Billions for Hate, A Pittance for Help

New York Post Online Edition: postopinion: "THE Saudi Arabian government and individual Saudis have spent billions of dollars spreading Wahhabi extremism and fostering hatred. No expense is spared to vilify Israel or the West. But when it comes to easing the misery of their fellow Muslims, the world-champ hypocrites in Riyadh just ain't interested.

As of last week, the Saudis had pledged a pitiful $20 million to the tsunami-relief effort. That's a Saudi prince's bar-and-bordello budget for a weekend in Paris. Even the devout Muslims of Indonesia's devastated Aceh province don't qualify for Saudi charity. The images of peerless suffering aren't enough to open any Arab wallets, for that matter.

It takes hatred to do that.

American government aid, private donations and military operating costs will approach a billion dollars before we're finished. The Aussies, the Japanese and even the Germans have pledged at least 500 million bucks each. But the policy of the Saudis and their oil-rich neighbors can be summed up in eight words: Big bucks for bigotry, peanuts for human suffering.

It isn't supposed to be that way. The Koran demands generous giving to needy Muslims as one of the faith's central pillars. Doesn't matter a bit to those holier-than-thou Saudis. They set themselves up as the arbiters of Islamic purity and perfection, but they demonstrate less moral integrity than prostitutes and thieves.

Outside of the Middle East, no population has been as eager to follow the Arab lead on Islamic practices as the Muslims of Aceh. They already had a thriving Koranic school in Mecca in the 15th century, where Acehnese mullahs making the Haj could study Islam's subtleties at the source. The Acehnese still turn to Meccan madrassas today, in preference to Indonesian traditions.

So much for Saudi Arabia's sense of Islamic brotherhood

....How the Saudis, with all of their self-righteousness and preaching about Islamic duties, can neglect the basic obligation of charity demanded by the Koran is so far beyond any recognizable sense of morality that words can't capture the shabbiness

....Meanwhile, U.S. Navy and Marine helicopters work around the clock to feed the starving — without asking for anybody's religious credentials. As predicted by The Post, Aceh's fundamentalist mullahs are already preaching that Allah punished the people for being insufficiently rigorous in their behavior, for being too tolerant.

The same mullahs explain away Western aid as a plot.But the people will know who helped them and who did not.