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THE SAUDI POT: MELTING OR
BOILING!
NATIONAL IDENTITY, POWER
STRUCTURE & FUTURE PROSPECTS
IN SAUDI ARABIA
Saad A Sowayan
Less than a hundred years ago, Saudi Arabia
consisted of different tribes and different regions that lacked
political cohesion. To unify such a disparate assortment of
tribes and regions into a political amalgam was no mean feat. By
whatever name you call him and by whatever title you address
him, King Abdulaziz was a real national hero and a great
historical figure. But after wars of conquest and political
unification, the late King was faced with the no less daunting
task of nation building; how to induce antagonistic regions,
warring tribesmen and hostile villagers to bury the hatchet and
come together as one nation, how to change diversity into
complementarity and fragmented parts into an integrated whole.
To create a stable, viable country, it is not
enough to draw borders and set up a central political authority.
In addition, you need to establish effective institutions that
would meet people’s need and create a national consensus and a
national culture with shared values and common interests.
Despite the passing of years, traditional loyalties and
associations, tribal, regional and sectarian, still run deep.
To transfer their loyalties from traditional
associations and commit themselves fully to the state, people
have to make sure that the state is a viable alternative, which
could fully meet their needs and serve their interests. They
need to be convinced that it is a neutral apparatus with no
favoritism or preference for one point of view or one group over
the others, and that its organs treat all citizens fairly and
equally, regardless of origin or background, especially in
applying the law and in the dispensation of justice and material
benefits.
The saga of the Saudi dynasty goes back to
1744, when the religious reformer Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhab
concluded a pact with Muhammad b. Saud, the baron of ad-Dir’iyyah,
a small hamlet in central Najd. This pact intrinsically linked
the history of the Saudi State to the Wahhabi creed and to Najd,
its geographical and political center. But if you were to talk
to Saudis from outside of Najd you would sense a tinge of
simmering resentment for what they consider to be the cultural
hegemony of Najd. Cultural hegemony takes many manifestations,
including the imposition of the Wahhabi version of Islam, the
imposition of the Najdi dress code as the national Saudi costume
and the Najdi sword dance as the national anthem.
Najd is rather poor, economically and
culturally, compared to other regions in the Kingdom. The wealth
of the Kingdom comes mainly from the oil fields in the Eastern
Province. However, a good percentage of the population in that
province is Shi’a. The sectarian tension between Shi’a
and Wahhabis is as exasperated as that between Catholics and
Anabaptists.
On the other hand, the Hijazis think that it
is pilgrimage to the two holy shrines in Mekkah and Madinah
that, in addition to providing a good portion of the state’s
annual revenue, gives the Kingdom the unique and leading
position it enjoys in the Muslim World. Furthermore, Hijaz had a
long history of self-rule under the Sharifs and it has always
been a center of learning, therefore, it is considered more
advanced culturally than Najd. Due to the flux of annual
pilgrims to Hijaz from all corners of the world and due to its
long contacts with Egypt and Syria, the Hijazis enjoy a more
urbane and open outlook on life; therefore, they feel ill at
ease with the way they are subjected to the strict Wahhabi
doctrine.
Saudi Arabia is mainly desert and until
recently, nomads constituted a large percentage of the total
population. The remaining were mainly settled villagers and
cultivators. The relation between the two groups was a
combination of economic complementarity on the one hand and
socio-political antagonism on the other. The nomads used to
exchange with the villagers their animals and animal products
for agricultural produce. In the past, the nomads constituted,
due to their military advantage and possession of means of
mobility in the forms of camels and horses, the nobility of the
desert who lorded it over villagers and cultivators. But in the
present situation, they are at a great disadvantage. They lost
their military superiority over the townspeople. Illiteracy is
very high among the Bedouins and they disdain manual labor and
look at it as something below their dignity. The situation is
aggravated by the historical prejudices entertained by nomads
and settlers against one another. The tension between these two
groups is further complicated by the fact that despite the
prejudice of settlers against the nomads, a settler who cannot
trace his genealogical descent to an aristocratic nomadic tribe
is considered lacking in nobility. An example of the conflict
between the old and the new value systems is when a simple, low
paid, unskilled employee of a tribal background is bossed by a
highly qualified manager of non-tribal genealogy. On the job,
the employee resentfully gives in to his boss but outside the
job the roles could easily be reversed. You still could see a
poor illiterate man in rags of tribal origin, nomad or settler,
who would look contemptuously to a nontribal citizen and would
refuse to give him his daughter in marriage, even if he were a
very successful businessman or high ranking official. Nontribal
citizens form a class unto themselves and they cannot intermarry
with those who claim tribal descent. This social custom is given
religious sanction by some religious ‘ulama who annul
marriages between spouses of incompatible genealogies. But
nowadays, many young Saudis are finding such a practice to be
unacceptable. For the last year or two the Saudi society has
been hotly debating the issue of genealogical compatibility
between husband and wife.
Such tribal, regional and sectarian divisions
run through and override most official associations, sometimes
hindering their proper and smooth functioning and rendering them
less efficient. The regime is well aware of all these points of
social disarticulations and the usefulness of using them as
checks and balances against one another in order to create a
sort of political equilibrium and rise above them as the
ultimate and necessary arbiter. Keeping such discordances
simmering but under control hinders the creation of any viable
national consensus which would lead to any sort of concerted
political action on the popular level.
Tribal and sectarian divisions are further
accentuated by the composition of the various branches of the
security forces which are counter poised one against the other
with each under the command of a senior member of the royal
family. The military conscripts are drawn mainly from the
settled hadhar population, the National Guards from the
Bedouin population, and the internal security and police forces
are mixed with the majority coming from the Southern Province.
Such arrangement and heterogeneous
composition would undermine any combined action by these forces.
By reviewing recent Arab history, we would see that the most
serious challenge posed to traditional regimes was the threat of
military coups. But in Saudi Arabia such a threat is rather
remote. The Gulf Arabs generally have become disillusioned with
military juntas and revolutionary rhetoric of the last century.
What the average Saudis worry most about is the possibility of
division within the ruling house, especially with the problem of
succession looming large as the sons of King Abdulaziz get older
and the second generation prepares to take over with no clear
rules laid out for this risky game. This is the more serious
given the various points of social disarticulations I just
mentioned which could be seized upon by different contenders,
given the fact that each of the various branches of the security
forces are under the command of a senior member of the royal
family who usually passes it on to one of his sons. Added to
this is the fact that every one of the seven major provinces of
Saudi Arabia is also under the governorship of a senior member
of the royal family.
These social divisions articulate with
well-entrenched traditional norms to direct political action and
shape political discourse. Appeal to traditional social norms as
a way to run a modern state may seem anachronistic, but they are
politically useful because they are congruous with the
conservative outlook of the great majority of the general
public, not to mention the fact that many policy makers and
people in the government are themselves people with traditional
mode of thinking and meager education who sincerely believe in
the efficacy and merits of such methods. More importantly, they
are organically anchored to the interests of the ruling elite
and clerical establishment.
Media and educational institutions which are
financed by the government and dominated by the clerical class
are diverted from their true functions of raising consciousness
and providing useful information and education and turned into
machineries for the dissemination of such conservative
discourse, a discourse revolving around certain interconnected
traditional values which don theological garb in order to
elevate them from the status of social norms to that of
religious principles. Such discourse is dominating academic
institutions, professional associations and literary clubs which
leaves no podium for any true scientific, philosophical,
inquisitive pursuit of true, objective knowledge.
Allow me to spell out some of these norms in
order to show how they interlock with one another to form a
comprehensive value system and how, in turn, this value system
serves to intermesh political discourse with religious discourse
and thus create an intellectual climate that is conducive
neither to progressive change nor to individual freedom.
Let me start with the notion of unitarianism
at-tawHied, since this is a pivotal concept, both
religiously and politically. Unitarianism is a religious
doctrine. But it is also a state of mind amenable to political
manipulation. It is a mode of consciousness shaped by the
interweaving of cultural values and religious conviction. The
unitarian view spelled over from religious to political
discourse and was generalized to encompass all aspects of
mundane worldly existence. It is manifested not only in the
ethical and religious sphere but also in the socio-political
domain.
According to the Wahhabi unitarian view, the
society is held together not so much by complimentary
associations and mutual interdependencies, but by binding
sentiments and common belief, a collective consciousness. It is
based not on utilitarian and expedient considerations, but on
shared moral principles, on the organization of human sentiments
into implicit convictions. Collective sentiments embrace the
greater part of the individual sentiments. Unitarianism gives
room neither for rational choice nor for individual freedom. No
matter where your mind or taste leads you, you are not allowed
to leave the fold or swerve from the right path followed by the
community of the faithful, the ‘umma. This leaves little
room whatsoever for differences in opinion or in life styles.
Even dress codes and personal appearance become regimented.
This submergence of individual personality in
the group limits the possibility of free choice and individual
preference. Any attempt to assert uniqueness or individuality is
viewed not as a licit alternative stand stemming from a rational
free choice, but as a detrimental antithesis of the fundamental
truth, as a deterioration from a pristine, original archetype of
the time of the prophet. The archetype is a model to be emulated
and reproduced, not dissected or scrutinized.
Such mode of thinking is characterized by a
static conception of the universe. Not only does it censure
individual differences but it also does not accommodate temporal
social change. Social change is not progress and evolution. It
is decay and degeneration, always for the worst. According to
this conception, the further we turn back in time the closer we
get to the ideal golden age of pure innocence.
The concept of ‘ummah, i. e. community
of the faithful, is loaded with familial connotations. The whole
community is seen as one extended family. Political, economic,
social and all other forms of relationships, with all that is
incumbent upon them in terms of rights and obligations, are
couched in familial terms. This is a relic from an earlier stage
of political development, the tribal, pre-state stage when
members of the whole tribe were conceived to be, according to
tribal ideology, all related to each other as descendants from
an ancient common ancestor.
Such conception has its impact on political
behavior. The jural aspects of the relationships and obligations
of citizens to one another and with the ruler are articulated in
kinship terms and tinged with familial coloring. The
relationship between ruler and ruled is not governed by a social
contract with clearly stated and mutually binding legal codes
and constitutional precepts so much as by mutual obligations
vaguely couched in paternal expressions. To fudge the political
and merge it with the social relieves the state from elaborating
viable, efficient political institutions with clearly defined
responsibilities and legally accountable apparatus.
This leaves the citizen perplexed. He is a
citizen of a modern state, living in an impersonal crowded urban
setting, yet he is supposed to operate and run his daily
business according to rural, traditional, small community,
face-to-face principles. To deal with such challenges, which are
compounded by the absence of effective government institutions,
professional organizations and viable unions of civil society,
the citizen is pushed back into the traditional loyalties of
locality and tribe. He must reduce all jural and administrative
problems he faces to the level of personal issues. He attaches
himself as the clientele of an influential figure of his tribe
or locale with wide network and good connections who would be
his patron, or waastah, to look after him, to further his
interests and to help him get what actually should be his right
as a citizen.
Furthermore, the familial conception of
society has its impact on how the role of public media is
perceived. Public media means public exposure, which would
violate the concept of sitir. The concept of sitir
is an important concept in traditional Arab culture, which is
hard to translate into English. It is related to discretion,
privacy and cover up. When you pray to Allah to grant you
sitir, you are hoping that you live your life honorably and
decently without ever being exposed to public shame, disgrace or
embarrassment. Until recently, families in Gulf countries,
especially in Saudi Arabia, avoided public exposures and shunned
public places. For example, Riyadh is a very modern capital in
many respects, yet there is a dearth of public parks or movie
houses. Private homes are fortified and surrounded with high
fences. It is only within the last few years that families there
started to venture to go dine in restaurants. Public exposure
could reveal your weaknesses. You should never reveal your
vices, nor your physical and material weaknesses. You should
always appear to the outside world as an honorable man of
substantial means and strength. That is why you should walk in
the streets wearing expensive clothes, even if you have to do it
on an empty stomach, because people could see what you are
wearing but not what you have eaten.
Therefore, the media should always be
laudatory, never critical. Outward criticism on the part of a
subject of a government authority is conceived as parallel to
showing disrespect to a family authority figure. Criticism could
convey the wrong message to the outside world, a message that
the house is divided and, by implication, weak. Any grievance
regarding the performance of the regime should be communicated
to the ruler in his majlis or submitted in a written
letter addressed discretely to the proper channels without
broadcasting such a grievance to the outside world. The
oft-repeated cliché is that we should not expose our laundry to
outsiders. A nation, like a family, should appear strong and
united behind the ruler, like members of a family behind a
patriarch. This is aptly expressed by one of the princess when
three Saudi activists were released from jail at the
inauguration of king Abdullah. The prince justified their
release by saying that they were children who erred against
their father and their father forgives them.
This patriarchal conception of political
authority is buttressed by the dominant official religious
ideology that disapproves of any outward show of civil dissent
and lends no provision to popular suffrage. According to this
ideology, the function of a ruler is mainly to insure security
for his people and their property, provide for the needy and
maintain law and order according to Islamic ethical principles.
Administering justice according to shari’ah, the legal
Islamic principles, is the backbone of political legitimacy. The
ruler, no doubt, should be sensitive to public opinion, but only
as long as that opinion does not undermine his authority.
Consideration of public opinion is not so much yielding to
public pressure as it is motivated by benevolence and a sense of
duty of ruler to ruled as stipulated by the sharie’ah.
What I have just said about the concept of
sitir is intricately interlinked with another widely
circulated concept that has been gaining grounds lately because
it has proven to be politically expedient. This is the concept
of khusousiyyah.
khusousiyyah
has a broad semantic field and a wide range of different shades
of meaning, among them: authenticity, uniqueness,
distinctiveness, peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, and many more. But,
as a political slogan, it is an ill-defined concept, which is
used as a bulwark against change by conservatives who want to
maintain the status quo.
The obscurity and indeterminacy of meaning
makes the word an ideal trump card to be used when you want to
silence the opponent and win the argument by fiat through appeal
to sentimental rather than logical grounds. The concept of
khusousiyyah is so loose, any form of oppression, extremism
or chauvinism can be justified in the name of preserving and
maintaining our khusousiyyah. The word could be used to
defend many abuses such as oppression of women. Democracy and
human rights go counter to our khusousiyyah. Satellites,
the internet and all modern means of communication are resisted
because they would impinge on our private culture and dilute our
khusousiyyah. Streamlining of the country with the rest
of the world is resisted because it means the giving up of
khusousiyyah. When liberal voices are raised demanding
change they are silenced in the name of khusousiyyah.
The ruling elite and the religious
establishment both are allied in their championing of
khusousiyyah. They use it, each in its own way, to entrench
their positions and strengthen their hold on the populace. But
this alliance between the political and the religious
establishments does not always work out smoothly. Considerations
of expediency, realpolitik and pressures, internal and external,
may force the political establishment sometimes to make
calculated concessions. This offers the religious establishment
the opportunity to present itself to the masses and pose as the
real champion of khusousiyyah. Thus, khusousiyyah
becomes a political commodity that goes for the bidder who
offers the highest price, in terms of more extreme rhetoric.
However, we should keep in mind that the
establishment of the Saudi state and the core of its legitimacy
revolve around its alliance with the clerical class. Therefore,
relying on the clerical class for legitimacy entails avoiding
rupture with the religious establishment and sometimes
succumbing to their fundamentalist ideology. This gives the
clerical class a great leverage in social and political affairs.
As a matter of fact, any approval or disapproval of government
policies has to be couched in a religious language to give it
any weight or credence. One may dare oppose a political decree
but it would be heretical and suicidal to oppose a religious
fatwa. Religious considerations take precedent over secular
considerations. Issues are examined and evaluated from a
religious vantage point. Whenever the government wishes to
thwart or abort public opposition to any domestic or foreign
policy it resorts to the Council of Grand Religious ‘ulama
to issue a religious fatwa endorsing such a policy, as it
did when it wanted to invite the “infidel“ American soldiers to
liberate Kuwait, or when it asked for a fatwa against
terrorist groups or against the take over of the Grand Mosque by
Juhaiman. This alliance with the clerical class puts the regime
in a delicate position regarding its efforts to combat
fundamentalists and extremists. It is intent on crushing them
but it does not wish to convey the feeling that by taking harsh
measures against the fundamentalists it is taking those measures
against the religion of the people.
Actually, the government is not to be blamed
for being more lenient with the fundamentalists, visa vis
intellectuals and liberals. What the government is doing is the
political thing to do. This is the nature of the power beast.
Politics take note only of those who have backing behind them,
those who express the interest of a class, a block of
constituents. The fundamentalist discourse, in its emphasis on
the importance of religion in life, is, more or less, expressing
the interest of the clerical class, which is quite sizable; from
callers to prayers, to leaders of prayers, to judges in courts,
to teachers and students in religious institutions, etc, etc.
The clerics are the only well-established professional class in
the Arab World with historical roots, which go a long way back
in history, with well articulated discourse, substantial
literature and a broad public base, not to mention that
practically all endowments and philanthropic contributions in
the Arab World go to religious functions and institutions with
only very negligible share directed towards scientific research,
cultural activities, the humanities and the arts. So what if a
handful of intellectuals go round talking to a score of audience
in few soirees a week! The clerics meet with multitudes of
devotees five times a day at the five daily prayers. This is in
contrast, for example, to the liberals and intellectuals who are
powerless and ineffectual because they do not express the
interest of any social class. At the close of the 18th century,
the liberal voice in Europe was expressing the interest of the
rising class of the mercantilists and the bourgeoisie in their
struggle against the nobility and the feudal lords. Without the
material support and political backing of the merchant class,
liberalism in Europe might not have achieved such tremendous
success. Before the rise of the merchant class in Europe, many
reformers, from John Wyclif to John Huss, were burnt at the
stake with no one rushing to take their side. We should also
remember that the timing of the reformation movement of Martin
Luther was the secret for its success. It came at a time when
the German provinces were anxious to throw the yoke of the
Vatican and wanted to keep the taxes and revenues of their
provinces to themselves instead of sending it to Rome. We might
say the same thing regarding the Wahhabi movement. It succeeded
because it managed to recruit a power base, that of ad-De’iyyah,
and because the Najdi merchants did not want to send their
zakaat to Istanbul.
The roots of the European merchant class go
back to guild associations, a professional class independent
from both church and state. The merchant class in the Middle
East, and Arab World in particular, especially in the Gulf
Region, has a completely different story to tell. Let us start
with the prophet. His tribe, Quraish is a merchant tribe. Even
before then, the temples in the ancient Middle Eastern States
have always been associated with merchant activities. Sacred
precincts in the East were meant to be safe areas to engage in
trade. The spread of Sufi zawaya and the religion of
Islam in Africa and the Far East are associated with the
itinerant merchants.
Furthermore, in the Arabian Peninsula and the
Gulf Region, all traditional sultanates, emirates, chieftains
and peti-states were established by merchant families, mainly
from the ‘Geil merchants or pearle merchants. The revenue
from merchandise gives them their material base, while their
alliance with the clerical class give their political and legal
authority the necessary legitimacy. This shows the political and
religious roots of mercantilism in the Gulf Region and the
intertwining of the merchant class with the ruling class and the
clerical class. This leaves the intellectuals and liberals out
in the cold, with no role to play, at least up till now.
Being in league with the ruling class, any
liberalization of the laissez faire vintage might hurt
the merchants more than benefits them, since it could break
their monopolies. They draw their wealth mainly from trade and
lucrative government contracts, more than from industry or
entrepreneurship. Since ancient times, the wealth of the Gulf
merchants is export/import with no industrial base, therefore,
they have no interest in scientific research and technological
development. As for clerics, their hostility towards natural and
physical sciences and secular knowledge in general need no
proof. In such social formation there is no room for any
intellectual enterprise.
Aside from the clerical class and the
merchant class, tribal elements also are staunch supporters of
the regimes in the Gulf Region. Political alliance between the
regime and present tribal leaders goes back to the early days of
unification and state formation when the tribes employed their
military energy and mobility as rapid deployment force in any
battlefield or any emergency. Tribal leaders who resisted the
hegemony of King Abdulaziz or allied themselves to opposing
powers such as the Othmans or Sharif Husayn of Hejaz were routed
and deposed and a new leadership was installed who owe their
position and allegiance to the House of Al Saud. Continuing
largess and patronage keep this loyalty
active. Insuring the allegiance of a tribal chief would insure
the allegiance of the whole tribe. Due to the demographic weight
of the tribal elements in society and its active role in state
wars, tribal ethos are not drowned by the religious principles.
On the contrary, the religious and the tribal merge to form a
national identity with two juxtaposed ideals, both of which are
conservative in outlook and loyal to the state.
Tribes, Clerics, and to a certain extent
merchants are the only organized groups who, each as an
independent and discrete block, could act to influence
government decisions, mainly with regard to domestic policies.
The power and wealth they have enable them to own and monopolize
the media in all its forms, from preaching channels to poetry
channels, and thus shape public opinion and color it the
conservative color. Although these media outlets are not
financed directly by the government, they usually work in line
with government media policies.
On the other hand, liberals and intellectuals
enjoy neither power base nor popular support. Their presence on
the national arena is rather feeble and impotent. Many are the
odds they face and insurmountable are the obstacles preventing
them from fulfilling their mission of enlightenment. They have
to combat outmoded but well entrenched traditional values which
I have already spelled out. To help visualize the situation let
me draw the following scenario.
If, as an intellectual, you happen to be
invited by a member of the business community to a weekend
soiree, you will find yourself in the odd position of having to
defend yourself, along with your fellow intellectuals, for not
raising your voice and for remaining free still and not yet
being thrown in jail for expressing opposition to the
establishment. One of the people present, after taking two sips
from his glass of expensive scotch and gulping a handful of
roasted peanuts, would accost you and reprimand you for your
pacifism and give you a long harangue about the necessity of
reform. You look at his manicured, shiny face and his stiffly
starched headdress and wonder to yourself: Is this guy really
serious? You leave the soiree a bit tipsy but hopeful and full
of enthusiasm. The next day you write up a petition addressed to
the king or president, whoever happened to be the head of your
state and whichever happened to be the system of your
government, asking for some moderate measures of liberal
reforms. Then, you take the petition to your fellow
intellectuals for signature assuring them that some of the most
important and influential business people would cosign it. After
that, you take the petition to the same business people who two
nights ago were full of talk about change and reform. As it
turns out, every one of them has his own excuse and ‘good’
reason for not signing. You decide to go ahead anyway with your
petition. As a result, you and the handful of your colleagues
who signed with you are either fired from your jobs or your
passports are withdrawn from you to prevent you from leaving the
country or, in case the language of the petition is not too
bold, you are prevented from ever appearing on TV or writing in
any newspaper to express any opinion on any subject whatsoever.
Yet, none of those manicured businessmen would dare ruffle his
starched headdress and come to your rescue. It is only then that
you realize that their pompous harangues about reform were meant
only to clear their conscious for being so wealthy despite their
illiteracy and to prove to their own satisfaction that members
of the educated class are losers and failures which shows that
education is useless anyway.
Let us now move to the other side of the
fence and tell a different story. Suppose that one of the
religious fundamentalists grabbed a microphone after Friday
prayers in any mosque and started a sort of soapbox sermon on
the moral ills of the time. Overcome with zeal, he would most
likely step over all bounds in seeing heresy everywhere and
accusing everybody of infidelity and pointing to high government
officials as cohorts of the devil for remaining silent while
they see all these travesties. He might even challenge the
sovereignty of the state and exhort everybody to take the law
into their own hands and rise up in the name of the true faith
to correct such flagrant transgressions against God. If
authorities find the guts to arrest him, multitudes would flood
the offices of government officials demanding his release. If
his sentence is prolonged they will see to it that his family is
well taken care off. Websites will be created to collect
signatures for his release and donations for his family. When he
comes out of jail, he will be received by the people as a
conquering hero. On the other hand, the other fellow, our friend
the intellectual cum liberal, will be avoided like a camel with
scabies.
What is needed is not only a separation of
powers or separation between church and state, but rather to
disengage the ruling class, the merchant class and the clerical
class from one another. Globalization and mandatory membership
in international organization such as World Trade Organization
might be the catalyst, which could bring about such a process by
fiat. After all, it is globalization, which is forcing the
regimes of the region to resort to technocrats rather than
clerics to fill certain government posts and ministries.
Fragmentation of public opinion and lack of
national consensus due to the social divisions alluded to above,
in addition to absence of professional syndicates, labor unions,
and associations of civil societies make it difficult for
popular voice to gather strength and rise to a perceptible
momentum that could exercise any political pressure on
government decisions.
Within the last few decades, Saudi Arabia has
been going through an unprecedented demographic explosion
whereby the average size of a nuclear family is soaring
somewhere between 8 to 12 individuals. People under the age of
25 years constitute the greater percentage of the population.
Problems of adjusting to modern times are felt most acutely by
these young people, males and females. Public schools and
colleges are becoming overcrowded, with many students finding it
almost impossible to find places for themselves to continue and
finish their higher education. High rate of unemployment coupled
with inflation and high rents and high prices of commodities
puts high financial strain on families with average income. Due
to the low standard of public schools and public hospitals many
families are obliged to send their children to expensive private
schools and private clinics, with no insurance policies to pay
for the bills. The low standard of the curriculum does not equip
university graduates with the necessary skills and
qualifications to compete successfully in the job market and
start successful careers, which means they will not have the
necessary income to get married, build a house and establish a
family and stable life of their own. Unwed young boys and girls
is becoming one of the most hotly debated issues in Saudi
society today. Recent exposure to the outside world through
modern media and means of communication and travel had created a
big generation gap between the old and the young. Young people
cannot fail to notice the big difference between the outside
world, with its political freedom and social openness and
economic affluence, and the repressive social milieu they live
in. Girls revel in watching the latest in fashion and cosmetics
on TV, yet they must cover up when they go out in the streets.
With uncertain future ahead of them, the
sense of anxiety and frustration by the young generation is
further aggravated by the general political instability in the
region as a whole.
Within the past few years Saudi Arabia has
achieved unprecedented economic growth and significant foreign
investment outside the oil and gas sectors. The coming years
promise to bring unparalleled growth and development, huge
public projects with huge budgets having been announced, and
some already having been started, but it will take some time
before the money for financing these projects is siphoned down
to the public. Furthermore, there is real concern that contracts
for these projects will go to few certain families with
political leverage and family connections to the ruling elite.
The wealth is getting concentrated in the hands of the
privileged few. A clear class distinction is emerging with a
great divide between the haves and the have-nots, with no
sizable middle class in between to stabilize society. More and
more voices are being heard lately demanding that granting of
contracts as well as high government posts should be awarded
according to merits and qualifications and not family
connections and social network. These same voices are demanding
a more equitable division of national wealth and that the whole
population of the country should be given a fair and even chance
to share in this wealth instead of it being the exclusive
privilege of a limited number of specific families whose members
and children are assured secure future with high paying jobs and
influential positions, regardless of what they contribute to the
prosperity and development of the kingdom.
Let me sum up the situation by saying that
the Saudi society is actually divided into two camps. The
majority camp of fundamentalists who see danger looming
everywhere because the society is changing too fast. Then there
is a small but growing camp of liberals who also see danger but
because they think society is not changing fast enough to keep
pace with the rest of the world
Yet, the general feeling among all sectors of
the Saudi society is that the present regime, like all regimes,
might not be ideal but the alternative could be much worse and
would eventually lead to anarchy. None of the regimes in the
recent history of the Middle East offers an attractive or a
better alternative. Nowadays, the average Saudi would not relish
a Qadhdhaafi style, or even a Khomeini style revolution. This
feeling is fortified by recent moves by the Saudi regime to
introduce some measures of moderate social reforms and a
semblance of freedom of expression.
If you pick up any Saudi newspaper on any day
of the week, you will find that social issues take up a good
deal of space. More voices are raised demanding equality for
women and a stop of sex discrimination and wife beating. Demands
for opening public theatres and cinemas are mounting these days.
The argument is that if you can watch a movie on TV in your
living room why not be able to watch one on a big screen in a
theatre house! Of course, the objection comes mainly from those
who do not want to see ikhtilaat, i. e. the mixing
together of men and women in the same place, because the prophet
said in one hadieth “whenever a strange man and a strange
woman meet privately in seclusion, surely the devil will join
them”, meaning the man will try to seduce the woman. But the
other side claims that it is not true that the only interaction
that could take place between man and woman is sexual
intercourse, for women are not merely sex objects.
Another hotly debated issue is changing the
days of the weekend from Thursday and Friday to be Friday and
Saturday. Although some clerics object strongly to this change
claiming that it would coincide with the Jewish Sabbath,
economic realities might eventually force such change because it
would cut down business losses of closing in Saudi Arabia on
Thursday and Friday followed by businesses in the rest of the
world closing on Saturday and Sunday, a total of four days of
business interruption. Following the settlement of this issue, I
predict the coming issue to be brought up is the half-hour shut
down of businesses every day during the five daily prayers.
Perhaps one of the most pressing issues the
Saudi society is facing these days is the coexistence of various
religious sects, especially sunnah and shi’ah. No
one even dared raise this issue few years ago. But today it is a
burning topic that every body is concerned about. There are
extremists on both sects, but the common consensus is that the
concept of citizenship should mean a kind of socio-political
contract based on jural and not religious considerations. All
people who carry the Saudi nationality should have equal rights,
regardless of their sectarian convictions. King Abdullah himself
is carrying the banner of sectarian tolerance and coexistence.
He never misses an opportunity to stress this point, the latest
was his endorsement of the interfaith dialogue.
Let me conclude by asserting that the point
of this presentation is not to make a political statement. My
purpose, which I hope that I have managed to accomplish, is to
present you with a detached socio-political assessment of what
is happening and why it is happening. I only hope that this is a
cultural stage we will soon pass by. After all, we have to keep
in mind that the idea of cultural evolution and social progress,
as well as the idea of individual liberty, are late discoveries
in the intellectual development of mankind. Less than two
centuries ago, Europe was still debating merits of the ancients
versus merits of the moderns. Individual liberty and freedom of
choice are the products of the principle of laissez-faire,
which is concomitant with capitalism and market economy,
themselves products of the industrial revolution, itself a
product of the scientific revolution. So, may be before we
clamor for individual freedom and liberty we should work towards
reaching scientific and intellectual freedom.
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