Saudi Wahhabism practices , influenced the Taliban . One example was the Saudi religious police , according to Rashid . ` I remember that all the Taliban who had worked or done hajj in Saudi Arabia were terribly impressed by the religious police and tried to copy that system to the letter . The money for their training and salaries came partly from Saudi Arabia . ` The taliban also practiced public beheadings common in Saudi Arabia . Ahmed Rashid came across ten thousand men and children gathering at Kandahar football stadium one Thursday afternoon , curious as to why ( the Taliban had banned sports ) he " went inside to discover a convicted murderer being led between the goalposts to be executed by a member of the victim 's family . " The Taliban 's brutal treatment of Shia , and the destruction of Buddhist statues in Bamiyan Valley may also have been influenced by Wahhabism , which had a history of attacking and takfiring Shia , while prior to this attack Afghan Muslims had never persecuted their Shia minority . In late July 1998 , the Taliban used the trucks ( donated by Saudis ) mounted with machine guns to capture the northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif . " Ahmed Rashid later estimated that 6000 to 8000 Shia men , women and children were slaughtered in a rampage of murder and rape that included slitting people 's throats and bleeding them to death , halal-style , and baking hundreds of victims into shipping containers without water to be baked alive in the desert sun . " This reminded at least one writer ( Dore Gold ) of the Wahhabi attack on Shia shrine in Karbala in 1802
Wahhabi attack
Wahhabi sack of Karbala
International propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism