Stephen Schwartz: Whose Saudi Arabia?

The population of Saudi Arabia is now under more-or-less continuous attack by terrorists, and its representatives, including its ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abd al-Aziz, have publicized their belief that all terrorists must be killed.

The Saudi kingdom is treated paradoxically by Western, and even by Israeli opinion. On the one hand, many in Washington and Jerusalem continue to believe that the oil princes of the desert can serve as moderates in a Middle East peace process. At the same time, the internal reality of the country is viewed as ineffably mysterious, conservative and traditional, and its people as so indoctrinated by the bizarre cult of Wahhabism, the ultra-extremist state form of Islam, that they have become haters of freedom.

Which is the real Saudi Arabia? I believe Saudi Arabia, operating in the interests of its rulers' alliance with the West, may serve as a moderate Arab state. But the Saudi Arabia erected on the basis of Wahhabism can never be a moderate Islamic state.

After publishing my book The Two Faces of Islam, and meeting and conversing with many Saudi dissidents, I have been confirmed in my belief that Saudi subjects do not despise freedom or modernity. They are no different from those who lived under other tyrannies, in other times and places, such as Russia under the czars or the Spanish under Franco. That is, sooner or later, every tyranny loses its ability to intimidate the populace, and every belief system or ideology associated with such a regime loses its capacity to convince people.

Saudi subjects have now lived under 75 years of Wahhabism. The origins of the regime may be traced to a marriage arrangement between the founder of the cult, Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and the head of a clan, Muhammad Ibn Sa'ud, some 250 years ago. The contract was a simple one: the descendants of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab would handle religious affairs, and those of Ibn Sa'ud would govern in a new state based in the underpopulated and backward Arabian region of Nejd. That system found its most stable expression in the creation of Saudi Arabia as we know it, by King Abd al-Aziz Ibn Sa'ud in 1932, and remains in place.

Whose Saudi Arabia?
By STEPHEN SCHWARTZ

A country founded on the basis of Wahhabism can never be a moderate Islamic state

The population of Saudi Arabia is now under more-or-less continuous attack by terrorists, and its representatives, including its ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abd al-Aziz, have publicized their belief that all terrorists must be killed.

How has this situation come to pass?

The Saudi kingdom is treated paradoxically by Western, and even by Israeli opinion. On the one hand, many in Washington and Jerusalem continue to believe that the oil princes of the desert can serve as moderates in a Middle East peace process. At the same time, the internal reality of the country is viewed as ineffably mysterious, conservative and traditional, and its people as so indoctrinated by the bizarre cult of Wahhabism, the ultra-extremist state form of Islam, that they have become haters of freedom.

Which is the real Saudi Arabia? I believe Saudi Arabia, operating in the interests of its rulers' alliance with the West, may serve as a moderate Arab state. But the Saudi Arabia erected on the basis of Wahhabism can never be a moderate Islamic state.

After publishing my book The Two Faces of Islam, and meeting and conversing with many Saudi dissidents, I have been confirmed in my belief that Saudi subjects do not despise freedom or modernity. They are no different from those who lived under other tyrannies, in other times and places, such as Russia under the czars or the Spanish under Franco. That is, sooner or later, every tyranny loses its ability to intimidate the populace, and every belief system or ideology associated with such a regime loses its capacity to convince people.

Saudi subjects have now lived under 75 years of Wahhabism. The origins of the regime may be traced to a marriage arrangement between the founder of the cult, Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and the head of a clan, Muhammad Ibn Sa'ud, some 250 years ago. The contract was a simple one: the descendants of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab would handle religious affairs, and those of Ibn Sa'ud would govern in a new state based in the underpopulated and backward Arabian region of Nejd. That system found its most stable expression in the creation of Saudi Arabia as we know it, by King Abd al-Aziz Ibn Sa'ud in 1932, and remains in place.

BUT A crisis is underway in Saudi Arabia. What are its roots? Aside from the crude, determinist arguments that blame the breakdown of the Saudi consensus on falling average income, the growth of the foreign guestworker population, and similar demographic issues, there is a much deeper problem.

That is that the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia has produced a growing middle class, which seeks entrepreneurial opportunities but finds its way forward blocked by the corruption and absurdity of the ruling elite, symbolized by the Sudairi princes - defense minister Prince Sultan and interior minister Prince Nayef chiefly - and their alliance with the Wahhabi hardliners. Sultan, Nayef and five of their brothers are known as the "Sudairi seven." Their mother, Hussah bint Ahmad Sudair, was a favorite among the many wives of Abd ul-Aziz Ibn Sa'ud.

The negative products of this alliance are obvious in such details as the Saudi ban on women driving, which is unique in the world and causes immense difficulties for people trying to live a middle-class existence. Even worse is the support of the regime for the world campaign to Wahhabize Islam, which produced al-Qaida, and has thus disrupted the Saudi arrangement with the United States and other Western powers.

The discontent of the Saudi middle class is aggravated by its access to the Internet and satellite TV, which reinforces its awareness that there is a way to live as Muslims without the dead weight of Wahhabism. As a material fact, Saudi Arabia is now surrounded by a crescent of Arab states that, if they cannot be compared in modernity or prosperity with a European country, are at least more normal than Saudi Arabia in their relations with their subjects: In Kuwait, Qatar, the Emirates, Oman and Yemen, people are not whipped in the streets for failing to pray, women are not beaten if an inch of their ankle shows below the body-covering abaya, and, of course, women can drive.

In addition, there are large Muslim minorities in Saudi Arabia that have suffered unspeakable repression under the Wahhabis, chiefly the Shi'as of the Eastern Province and the southern border zone, who are subjected to extraordinary discrimination. The oil deposits are mainly in the eastern province, and Shi'as are over-represented in the oil industry technical and management class. Shi'as may account for up to a quarter of the Saudi population.

THE WAHHABI monopoly on religious life, Wahhabi control of Mecca and Medina and Wahhabi supervision of the hajj pilgrimage also represent constant affronts to the non-Wahhabi Sunni population, who follow the earlier, more traditional and pluralistic traditions of Islamic jurisprudence - Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali. Residents of Hejaz, where Mecca and Medina are located, have a significant collective recollection of life under the Ottomans and directly afterward, when they were subjects of a separate kingdom on the road to full, constitutional monarchy. They yearn for that time, when Islamic pluralism existed in place of Wahhabi domination.

The Wahhabis have also rigorously suppressed Islamic spirituality or Sufism, which flourished under the Ottomans and has survived underground. Inside the kingdom, Sufism has begun to make a reappearance, as a form of youth protest.

Where, then, is Saudi Arabia going? The Saudi rulers have a choice. They can follow the road of transition to normality represented by countries like Morocco or Indonesia, which are Muslim but closer to a Western model, or they can continue to defy pressure for change and eventually collapse.

Will the current rulers be replaced by something worse? That is, al-Qaida and bin Laden? I believe not, because bin Laden is a creation of the Saudi state, in exactly the way the terrorist Black Hundreds in czarist Russia were a creation of the regime. Terrorism exists inside Saudi Arabia to dissuade the local population from pressuring the rulers for reform. That is why the terrorists never attack members of the royal family or state institutions, nearly always appear to be police or military personnel, and have a strange ability to repeatedly escape after committing their crimes.

IF THE Saudi monarchy collapses, violence is possible, but I do not believe, based on my conversations with Saudi subjects, that enough of the people support the bin Laden alternative to fuel such a conflict for very long. Western-conducted polling on these issues is misleading - Saudis say they admire bin Laden in the same way Soviet citizens once claimed they loved socialism, i.e. because they don't have confidence they can speak freely. And maybe the Soviets did love socialism, but they didn't go into the streets to shed their own blood to defend it. The same may well be true of many Saudi subjects and Wahhabism.

Will change affect access to the oil by the West? No, because even the most radical Arab regimes have kept their oil on the world market.

The best solution for Saudi Arabia would be for a reforming element from within the royal family (comparable to King Juan Carlos in Spain) to begin a transition to normality. Members of the House of Sa'ud could even retain their role as heads of state, and their wealth, along the model of the Windsors in Britain. But it seems doubtful that can happen, especially given the turn of Crown Prince Abdullah - once seen as a paragon of reform - toward Wahhabi paranoia, viz. his recent accusation that "Zionists" are behind the latest wave of terror attacks.

Would a post-Wahhabi Arabia facilitate peace with Israel? As always, such predictions may be made, but are undependable. At least a post-Wahhabi Arabia would likely cut off funding to Wahhabi infiltration, from Morocco to Malaysia and from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Botswana, as post-Soviet Russia stopped financing world Communism. That in itself would give the Middle East, and the world, space to relax.

The writer, based in Washington, is the author of The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role in Terrorism, a Doubleday paperback.

After publishing my book The Two Faces of Islam, and meeting and conversing with many Saudi dissidents, I have been confirmed in my belief that Saudi subjects do not despise freedom or modernity.

The Religious Policeman
A Saudi man's diary of life in the "Magic Kingdom", where the Religious Police ensure that everything remains as it was in the Middle Ages.
http://muttawa.blogspot.com/

Saturday, May 15, 2004
Our Royal Family
Every self-respecting country ought to have a Royal Family. The Brits have got one. The Danes do, and had a lovely wedding yesterday. Even India has the Gandhis. And we have the House of Saud.

So where did they come from? Let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time, on a hill known as Watership Down, there lived a family of rabbits. They had a family name, let's call them the Hashemites. They ate grass and skipped around, did nobody any harm, really.

However, nearby lived another family of rabbits. They were seriously wierd. All their female rabbits had to stay inside the burrow. Whenever there was an eclipse, they would hold special rituals. They took everything absolutely literally. They were led by the meanest, baddest rabbit ever. Let's call him AbdulAziz.

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He decided to move in on the rabbits on Watership Down, and take the place over. This he did, relatively easily. The poor old Hashemites moved off, so some very poor and scrubby land up north. AbdulAziz was now King of some very prosperous real estate.

He decided it was time to start a family. As I said, these rabbits were seriously wierd. They had a rule that you could have 4 wives at a time. Tough shit on the 75% of male rabbits who ended up celibate, they could always go off and be terrorists. So King AbdulAziz started to procreate, as rabbits do. When he got bored with one wife, he divorced her, and married another one. In fact he married several, having children all along the way. And of course these children interbred, thru several generations.

This tale illustrates why we now have several thousand Princes and Princesses. They all get a pension. However there remains the problem of how to find them gainful employment.

Some are real businessmen in their own right. Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud owns lots of everything. However others operate, let us say, less mainstream businesses. When cops make a drugs arrest, they will never follow the chain upwards, knowing what they would find. Many are involved in the "beverage industry". Others are Venture Capitalists. When they spot a growth business, for example mobile phone sales, they will approach the owner with a "buyout opportunity". When the owner rejects the low price, he is reminded that he could easily become the guest of Prince Nayif's penal correction system, no questions asked. So the bad news is that he has to sell. The good news is that he gets to stay on and manage his old business, on a lousy salary.

This leaves the top princes. Clearly they have to be found positions in the top echelons of government. The royal succession passes via elder brothers, so that's all sewn up. The current King, Fahad, is not a well man. In fact he is both a diabetic and an alcoholic, which is a Bad Thing. It is said that he has so many intravenous drips, so many pipes going into him, that he looks like an Oil Terminal. Then there is Crown Prince Abdullah. He is the next oldest brother, so he is next in line, and the current de facto ruler, given King Fahad's incapacity.

But what to do with the others? Imagine, in earlier years, a family picnic in the grounds of one of the palaces. The younger princes and princesses play together. Young Sultan has lost his Action Man. Young Nayif is beating one of his smaller cousins with a stick; "Apostate!", he shouts, not knowing what it means, but liking the sound of it. Fahad (in tube-festooned wheelchair) and Abdullah, discuss their future careers.

"Saud's no problem", says Abdullah, "He's bright, urbane, witty, charming. Good talker, complete bullshit of course, but it sounds plausible. Make him Foreign Minister, he can be the Acceptable Face of Saudi Arabia, he'll make us all look civilized. I can just hear those women on the diplomatic circuit. "Darling, last night I met the Saudi Foreign Minister! Absolutely Divine! Such a charmer, such twinkling brown eyes! Made me feel twenty years younger!""

"That's settled, then" says Fahad, pushing the plunger on his glucose tube and giving himself another shot. Nayif, meanwhile, has discovered a young female cousin holding Sultan's Action Man, and is throwing large stones at her. "Harlot, adultress, whore!" he screams, his face livid with rage. Eventually, she loses consciousness; Nayif loses interest.

"Sultan", continues Abdullah, "is quite straightforward. He loves his Action Man, his toy tanks, his model aeroplanes. We'll make him the Minister of Defence and Civil Aviation. He'll probably make Saudi Airlines buy every airliner that's going, he thinks Airfix make them, but since when did our nationalized industries have to worry about being cost-effective, that's what the oil money is for".

"OK", says Fahad, for whom any conversation is a bit of an effort. "The one I really worry about is Nayif"

"I know what you mean", replies Abdullah, looking at the prnce in question, who has now captured a stray cat, and is cutting off its head with a steak knife. "He's definitely the dimmest of the lot, I doubt he'd even get into Imam University. He's nasty, mean, sadistic, and completely stupid. I don't think we have anything that would suit him."

Meanwhile Prince Nayif, having decapitated the cat, has climbed into his toy Police Car. He's driving round in circles, blue light flashing, going "Nee-Naw-Nee-Naw", and eating a shawarma, just like the real thing. Abdullah and Fahad look at each other, each having the same flash of inspiration. "Minister of the Interior!" they exclaim simultaneously.

Abdullah settles back in his chair, satisfied. Fahad rewards himself by pushing the plunger on his tube of Johnny Walker Red Label.
Posted by: Alhamedi / 1:25 PM| Comment (0)

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