Saudi Gazette breaks the news of Pres. Obama’s scheduling a visit to Saudi Arabia next Wednesday.
WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama will meet with King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, next week in Riyadh for talks on the Mideast peace process, Iran and terrorism, his spokesman announced Tuesday.
The visit will come at the start of a trip by Obama that will also take him to Europe and Egypt, where he is scheduled to give a major speech to the Muslim World, Robert Gibbs said.
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The White House Press Conference addressed the purpose of the visit:
On his trip next week, the beginning of the trip, President Obama will make a visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. While there the President will meet with His Majesty King Abdullah to discuss a range of important issues, including Middle East peace, Iran and terrorism. That’s the front end of the trip.
You can read the full text of the press conference at this link. The Saudi visit is the first item.
A few computer problems have popped up today that need tending. I’ll be posting later in the day on issues like Pres. Obama’s scheduled visit to Saudi Arabia. Please do return later.
‘Eruptions’, a blog at the Science Blogs site, has been doing an excellent job in tracking information about the seismic activity in Saudi Arabia and its potential for a volcanic eruption. Now, it is reporting that whatever was happening for the past two week appears to have stopped. The article is strongly critical of the reporting of rumor as established fact and ‘pseudo-science’ media reporting that throws in extraneous science facts to give an article weight.
As the writer notes, no one really knows whether the recent activity was related to vulcanism. That is unknowable until a volcano actually erupts. While seismic activity still continues, it is at a lower power level than before. The frequency is not really known outside the Saudi Geological Survey as smaller quakes both don’t show up on international meters and don’t get much publicity from those organizations that can record them—little shocks, the ones that people can’t even feel, are hardly newsworthy.
So, things are quiet for now. They may stay quiet, they may not. Only time will tell…
Earthquakes subsiding in Saudi Arabia
fter a week’s worth of worry, it appears that the seismicity in western Saudi Arabia is subsiding. The latest statement from Zuhair Nawab, the head of the SGS, is that over the past four days with fewer and less severe aftershocks. If this continues, people who have evacuated the area around Al Ais might be able to return to their homes in a few days. However, it is important to note that even though officials suggest the seismicity is waning (and there may be indications this is not entirely accurate), the swarm is definitely not “over”.
Rumors/reports of increased radon gas and changes in the chemistry of the well waters near the earthquakes epicenters appear to be unfounded. Saad al Mohlafi, the deputy director of the National Observation Centre, said that “no gases indicating an imminent eruption of a volcano have been found in Alees [Al-Ais].” This contradicts a lot of what was being said earlier last week and would support the idea that these earthquakes might not be directly related to any imminent eruption from Harrat Lunayyir. However, this does not preclude the idea that these earthquake could have been the product of a subvolcanic intrusion of magma underneath the volcano field that did not lead to an eruption. These contradictory reports and rumors have lead to more confusion for the residents of the region.
I am still flabbergasted by comments like this from Zuhair Nawab: “The magma level is still at eight kilometres … I don’t know where the media got this worrying level from.” I have yet to find any information about how the SGS (a) knows what depth there might be melt – i.e., magma and (b) what “magma level” even means. The article linked here (and above) from The National in Abu Dhabi does suffer from a lot of mish-mashed science, such as bring up that, according to the EPA, radon “is reportedly the second-most frequent cause of lung cancer, after cigarette smoking.” How does this help our understanding of any potential precursors to eruption? It really doesn’t, but it does give an false pretense of scientific authority to the article.
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The Saudi Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, commonly referred to as the ‘religious police’ or ‘Haya‘ have come in for a certain amount of bad publicity over the past half-dozen years or so. The criticisms have grown louder and wider as the Saudi media has attained more social space on which to comment. Starting with the 2002 fire at a girls’ school in Mecca, which the media largely laid at the feed of the Commission, the group’s overreaching, poorly monitored power, and lack of clear lines in its authority have all been questioned by the public and media.
Now, reports Arab News, the Commission appears to be looking for immunity from outside criticism, particularly from the media. It seeks to take journalists and media to court in suits for defamation or tash’hir. Now, truly defaming someone in print is not a good thing. It should be legally punished. Whether a government institution is subject to being defamed in the first place is, I think, an entirely different matter. I simply do not believe in institution reputation that should be protected in court as lines between true opinion and defamation are too easily manipulated by those in power.
The article points out that when journalists come across a story involving the Haya, they do try to get the organization’s side of the story. Through bureaucratic inertia or chains of command, however, the Commission is rarely able to provide prompt, newsworthy commentary. Thus, the media has to rely on eye-witness reports. When the Commission gets around to responding, the papers run the response, but by then the story has moved on, readers’ opinions are formed, and the Commission loses all possibility of reframing the story to its own benefit. The Commission is also slow and stingy in releasing reports on its members’ misbehavior.
More importantly, the article also notes that the Commission has yet to publish a guide book or protocol for its own members on just where the lines of their authority are to be found. Too much is left to individual Commission members to decide what to do and how to do it. Without such guidance, the Commission will continue to come in for due criticism as its members continue to annoy and offend the public.
Virtue Commission’s defamation move raises eyebrows
Omaima Al-Fardan | Arab NewsJEDDAH: The recent move by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice to seek judicial action against those who defame them has evoked a fiery response from Saudi legal experts, who say journalists have the legal right to report news and that members of all government bodies are open to criticism as long as it is supported with evidence.
The legal experts also say that the only government body that can question journalists is the Journalist Violations Committee of the Ministry of Information.
It is unclear whether the commission’s decision to seek legal action against media outlets includes coverage in the international media. When asked if the rule applies to the international media too, the commission stopped short of complete acquiescence.
The commission said it would open new channels of communication with the international media to convey their side of stories. It was not clarified how and with whom the channels would respond.
Shariah defines defamation as tash’hir — harming the reputation of someone or an institution in public. However, lawyers, judges and religious scholars differ in its interpretation. It is here where the debate begins on what exactly constitutes tash’hir.
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I reviewed Stephen O’Shea’s most excellent book, Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterranean World for Middle East Policy magazine last year. The copyright license which I sold them has now expired, so I can post it here on Crossroads Arabia. If you’d like a digital download of the piece, you can purchase one through Amazon.com at this link. The money goes to Middle East Policy, as the publisher. Or, you can read the piece here, for free! [Clearly, there's something wobbly with the business model.]
I found O’Shea’s book to be wonderful and very useful, for both Arabs and non-Arabs. It covers periods of history that is poorly addressed in schools, those in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews managed to find a way of living together in relative peace, convivencia. These sessions occurred through the 7th to 16th C., from Yarmuk, through Andalusia, all the way to Malta. O’Shea uses seven battles—that is, times of ultimate conflict—to put the periods of co-existence into relief.
The book is amusing, well-documented, and a pleasure to read. Jump over to the full review, then go find the book!
Reader Solomon2 sent me a link to this piece from National Review Online, the Internet presence of the conservative magazine. It’s an interesting essay in which the writer comments about the vast gulf that lies between conservative and liberal Arabsd. More troubling are the ‘excuse makers’, starting with Arab League President Amr Moussa, who seems to find an exculpatory explanation for every bad act committed by Arab entities. Worth reading.
Davos in the Desert, Part III
Jay NordlingerEditor’s Note: Jay Nordlinger attended the World Economic Forum on the Middle East last week. It took place by the Dead Sea in Jordan. Below is the third installment of his journal. For the first two, go here and here
It can be a wondrous thing to hear Arab elites talk behind closed doors. They can be bracingly, sometimes thrillingly, candid. They recognize the problems of Arab society; they are eager to confront and surmount them.
At a lunch, I hear things like, “We Arabs are at the bottom of everything — at the bottom of every index: literacy, capitalism, the rights of women. Everything. In our countries, we have cults of personality, dictatorships, dynasties . . . Where is democracy? Where is rotation in office?
“In the past, extremist Islam was unusual; now it is usual. In the Soviet Union, South Africa, South Korea, there was restructuring. But not in our region. We have no Gorbachev, we have no de Klerk, we have no Kim Dae-jung. The vast majority of our people are chromosomally reasonable and moderate. And the human spirit must be unleashed here.”
How touching it is, too, to hear a Syrian woman plead for human rights. Many of her countrymen — many of her best ones — are in cells.
I wish the whole world could hear what I have heard at this lunch.
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Here’s an interesting piece from Al-Arabiya TV’s website. It’s an opinion piece that looks at how sexual stereotypes mold behavior, starting at an early age. The article, which originated in Dubai’s The National, reports on a study conducted in Jordan. Jordan, not the hyper-sensitized Saudi Arabia. Jordan, the country that has had active and outward Queens for the past 20 years or more.
I shudder to think of the results had this study been conducted, say, in Buraidah or Hail.
When boys want to be boys and girls want to be … er, boys
Tala al RamahiMuch has been written on “the other”, whether it is literary texts on orientalism, imperialism and such, yet there seems to be a peculiar species living among us that we still barely understand: the other … sex.
Abdul Salam Darwish, head of Family Reconciliation at Dubai Courts, recalls a social experiment conducted recently on fifth graders at a school in Jordan. The pupils were told: imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had been magically transformed into the opposite sex. The results were unintentionally humorous, and telling to say the least. The 10-year-old boys who imagined they had woken up as girls provided responses such as: “I would kill myself”, “I would go to the hospital and ask them to switch me back” and “I would never leave the house”. The girls’ reponses to their hypothetical sex change were more positive: “I would be the happiest person in the world”, and “I would have a big party and invite all the other boys”.
Despite advances in the cause of women in the region, it seems that being a boy – even a “boy” – is still preferable to being a girl. Differences in lifestyles are so pronounced, it seems, that even fifth graders are subconsciously aware of them.
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A local New York cable TV station has this interview with Areej Khan, the Saudi Master’ student at the School of Visual Design. In it, Khan explains how she (and many other Saudi women, she claims) got around the prohibition on women’s driving. Now, though, she’s tired of cheating and wants to change the system. Do watch the video!
Local Student Artist Helps Drive Change In Saudi Arabia
Stephanie SimonA local artist is the driving force behind a new campaign to help women in Saudi Arabia win the right to drive. NY1′s Stephanie Simon filed the following report on the international effort.
Areej Khan used to dress like a man to be able to drive in her native Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to drive.
“I know a lot of women who were doing it anyway, a lot of my friends did it,” she recalls. “So I would just put on a cap and tuck my hair inside and get in the car and drive.”
Now, instead of covering up, this student artist and activist is encouraging women to stand up for the right, to sit behind the wheel. It’s all part of Khan’s master of fine arts project, which is on view at the School of Visual Arts gallery on West 26th Street.
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The headline, a quote from Robert Lacey, is a pretty shocking one, one assured to make many people angry. It is also true.
Lacey, author of The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Saud (published in 1981 and still banned in the country) is featured in a 26-minute minute program with the American Public Broadcasting System (PBS), the state-subsidized network of radio and TV stations. The focus of the program is Saudi Arabia’s rehabilitation program for terrorists.
The video (which can be viewed at the link below) covers much more than that, however. Lacey looks at what has happened in Saudi Arabia since 9/11 and finds that the changes are far ranging and sweeping. The video takes us to places that will never appear in postcards from the country: inside a terrorist rehab camp; flying and driving along the Saudi-Yemeni border; through the worst neighborhoods of Riyadh. He speaks with former Guantanamo detainees as well.
The PBS site also has both a slide show of Lacey in various parts of the country, and an essay he wrote for ‘The Daily Best’ news blog. Both are worthy of your attention.
Lacey has been in Saudi Arabia for the past several years, writing Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Terrorists, Modernity and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia, the follow-up to his earlier book. His new work is nearing publication and I will be reviewing it in the very near future.
Reforming the legal system of Saudi Arabia is a task of gigantic proportion. The giant, however, is starting to budge.
This Arab News article reports on the first, measured, steps now being taken to fix the system, beginning with infrastructure. It notes the shortage of judges, the difficulties in recruiting and training new judges, and simply building facilities. Interestingly, the reform project is working with the advice of foreign experts, Islamic as well as Western. It will be interesting to me—and critical to Saudis—to see how reforms progress.
JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia intends to develop its judicial system by making use of the experiences of the American, British, French, Malaysian and Jordanian legal systems, said Omar Al-Suwailem, director of the project for the development of the judicial system and its facilities.
“We have selected a number of international judicial systems in order to adopt their best practices while formulating the Kingdom’s strategic plan for judicial development,” Al-Madinah Arabic daily quoted Al-Suwailem as saying in its report yesterday.
A plan has been made to develop the Kingdom’s judiciary that envisages allocating a budget for providing justice to individuals; number of judges needed for every 100,000 people; number of officials to assist a judge; average days required to pass judgment on a case and the application of modern technology.
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There’ve been no significant earthquakes in the Al-Ais region of Madinah Province for the past two days. Three earthquakes, measuring around 3.6 on the Richter Scale hit the area, but those are smaller than the 4.7 and 5.9 magnitude quakes that shook the area earlier in the week. Evacuees, housed in some 250 camps, are starting to get restless and want to return home, according to this Arab News piece.
Seismic activities subside
Yousuf Muhammad | Arab NewsAL-AIS: Although three more tremors measuring 3.62 on the Richter scale shook Al-Ais — 240 km northwest of Madinah — on Friday, Saudi Geological Survey (SGS) said seismic activities at Harrah Al-Shaqah, the epicenter of the earthquake and the location of extinct volcanoes, subsided considerably.
Residents of Al-Ais expect the tremors to end within a few days.
The tremors were registered between 2 p.m. on Thursday and 2 p.m. yesterday, said Col. Zuhair Sabeeh, commander of the Civil Defense force in Al-Ais.
He said only 10 families remained in camps in the quake-hit area while the rest were shifted to Madinah and Yanbu.
Sabeeh said recreational programs, including contests, were being organized for children living in the camps in Al-Ais and prizes were distributed among the winners.
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For their part, Saudi Gazette/Okaz report that the earthquakes have created two new, deep rifts, one three kilometers in length. This would tend to lend support to the geological theory that the western part of the Kingdom is splitting and will eventually form a new sea. The report goes on to say that the government feels no rush to return people to their homes and will take time to ascertain safety first. It also notes that there was no disruption to the port activities at Yanbu, to the south.
2 rifts, no emissions in Harrat Al-Shaqa
Muhammad TalibMADINA – Civil Defense specialists have detected two deep rifts of three kilometers and 700 meters in length close to the epicenter of earth tremors in Harrat Al-Shaqa in the region of Madina.
The rifts were observed from the air by a team of inspection experts who said that no emissions were detected.
Civil Defense officials say the situation may return to normal soon but they will wait for a period of stability before passing judgment.The Saudi Geological Survey, Saudi Arabia’s authority in charge of monitoring and controlling seismological activity in the country, said in a statement Saturday that seismic activity in Harrat Al-Shaqa had begun to decline in strength and frequency.
It said the volcanic activity at Harrat Al-Shaqa, which showed unprecedented activity over the last 30 days, registered recent remarkable fall in terms of number and strength.
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So, is this it? No massive devastation? Quite possibly so. It will take several more days of monitoring to ensure (as a best-estimate) that the seismic activity has finished for now. Then again, activity could restart abruptly and violently.
The area, because it is volcanic, will require constant monitoring into the indefinite future. I suspect that the Saudi Geological Society will be seeing its budget get a bump upwards. I expect, too, that there will be a lot of proposals from international geologists suggesting joint studies. Many people were unaware of how geologically active the Kingdom is. That situation has changed, for the time being.
In passing, Saudi Gazette says that for the first time in 14 centuries, the mosques in the area were silent and vacant for Friday prayer:
Financial Times reports on the state of Saudi businesswomen and the troubles they’re having trying to do business. While they have law and regulation more or less on their side, they’re having a hard time breaking through social and cultural barriers. They’d like to see the government take a more active role in educating the would-be ‘guardians’ of their virtue and enforcing existing law. That’s not a lot to ask.
Saudi women push for business equality
Abeer Allam in JeddahAlia Banja, a Saudi businesswoman in Jeddah, had had enough of the “general manager” of her company. But rather than simply sack him, she has shut her IT business and is now pressing the Saudi government to abolish a requirement that female-run companies which deal with both sexes have to employ a male general manager.
“My business was growing and I had to protect myself,” said Ms Banja, whose company, 2Thepoint, develops websites and provides information technology services. “I cannot give anyone the power to sign or cancel deals without my knowledge – not when I’m the one bearing all the risk.”
Islamic law permits women to own and operate their own businesses and to maintain financial independence. However, as a result of gender segregation in the conservative kingdom, women cannot enter many government offices and face a risk of detention by the religious police, or mutawa, if they meet male customers.
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