Zarqawi Says US Bombing Killed Al-Rashoud
Raid Qusti & Saad Al-Matrafi, Arab NewsRIYADH/JEDDAH, 24 June 2005 — A statement posted on the Internet by the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, said yesterday that Abdullah Al-Rashoud, one of the most wanted men on a Saudi list of 26 terrorists, had been killed in US airstrikes on the Iraqi town of Qaim near the Syrian border.
The Saudi Ministry of the Interior (responsible for security, among other things) is not yet confirming the death of Al-Rashoud; other media sources are being equally cautious in verifying the story.
If Al-Rashoud has been killed, this brings to 24 the number of Saudi Arabia’s most-wanted terrorists. As the article notes, Al-Rashoud was one of the most important religious leaders of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and was noted for his Internet presence through which he solicited young Saudis to come to Iraq for jihad. He’s also the one who condemned Saudi religious leaders for their attempts to discourage exactly that.
Several Arrested in Al-Sawat Murder Case
P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab NewsJEDDAH, 23 June 2005 — Security forces have detained a number of suspects in connection with the murder of a senior security officer in Makkah earlier this week, an Interior Ministry statement said yesterday.
“A number of suspects have been detained as part of the investigation,†the Saudi Press Agency reported quoting the ministry but without giving a figure.
Still following an earlier story, ( here and here).
The investigation into the assassination of a senior security official is reaping additional suspects, with links to Al-Qaeda as well as criminal backgrounds.
Tyranny of Silence
Dr. Mohammed T. Al-Rasheed, comments@d-corner.comWe grew up in this part of the world under what I euphemistically call “the Tyranny of Silenceâ€. Children are told that speaking in the presence of their fathers is the height of rudeness. Asking questions is tantamount to rebellion; Questioning authority is outright blasphemy.
As the world turns its prying eyes on our existence, much needs to be explained in order for us to reach a common ground of understanding. Basically, we grew up being told what to do and what to believe and how to act and react. When one of us reaches maturity, the cycle is repeated without questioning or alteration.
Needless to point out that the products of such a system are firm believers in what they already believe in and know nothing of the mechanism of dialogue. You see this phenomenon working itself out in the letters sections of this newspaper for example.
Dr. Al-Rasheed is on target again, talking about how Saudi culture has closed minds (see the post below for another view on this issue).
I would differ in his analysis of the problem only in promoting to first place–in a list of things to keep in mind in life–the possibility that one might be wrong. Facing life with the absolute certainty that one is right while condemning any other possibility is a recipe for disaster, on both personal and global scales.
Do read the whole piece.
The Perils of Not Thinking
Abeer Mishkhas, abeermishkhas@arabnews.comNewspapers recently carried the story of a famous religious scholar — a sheikh — who gave a lecture in a mosque. During the lecture, he was interrupted by a group of young men who shouted at him and expressed their contemptuous rejection of his opinion. Though in a mosque, one of the young men angrily waved a small knife at the sheikh who was forced to stop his lecture. He was then escorted by security from the mosque in order to avoid a worsening of the situation. The reason for the young men’s inexcusable reaction was, as far as most people are concerned, inconsequential. The sheikh was speaking about his belief that drums are not forbidden. To say such a thing to people who have always been told — and have always been taught — that music is completely haram (not allowed) was a genuine shock.
Abeer Mishkhas has been doing a good job in chronically Saudi society. Today she take on two topics, how Saudi Arabia has become a country of closed minds, and how complaining about problems is always easier than solving them.
She takes to task those that seek unitary views of the world in all its aspects, warning of the danger that it both has produced and continues to produce. Citing an article by another journalist, writing in Arabic for another paper, she notes how the closed mind–another example of laziness–has become the norm and why it must change.
A Brief Q&A with Thomas Lippman
Starting today, I will occasionally be running Brief Question-and-Answer interviews with academics, diplomats, journalists, and others on their perceptions of Saudi Arabia. The purpose is not to publish scholarly dissertations, but to provide an overview of what’s going on in the country, what Saudis are thinking about, and what the future looks to hold.
I welcome both your suggestions about to whom I should be posing the questions and what, specifically, you’d like me to ask.
Thomas Lippman, formerly a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, is the author of Inside the Mirage: America’s Fragile Relationship with Saudi Arabia (reviewed here) is currently an Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute.
1. How long have you been visiting Saudi Arabia?
I first went to SA in late 1976 or early 1977.
2. Have you noticed any stark changes between your first and most recent visits? Infrastructure? Social behavior/norms?
The physical changes of course are staggering. I went there in the days when there were no good hotels and foreign businessmen were sleeping in the back of taxis.
There were still small community mosques without air conditioning. In Riyadh and Jeddah, they were still using the oil airports.
But the great social changes are more recent–the most important being the education of women and the urbanization of Saudi society. The full implications of these trends are not yet fully understood.
3. What about Saudi privately owned media (i.e., not government-controlled TV & radio)? Any changes there? Any reasons you can think of?
On the media, the biggest change by far is the development of the Arab satellite TV stations. These have liberated the people from the controlled print and broadcast media.
4. How would you rate Saudi media freedom on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being equivalent to US press freedom and 10 being like that where media is entirely state-controlled (e.g., Syria, N. Korea)?
Maybe a 6 or 7. There is no serious reporting about the royal family or high-level corruption.
Secretary Rice Roundtable with Saudi Media
Secretary of State Rice, in Riyadh today during part of her regional visit to the Middle East, held a press roundtable with Saudi media. She was joined by American Ambassador Oberwetter Below is a full transcript of that meeting. The Arab News report on it can be found at this link.
The roundtable touched on the following issues:
The US-Saudi Joint Commission, its process and topics;
Visas for Saudis to visit or study in the US;
The involvement of regional countries in seeking solutions to the Arab-Israeli problem;
Libya;
Tthe need for free, fair, and secret elections as part of democracy;
Saudi accession to the WTO;
The importance of political organizations for democracy as well as the importance of the inclusion of women.
Officer’s Killers Shot Dead
Samir Al-Saadi & Essam Al-Ghalib, Arab NewsJEDDAH, 22 June 2005 — Two terrorists suspected of murdering a senior police officer three days ago in Makkah were killed by Saudi security forces in a gunbattle in Jeddah yesterday morning, according to the Interior Ministry. The terrorists were identified as Mansour Al-Thubaity and Kamal Foudah. On Saturday morning, Lt. Col. Mubarak Al-Sawat was shot dead in front of his house as he was leaving for work. Since then, the security forces have been hunting for the assassins. “Investigations in Lt. Col. Al-Sawat’s murder led us to two suspects from the deviant group responsible for the crime,†Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, Interior Ministry spokesman, told Arab News.
Following up a story posted yesterday, this Arab News article reports that two men were tracked down and killed in another gun battle.
Kingdom Optimistic About Outcome of Rice’s ME Tour
P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab NewsJEDDAH, 21 June 2005 — Saudi Arabia yesterday expressed its optimism that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s current tour would activate the Middle East peace process. The Kingdom also said that continued tension in the region was hampering development.
The Council of Ministers, during its weekly session chaired by Crown Prince Abdullah in Riyadh yesterday, expressed hope that the flexibility shown by the Palestinian side toward peace initiatives would make Rice’s mission easy.
In a brief summary of actions taken by the Saudi Cabinet and Shoura (Consultative) Council, it’s reported that the government is largely supportive of and optimistic about US efforts to find a solution to the Arab-Israeli issue.
Other matters are covered, including a proposal to put the Mutawwa, the religious police, into clearly identifiable uniforms and require them to carry a standardized ID card. This will do a lot to get rid of the vigilantes to confuse issues with their vehement promotion of their own, idiosyncratic vision of Islam and moral behavior.
Hunt On for Killers of Security Officer
Samir Al-Saadi, Arab NewsJEDDAH, 21 June 2005 — Saudi authorities have vowed that they will bring the killers of Lt. Col. Mubarak Al-Sawat to justice. A senior security officer in Makkah, Al-Sawat was shot in a drive-by shooting on Saturday morning. Authorities believe that Al-Qaeda may have been involved in the murder.
The targeting of security officials is something we’ve seen a lot of recently, unfortunately. It’s very early in the investigation of this murder, so it’s impossible to draw any conclusions from it. We’ll have to wait to see how the investigation unfolds.
2,500 Scholarships Award for American Studies
The Crown Prince s recent visit to US President George W. Bush s ranch in Crawford, Texas, helped mend the fences between the Kingdom and the United States. Relations between the two countries suffered a blow following the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
About 2,500 scholarships for study at American universities are among the most recent signs of renewed relations between the two countries following the months-long visa issuance process Saudis have endured recently.
Dr. Abdullah Ibrahim Al-Mogil , undersecretary at the Ministry of Higher Education for Cultural Affairs, said the ministry has accepted applications of about 2,500 students who applied for scholarships in the American universities. He said the ministry will finalize their procedures soon.
In a posting last week (here), I noted that the US and Saudi Arabia were discussing how to get Saudi students back into American universities. According to this Saudi Gazette article, they’ve come up with a plan. The number is about right, too.
I point out that these scholarships are coming from the Saudis–although they will use the same bureaucracy to place privately-funded students too. The US government contribution to these scholarships is nil; the Fulbright Scholarship Program, funded by the US, currently sends only a handful of Saudi professors and researchers to the US for one or two years maximum, with a reciprocal number of Americans traveling to Saudi Arabia.
Woman Driver Injured in Car Accident
DALUM, 20 June 2005 — A 17-year-old-girl from Dalum area, north of Riyadh, suffered serious back injury in a car accident, Al-Madinah newspaper reported. The girl was driving at high speed when her car rolled over several times. Two other girls in the car were also injured. The victims were brought to a nearby hospital in Riyadh. Police regard female driving in areas and villages around the national capital as “normal.â€
While women tend to be safer drivers than women, driving in Saudi Arabia means that they’re also going to be in accidents, as is the case described in this Arab News squib.
Journey through a Disturbed Mind
Mshari Al-Zaydi — Asharq AlawsatThere are moments in life when the sound of motion, no matter how low, makes itself herd. Its echo in the distance makes it seems much bigger than its actual size. In these moments, society ears become very sensitive and ready to listen, even to the sound of silence, for silence can sometimes become audible.
In instances such as these, everyone becomes busy classifying and categorizing, with events turning into a barometer to assess the characters and beliefs of others, and their position on the intellectual map.
In these days, the winds of the North are blowing across the Arab World, leaving behind an altered landscape….
The pan-Arab Asharq Alawsat Arabic language paper–with the largest circulation of any Arabic paper–is now presenting some of its material in English translation.
One of the pieces I’ve come across is a very interesting op-ed by Mshari Al-Zaydi, a Saudi journalist and expert on Islamic movements and Islamic fundamentalism. In it, he discusses the history of change, reform, and “improvement” in the Islamic world, noting how it is not something new, nor anything to be feared, in and of itself.
His article continues:
As I’ve already mentioned, the current situation in the Arab World is one of intense excitement and lurking in the shadows, with some groups trying to define their enemy. In their opinion, times like these are times of war and intellectual invasion, where Islam is being threatened by the West and the fighting is imminent.
In this atmosphere, anyone who holds an opinion, no matter how technical, on the position of women, education, or any matter of public interest, becomes prone to attacks, sometimes viciously. The examples are many and very sad. Among the funniest I’ve come across is the story of a Kuwaiti MP from the Salafi movement (following the methods of early Muslims, or Orthodox Islam) who, surprisingly, supported the rights of women to be granted their political rights, during a debate in the Kuwaiti Parliament, against the party line. With his vote not determining the outcome, the MP could’ve remained silent on the issue. Instead, he chose to lend his support to the opposing camp and was severely reprimanded as a result. The most humorous part of the situation was the large number of poems that were written, ridiculing the MP, some of which I’ve seen.
A few days ago, in Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Safar Al Hawali, a prominent symbol of the Islamic movement and the revivalist trend in the Kingdom, was rushed to hospital after suffering from a brain hemorrhage, amidst much concern from the authorities and sections of the public. His illness has become a new point of discord between warring parties in Saudi society who are in conflict on intellectual issues, the scope of reform, and the future of the Kingdom. The case has become the latest in a long line of contentious issues that have split Saudi youths in two main groups, with one blaming the other of distorting the education and thinking of a large portion of young people, and the other religious revivalist camp rejecting this and, in turn, accusing its detractors of being a minority with no popular support.
Dr. Al Hawali is considered, rightly so, as the most prominent symbol of the resurgent camp in Saudi Arabia , at present.
He has written a number of books, given many lectures, spent time in jail, and clashed with the Kingdom’s authorities. He is depicted by his supporters as a symbol of the religious revival in Saudi Arabia and a representative of the collective.
Most intriguing, however, are the ramifications of Dr. Hawali’s ill health, and the accompanying polarization of Saudi society.
Will this conflict benefit the Kingdom? I personally do not believe it is either good or bad, for it is a normal occurrence we don’t need to judge. It is standard in all societies that the public disagree, amongst themselves, on symbols, events, reality, the future, plans, ideas, visions, and choices.
Saudi society is at once, rich and complex, full of vitality, and multilayered. Clearly, any section which seeks to impose its own perspective and understanding of religion should not do so by force, as this can only lead to provocation and resistance from the rest of society.
In conclusion, I feel it is important to mention that we shouldn’t fear for the identity of Saudi society or its basic principles. As long as we hold our existence dear, we will not be harmed by any reform, change, amendment, or even the elimination of a few details in our lives. After all, details are additional, sometime useful, and in other times, harmful. Problems occur when we become incapable of distinguishing between the details and the basics, in which case we can be easily led astray.