It’s only seven days into King Abdullah’s reign, but if things like this become the norm, then his reign bodes well not only for Saudi, but for the whole region

The “show” so far is that he released the reformers and interrupted the trial of their lawyer to make his point.

As for women’s rights, putting all the spotlight on what Kuwait has achieved is not seeing the whole picture, or a fair comparison.

Keeping in mind what we American women endured in history to receive our rights (torture in some cases) let us put the women’s empowerment issues where they belong: on the women.

Despite media blitz on the National Assembly in Kuwait to protest for their rights, in actuality only 400 women showed up. Perhaps the West should listen to the actual women speaking as a whole. The mere numbers showed indifference.

Women over here have a “quiet” power, not seen in public, and are quite able to speak for themselves. The public persona is completely different. Women’s empowerment will come in it’s own time based on the collective views of society, as it should be.

In the M.E. there is more of a sense of “We” rather than “I” and this is positive in terms of social evolution for a society who still maintains family as priority.

FYI, The Religious Policeman has returned.

Here’s some interesting stuff sent to me this morning. New intelligence indicates that Osama bin Laden may be headed to Iraq for Ramadan. I’m not buying it, but if it was true think of all the great caption-contest opportunities. Brazil…

The men’s release, announced in a brief statement on Saudi television, was accompanied Monday night by the pardon and release of an Islamic scholar, Saeed bin Mubarak Zaeer, who had been jailed on terrorism-related charges because of televised statements that the Saudi government said had endorsed the violent tactics of Osama bin Laden.

It seems that he’s signalling that he’s not going to put people in jail merely for what they say. We’ll need to wait to see how that works out with those who support terror. Abdullah has been absolutely condemnatory of terror, so this may be giving Zaeer a chance to clean up his act.

D. Stevens: Until last week, Abdullah was not king. As regent, his powers were limited by what other senior princes–and outsiders–thought. Now he’s the leader and it seems he’s prepared to lead.

I would hope he eventually does something about the extremely negative influence of Wahhabism. It’s one of the most dangerous influences underlying terrorism, both inside and outside the Kingdom. Can the Family ever succeed in taming it, or do they even want to?