No, ahl is one word for ‘family’ (it basically means ‘people’ and can also mean ‘family’), but it’s a completely different word from the one we were discussing.
The word âl used in Arabian family names is from a different root. When you look it up in an Arabic dictionary, you have to look under the root letters, not the actual spelling of the individual word. The root that âl comes from is ’-w-l.
It can be found in A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic by Hans Wehr, 3rd printing, on page 34:
âl family, relatives, kinsfolk, clan; companions, partisans, people; mirage, fata morgana.
This word comes from the verbal root ’-w-l meaning ‘to return, revert to; to go back, be attributed, be attributable to, spring, derive from; to lead, conduce, tend to, result eventually in, to come or go eventually, pass into the hands of’. Other words from this root include âlah ‘instrument, utensil, tool, apparatus, device, machine’. âlî ‘mechanical’, and awwal ‘first’. The word âlah (tool) is also used to mean ‘penis’, even though it’s grammatically feminine.
Tamerlane has already explained quite well the social/political situation in Saudi Arabia. One more thing to add: The Âl Sa’ûd hasn’t helped matters any by running an abysmally corrupt system. The corruption reaches from the top down throughout the whole system. This disgusts people with any shred of decency and makes it easier for the fundamentalists to persuade people to join them. If the ruling cliques had cleaned up their act years before, there wouldn’t be so many attacks on them now, recruiting for al-Qâ‘idah wouldn’t be so easy. But if anyone had been listening for many years to people in the Arab world, you would have heard constant grumbling and hatred of the Saudi regime, not from fundies or extremists, but from just ordinary people.
Crown Prince ‘Abdallah is a personally honest and intelligent man; he has the intention to clean up the corruption, but has been waiting until he fully accedes to the throne instead of just acting as a caretaker. It will probably be too late by then. The Sudayri clique, which has been in charge for years and has perpetrated the worst corruption, would love to eliminate their half-brother ‘Abdallah, but know they can’t be seen to oppose him publically. It’s a dangerous chess game. They try to undermine his efforts behind closed doors.
