Reining in the clergy would be a good start but it’s like “belling the cat,” a good idea but who’s going to do it? CP Abdullah gives the orders but who will carry them out? The very people that would be coming down on the extremist clergy are their sympathisers. For the past half-century the Sauds have allowed the extremists to push their brand of Islam through the schools and now the citizenry is well indoctrinated. The Wahabbi brand of Islam is the most pure and the truest interpretation of the Quran. Anything else is “brand X” and not to be encouraged. Certainly this isn’t the case with everyone in the country, but “Abdullah Average” believes it.
Tamerlane
You have a point about the National Guard. The SANG consists of mostly some kind of Bedouin and the average grunt is a pretty reasonable guy. The commanders though, are more like the usual people in the Ministry of the Interior, heavily bearded and wearing a “high-water” thobe with no agal. The RSAF has also been somewhat Westernised through their foreign training. I would hate to depend on them in a crunch though.
Ooops! Looks like I crossed postings with you. Yes, as you point out, there hasn’t been much to replace the tribal ties the SANG has lost. Still a decent bunch at the grunt level, not so damned touchy and holier-than-thou.
On another note, GE has closed for the next few days, medical, power transmission, the whole lot. Management called them at home late last night and told them to stay there for the next 96 hours. The compounds are deserted, as is a lot of Riyadh. We’re not even having the usual sneak-off-early on Wednesday traffic jam.
If the average Saudi believes in the extremist interpretations of Wahhabism, we are doomed. I have seen societies which were very “strict” on the outside, but inside their homes, it was a different situation. It is more the fear of treading on new ground than actual fervent beliefs that keeps the society from reforming itself.
However, I accept your point about reform from the top. Even if orders were given out, I can only imagine it leading to a revolt. That leaves us with reform from the bottom-up. Grass-roots. Much like an societal awakening. Again smells like a revolution. Damn!
The early indoctrination here is ferociously effective. I recently had a Saudi engineer in ARAMCO middle management warn me about the dangers of invading Iraq. He wasn’t worried about military issues, but rather the demonic possesion of our troops. He said this with a perfectly straight face and seemed to be truly concerned about the problem. I must admit that my response was less than brilliant, something along the lines of “ahhh, yeah, sure.” Possibly this was an elaborate joke and I was “whooshed” but I don’t think so. This guy controls a budet in excess of $30 million.
As Tamerlane mentioned in the thread on “Wahhabi in America,” maybe simply isolating the more hard line is a possibility. Unfortunately I have no idea at all how to go about this.
An idea that occurred to me during this discussion was schools.
Saudis, and AFAIK Arabs in general, have an enormous respect for education. It is difficult to overestimate the respect they have for an extended education.
At the same time, the Saudi population is extremely dissatisfied with the present school system. The public schools are horribly under-funded and, while no one will openly say so, they also lean much too heavily toward a religious education. Saudi parents will go to extraordinary lengths to get their children into one of the few private schools allowed in the Kingdom. There are two or three “real” co-ed, secular, Western schools here but Moslems, even those from other countries are not allowed to attend without a special dispensation from the Min. of Interior.
If it were possible to set up a chain of Western, secular schools, accredited by a US/UK body, I believe the average Saudi would kick the doors down to get their children into them.
This would take several things to succeed:
a) Some political clout but I believe this would be less of a problem than it might initially appear. It would be hard for someone to come out against education for children.
b) Money. I have little idea of what it would take to set this up but I am certain it would be significant. On the up-side, the parents themselves would contribute. The trouble with the existing “private” schools is they are more-or-less contaminated with religion.
Assuming something like this could even be arranged, (admittedly a large assumption) it would still require years to show a return in the form of a less indoctrinated population. Aside from this, I have no idea of what could be done. Tamerlane?Collounsbury? Any Arabic scholars want to weigh in on this?
I can see the sketch above working, but the issue is there time for that?
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BTW, I presume you got the new Warden Message. I love getting these, although I think they should include the executive summary line, “Please try not to get shot or blown up on our watch.” :^) [/sub]
A while back I was asking if education could be the way to reform the Saudi society. The predominant response was that it would be difficult to pull education out of the Wahhabite hard-liners, and that the Ibn Saud have no legit w/o Wahhabi support.
I see an apparent contradiction. The above suggests to me that the public, by and large, favor the Wahhabites being active in public education. Now, I read that the public are disenchanted with education. What gives?
They’re disenchanted with Âl Sa‘ûd. The ruling family is trying to keep playing the old tricks that got them power in the first place. Although that strategy is now obsolete, they haven’t got any new ideas. They can’t face the fact that they are themselves obsolete.
You are right about the contradiction, I probably didn’t make it clear or the idea was just muddy to start with. The Saudi public loathes their public school system. It is easy for them to see that the graduates just aren’t as useful/desirable as those from western institutions. For the most part, they blame a lack of funding rather than the contamination by religious teachers. There is some truth in that, the schools ARE underfunded but the bigger issue is the control by the clerics. The hard-core are, almost by definition, extremely conservative and do not embrace new ideas and attitudes. I believe the Saudi parents would actually fund such a school but obviously, the less-than-devout attribute would have to be slipped by the Min of Interior and the Mutawwa. Assuming the school didn’t make it some kind of public issue I believe the parents would let it slide.
Collounsbury has pretty-well knocked it on the head anyway. He’s right, even assuming this could be done, there probably isn’t time for it to be effective. If it had been implemented two generations ago it might have helped.
And Collounsbury? I’m glad someone besides myself sees the CYA aspect of those warden messages. If we ever meet I’ll tell you how the Dhahran consulate tried for 30 minutes to get me to evacuate without ever using the word. There is probably some low-level consuler official that is still cursing me.
After the Bosnian civil war, the Saudi religious charities came in, including charities to build and repair mosques. Now, you know, Bosnia’s got a lot of those ornate Turkish style mosques, some of them actually dating back to Turkish control of the region, and of course, a bunch of them got damaged in the fighting. The charities wouldn’t repair them, and instead stripped and destroyed some of them, and built in their place “correct” Wahabi-style mosques.
Odd, AFAIK the aid agencies tearing down mosques was never really emphasized around here. Some of the Shia mosques in Bahrain are nice pieces of architecture and a pleasure to look at. Most mosques in Riyadh are fairly ugly.
Speaking of mosques. The Crown Prince seems to have made a speech recently threatening to consider the supporters of terrorists as terrorists. In Riyadh, prayer time is usually announced at some incredibly high number of decibels and the sermons during Friday prayer can get a bit frenzied. Both of those have stopped over the last week. Prayer call is MUCH more subdued and today’s sermon lacked the true anti-western frenzy we usually get. It was a relaxing day.