I’m not quite sure where the writer of this Al-Madinah opinion piece (translated by Arab News) is coming from. I half-suspect that he’s being satirical.
Of course, Saudi Arabia is known as the only country on the planet that prohibits in fact, if not in law, women’s driving. This leads to the importation of millions of foreigners to drive Saudi women and children around in conducting their daily lives. And that, in turn, creates an enormous expense for both the individual and the state.
The solution, according to the writer, is to import female drivers, loosening the societal ban for foreigners, not Saudi women. What?!
Yes, if this were to be done, a lot of issues, like having Saudi women in close company to unrelated males, might be avoided. It wouldn’t do anything for economies, though, other than that female drivers would likely be paid less than their male counterparts. Far simpler, far more efficient, would simply be permitting Saudi women to drive themselves. That would solve a whole array of issues, including under-age male drivers, privacy, avoidance of khulwa, and lead to significant savings.
Women drivers can solve problems
MUHAMMAD AREEF | AL-MADINAHThere is so much talk about the problems of domestic workers in Saudi Arabia, as if it is a problem that can never be solved. We have heard about the woman who tortured and burned her maid and cut her lips.
We have also heard about the sponsor who pushed needles into a maid’s body before deporting her. We have also heard about a maid who murdered her sponsor and dismembered her body. Then there was the case of another maid who scalded a child with boiling water.
There are many other problems associated with maids, such as running away, working illegally for other families and nonpayment of salaries. Many lawsuits are also filed in embassies and consulates against Saudi sponsors, not to mention the sex crimes, something that is expected because we have over a million single foreign males and females working in Saudi homes.
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Even before Islam, pilgrimage to Mecca had a financial aspect. The Quraysh tribe, of which the Prophet Mohammed was a member, made a substantial part of its living through its taxes on and services for pilgrims who came to the then-polytheistic shrine we know as the Kaaba. In the early days of modern Saudi Arabia, head taxes on pilgrims represented the sole source of income for the Kingdom. While head taxes were dropped in the 1950s as Saudi oil revenues started pouring in, the Haj still implies an enormous flow of cash for services, expected to soon reach $27 billion annually.
Now, over one million pilgrims attend the Haj, with millions more taking part in Umrah, the ‘lesser pilgrimage’. Housing accommodations can be splendid, if one has the money, but most of the pilgrims do not have money. They spend the time they are not actively participating in a variety of temporary dwellings, often tents, and often in fairly poor conditions. The Saudis are looking to change that by building up to 500 new hotels, the largest of which may have as many as 5,000 rooms.
Even as a holy city, however, Mecca does not miraculously create more real estate simply because demand is high. Building new hotels is necessarily going to mean that older structures are going to be demolished. That, I’m confident, is going to cause heartburn among preservationists. I’m confident, too, that critical observers will be watching to see just which buildings are torn down, looking to find meaning in the choices.
500 hotels to be built in Makkah
ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: Licenses have been issued for the construction of 500 hotels near the Grand Mosque in Makkah, including one with 5,000 rooms, reported sister publication Asharq Al-Awsat on Wednesday.
Economic experts told the newspaper they expected revenues from Haj and Umrah to cross the SR100 billion ($27 billion) barrier in the coming years due to the availability of extra accommodation.
Saad Al-Qurashi, chairman of the committee for Haj and Umrah auxiliary services at the Makkah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that the provision of such a large number of hotels with numerous rooms and suites will help accommodate the growing number of pilgrims from inside Saudi Arabia and abroad.
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Last week’s WikiLeak of a US State Department cable about Saudi Arabia’s oil production made a bit of a splash among the ‘peak oil’ crew. They pointed to it to show that they had been right all along, that the world was already on the downside of oil production (and please subscribe to my newsletter to stay ahead of the other investors)! As I noted at the time, I had some problems with the cable and the reporting on it.
Now, Arab News sits down with Mr. Al-Husseini, interlocutor for the cable, to ask him about what he said. He asserts that the reporting officer did not understand the technical points Al-Husseini was making about oil reserves and that led to confusion in the cable. I still have no reason to doubt him.
Al-Husseini sets WikiLeaks record straight
SIRAJ WAHAB | ARAB NEWSDHAHRAN: Retired Saudi Aramco senior executive Sadad I. Al-Husseini was surprised recently to be thrust into the international spotlight when newspapers picked up a story about a WikiLeaks release of a US State Department cable that attributed comments to him purporting to dispute Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves.
The former executive vice president and veteran geologist was disappointed by the news stories, asserting that the American diplomat in Dhahran who sent the cable had not understood the technical industry terminology and that the press had sensationalized the communique in the interest of selling newspapers.
Al-Husseini consented to an exclusive interview with Arab News in order to set the record straight and assure the world that he had no doubt that Saudi Arabia will continue to be the world’s largest supplier of crude oil for many decades to come.
“It is clear to me that the consulate official who approached me did not understand the technical distinctions I was making and that several subsequent news articles took my comments out of context for their own purposes,” Al-Husseini said. “The reality is I have full confidence in Aramco’s reserves estimates and have never questioned them in any case. How could I say Aramco’s reserves are overstated by 300 billion barrels when Aramco’s entire published reserves were only 260 billion barrels at that time?”
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Here’s a very interesting essay by Middle East analyst Olivier Roy, looking at the meaning of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and the ongoing conflicts across the region. He finds that both Western analysts and Muslim participants are finding that the ground has shifted beneath their feet—and many haven’t realized it yet. Old-style ‘Islamism’, seeking a universal solution to life’s problems through a ‘muscular’, assertive dependence on religion, has gone out the door along with the dictators. In its place is a more individualistic approach to both religion and politics, a de facto separation of church and state that has arisen more or less organically out of the middle classes and ‘middle class values’. He says that those who fear a ‘resurgent Islam’ need to take a closer look at what has happened and how it has happened. Those who think that they can use the discord to advance their sectarian programs need to do some serious reappraisals as well.
Highly recommended.
“Post-Islamist Revolution” — Events in Egypt Analyzed
by French Expert on Political Islam
By Olivier RoyEvents in Egypt confirm the recent movement in the Arab world away from belief in a theocratic Islamic state, according to Olivier Roy, an authority on political Islam. His most recent book on the subject – the ground-breaking “Holy Ignorance: When Culture and Religion Part Ways” – is available in English from the Columbia University Press. In a just-published article, he offers a magisterial analysis of developments in Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and also a larger view of the real political forces at work in the contemporary Arab and Muslim societies in the Middle East emerging without ties to jihadism or admiration for repressive Islamist regimes such as Iran and Salafism, the fundamentalist version of Islam derived Wahabism and present in radical movements in Arab countries. His perceptive insights capturing the trends at work in Egypt (and elsewhere) in a new generation of Arabs appeared in Le Monde newspaper in an article translated here by Georgio Comninos of the European Institute.
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Thanks to commenter NeilsC for the pointer.
I think it was pretty widely anticipated that former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would find welcome in Saudi Arabia if he decided to leave Egypt after his downfall. There had been rumors that perhaps he’d go to Germany, where he could be treated for undefined health problems, or perhaps to the United Arab Emirates, but Saudi Arabia has a tradition of offering sanctuary to fallen Islamic leaders.
Reuters reports, though, that Mubarak has declined the asylum offer from the Saudis, preferring to stay at Sharm Al-Sheikh, the Red Sea resort city on the Sinai Peninsula.
Mubarak has given up, wants to die in Sharm: Saudi official
Alexander Dziadosz(Reuters) – Egypt’s ousted president has given up and wants to die in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh where he has been living since a popular uprising ended his rule, a Saudi official said on Wednesday.
Hosni Mubarak, 82, has suffered from health problems in recent years and traveled to Germany for gall bladder surgery in March last year. Reports of a further decline have increased since he stepped down on Friday after three decades in power.
An official in Saudi Arabia said the kingdom had offered to host Mubarak but he was determined to see out his days in Egypt. Official confirmation could not immediately be obtained from the Saudi government.
“He is not dead but is not doing well at all and refuses to leave. Basically, he has given up and wants to die in Sharm,” said the Saudi official, who asked not to be named.
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Arab News reports that large parts of Jeddah’s history, as preserved in its old buildings, are disappearing. Most recently, two buildings burnt down, perhaps to arson, while thousands of others are threatened with collapse. There’s a perverse incentive to neglect these old buildings. They are sited on expensive real estate, but because they’re old, they lack most of the amenities now considered standard, like in-door plumbing and proper electrical wiring. As a consequence, the owners end up renting the buildings to those on the lower end of the economic scale. They, in turn, are unable/unwilling to put their own money toward maintenance. The rents they are paying aren’t enough to give the owners a profit sufficient to cover expenses as well as maintenance or upgrading. The cycle repeats until something happens, with or without encouragement from the owners.
The problem, of course, is not unique to Jeddah. You can find it in every major city in the world. Nor is arson—as a reasonable, though illegal response to regulation and economic reality—unheard of. The municipality, the citizens of Jeddah, and the preservationists need to get together to decide what needs to be preserved, at what cost, and at whose cost.
Historic preservation is important, there’s no doubt about that. But not everything historic, or even importantly historic, can be preserved rationally. Nor should the costs of preservation be put solely on the shoulders of the current owners of a property. These owners should be held responsible for adequate maintenance of the buildings, but if they end up being squeezed unfairly to pay for other people’s perceived values, then perhaps the Municipality should buy them out, by forced sales if necessary.
8,000 buildings in Jeddah on verge of collapse
MUHAMMAD HUMAIDAN | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: There are about 8,000 buildings in Jeddah on the verge of collapse, according to informed sources.
This opens the door wide to accusations of our historic legacy being neglected, they say.
Jeddah lost two more historic buildings in the downtown Balad area when they were burned down Saturday night, bringing the total number of ancient buildings lost to fires to 200.
Suspicions that the fires in the two historic buildings might be deliberate are also not a distant possibility,” an informed source at the municipality said.
According to the sources, the fire that burned down the two houses did not reach the historical Bait Naseef. They said eight fire brigades were able to fight the blaze, preventing it from reaching other houses in the historic area.
According to the Civil Defense, the fire started at an apartment in the second floor of one of the two historic buildings before it extended to the third floor and then to the other building.
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Asharq Alawsat carries this too-brief Associated Press report from Riyadh. What it means is pretty much opaque, open to whatever interpretation one wants to put on it. It’s certainly true, however, that there are a lot of books available in Saudi Arabia that support extremist thought, if not out-and-out promote it.
Saudi to remove books deemed to promote terrorism
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, (AP) – An official at the Saudi Education Ministry says the kingdom plans to remove books from school libraries that are deemed to encourage terrorism or defame religion.
The official said Tuesday the ministry has created a book review committee that will begin work soon. No further details were immediately available. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with ministry protocol.
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The following is a screen capture from the website of the Egyptian government…
Asharq Alawsat‘s Editor-in-Chief, Tariq Alhomayed, offers his thoughts about what Arab states should do when confronted by popular revolt: hold elections with international observers. That’s only a partially good answer, I think. The reason I think it faulty is one that Alhomayed recognizes: responsibility.
It’s not that I think Arabs incapable of building and sustaining a democracy, not at all. Where I cavil is on whether all Arab countries are capable of holding a meaningful election right now. Holding a meaningful election implies many things: tolerance, respect, accountability, generosity of spirit, respect for process over personalities. You can certainly find these in many, many Arabs and in sections of Arab society, but on the whole, these aren’t really the social values that dominate Arab society.
I think one of the major hurdles to be met is the ability to see other people as being absolutely equal when it comes to human and political rights. A society that permits marriages to be broken because of ‘tribal incompatibility’ is not one likely to see members of a different tribe as holding equal political rights. A society that assumes non-members to be in some other, subordinate category of humanity—whether due to color, sex, ethnicity, nationality, or religion—is not ready to give power to those people. A society that honors family or personal relationships more highly than the rule of law is not ready to write, implement, and enforce laws through democratic process. A society that has laws which don’t apply to people with particular surnames—even when it’s conveniently your own surname—is not ready for democracy or elections.
As others have noted in talking about Algeria, Ukraine, Cambodia, and Iraq, among other countries, ‘an election does not a democracy make.’ There needs to be a mindset that supports it. An attitude of “I won, so my guys get all the prizes and your guys don’t” is not what elections are about. Recognizing that other voters hold their views, not out of malice or moral failing, but because that is how they best understand them is primary. Assuming that someone with different views is simply out to screw you over does not build a democratic society.
Instead, quick elections put the cart before the horse. Civil society and its value must come before meaningful elections.
I had thought, in the case of Iraq, that a lengthy history elections, however flawed or rigged, might make the transition to a post-Saddam Hussein government easier. I certainly didn’t work out that way. Will it work out for Egypt any better? As an optimist, I think it might. Egypt, though it does have religious tensions sometimes accompanied by violence, is not so sharply divided along sectarian lines. Nor does it have a majority who have been suppressed by a minority (‘thugs’ does not represent a minority group). Other Arab states, though? I just don’t see, today, the willingness to let ‘the other’ act equally or to see his actions as equally worthy.
The remedy for revolutions
Tariq AlhomayedAs long as our media, or at least parts of it, insist on asking the question who’s next after Tunisia and Egypt? Let us offer advice to our republics who are concerned with the crisis more than others. Whatever some of our media outlets say, which I will discuss in a forthcoming article under the title “the bullying media”, there is a magic remedy to the crisis, rather than demonstrations and destruction. This remedy is especially significant considering what we see happening in Algeria and Yemen.
My advice is not along the lines of what Colonel Muammar Gaddafi intends to do, by joining the anti-government demonstrations in person, in other words demonstrating against himself, but rather it is far simpler, and more credible. In the event of an outbreak of severe protests in our republics, the best solution is to call for immediate presidential elections under international observation. Whoever wins that election stays in power, and whoever loses leaves with dignity, rather than being defamed. This would circumvent the maneuvers of some of our Arab media, which in turn would appease the professionals in the business, who have endured a difficult past two months. This is not a ridiculous proposal; rather it is a rational and prudent call, with a sense of responsibility.
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While newspaper and media reports may represent a ‘rough, first draft of history,’ academics can be quick to provide a second draft.
Here are two pieces from The Chronicle of Higher Education, a US newspaper and website that serves educators, primarily at the university level. They look at what was going on in Egypt last week (prior to Mubarak’s resignation) and try to make sense of it.
The first considers the question of why academics didn’t see the Egyptian revolution coming. Of course, they were not alone…
Why Mideast Tumult Caught Scholars by Surprise
Daniel BymanPopular revolutions are difficult to predict or, more accurately, easy to overpredict. How often does an opinion piece begin or end by declaring, “The current [repressive, unjust, unstable, dangerous] situation cannot last.” Yet in the Middle East it has. Sclerotic, illegitimate, and brutal governments persist and seemingly grow stronger, despite their countries’ many problems. Democratic waves swept Europe, Latin America, and Asia, even touching parts of Africa, but the Middle East remained a desert of autocracy.
The scholarly and broader analytic community offers some insights to explain the surprising endurance of regimes like those of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Two works I’ll single out are Eva Bellin’s “The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective,” in Comparative Politics 36 (2004); and Steven Heydemann’s “Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World” (Brookings, 2007).
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The second tries to step back from the immediate situation and put it into an historical context, along with the various democratic revolutions of the 18th, 19th, and 20th C.
A Fourth Wave Gathers Strength in the Middle East
Richard WolinIn January 1969, Jan Palach, a young philosophy student, set himself aflame in Prague’s Wenceslas Square to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia five months earlier. Paradoxical though it may seem, his self-sacrifice was not intended as an act of despair. On the contrary, it was meant to inspire hope and resilience in his fellow Czechs. Decades later, Palach would be remembered as one of the inspirational precursors of Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution. Today a square is named in his honor in Prague’s Old Town section.
Some 41 years later, a North African youth with a computer-science degree, Mohamed Bouazizi, committed a parallel act, immolating himself in the rural town of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia.
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Meanwhile, Reuters covers what may be a new stage of politics in Saudi Arabia:
In this Arab News piece, the writer finds a situation in Saudi Arabia that is troubling. The children of long-term expat workers lose their connections with their parents’ homeland. The family home is not their home. Rather, the country in which they live—Saudi Arabia—becomes, psychologically, their home.
This isn’t exactly news and it isn’t limited to the children of expat workers. The workers themselves, after having spent 20 or 30 years in another country, lose connections with their homelands to a greater or lesser extent. Not only have friends and family ‘back home’ moved on, perhaps died, but the network of interactions, the country’s very own sense of itself, and the ‘way things are done’ have all drifted from what they once were.
What’s more, those living their lives ‘abroad’ (that is, not in their home countries) are also changing. They are learning, wittingly or not, different ways of seeing the world and appraising it. This can be good, bat, or neutral, but it is, nevertheless, a real difference too.
This is something that also pertains to the children of diplomats—also to a greater or lesser extent. While they may not adopt the cultural values of a single country, they do drift a bit from what their peers who stayed in one place in the home country consider ‘normal’. Those within their own culture don’t notice the gradual changes that creep in and adapt to them without much thought or effort. Those coming in for brief periods—summer vacations and the like—do notice them and try to find ways to deal with those changes. Some expats become hyper-patriotic, taking up strong positions on values that might have been traditional at the time of their departure, but no longer representative of where their societies now stand. Others, as this piece points out, abandon those traditions and cultures completely.
Expat children can’t adjust to life in home countries
DIANA AL-JASSEM | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: The children of expatriates who have been living in the Kingdom for decades often find it difficult to return to their parents’ home countries to live. This is a phenomenon that often leads to clashes between expatriates and their children who have grown accustomed to life in Saudi Arabia.
Aayat Asad, a 25-year-old Jordanian who was born in Saudi Arabia, found it very difficult to live in Jordan for four years. “My family’s been in Jeddah for 30 years. My elder brothers got married here in Jeddah,” said Asad.
“When I was 20, I was forced to move to Jordan to study in university. At that time my parents decided to move to Jordan forever, but my brothers and I refused. I only wanted to study in Jordan and then come back to Saudi Arabia,” she added.
“Although I spent four years studying in Amman, I found it very difficult to adapt to the different lifestyle. I feel a special link to Jeddah and the people who live here. After finishing my education in 2010, I immediately asked my parents to return to Jeddah to live here forever,” she said.
Asad also received several marriage offers while in Amman, all of which she refused saying she wanted to marry someone who lives in Jeddah.
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Well, it’s February 14, St. Valentine’s Day in much of the world. This means, of course, that the wet blankets at the Saudi Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice are out there warning merchants and customers about the damnation that awaits them if they go anywhere near the color red or heart shapes. And, of course, people being people, they find their ways around strictures that make little sense. Perhaps one of these years we’ll see less paranoia about ‘corrupting religious influences’, but clearly not this year.
Arab News reports on both aspects…
Couples find novel ways to celebrate Valentine’s Day
SARAH ABDULLAH | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: While some retail outlets in the Kingdom have geared up for Valentine’s Day only to be warned by the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to remove items that are red, many couples have devised novel ways to celebrate Feb. 14 by exchanging other types of gifts.
Instead of exchanging red roses or balloons, couples are now exchanging jewelry, perfumes, chocolates and other gifts, in addition to having dinner in some of the city’s most popular restaurants.
“I have already bought my wife a gold and diamond bracelet and have reserved seats at a local restaurant to celebrate,” said Amjad, a 28-year-old Saudi who recently got married.
He added that if celebrating Valentine’s Day can bring a couple’s relationship closer, then it is well worth it given the high rate of divorce in the Kingdom.
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