Saudi Arabia had been a place of wealth and secrecy, but hiding
the role of extremists in the kingdom is no longer an option. Domestic
bombings and connections to September 11th have forced Saudi Arabia
into an uncomfortable spotlight.
Home of Islam and source of a quarter of the world's oil reserves,
the country always had strategic importance. Under the rule of
the al-Saud princes Saudi Arabia has been a paradigm of stability,
but no more. Their rule is challenged from within and without.
How far can the Royal family go in reforming their absolute rule?
What is the real conflict threatening the eight-decade rule
of the House of Saud?
An American diplomat said the essential sound of Saudi Arabia
is silence.
Not perfect silence. In Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh there is
also the din of traffic plying its way around a ribbon of highways
that would not be out of place in a new conurbation in the American
Sunbelt. A gleaming modern surface, with hardly anybody in the
streets: that seems to be the face that Saudi Arabia wants its
capital to present to the world. For a foreigner, finding out
what lies beneath the surface is no easy task.
In other Arab countries, the cities and towns bear the shape
of their imperial past, Ottoman and European. A newcomer can wander
through picturesque lanes down to the old town bazaar or sit in
the cool courtyard of the beautiful main mosque and meet people.
But in the cities of Saudi Arabia, the architectural past seems
to go back only as far as 1973. Then oil prices quadrupled, and
Riyadh -- population then about 200,000, population today close
to 5 million -- began to take shape. Picturesque back alleys were
not built into the city's new design and the Mosques are aggressively
plain.
The absence of pedestrians could be due to a climate that is
almost unlivable for three months of the year and even in autumn
is on the cusp of what is bearable for the human animal. However,
it could also be explained by the fact that the residents of this
city have very little to do. Many public social activities that
are taken for granted elsewhere are forbidden by the strict form
of Islam that is practiced here:
Inside Riyadh's city limits it is even haram to go to coffee
houses and smoke the traditional Arab water pipe.
But at the outskirts of Riyadh, where the First World stops
and the desert resumes, you can find places to relax with sheesha
and a non-alcoholic beverage of your choice and try to join
in a conversation with ordinary Saudis. The Dana Coffee House
is one such place. Out under the stars, it's a little man-made
oasis. Around a shallow pool of water and on parched grass underneath
date palm trees are dozens of television sets perched on little
tables. Some of the TVs are tuned to soccer from Europe, and
football from the U.S. But most of the men here, sitting in
little groups of three and four, are watching all the things
that are haram: scantily clad Arab women singing love songs
on the Lebanese Broadcasting Channel or Egyptian movies from
the 1950s with Omar Sharif seducing lovely, young, Western-dressed
Arab girls.
Not Much to Do But Talk Politics and Religion
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Medina
is the second holiest city in Islam. It lies 447 kilometers
north of Mecca, the other holiest city in Islam. Medina
is where the Prophet Muhammad is buried. Medina is
also where the Prophet Muhammad and his followers
arrived in 622 AD and compiled the Book of Quran,
the holy book of the Muslim religion. |
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Not much to do here but talk, a favorite -- and perhaps the
only -- Saudi pastime. Politics and religion (in Saudi Arabia
inseparable topics) dominate many conversations, especially
on the extremely rare occasion when an American is around. Three
young men, who don't give their names, want to tell you what
is happening north of their country in Iraq, and it doesn't
please them. "There is a movement inside the kingdom here for
Iraq," says one of the men. "I mean that in the future
American will feel worse about this Iraq attack," he says.
You have to learn to read between the lines in this country.
The movement inside the kingdom the speaker referred to, is
the desire of young, religious men to go support their Arab
brothers in Iraq -- whether the Iraqis want them there or not.
The speaker is a university student, studying at Imam Muhammad
bin Saud Islamic University. Its massive campus is not far away.
When you ask the question that every Western journalist who
has visited the country since September 11th has asked, "Why
did so many of the hijackers come from Saudi Arabia," his response
is almost a paraphrase of "what did you expect?"
Throughout Saudi Arabia the sense of being the guardians of
Islam because of Mecca and Medinah is palpable. King Fahd's official
title is "Keeper of the Two Holy Mosques." And because Islam
has been thrust violently into the foreground of world affairs,
its future and Saudi Arabia's future are linked. It makes life
in the Kingdom of the House of Saud more tense than it has ever
been.
In May, suicide attacks killed 10 Americans. These bombings
turned out to be just the opening salvo in a campaign waged by
Islamic terrorists in the kingdom. The target of the May attack
was the al-Hamra compound, home to many employees of Vinnell,
a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman. Through the Pentagon, Vinnell
has the contract to train the Saudi National Guard, an elite unit
that protects the Royal Family. The guard is so important that
the de facto manager of Saudi Arabia's affairs, Crown Prince Abdullah,
has a title that includes the phrase "Commander of the National
Guard."
Al Qaeda sympathizers are suspected of carrying out the al-Hamra
and the more recent bombings. Yet after the first attack there
were reports that members of the Guard had provided arms to Al
Qaeda over the years.
The May bombing provoked surprise and an immediate government
crackdown on suspected militants. Police raided farmhouses not
far from the Dana Coffee House and found large caches of weapons.
Mazin Motabagani of the al-Madinah Center for the Study of Orientalism
at Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University researches how the
Islamic world is perceived in the West. He said he was "surprised
and not surprised" by the attacks. "Our society in Saudi Arabia
is not an open society. Things were not discussed in the open.
We could have prevented this if we had a more open society," he
said.
Who's In Charge Here?
You can understand Mazen Motabagani longing for a more open
society. He was educated in America 35 years ago. But an open
society was always going to be difficult to achieve here. Since
uniting most of the Arabian Peninsula by the sword in the first
third of the 20th century, the House of Saud has ruled the nation
as an absolute, feudal monarchy. There are no elected bodies
in the country, so there are no political parties. Political
legitimacy is conveyed to the family by its close relationship
with the leaders of the Wahabbi sect of Islam. It's a relationship
that goes back hundreds of years. That much is clear, but like
so many other aspects of Saudi society, the details of the modern
relationship between the House of Saud and the clergy are completely
opaque. It isn't even clear who runs religion in the country.
"Nobody's in charge here. There are no clergymen in the Islamic
religion and Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of
Islam. So, we will not have a pope, we will not have an ayatollah,
or anything of that matter," says Mohammed al-Khorreji, of the
Arab News newspaper. "Who is in charge is a collective thing
based on the Islamic scholars. Now if they had recommended something
that would have an adverse effect on the kingdom, it would be
rejected," says Khorreji.
The religious community may not have the power over state
policy, but it has tremendous power at street level. The enforcers
of the Council for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of
Vice, the Muttawa police, roam the country aggressively enforcing
Islamic rules on behavior. The religious leadership also controls
the country's education system to the chagrin of Mazen Motabagani.
"The problem with the religious community is we have what I
sometimes call the small dictators. It's not easy sometimes
to live within these universities or these schools teaching
religion to be open-minded, to be innovative; there are so many
ways to stop your activities," says Motabagani.
Motabagani's critique of education has a historical context.
"In the last 200 years or more in the Islamic world, religious
studies were taken by the less talented students. I think we
should have taken religion more seriously," he says.
Foreign Workers
It's hard to imagine a society where religion is taken more
seriously, except maybe Afghanistan under the Taliban, and Afghanistan
doesn't have the money with which to buy modernity.
Nor does Afghanistan have the money to import its work force.
The population of Saudi Arabia is 24 million. About 5.5 million
of those people are foreign workers. They do virtually everything
from sweep the streets to manage the shops to staff the hospitals
At night, many of them congregate in Riyadh's Batha district
market. Even young Saudis come here to haggle in a patois of
Arabic and English over purchases of life's necessities.
The market in Batha sprawls up and down alleyways either side
of a highway overpass. It is as close as Riyadh comes to having
a traditional bazaar but even here there are sounds missing.
A hint of music hits a listener like the pleasurable shock of
air conditioning when you come out of the 105 degree heat.
It's a strange music store that doesn't play music to entice
customers, but this is the kind of place the Muttawa religious
police would visit to make sure that the haram activity of playing
music wasn't happening. The Pakistani shopkeeper, a devout Muslim,
has his doubts about this excessive Islam, and he says that
while he works in the country, he doesn't enjoy living in Saudi
Arabia.
Batha is a forlorn place at night, a place where you can feel
time slowly being butchered. It's streets are lined with men
shuffling along at loose ends, separated from their families
for months and even years at a time. They work in Saudi Arabia
to earn salaries that are tiny by American standards, but huge
by the standards of the villages they come from in Pakistan,
India, Bangladesh, Malaysia or the Philippines. But, they never
fully integrate into Saudi society, and the locals ignore them.
The nice thing about Batha for a visitor to Riyadh is that
it is the one place where men and women can speak to each other,
if there are no Muttawa around, and talk about their lives.
Several nurses say that since they came, they have no complaints
about salary or work, but they did say that getting used to
the restrictions on women was a bit of a culture shock. The
Muttawa presence seems to have been scaled back recently according
to the nurses. One of them speculated it was part of the ruling
family's attempt to liberalize the society. She suggested I
get out of Riyadh and go to Eastern Province, where she promised
I would find a much more open society.
I decided to take her advice.
Next: A Visit to the Eastern Province
