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Reformers in Saudi Arabia: Seeking Rights, Paying a Price
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The Saudi writer Turki al-Hamad wants to shake the younger generation attracted by militant Islam. His new novel, a thinly disguised sketch of four Sept. 11 hijackers, seeks to warn those weighing suicide missions.
"Put your luggage aside and think," reads the opening page to the book, called "The Winds of Paradise" and just released in Arabic.
"I wrote the latest book just to say that the problem is not from outside, the problem is from ourselves - if we don't change ourselves, nothing will change," Mr. Hamad said over coffee in the green marbled lobby of a hotel near Dammam, the city along the Persian Gulf where he lives. His earlier books challenging sexual and political mores remain banned.
After Sept. 11, 2001, the push toward reform in the Middle East gained momentum with the recognition in some quarters that stifling political and economic conditions helped spawn extremism. Reform advocates like Mr. Hamad live under threat but have also gained some space to air grievances.
Hence, Mr. Hamad writes novels to try to jolt young Saudis into re-examining their own society. Fawaziah B. al-Bakr, a woman and a college professor, agitates for women to question their assigned roles. Hassan al-Maleky, a theologian, argues that no one sect - like the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia - holds a monopoly on interpreting Islam.
They are the first to say that meaningful change remains a distant prospect because the institutions opposing such change are so powerful. And because there is no real forum to even discuss change, the process of creating open, freer societies is more the sum of individuals chipping away at the traditional order, rather than any organized movement or national discussion.
The three barely know each other, and their lack of contact is emblematic of Saudi Arabia, which ranks among the most closed Arab countries.
Here and elsewhere, Arab reformers tend to be isolated dissidents, sometimes labeled heretics, much like those persecuted under Soviet totalitarianism.
Even those who pursue the mildest forms of protest are slapped with long prison sentences. The right to assemble does not exist, political parties are banned along with nongovernment organizations, and the ruling princes constantly tell editors what they can print. Local television is almost all clerics, all the time.
The many Islamic theological institutions that maintain the rule of the Saud princes determine the parameters of any public debate.
They evaluate everything through the prism of the Wahhabi teachings unique to Saudi Arabia, vehemently rejecting any alternative.
For many reformists, the lack of free speech grates most; obtaining it is a far higher priority than elections or other formal ingredients of Western democracy.
"Sometimes I don't want elections here, I want public freedoms and public rights," says Mr. Hamad, echoing a statement heard from reformers across the kingdom and indeed across the Arab world. "Give me those things and everything else will come automatically."
But that must be endorsed by the ruling Saud tribe. The eruption of terrorist bombings in downtown Riyadh and elsewhere starting in May 2003 forced them to recognize that Islamic extremism was not some foreign problem.
Which was one of the reasons for the thinking behind the 'flypaper' stategy. In many cases these foreign fighters are being sent by the leaders.Merlin1047 said:It's been my belief all along that not a single nation in the middle east wants democracy to succeed in Iraq. Given the fact that every nation in the region is a dictatorship of some sort, they fear a successful democracy in their midst. Because if Iraq succeeds, then the days of princes, dictators and theocrats are numbered.
