King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud has a long-established record of leading popular campaigns to raise funds for Islamic causes. Saudi Arabia has been accused of poor oversight of such funding with some money ending up in terrorist hands. It has made considerable progress on this issue, but more still needs to be done. The three bomb attacks July 4 should encourage the king to take tougher measures to combat terrorism funding at home.

In December 1967, King Faisal created the Popular Committee for Support of Martyrs, Families and Mujahedeen in Palestine in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. He choose his half-brother, Prince Salman, who was already the governor of Riyadh, to chair the committee. At first, the committee raised a modest $5 million a year, but by 1978, that had doubled to $10 million. In 1982, during the civil war in Lebanon, it spiked to $45 million. The king remains the committee chairman today and has contributed considerable funds himself, including a check for $100,000 in 2001 for the family of Muhammad al-Durrah, the 12-year-old whose death in the second intifada sparked outrage in the Arab world.

In 1980, King Khalid turned to Prince Salman to chair fundraising for the Afghan mujahedeen fighting the Russians. In the early years of the Afghan war, Salman's fundraising exceeded the government funding covertly coming from the CIA and Saudi intelligence. Without the private Saudi money, the mujahedeen might have been contained by Moscow before Washington and Riyadh upped their official but secret financial help. Salman raised as much as $25 million a month. Three American presidents — Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — encouraged the Saudi financial support.

In the 1990s, Prince Salman was deeply involved in raising funds for Bosnia and its struggle with Serbia. In 1996, Salman visited Bosnia and Herzegovina to distribute money raised for the Muslims and raise awareness for their cause in the kingdom.