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Introduction

“Given the brutal police states that some of the nation-state regimes in the Arab region became, Saudi Arabia could have been viewed as an indigenous model that survived colonialism: the Najd region where the Saudi-Wahhabi state first emerged in the mid-eighteenth century was one of the few areas of the Arabian peninsula to avoid direct European control and imperial subjugation. Indeed, since the oil boom of the 1970s, white- and blue-collar labour from around the world clamoured to live in Saudi Arabia for a job, a better wage and a better living. Saudis are ensured education and welfare coverage in a relatively safe and clean environment; the Muslim is offered sanitised access to certain aspects of modernity – fast-food restaurants, high-tech gadgetry, the internet, designer home furnishings. Only Westerners complain because there is no easy, regularised access to branded alcohol and corporatised nightlife.
Yet Saudi Arabia has not evolved in a manner that nationalists consider would have been possible in Algeria, Egypt or Iraq had the heavy hand of colonialism not intervened in their historical development. The Saudi-Wahhabi state tried to lock itself in time through the collusion of colonialism with Al Saud and the ulama, fearing that to import or accommodate the modernising political and social trends of the outside world would spell the downfall of both in a polity they idealised as an Islamic Utopia. The country’s historical experience is intimately involved with Western imperial power. The consequence has been a country trapped within a pre-modern framework that perpetuates religious obscurantism, tribalism, misogyny, inequality and a notion of the citizen as little more than consumer, all in the name of a manufactured cultural particularism (khususiyya) that has become so pervasive that it is cited ad nauseum by many Saudis and Westerners, not least diplomats and government officials, as justification for maintaining the status quo.”

1: The Religious Society

“It was early evening in May 2007 when 28-year-old Salman al-Huraisy was sitting with relatives and friends enjoying homemade alcohol in his mudbrick home in the poor Uraija district of Riyadh. Suddenly they found themselves besieged as some 30 members of the vice squad – a force of religious zealouts called the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – stormed their home from all sides. The mutawwa’een, or the ‘volunteers’, as they are commonly referred to, were coming through the front door, jumping down into the back yard from the roof and the walls and climbing through the windows. They began beating the group with sticks then dragged twelve of them off to a nearby office of the Commission. The beatings continued, but it was Salman, 28 at the time, whom they accused of selling alcohol and drugs, who attracted their wrath. He was beaten to death over two hours in front of his family’s eyes.”

2: Government in the Sharia state

“The third Saudi state has struggled with its terminology. Abdulaziz’s official title was imam, before he was sultan, before he was king. Saudi kings are referred to in Friday prayers as imam al-muslimeen (‘leader of the Muslims’). King Fahd took the title ‘custodian of the two holy sites’ and Saudi media shifted towards the term maleek, an intensifier of the term malik (‘king’) in its references to the Fahd and Abdullah. The national anthem chosen in 1984 uses the word in its title. Libya under the rule of Muammar al-Gaddafi also had name trouble: Gaddafi ditched jumhuriyya (‘republic’) for jamahiriyya (‘state of the masses’). Both cases bring to mind the
mystifications that Fanon observed of post-colonial regimes which perpetuated the exploitative systems they had inherited in new forms and guises. The key point is the dominion of cleric-mediated Sharia is more important than the person of the ruler himself in the Sunni Islamic tradition that the Saudi-Wahhabi state claims to embody. Saudi Arabia sees itself as the true heir of the Islamic Utopia of Medina under the leadership of the Prophet and the four ‘Rightly-Guided’ caliphs who succeeded him.”

3: The Warrior King and His Priests

“Post-9/11 the royal family faced renewed attempts by some of the ulama to suggest, expanding on Ibn Taimiyya’s ideas of priestly primacy, that they can exercise political power in the regulation of public affairs. The Memorandum of Advice of 1991 implied, but did not say directly, that clerics should have an equal if not greater role in running the country. The example of Iran since 1979, although Ayatollah Khomeini’s velayat-e fagih was a Shi’ite innovation, demonstrated that the ulama did not have to remain beholden to a higher political authority in the land. Al-Qa’ida’s call for revolutionary action against despotic apostate rulers and the wider movement of political Islam hinted at such possibilities. With Al Saud facing a crisis in its ties with the West after 9/11, Sahwa sheikh Nasser al-Omar and others suggested publicly that the ulama should be partners in political authority as opposed to the adjunct that they have been, providing advice to the Sharia state’s ruler or legal guardian (waliyy al-amr; that is, the king), or even that they should have the right to take over rulership itself. His argument was that Surat al-Nisaa in the Quran allows for ultimate authority to lie with the ulama.”

4: Segregated nation

“Wahhabi misogyny has left its mark on generations of Saudis, yet Saudi Arabia has the cultural and historical materials with which it can alter women’s status if it wants to through its own traditions. Abdullah al-Ghaddami and Mai Yamani have documented at length the more liberal social customs of the Hejaz and which have been suppressed in stages during the region’s journey as part of the Saudi realm. Today women unveil in shopping malls and socialise in mixed-gender coffee shops and restaurants. A Jeddah businessman tried to establish a TV channel ‘Uyoun Jeddah where unveiled Saudi actresses took the female roles (actresses in Saudi comedies and dramas are usually Bahraini or Kuwaiti). The status of women in south Yemen and the Dhofar region of south Oman demonstrates that Arabian conservatism is not an eternal reality or cultural specificity which subsequently acquired an Islamic stamp of approval, but a situation of its time, maintained and produced by political systems. Women played a role in political activity against the British in Aden, then formed their own trade union, joined the army and mobilised against forced wearing of the veil and in favour of women playing an active role in society outside the home. A law was enacted, modelled on Tunisia, to end polygamy and equalise divorce rights. Serious measures were also taken in an attempt to end tribalism, unlike Saudi Arabia where the state periodically sheds crocodile tears over the strength of tribal identity, despite the central role given to certain tribes in the family-centred political system and the fetishisation of Bedouin traditions (namely the annual Janadiriyya festival). The six governorates set up in South Yemen broke up the old tribal lines that the British had maintained. Revenge among tribes was outlawed, ‘urf, or customary tribal law was suppressed so that rural murder became a capital offence and tribal associations were banned.”

5: The Illusion of Reform

“The narrative of the reformer king bravely challenging the radicals who want to stymie his plans for comprehensive social, political and religious reform has been heavily promoted by some Western media, politicians, diplomats, analysts and academics who like to contrast him to his hawkish half-brothers. To believe the rhetoric, Abdullah wants women to drive, parliament elected, the courts to ditch Sharia judges and al-Wahhabiyya reduced to Sufism. He not only wants it – it’s easy to want – but he will make it happen. Newsweek wrote in May 2008 that the king hopes to ‘outflank the repressive clergy’ with his Aramco-run KAUST. The article fails to mention how the regime has crushed proponents of political reform who oppose publicly the arbitrary powers of the state’s coercive bodies in the form of the security forces and religious police. Reform simply means the clerics moderating their positions to allow for economic development to provide jobs for the burgeoning youth population and rejecting the ideology of takfir in as much as it threatens the Saudi rulers, leaving the autocratic family untouched in their powers and their Western-friendly foreign policy. ‘Ever since King Abdullah came to the throne three years ago, his government has been slowly implementing progressive reforms to counteract the extreme Wahhabi doctrine that many blame for fostering terrorism at home and abroad and for squelching innovation’, it said. The theme of such articles, which have been many in number since Abdullah took the throne, is that he has so little time to do his work since he is already in his eighties and conservative forces will turn back the tide of reform.”

6: Foreign Policy Adventurism: Iran and Palestine

“Talking of horses, the American officials lead Abdullah into some soft banter on the topic of one of his favourite animals. ‘The King appeared alert and at times animated, entertaining his guests with anecdotes about his encounters with Iranian leaders, and throwing up his hands in complaint when asked if he spent time with his horses: “I see them on television when they race,” he said. “I love horses,” he exclaimed, “every couple of weeks I get to see them, and then I have a very calm and restful sleep.”’ The conversation wouldn’t have been complete without the old in-joke about what a dangerous neighbourhood Saudi Arabia lives in – a favourite trope among the Arab leaders who need to please Washington and one that Mubarak often trotted out in interviews with American media. When the diplomatic reports first became public in 2010, Prince Turki al-Faisal led the way in Saudi efforts at damage control, dismissing them as inaccurate prattle, ‘a hodgepodge of selectivity, inaccuracy, agenda pursuit, and downright disinformation’. What the reports represent, however, is a record of what senior princes involved in key policies and decisions over the years said in unguarded moments of considerably more candour and alacrity than we get in the air-brushed PR that princes spout in many published works of the decade following 9/11.”

7: The Saudi Cordon Sanitaire in Arab Media

“Pro-government writers went on the attack over the ‘new activism’ whereby activists use the internet to bypass the traditional, controlled media and have a lot more impact for doing so. One homed in on the use of the hashtag, since one had been assigned to the Saudi terror law debate that helped spread word of the issue. Blogger Adhwan al-Ahmari asked: ‘What are Saudis doing on Twitter?’ In the Saudi edition of Al-Hayat newspaper, columnist Saud al-Rayes said the new activism was as dangerous challenge to the state’s authority. ‘There is no doubt that the new activism has become a dangerous phenomenon because it aims to challenge the state and its organisations’, he wrote. Hani al-Dhaheri, a columnist for the same paper, attacked the activists in another column. ‘How could a whiner in Twitter, Facebook or YouTube assert that someone is innocent or oppressed unless they have an ulterior motive beyond this cause which they use to cover their agenda?’ he said. Dhaheri had actually been a signatory to one of three public petitions for democratic reforms organised earlier in the year after Mubarak was deposed in Egypt. He conformed to the familiar of pattern of activism, a wrap on the knuckles in one form or another, then acting as a loyal policeman of the state by advocating ‘limits’ to demands.”

8: Controlling Mecca: In the House of God

“Negotiating our way down the mountain as the crowds swarmed upwards, we had the first sense of the kind of chaos that was to come. Down below I noticed huge multilingual signposts from the Saudi authorities warning that the Prophet did not sanction prayer there, but clearly no one was paying any attention to what the Saudis thought. A carnival atmosphere was filling this huge pilgrim city at Arafa, which by mid-morning had come alive. Hawkers by the roadside sold everything from umbrellas to keep off the sun, to prayer mats and prayer beads. Men were offering to take pictures of pilgrim groups for up to $12 a shot and enterprising teenagers were offering camel rides for around $3. ‘It’s God that gives me my daily sustenance, but I get about 500 pilgrims every day during the hajj season’, one camel boy said shyly at being questioned about the time-honoured tradition of making money out of the pilgrims.”

Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index