Establishment of Shoura Is a Great Change
Huda Al-Shayeb

Robert Lacey is a British historian and author of a number of international bestsellers. His first works were historical biographies of Robert, Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Ralegh. In 1977, he wrote “Majesty,” a biography of Queen Elizabeth II marking her 25th year on the throne. His next book was “The Kingdom” a history of Saudi Arabia published in 1981. It is required reading for businessmen, diplomats and students who are interested in the country. His other books include biographies of the gangster Meyer Lansky and of Princess Grace of Monaco plus a study of Sotheby’s. In 2002, the Golden Jubilee Year of Queen Elizabeth II, he published “Royal” (“Monarch” in America).

 Robert Lacey’s The Kingdom was published during my first tour in Saudi Arabia. [ Read my review] It was one of those books that was a bit too close to the bone for some (like the censors) and was a difficult book to obtain in the country in those pre-Amazon days. But copies found their ways in and the book was quite popular among certain Saudis (not the censors).

 Here, some 25 years later, he looks back as well as talks about his new book on Saudi Arabia, which he’s writing to update his research. In this interview with the “Review” section of Arab News, he talks about some of the changes he’s found. Among the topics discussed in this interview are the role of women in Saudi Arabia, the development of the Shoura Council, the prospects of a Saudi constitutional monarchy, and the way monarchies have a way of surviving. Worth reading!

Strict On Charity
Shroog Talal Radain

GOVERNMENT officials announced that charities are now prohibited from soliciting donations at government schools, private schools and other educational institutions in Saudi Arabia, such as colleges and universities. King Abdul Aziz University (KAAU) in Jeddah assured students, teachers and officials that on-campus solicitations have stopped after receiving a copy of the royal decree outlawing charity on campus.

“We used to see girls walking around the university with plastic bags and a receipt booklet asking for donations for Palestine, Bosnia and Kashmir,” said Sabah Ahmed of KAAU. “Honestly, we never thought that it could be donated to the wrong people.”

Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and charities serve legitimate purposes. However, they can be vulnerable to abuse as a source of funding for terrorist groups. This is the reason Saudi Arabia has enacted new laws ensuring that donations to charity are used solely and specifically for humanitarian work.

The Saudi government is continuing to close loopholes in charitable donations to prevent them from getting into terrorist hands. This Saudi Gazette article has a bit more.

Judiciary Set for Major Revamp
P.K. Abdul Ghafour

JEDDAH, 25 May 2006 — The Justice Ministry intends to establish a series of specialized courts, including three state security courts in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam as well as family, traffic and commercial courts.“

The new courts will operate in line with the Kingdom’s general judicial system and people will have the right to appeal their verdicts,” Justice Minister Abdullah Al-Asheikh said. Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has instructed the establishment of special courts to deal with family violence in the country. Higher authorities have also approved the formation of traffic courts to take speedy action on traffic accident cases.  

 This is a very big deal. Moving elements of social (mis)behavior out of the hands of the religious courts means that laws and their enforcement will be more accountable, more transparent, and more predictable. What’s quite impressive about this is that the Justice Minister–a decendent of the famous Abdul Wahhab–is on board. This helps to quash any dissent from traditionalists who don’t like that Sharia law will not be the whole of the law.  

 

Prince Naif Curbs Power of Virtue Commission
Mahmoud Ahmad

JEDDAH, 25 May 2006 — Interior Minister Prince Naif yesterday curbed the powers of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in handling issues such as harassment of women. Such cases have now been brought under the Commission for Investigation and General Prosecution, the Saudi Press Agency said.

“The Commission for Investigation has been given the charge to carry out probes in such cases,” the prince said in a directive to governors, adding that the measure was taken in line with the requirements of the penal code. The role of the virtue commission will be restricted to arresting suspects and handing them over to police.

This is a political move by the Saudi government that’s past due. While this particular curb isn’t major, it’s a clear sign that the cart isn’t before the horse. This Arab News article gives further details, as well as comments by Saudis who think this change is just fine.

The Washington Post runs a story, Saudi Arabia trims powers of morality police taken from Reuters. The article, by a good Middle East reporter, Andrew Hammond, adds some details.

Arab columnist deplores lack of Press freedom
Habib Shaikh

JEDDAH — As far as freedom of expression is concerned, countries in the Arab world, from the Gulf to the Atlantic, are on the dark side of the moon, or at least of this planet, according to an Arab columnist.

Writing in a recent issue of the Arabic daily Asharq Al Awsat, Mohammed Dyab quoted French jurist and political philosopher Montesquieu, and German composer Beethoven to introduce his subject.

…Dyab said that if the world views freedom of the Press as one of the indicators of public liberties, then reports such as these ought to set all the alarm bells ringing.  The governments of Arab states ought to review their own internal affairs related to their citizens’ freedom of speech. It is well known that writers and thinkers who can openly and freely express their opinions don’t use false names on Internet blogs and forums. He added that writers “with sealed mouths and chained pens, on the other hand, don’t threaten governments.” 

He emphasised that the freedom of journalism is ultimately the freedom of mankind, and said that some people seem to believe that the standards used by Reporters Without Borders fail to consider cultural differences. They think that the standards are exclusively Western.

This piece, from Khaleej Times of the United Arab Emirates, reports on a columnist for a Saudi paper, writing in Arabic. His message is pretty clear, no matter what language it’s in.

Note again how traditionalists insist on seeing various freedoms as “imports from the West”!

 

Don’t Be Friends With Christians or Jews: Saudi Texts Say
HASSAN FATTAH

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, May 23 — Despite years of work aimed at changing Saudi Arabia’s public school curriculum, the country’s latest textbooks continue to promote intolerance of other religions, a new study said Tuesday.

 This New York Times article on the issue of Saudi textbooks (as reported in the Sunday Washington Post gives a far more useful look at the problem.

 Yes, the textbooks are being cleaned up, but the job’s not done and there are probably some things in the new texts that should still be removed. But doing so isn’t simply a matter of the government’s saying, “Do it!” The article continues:

It is an uphill battle to revise the curriculum because the resistance by well-established conservative pockets is so fierce,” Mr. Zulfa said.

One Saudi official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, also cited religious conservatives. “We know what needs to be taken out,” he said. “But it’s not that easy to do it.”

Hamza al-Mozainy, a professor of linguistics and a columnist who has campaigned for education reform, said the seeming clash between Islam and the West creates a tough environment for change.

“What makes changing the curriculum so difficult is that the people are living in the middle of a conflict,” he said. One of the easiest ways conservatives have of attacking him is to say he is serving America by demanding the change, he says.

“As we discuss change, they say, ‘Look what America is doing to us, look what Israel is doing,’ ” he said.

But even if the textbooks were changed, the effort might not amount to much unless the country’s teachers were retrained, a far more difficult matter.

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Editor, Columnist Fined SR30,000  

THE Ministry of Information settled a complaint against Al-Watan’s outgoing editor-in-chief, Tareq Ibrahim, and one of the Abha-based newspaper’s columnists, Hamza Al-Mezaini with a SR30,000 fine, Al-Hayat reported Tuesday.

Ibrahim will be fined SR20,000 and Mezaini will pay the remainder after they were found guilty of libel against Abdullah Saleh Al-Barak.

On November 30, Mezaini wrote a column attacking against ideas presented by Barak, in which he described the latter’s ideas as warped.

At the time, Barak filed a defamation suit against Mezaini before a Shariah court. The Shariah judge convicted Mezaini of defamation, and sentenced him to four months in prison and 200 lashes. Mezaini appealed the case on the basis of jurisdiction.

…In late March, King Abdullah then Crown Prince issued a directive ordering that Mezaini’s case be considered only on original jurisdiction, annulling the earlier sentence of four months in prison and 200 lashes.

In Al-Hayat’s report Tuesday, the newspaper quoted an unnamed source at the ministry saying that both the former editor-in-chief and columnist had been found guilty of libel after consideration of all case documentation.

The committee’s findings, according to Muhammad Ali Alwan, acting Assistant Undersecretary for Internal Media at the ministry, are not final and can be revoked by the Board of Grievances.

Divisions amongst the ministry committee members, meanwhile, surfaced as the representative of the Ministry of Justice’s representative said Mezaini’s sentence was too light. The representative suggested that Mezaini be punished with a blanket ban against him from having any of his work published in any Saudi publication.

According to this article from The Saudi Gazette, the judicial reforms started by the current King, are starting to take effect. Tried in a religious court, the defendant lost his case and was sentenced to prison and lashes. The case was overturned, though, as the Sharia court was deemed not to have jurisdiction; under new rules, the case should have been considered by the Ministry of Information, and it was.

The defendant (and his editor) lost again and were found guilty of libel. They were fined about $8,000, but given no prison time or flogging. Without knowing the details of the case, it’s impossible to say whether or not this was justified, but the larger point is that there is now an active–and successful–effort to peel ordinary legal matters out of the religious courts with their notoriously arbitrary judgments.

Stem Growing Tide of Work-Related Violence
Waheeb Sufi • Al-Watan

Work-related violence is a seemingly growing problem everywhere.

According to a local newspaper, an officer working for the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice shot his supervisor dead while seated at his office. The officer, who was transferred from Jeddah to Taif a few months earlier, had a history of violent behavior.

On a previous occasion the same officer had repeatedly stabbed another colleague with a knife in a mosque on a Friday, critically wounding him. The newspaper added that the policeman had felt that his colleague was responsible for his transfer.

This is a sly article from the Arabic daily Al-Watan. The piece is a generally objective look at the issue of violence in the workplace. It cites statistics from the US–but notes that American workplaces are far nicer than Saudi offices. What amounts to wielding a sharp, pointy stick, however, is the use of the religious police as the lead-in to the story! Clearly, the officer in question has issues that should have disqualified him from the position he held: two assaults? By pointing out that he was able to be gainfully employed by the mutawwa’in, the paper is scoring a serious point. I’m sure many Saudis will be amused by the example. Perhaps not the Commission, though…

Saudi, Conoco to Sign Refinery Deal: Sources

RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Aramco and U.S. oil firm ConocoPhillips are expected to sign a deal on Wednesday for a second new refinery in the Gulf state, industry sources said on Tuesday.

Aramco said it could not confirm the news, which was also reported by Saudi newspapers.

The state oil firm on Sunday signed a deal with France’s Total to build a 400,000-barrel-per-day (bpd), export-oriented refinery in Jubail on the kingdom’s Gulf coast.

Aramco officials have said they hope to sign a memorandum of understanding with ConocoPhillips for another 400,000 bpd refinery in Yanbu on the Red Sea coast by the end of May.

Al Watan daily said the Yanbu project would be similar to that of Jubail, due for completion in 2011 and with 30 percent of the project being offered to the Saudi public in the future.

Aramco officials have said each of the refineries would cost around $6 billion.

According to this Reuters piece, published in The New York Times, the Saudis are entering joint ventures with foreign oil companies to establish additional refineries in the KSA. This produces several results favorable to the world, and some specifically for Saudi Arabia.

It’s been repeatedly noted that today’s high gasoline prices are due largely to high demand and low supply of refined products. By moving refinery production to Saudi Arabia, the oil companies can ship refined oil–which is a more densely valuable commodity than crude. This has implications for shipping technology, but on the whole it is more economical. The new refineries will also be open (partially) to private investment, too. This helps to diversify the Saudi economy from its dependence on crude oil sales, though it’s clearly not a complete break.

Saudis have assured not boycotting Israel: US aide

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia has assured the United States it no longer enforces the Arab League boycott of Israel, even though it attended a recent meeting in Damascus to discuss ways to tighten it, a top U.S. trade official said in remarks released on Monday.

“We have raised this issue directly with senior Saudi officials on several occasions, both in Riyadh and in Washington,” Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said in written responses to questions raised by members of the Senate Finance Committee.

“In all cases, we have received assurances that Saudi Arabia fully understands and remains committed to its WTO obligations, including the WTO obligation to treat all WTO members according to WTO rules,” Schwab said.

…If Israel believes Saudi Arabia is boycotting its goods and services, it could bring a case against Riyadh at the WTO and “the United States could support such a case,” Schwab said.

If Saudi Arabia boycotts U.S. companies doing business with Israel, U.S. trade officials will immediately raise the issue with Riyadh and could file a case at the WTO, she said.

This Reuters piece, carried on The Washington Post‘s online pages, notes that the Saudis not only claim to be sticking to their WTO obligations regarding the economic boycott of Israel, but that there are vehicles open to both Israel and the US to challenge any wandering.

 While the story doesn’t go into it, I do wonder how broadly the Saudi obligations under WTO are known within Saudi Arabia itself. I haven’t come across any articles in the Saudi media discussing it…

Foreigners Cleared In Bus Scare
Keith Morelli

Two Saudi men jailed last week after being accused of boarding a school bus and riding to a New Tampa high school could be released as early as today after federal and local authorities determined the pair are in the country legally and are not a security risk.

Mana Saleh Almanajam, 23, and Shaker Mohsen Alsidran, 20, were charged with trespassing on school property Friday. A day after their arrest, the $250 bail was revoked by a judge to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement time to investigate the two men.

Monday, ICE Special Agent in Charge Robert Weber said investigators found Almanajam and Alsidran are here legally on student visas and that immigration holds would not be imposed.

“In a nutshell,” he said, “we determined what their status was and that it did not require any immigration detention. They are not here illegally.”

…”We determined that they were apparently just confused,” Callaway said. “There is nothing else to lead us to file more criminal charges.”

The men raised concerns among the students on the bus when they began speaking in Arabic. The bus driver, a substitute, called ahead, and deputies met the bus at Wharton High School and arrested both men.

Well, the Saudi-bashing bloggers are going to have to send their twisted knickers out to be pressed. As I anticipated, this story was a matter of stupidity, not any sort of threat. The fact that there are no “yellow school buses” in the KSA (parents all drive their kids to school, or the kids walk) has some bearing on the issue.

 Complaint should be made to the Saudi authorities, however, for inadequate briefings for incoming students. Again, though, it’s not possible to brief on the entirety of areas in which confusion may result. That’s not just a Saudi thing; it’s universal. [This story is reported on Tampa Bay Online, the Internet version of The Tampa Tribune.]

Saudi Ambassador Responds to Washington Post Editorial

The Saudi government has worked diligently in the last five years to reform its education system, said Prince Turki al Faisal, the Kingdom’s ambassador to the United States.

He was responding to an article by Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, published in the Washington Post on Sunday. Shea claims that Saudi Arabia ’s textbooks continue to indoctrinate students and promote intolerance.

This, Prince Turki indicated, is simply not true. In a statement issued on Monday through the Saudi embassy in Washington D.C, Prince Turki said Riyadh had “overhauled the Saudi education system, including textbooks, teacher training and the introduction of new teaching methods. In order to ensure optimal results, the planning, implementation and assessment of these changes continue to be conducted with the assistance of governmental and non-governmental educational institutes, as well as consulting firms. This reform has taken place publicly, with debates and discussions taking place through the National Dialogue, the Consultative Council and the Ministry of Information. Freedom House neglected to mention this fact in the article.

Overhauling the education system is a massive undertaking. Hundreds of books are being revised in order to comply with the new requirement and the process is ongoing. The report submitted by the Saudi embassy to Congress earlier this year on textbook reform is by no means final and was never presented as such. Again, Freedom House does not mention this.

Moreover, the materials used in the Saudi education system and in the public domain and are provided to students free of charge. These texts can be obtained at schools and other institutions through Saudi Arabia ; they do not need to be “smuggled” or “slipped out” of the Kingdom. As with previous reports, Freedom House continues to exhibit a disregard for presenting an accurate picture of the reality that exists in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi position on education reform has been clearly articulated by the Kingdom’s political and religious leaders. The objective of the education system is to fight intolerance and to provide the Saudi youth the skills and knowledge needed to compete in the global economy.”

Here’s the official Saudi response, from the Saudi Embassy in DC, to the article appearing in the “Outlook” section of The Washington Post last Sunday.

As I’ve noted before, I find Shea’s report writing to be a little short of fully honest. But that doesn’t excuse what factual complaints she may have concerning the promotion of intolerance. I do think the Saudis have made a good faith effort to clean up their textbooks and the job isn’t done yet.