page_title: Petro-Islam
section_title: Mosques
hierarchical_section_title: Petro-Islam / Influence of "Petro-dollars" / Religious funding / Mosques
caption_attribution_description: Imran wazeer, Shah Faisal Masjid,
context_page_description: Petro-Islam usually refers to the extremist and fundamentalist interpretation of Sunni Islam, sometimes called "Wahhabism," favored by the conservative oil-exporting Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Its name derives from source of the funding, petroleum exports, that spread it through the Muslim world after the Yom Kippur War. The term is sometimes called "pejorative" or a "nickname."
  According to Sandra Mackey the term was coined by Fouad Ajami. It has been used by French political scientist Gilles Kepel, Bangladeshi religious scholar Imtiyaz Ahmed, and Egyptian philosopher Fouad Zakariyya, among others.
context_section_description: More than 1,500 mosques were built around the world from 1975 to 2000 paid for by Saudi public funds.
  The Saudi-headquartered and financed Muslim World League played a pioneering role in supporting Islamic associations, mosques, and investment plans for the future. It opened offices in "every area of the world where Muslims lived." The process of financing mosques usually involved presenting a local office of the Muslim World League with evidence of the need for a mosque/Islamic center to obtain the offices 'recommendation' (tazkiya) to "a generous donor within the kingdom or one of the emirates."
  Saudi-financed mosques were generally built using marble 'international style' design and green neon lighting, in a break with most local Islamic architectural traditions, but following Wahhabi ones.
caption: Pakistan's Faisal Mosque, a gift from Saudi Arabia's King Faisal[30]
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