Wesal TV (may I add that similar religious channels exist in most Middle Eastern and Muslim countries, including Iran) is a private channel that operates outside of KSA and personally I believe that it should be closed. 4 years ago it was banned by the government (so locals could not watch it inside KSA without a VPN) but not sure what the situation is today.
KSA, outside of religious influence (at least as long as the Hanbali Ulema dominates, if future Saudi Arabian Ulemas included Twelvers, Zaydis and Ismaili representatives, then not), could have influence from Mosul to Basra for cultural, linguistic, historical, religious, ancestral, tribal, clan, geographic, media (Saudi Arabian shows, media etc. is the most watched in Iraq outside of Egyptian and Lebanese, not to mention the huge Saudi Arabian social presence online which many Arabs watch) but since KSA and Iraq post 1990 (after Saddam invaded Kuwait) until 2003, the ties were very very sporadic (Iraq was isolated as a whole), post 2003 we know the story (KSA and most Arab countries did not trust the Iraqi regimes for reasons that we have already discussed in this thread) and first until recently (almost 15 years later) normality has returned.
Anyway many people forget (in particular in Iraq) that it was actually the Al-Assad regime that was most destructive towards Iraq (just like the traitorous Al-Assad regime was when it betrayed Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war as the only relevant Arab country to do so), just like it did in past wars against Israel, by facilitating Syrian and foreign fighters to enter Iraq with the same Syrian regime doing the ground work to facilitate this (even training those Jihadists) to hurt US interests and destabilize Iraq.
This among the "Malik types" is all forgotten now due to the Syrian civil war.
Modern-day Muslim Jihadism has nothing to do with 250+ year old "Wahhabism".
Suicide bombings, nothing to do with it.
Destroying tombs/shrines, nothing to do with it, Abdul-Wahhab did not destroy any tombs during his lifetime, just discouraged worshipping ancestors/holy figures. What happened 150 years after his death was politically motivated when the Sauds conquered Hijaz and wanted to destroy/weaken the strong Sufi tradition in Hijaz to better uniform the country similar to how Ibn Saud married with important dynasts, clans etc. from across KSA to gain legitimacy and for his off-spring to have legitimacy by saying that they are part of the old status quo.
Similarly no Shias were slaughtered anywhere doing that time. Majority Shia Eastern Province next door was not harmed even once.
As for some raid on Najaf and Karbala 200 years ago done by fighting Arab tribes (looting as was common by everyone back then and still is to this day among many), there is only 1 source that reports this incident, and if it happened, it had nothing to do with "Wahhabi" preachings.
Al-Qaeda, ISIS etc. all originates from the Muslim Brotherhood teachings and more precisely Qutbism. This was even admitted by OBL and every "old-school" Jihadi.
KSA became radicalized (Sahwa period) in the 1970's (the process already began in the 1960's) due to a influx of Muslim brotherhood members from Egypt and Syria (who escaped Nasser's and Al-Assad's governments and where welcomed by KSA due to KSA back then being Pan-Islamic and not pan-Arab) which were mixed by local puritanical ideas/streams.
At this same period, KSA was becoming more and more "Westernized" (like Arab and Muslim societies by large in the 1970's) so the fanatics had the perfect excuse.
KSA in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's
View attachment 485317
Women students being interviewed by Western reporters in English in 1966.
Jeddah beach front (bikini cladded Western expats mingling with locals)
Of course you can find such photos from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan etc. as well and it does not meant that KSA was not majority conservative like the other countries but it was a different time (pre-Sahwa, pre-1979, pre-moronic laws) than afterwards. Obviously not a liberal paradise (LOL) but people should understand the point.
Later came the "Islamic Revolution" in Iran next door in 1979, largely as a reaction to the Shah's aggressive "Westernization" process. Then after 1979, KSA used religion as a counter to Iran's use of religion and the crap that we have witnessed since then is history that we are all aware of.
Later came the Afghan-Soviet war (same time period moreover).
After that war splinter groups (OBL and his likes) started going after their own regimes that they considered not Muslim enough or "Western agents" leading to OBL (who btw was half Yemeni and half Syrian) being stripped of his citizenship back in 1994. Some locals agreed with this moronic rhetoric and joined Jihadi outfits back home or went abroad to fight numerous wars that were not their own (Tajikistan civil war, Chechnya in the 1990's, Bosnia in the 1990's) etc.
All what I have written can be backed up by facts and simple google searches but it is obviously more complicated than this.
