90% Couples Ignore Health Warnings After Premarital Blood Tests
Raid Qusti, Arab News

RIYADH, 27 February 2007 — Up to 90 percent of Saudi couples who tested positive in premarital blood tests ignored warnings of transmitting diseases to their children and proceeded to marry, according to a Health Ministry official.

“Ninety percent of them carried on with their marriage in the first year of when the tests were made mandatory,” said Dr. Ali Al-Amri, head of the Non-Chronic Diseases Department at the Health Ministry, while speaking in the Arab Child Health Conference in Riyadh.

Al-Amri added, “In the second year, 88 percent went ahead with marriage plans, followed by 84 percent in the third year.”

The Health Ministry official noted that negligence among Saudi youth toward the seriousness of the matter could have drastic results in future. He added that couples’ stubbornness to proceed with marriage plans despite being tested positive was a clear indication that people were ignoring Health Ministry advice regarding the matter.

According to this Arab News piece, Saudis are disregarding warnings about inheritable genetic disorders and proceeding with marriages that endanger future children. The Saudi government is clearly unwilling to start passing laws forbidding marriages, relying instead on counseling. But, this article says, counseling from the health sector is insufficient. Religious figures need to learn about the problems so that they can bring their weight to bear in counseling. It’s a tough problem.

This piece also reports on a three-day Arab Children Conference which concluded yesterday, leaving a number of recommendations. Delegates from 22 Arab countries participated. Read the entire piece.

JEF Diary: American President’s Brother Building Bridges With Saudis
Siraj Wahab, Arab News

JEDDAH, 27 February 2007 — There are many interesting sessions being presented at the Jeddah Economic Forum, but just as much (if not more) is happening on the sidelines of the forum. International and local businessmen, educators and officials from around the world are sharing ideas, building relationships and negotiating business deals — typical networking stuff. It seems as if there is a conversation going on in every nook and cranny of the Jeddah Hilton with the impromptu meetings occasionally spilling out onto the picturesque palm-fringed seaside promenade just across the street.

Neil Bush, younger brother of the President, has been at the Jeddah Economic Forum four times, promoting the educational software his company sells. Arab News takes advantage of his presence to ask him questions, including about his brother’s policies and the ‘clash of civilization’ that some declare is under way.

Saudis looks to boost local employment
Andrew England in Riyadh

Saudi officials are considering increasing the cost of expatriate workers for the private sector, as a way of tackling rising unemployment and making the recruitment of young Saudis more attractive.

Foreigners, mainly from Asian countries, who are willing to accept lower salaries and work longer hours dominate the kingdom’s job market.

But the influx of expatriates since the 1970s – there are some 6.5m foreign workers in Saudi Arabia – has created a “lower equilibrium wage” pricing Saudis, who tend to seek higher salaries, out of the market, says Abdulwahed al-Humaid, deputy minister of labour.

“It is an economic problem and it needs an economic solution,” Mr Humaid told the Financial Times. The answer, he believes, is “to increase the cost of expatriate labour to make it comparable to the cost of the Saudi worker”….

Financial Times runs this piece [full text available online] on how the Saudi government is trying to push expatriate labor out of the country by making them more expensive. This would tend to make Saudi labor relatively less expensive, thus providing more opportunities for Saudis to be hired. Interesting piece.

How the inquiry into BAE’s Saudi deals was brought to earth
Michael Peel

Late one Tuesday shortly before Christmas, Robert Wardle, director of Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, had much to ponder as he stepped into the midwinter gloaming outside Buckingham Palace. He had just emerged from the last of three meetings with Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain’s urbane ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Mr Wardle was coming around to the view that he would have to scrap an SFO probe into the alleged bribery of Saudi officials by BAE Systems, the UK arms and aerospace group, on the grounds that the investigation was damaging national security.

The Financial Times runs an extensive analysis of how the British government came to drop its fraud investigation into allegation of the bribing of Saudi officials to secure arms contracts. The full article is available only to subscribers or those who wish to take advantage of a free 15-day ‘trial subscription’.

In brief, the analysis finds that the Serious Fraud Office paid close attention to what the British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, had to say and to the representations made by the Prime Minister’s Office, the Foreign Office, and the Ministry of Defence. In any event, the piece says, prosecution would have relied on full cooperation of the Saudi government which was disinclined to do so.

The article notes that the British government recognizes that its steps in this action make future prosecutions for corruption more difficult, but that governments do and must set priorities. National security takes the highest priority.

The Saudi papers are covering the Jeddah Economic Forum in some depth. The opening session seemed filled with admonitions for the US, whether it was on its double standards of dealing with the fact of Israel as a nuclear state to a perceived unwillingness to admit policy mistakes.

Saudi Gazette provides the most concise wrap-up of the day’s speakers (Turkish Premier: Stop Spending on Violence) and reports on the Chinese delegation specifically (Chinese Look to Stronger Ties With Saudi Arabia).

Arab News takes a harsher line, critical of the US in its coverage. Stories include ‘West Skirting Israeli Nuke Issue’ and US Spin Won’t Work, Says Rania. It also runs a piece on technical problems with the interpretation set-up, particularly as they involved the Chinese, in JEF Diary: Profound Words Overshadow Sound-System Mix-Ups.

Fragile Units and Solid Entities
Sayyed Wild Abah

At the peak of the Iraqi internal crisis, many expect that Iraq would be dismantled and divide into warring sectarian cantons.

This view was based upon a number of widely apparent justifications that include the fragility of the Iraqi national fabric which lacks the national dogmatic homogeneity and the historical background. It considers that the modern Iraqi entity had emerged as a result of a state of coercive unification between dissimilar regions, which have nothing in common to unite them.

According to this scenario, Iraqi national unity was nothing but a difficult resort for the British that continued at the price of repression and oppression. It was quite natural that such unity would collapse after the demise of the Baathist regime. The new Iraqi constitution, which took shape after the occupation, had adopted this approach. Thus, it had practically legalized the separation formula while sectarian militias assumed the rest of the task through horrifying cleansing operations that were carried out to impose national and religious homogeneity.

Some may not hesitate to reiterate an idea that had long prevailed for decades in the Arab political discourse. This idea stated that the United States links its vital interests in the Middle East to a division plan that aims at dividing it and dismembering it along ethnic and sectarian lines of differentiation.

Abah, who writes for Asharq Alawsat writes densely reasoned articles, not always fun to try to read. He’s pretty clear here, though, in pointing out that Arab states have continued to defy the prediction that, because they are ‘artificial entities’ established by colonial powers, they are destined to disintegrate into their ‘more natural’ configurations. He is, of course, alluding to the situation in today’s Iraq, but goes back not note that it hasn’t happened in the Arab world, it hasn’t happened in Africa, and—he points out—it hasn’t happened in most of Europe, where states also lack any great historic legitimacy. The state, he suggests, is fixed by by the will of the people within in. With the exception of the former Yugoslavia, I think he’s right.

It’s an interesting piece, worth the time to unravel.

Parents of Other Victims Applaud Joy Riding Verdict

RIYADH, 26 February 2007 — After hearing the death sentence passed down last week to a young Saudi who killed three young men and injured two others while driving his car recklessly for sport in 2005, the parents of the victims of a similar incident have called for the head of that perpetrator.

Joy riding, as it is called, has become an alarming trend among bored, car-owning Saudi youths who use public streets as stages for high-speed stunt driving. A young man who is being cited in the local media by his nickname Al-Hanooti (“The Undertaker”) is in the process of being tried for killing four young men during a joy-riding incident in 2006 in Riyadh.

This Arab News pieces says that, at least for the parents and families of victims, the recent death sentence handed out for killing others while stunt driving was deserved. And it should be repeated.

It’s understandable how family members might feel this way, but it’s not at all clear whether Saudi society as a whole would. The sentence is harsh by Western standards as most homicides resulting in death penalties include the critical element of premeditation. Reckless and negligent behavior resulting in death isn’t punishable by death. Things would be a lot easier to understand if there were codified laws that spelled out what crime deserved which punishment. At present, that’s not the case, of course.

Meanwhile, Saudi Gazette carries this piece: Hot-Rodder to Appeal Death Sentence

A Secret History
CARLA POWER

For Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the stock image of an Islamic scholar is a gray-bearded man. Women tend to be seen as the subjects of Islamic law rather than its shapers. And while some opportunities for religious education do exist for women — the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo has a women’s college, for example, and there are girls’ madrasas and female study groups in mosques and private homes — cultural barriers prevent most women in the Islamic world from pursuing such studies. Recent findings by a scholar at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies in Britain, however, may help lower those barriers and challenge prevalent notions of women’s roles within Islamic society. Mohammad Akram Nadwi, a 43-year-old Sunni alim, or religious scholar, has rediscovered a long-lost tradition of Muslim women teaching the Koran, transmitting hadith (deeds and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) and even making Islamic law as jurists.

Akram embarked eight years ago on a single-volume biographical dictionary of female hadith scholars, a project that took him trawling through biographical dictionaries, classical texts, madrasa chronicles and letters for relevant citations. “I thought I’d find maybe 20 or 30 women,” he says. To date, he has found 8,000 of them, dating back 1,400 years, and his dictionary now fills 40 volumes. It’s so long that his usual publishers, in Damascus and Beirut, have balked at the project, though an English translation of his preface — itself almost 400 pages long — will come out in England this summer. (Akram has talked with Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former ambassador to the United States, about the possibility of publishing the entire work through his Riyadh-based foundation.)

The New York Times ‘Sunday Magazine’ runs this exceptionally interesting, eye-opening article on the historic role of women in Islam. I urge you to read it.

Valentine’s Day in Saudi Arabia
Portents of change from the desert kingdom
Stephen Schwartz & Irfan al-Alawi

Close observers of Saudi Arabia detect what may be the first faint signs of movement away from tyranny. King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, who ascended the throne two years ago and is now at least 83, is the apparent instigator of this change. The Saudis are polarizing, some say, between the supporters of King Abdullah and his enemies, the fundamentalist clerics.

Saudi Arabia was founded on a totalitarian ideology, Wahhabism, that claims to be an Islamic religious doctrine, but is really a radical system of social control. Riyadh has long financed Wahhabi global expansionism and adventurism, and this has now come home to roost. Saudi Arabia has entered a crisis, and resembles the former Soviet Union as it was poised to fall apart–a gerontocracy in which neither power nor policy is transparent or, until lately, susceptible to pressure for change from below….

Stephen Schwartz is a writer I hold in generally low regard. ‘Wahhabi’ is his bête noire and in his enmity he is unable or unwilling to distinguish between the majority of ‘Wahhabis’ (those who follow the guidance of 18th C. Saudi theologian Abdul Wahhab) and those extremists who use the conservative theology to justify terror and violent xenophobia.

In this piece published in the American conservative magazine “Weekly Standard”, he and Irfan al-Alawi find themselves in a contradiction. The first page of the article is a hearty bashing of all things Wahhabi; the second notes that the Saudi government, under King Abdullah (who is himself a ‘Wahhabi’, by the way), is making actual reforms and setting the stage for further reforms. They note that arch ‘Wahhabis’ like the Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Sudais (characterized as ‘a noted Wahhabi bigot’) has nevertheless condemned Sunni-Shi’a conflict and called for peaceful relations between them. They also report on King Abdullah’s statements that Saudi Arabia will not become involved in intersectarian violence in Iraq.

They note that King Abdullah has said that the issue of women’s driving is a matter of civil law (based on culture and tradition) and not a matter of religious law. They report on rumors that King Abdullah seeks to abolish the religious police, but has run into deep conflict with the Minister of Interior.

The article, almost begrudgingly concludes:

Certainly, it is in the direct moral and practical interest of the United States that Saudi Arabia become a normal and respectable state.

I’d suggest taking the first page of the article with a huge grain of salt, but do note what’s being said on the second page.

Value of Jeddah Economic Forum to the Saudi Image
Michael Saba

The Jeddah Economic Forum bills itself as “The Think Tank of the Middle East.” It also could be called “The Image Tank of the Middle East.” For hundreds of Western visitors to the Jeddah Economic Forum (JEF), it is their first view of Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. And Western popular culture perspectives on Saudi Arabia and the region really can use some image enhancement. The commonly held view of Saudi Arabia in the West is neither realistic nor positive.

After having attended the JEF for the past three years and meeting scores of Western attendees who experienced Saudi Arabia for the first time through the JEF, it was very easy to see changes in people’s attitudes. “I had no idea the Saudis were so friendly and hospitable,” is a common statement heard from the attendees. “The Western press doesn’t do this place justice,” is another phrase often heard. The opportunities for direct interaction with Saudis and Saudi culture at the JEF are invaluable components of attending the forum.

And when the attendees return home, they often relate their positive experiences in Saudi Arabia to their friends, colleagues and business associates.

Michael Saba, Arab-American founder and Executive Director of Friends of Saudi Arabia (FSA) and consultant to the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAIGA), has this appreciation of the Jeddah Economic Forum which takes place this weekend.

Should the Muslim Brotherhood Disband?
Mshari Al-Zaydi

In an article that surprised many, the Kuwaiti Islamist writer Abdullah al Nafisi called upon the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) to disband because it has become a burden upon Islam, asking the mother-group in Egypt to follow the lead of Qatar’s Muslim Brotherhood that, following an internal study of the status of the organization in that country, concluded that it should disband. According to al Nafisi, the significant study, the second part of which is yet to be published, arrived at the decision to dissolve the organization in 1999 and transform into a general Islamic intellectual current that serves educational and intellectual issues of the whole of society.

In his article entitled “The Islamic Condition in Qatar,” al Nafisi concluded that the idea of the organization is ineffective and that the organization’s historical entity had become an obstacle to the development and productivity of the Islamic condition on account of the organization’s burden, limpness and antagonism with the government. He quoted a “former” Qatari Muslim Brotherhood member giving an “interesting” statement…

“The Qataris have shown early judiciousness that will spare them from many problems faced by their brethren in various Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman. I asked one of those who conducted the two-part study, ‘After all these years, what do you think of the MB in Egypt?’ ‘It has transformed into a sponge that absorbs and freezes all energies,’ he replied.”

Mshari Al-Zaydi writes about Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic movements for Asharq Alawsat. Here he takes a look at recent writings by Abdullah Al Nafisi who believes that the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has lost it focus on its ends—an Islamic world—and instead focuses on its means—the MB itself and its political and jihadist methodology. It’s an interesting analysis that brings in others who are starting to question the relevance of the MB and the way in which it excludes the younger members from introducing any change to the way the organization works. Definitely worth reading the whole thing.

Saudi Arabia: Communications Program Helps Parents
Keep Track of Children at School
Huda al Saleh

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat- Over 150 schools in Saudi Arabia have adopted the “school communications” system, which is also known as “electronic schools” through which parents of students can interact with the administration of the school.

The schools communication system sends voice messages to the parents of students through a land-line periodically to inform parents of the academic standing and behavior of their children. The system also interacts with parents using SMS. This program, which is being offered by one company, allows parents to track the behavior of their children, any absences, lateness, the school timetable and so on.

Asked about the extent to which the Ministry of Education represented by the educational development department would rely on the communications system, an official from this department told Asharq Al Awsat that the program is not available to all schools at present. The official, who spoke to Asharq Al Awsat on condition of anonymity, stated that the Ministry of Education has not planned to implement the communications system but that it is encouraging schools to set up websites as part of the Ministry’s website….

Asharq Alawsat has this piece about how some Saudi schools are starting to use the Internet and cell phone telecommunications to help parents stay informed about school matters.