimacy to these groups," he said, speaking at the Royal United Services Institute in London. 

The same countries are "stoking sectarianism" to rally support as they face economic crises due to falling oil prices, Fayad said, apparently referring to Saudi Arabia.

The extremist ideology of Wahabbism is the key driver of violence across the Middle East which is promoted by Saudi Arabia and followed by Daesh and other Takfiri groups. 

“We know about the real perpetrators” who are spreading the Daesh ideology, as well as, funding and training the terrorist group, the Iraqi official said.

In an opinion piece published in the New York Times on Tuesday, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote that Riyadh has spent tens of billions of dollars exporting Wahhabism through thousands of mosques and madrasas across the world. "Virtually every terrorist group abusing the name of Islam — from Al Qaeda and its offshoots in Syria to Boko Haram in Nigeria — has been inspired by this death cult," the article said.

EA