Then President George W. Bush and then Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud walk amid the blue bonnets of Crawford, TX in 2005.

On Wednesday, Jan. 7, Saudi Arabia denounced the attacks on the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo as a “cowardly terrorist act.” Two days later, the kingdom flogged liberal blogger Raif Badawi 50 times for insulting Islam, the first of 20 weekly flogging sessions that will add up to 1,000 lashes. Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in jail last year.

The Saudi regime’s crippling hypocrisy can only be matched by its allies in the West. Saudi Arabia’s European and American friends are reluctant to call out the kingdom on its human rights abuses. 

When the medieval punishment against Badawi made international headlines, it was met with online outrage in the United States. The world wide web was filled with comments on how horrible Saudi Arabia is. Many of those comments had anti-Islamic and racist undertones. However, few remarks called out our own government, which props up, sponsors, arms and militarily protects the Saudi government.

But the danger of the Saudi government exceeds assaults on its own population. The kingdom, which does not have a constitution, follows an ultraconservative school of Islam known as Salafism. This sect, which adopts a strict interpretation of Islamic rules, has been the ideological compass of most violent “jihadis.” For example, the destruction of Islamic and non-Islamic shrines and temples by extremists all over the world is a direct application of the teachings of Mohammed bin Abd Al-Wahhab, who founded Salafism in the 18th century.

Not all Salafis are violent extremists. However, the Salafi school of thought that Saudi Arabia follows and promotes has planted many seeds for “jihadi” terror around the world. 

The week of the Charlie Hebdo attack witnessed many other atrocities by extremists. In north Lebanon, two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a predominantly Alawite neighborhood in Tripoli, killing seven people. In Nigeria, the militant group Boko Haram killed hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians in Baga town and surrounding villages. While the attack in France drew international outrage, other victims of the same ideology received much less attention. 

The debates that ensued after the Paris attacks tackled free speech and questioned whether Islam is responsible for terrorists’ activities. However, few were the words of criticism about the biggest state in the world that follows and exports the ideology of “jihadi” militants. 

We know that the rulers of Saudi Arabia are not pious or conservative in their personal lives. The reality is that they use fundamental aspects of religion to keep their domestic population oppressed and to wage proxy wars and attacks via extremist groups. 

When it comes to ideology and social order, Saudi Arabia shares much with the terrorists of the “Islamic State”, yet the Saudi regime remains one of Washington’s key allies in the Arab World. 

Fundamentalist Saudi clerics fill the airwaves of Arabic satellite television with hateful, sectarian speech that contributes to the rise of extremism and recruitment of terrorists.

The absolute monarchy’s interpretation and enforcement of Sharia law are similar to the draconian laws imposed by the IS on the people of eastern Syria and northern Iraq. Beheading, severing hands, stoning, strict gender segregation and religious intolerance are all practiced in Saudi Arabia and the IS “Caliphate.”

Comedian Bill Maher compared the connection between Islam and terrorism to the elephant in the room that nobody wants to address, yet over the past week volumes have been written and spoken about the issue. The real elephant in the room is the links between Saudi Arabia and terrorism. 

Nobody wants to talk about this issue, perhaps because of the complacency of the United States in the matter.

U.S. presidents continue to bow and hold hands with Saudi kings, as their “War on Terror” enters its 15th year.