"We are going to shut down the Islamic affairs section in every embassy," the officials said. "That's the objective." [Washington Post] Whether "the objective" is achieved is another matter, but perhaps the Saudis actually realize that words have consequences and that decades of extremist rhetoric.

The Saudi action is part of that government's increased vigilance toward expressions of religious extremism after the deadly May terrorist attack in Riyadh that shocked the oil-rich nation and its ruling family. The government has dismissed hundreds of imams from Saudi mosques for allegedly using extremist rhetoric, and has moved to delete language denigrating non-Muslims from school texts and curriculum.

The Saudis also have cracked down on violent Islamic extremists operating in the desert kingdom. In addition, U.S. law enforcement agencies are trying to learn whether hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the embassy here each year have aided extremists in the United States.

If the Saudi government follows through on its pledge to shut down the Islamic affairs offices in its embassies here and around the world, "It would be the first visible sign of an effort to tone down decades of extremist Wahhabi propaganda," said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Institute, a counterterrorism think tank. Wahhabism is a puritanical strain of Islam that sometimes views non-Muslims and Western cultures as enemies of Islam.

My guess is that the regime is finally responding to internal and external pressure for its own self-preservation. The darkest view of the Saudi regime posits that they made a deal with al Qaeda to allow Islamist teaching and rhetoric and even noninterference with terrorist activities as long as attacks were kept out of the country or at least confined to foreign interests. When you make a deal with the devil, however, it is only a matter of time before you get scorched.

Whether this reflects a real change of heart or merely a bow to intense political pressure remains to be seen.