A reader pointed me to a very strange article he’d come across:
As this made no sense, I took a look to see what it was all about.
I’m not sure how an article could come out wrong-headedly. The article it cites, from the UAE’s Gulf News, says nothing about dropping English. Instead, it reports that the Saudis are insisting that the Hijri or Islamic calendar be used for dating purposes on all official and business documents. This does makes sense because the Hijri Calendar is indeed the national calendar. Translations from one calendar to another already create problems when they’re necessary. Performing those translations when not necessary just creates more problems.
The Gulf News article also quotes an unnamed Saudi daily saying that hotels and the like should use Arabic to greet customers on the phone. That’s a suggestion, not a ban. It makes sense, too, because Saudi Arabia’s population speaks Arabic, though English has certainly become an unofficial second language.
English is the language of instruction at both King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. It is taught in Saudi public schools starting at the fourth grade.
Two recent articles in Arab News also stress the importance the Kingdom and its residents place on English:
Seven years ago, Isobel Coleman, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), co-wrote an article about Saudi Arabia’s education system Saudi System Is the Problem. She has a new article for the Council based on her recent visit to Queen Effat University, where she was invited to deliver a commencement address. She reports that Saudi Arabia is indeed fixing the system and women’s education is at the fore. She notes that female literacy is over 80% and near 100% for young women, a far cry from the 5% literacy rate in the 1960s. Women have come along way in a relatively short period of time. They have further to go, of course, but they are determined to get there.
Effat University on the Forefront of Change in Saudi Arabia
Isobel ColemanThis past weekend, I had the honor of being the commencement speaker at Effat University, a private university for women in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It was hardly the staid affair I expected. Colorful klieg lights lit the way of arriving parents and dignitaries; forget “Pomp and Circumstance”—the more than two hundred graduates and faculty paraded in to a pulsating techno beat, while stage fog swirled to dramatic effect. The array of high-heeled shoes under the graduates’ sky-blue abayas was breathtaking—everything from six inch high, hot-pink platform wedges, to cowboy boots, to the latest snakeskin and metallic Manolo Blahniks.
What really impressed me was the energy and passion of the graduates. The president of the student government in her speech exhorted her fellow graduates—in a chant of “yes, we can”—to change the world around them. Married at the age of twenty, she also thanked her husband for not “putting her in a cage” and allowing her to pursue her dreams. (She exuded such determination that I can guess he didn’t have much of an alternative.) The alumni speaker, who had been the valedictorian of the class of 2006, spoke of her sense of accomplishment in getting her master’s degree in England and building her career, but noted that she was most proud of passing her driver’s test in the U.K. That elicited particular cheers from the crowd. (Despite last year’s renewed effort to eliminate the driving ban, Saudi women are still not allowed to drive.)
I was also impressed to see Effat graduating a quarter of its students from its College of Engineering, which it established in partnership with Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering. When I first visited Effat seven years ago, it was still in the early stages of establishing engineering as a degree, a first for women in Saudi Arabia. In my book Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East, I describe the challenges that Effat faced in introducing engineering for women. As Dr. Haifa Jamal al-Lail, the president of Effat explained then, “Those in the business community said to us, ‘Why teach the girls engineering? We won’t hire them.’ Others who were more sympathetic to our goal said, ‘Why don’t you call it something else, so people aren’t so against it?’ But I like the word engineering – I’m not hiding anything!” Her gamble paid off, and today Effat’s engineering graduates are enrolled in top post-graduate programs around the world and are sought-after employees in the Kingdom.
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[HT to SUSRIS]
In it’s “On Faith” section, The Washington Post runs a piece by Dalia Mogahed, Executive Director at the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. She questions the tactics used by Mona Eltahawy in addressing gender inequalities in the Arab Muslim world, finding that in addition to being too sharp, those tactics miss their target. Declaring intellectual war on Islam or Arab culture simply will not win adherents in the region and offer no useful advice to foreign governments concerned about women’s right.
Instead, Mogahed suggests, attention needs to be paid to overall development and overall respect for human rights. Only when there is a substantive change in people’s perceptions of justice and equality and respect for rights can special attention be carved out for women. It’s an interesting piece, worth reading.
Does Mona Eltahawy’s approach hurt women?
Dalia MogahedMona Eltahawy’s Foreign Policy cover story “Why Do They Hate Us” triggered an avalanche of passionate responses. But few have addressed how her arguments impact indigenous Arab women’s rights activists or the article’s primary audience– how American policy makers– can best support the cause of gender justice in the Middle East.
Eltahawy draws attention to crimes committed against women in the Middle East that should outrage us all. Unfortunately, rather than discuss the complex social, economic and political dimensions of these issues (see Max Fisher’s useful analysis), she offers the radically original notion that Arab men, and by extension Middle Eastern culture and even “moderate” interpretations of Islam, are backwards and barbaric.
Well-meaning fans of the piece applaud what they see as Eltahawy’s courage for raising public awareness of Arab women’s struggles.
Critics question not the crimes Eltahawy describes but the causes she assigns, namely Islam and Arab culture’s inherent “hate” for women, alleging that her analysis is not only pedestrian but panders to prejudice.
The real danger however is that Eltahawy’s narrative harms the very cause she claims to champion. Conflating women’s rights advocacy with Arab inferiority or Islam bashing doesn’t empower the champions of change, it aids their enemies.
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Saudi Arabia’s journalists seem to believe that they’re right on top of things, doing a good job of reporting. The Saudi Journalists Association says so:
Saudi press enjoys considerable freedom, says journalists’ group
JEDDAH: ARAB NEWSSaudi Journalists Association (SJA) has underscored the remarkable progress achieved by the Saudi press during the past 50 years.
“The Saudi electronic media space is open without restrictions and journalists deal with many sensitive issues with courage,” it said.
In a statement issued on the occasion of the World Press Freedom Day, which falls on May 3 every year, the association said the Saudi press has made rapid strides during the past years, in terms of content, technical structure and professionalism.
“We don’t claim the Saudi press enjoyed total freedom in the initial stage or during its development stage. However, we can say that Saudi journalists enjoy considerable freedom in dealing with all issues,” the association said.
“Saudi Arabia participates in this important international event that aims at deepening the basic principles of press freedom, defending journalists and media persons and removing the obstacles that stand in the way of their mission,” he said
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The international Committee to Protect Journalists, however, sees things a bit differently. It reports [13-pg PDF] that Saudi Arabia has the 8th most-censored media in the world. If there’s any solace to be taken from the report, Iran and Syria are worse than the Kingdom.
Saudi-owned satellite TV channel Al-Arabiya runs a Reuters story reporting on religion in America. Based on a report released Monday from the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, the number of American Muslims is rising rapidly, and now number 2.6 million.
The report gives a good overview of the reach of all major religions, including many of the smaller Protestant denominations. The maps and charts are informative. Data was collected in 2010.
Number of Muslims in the U.S. rises sharply, claims census
Reuters — ChicagoAmerican Muslims grew in number over the past decade, outnumbering Jews for the first time in most of the Midwest and part of the South, while most mainline churches lost adherents, according to a census of American religions released on Tuesday.
The number of Muslim adherents rose to 2.6 million in 2010 from 1 million in 2000, fueled by immigration and conversions, said Dale Jones, a researcher who worked on the study by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies.
“Christians are the largest group in every state, but some of the things we found interesting was the growth of the Mormons, who reported the largest numerical gain in 26 states,” said Jones, who presented the report to a conference in Chicago.
The number of Mormons, whose Utah-based church’s formal name is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, grew by 45 percent to 6.1 million in 2010, according to the census, which asked 236 religions to count their own adherents. Family members of adherents were generally included in the numbers.
Roughly 55 percent of Americans attend services with enough regularity to be counted, according to the data. By comparison, most surveys estimate roughly 85 percent of Americans profess religious faith, though they may not attend services.
Some 158 million Americans were classified as “unclaimed” by any religion in the survey.
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An amusing post from Sadie Abroad, a blog by a US Foreign Service Officer stationed in Jeddah. She tells how she accomplished a long-held wish to attend the Parrotfish Festival held on the island of Farsan, in the far southwest of Saudi Arabia. I never had a chance to attend this festival, but definitely wish I had.
Credit: Ewa Barska
I know I’ve kept you all in suspense for entirely too long about my recent adventures – apologies! I had no idea how exhausting the last weeks would be. But now I’m reflecting on a busy two weeks and a wonderful escape to London. But first – adventures!
Before I came to Saudi Arabia, I studied Arabic for ten months. One of the skills we practiced was listening, first to audio files, and, eventually, with videos as well. One video in particular caught my eye – it was of hundreds of people wading in shallow water catching fish – with nets, with their bare hands, with their clothes, really with anything handy. It looked like so much fun! And when I found out it was in Saudi, that was it. I had to go. I mean, I HAD to go.
So I did some research, found out some more details, and started talking nonstop about this event – which I discovered was the Parrotfish Festival on Farasan Island. I had enough other people intrigued to try and organize a trip, but the first year it didn’t work out. So as this April approached, I once again tried to interest people. And I was lucky to have the opportunity to go this year, and as part of a regional outreach trip for work, too!
We were privileged to be part of the festival’s VIP delegation, which afforded me great opportunities to meet and talk with people as well as see things up close.
So, without getting into too many work-ish details, here’s how it all went down.
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Saudi Arabia’s oil company, Saudi ARAMCO, is a pretty smart investor, it seems. Not only does it make a profit from the oil it produces, but it will also make a profit on oil – no matter its source – that is refined in its half-owned refinery in Port Arthur, Texas.
Within a Month, Which Refinery Will Be the Largest in the US?
Eagle Ford Shale Project, Seaway reversal, and other factors favor expansion of Saudi-Shell’s Port Arthur refinery in Texas
Ashim MidhaWhile US Northeast refineries such as ConocoPhillips’ (COP) Trainer as well as Sunoco’s (SUN) Girard Point and Marcus Hook are on the verge of shutting down if a buyer is not found, the historic Port Arthur refinery near Sabine Lake in East Texas is about to complete a massive expansion.
Continually improving exploration and production technology will allow for significantly greater oil recovery from the Eagle Ford shale and Permian Basin in Texas – aggregate flow from these regions is expected to multiply several times over within the next few years. Increased flow from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and Athabasca Oil Sands near Alberta, along with the reversal of Enbridge (ENB) and Enterprise Products Partners’ (EPD) Seaway Pipeline, will also add to the vast quantity of oil moving toward Gulf Coast refineries such as Port Arthur.
After the Port Arthur project is completed within the next month, the 110-year-old facility’s throughput capacity is expected to more than double to 600,000 barrels per day (“bpd”). It will rank as the largest in the United States (measured by operable capacity) and among the top 10 in the world. Following expansion, it will surpass the largest US refinery, ExxonMobil’s (XOM) Baytown, by approximately 40,000 barrels. The Port Arthur refinery currently handles 285,000 bpd and is the 15th largest in the country. For the sake of scale, the world’s largest is Reliance Industry’s 1.24 million bpd facility located in Jamnagar, Gujarat, India.
The operation is owned by Motiva Enterprises, a joint venture of Saudi Refining, Inc. and Shell (RDS.A). Each entity owns a 50% share of the JV. Saudi Refining is a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabian national oil company, Saudi Aramco.
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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is complaining about bias on the part of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an organization that was intended to counsel the US State Department on matter of international religious freedom. While I’m not entirely clear on all the elements of the ACLU’s complaints, I do support their view that the organization seems to have a strong bias against Islam, as I’ve noted over the years.
The USCIRF is capable of doing good work. And it’s not as if religious freedom isn’t an important issue. Rather, the issue is that the organization is working inconstantly, with unequal attention paid to and complaints made about different religions. Where the organization slams Islam or Islamic countries, it neglects to complain about similar activities conducted by other religious groupings. It finds objectionable practices within Islam that are unobjectionable in others.
The USCIRF nearly lost its congressional funding last year. As a creature of Congress, that would have put it out of business. Its funding was approved at the last minute.
A Look at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom
Dena Sher, Washington Legislative Office at 12:31pmIn 1998, Congress created the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to draw attention to violations of religious freedom in other countries. The commissioners vote annually to list countries that are of particular concern or place others on a watch list of countries that should be monitored closely for religious freedom violations.
But, since its inception, the commission’s been beset by controversy. People who watch the commission closely say it was created to satisfy special interests, which has led to bias in the commission’s work. Past commissioners and staff have reported that the commission is “rife, behind-the-scenes, with ideology and tribalism.” They’ve said that commissioners focus “on pet projects that are often based on their own religious background.” In particular, past commissioners and staff reported “an anti-Muslim bias runs through the Commission’s work.”
The commissioners’ personal biases have led to sharp divides both within the commission and with the State Department, which it is supposed to advise. One expert calls the commission’s relationship with the State Department “adversarial,” and “not conducive to effective dialogue, let alone cooperation.” And the divisiveness within the commission itself is obvious, ranging from how it dealt with when a policy analyst claimed her contract with the commission was cancelled because she was Muslim to its most recent report in which five commissioners voted to include Turkey on the list of countries of particular concern (alongside a few others like China and North Korea) over the strong objections of the four other commissioners.
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Christian Science Monitor runs a piece about the sources of US oil imports. It notes that over the past ten years, Saudi Arabia’s oil imports have decreased, moving the Kingdom from the #1 position down to #3. Canada has greatly increased its exports to the US and Mexico, while its volume has declined, rises to #2 because Saudi imports have declined more sharply.
Credit: Robert Rapier/EIA
Top 15 sources of US crude oil imports
Here’s where the US is really getting its oil, plus a look at how imports have changed over the past decade.
Robert RapierThe Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently published an article on 2011 U.S. crude oil imports. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at where the U.S. currently obtains its oil, and how that has changed over the past decade. The EIA story is: Nearly 69% of U.S. crude oil imports originated from five countries in 2011. I downloaded their data sources for 2011 import data, and then also went into the archives and pulled up 2001 import data to create the above table.
Over the past decade, Canada became our top supplier of oil, largely due to increases in oil sands production. The EIA report noted that U.S. imports from Canada topped 2 million barrels per day for the first time ever in 2011, “because more oil is now being transported by rail.” This is one of the reasons that the Keystone XL pipeline protests may have the opposite effect of what the protesters intend. Lack of pipeline access isn’t going to slow the growth of the oil sands much (Canadian crude oil imports were up 12% in 2011), it just forces more oil onto more carbon intensive transport options (and perhaps to more distant destinations). Note that there is also greater risk from transporting oil via rail versus pipeline.
Saudi Arabia declined in importance as a supplier of oil to the U.S. over the decade, falling from the top supplier in 2001 to the third spot last year. Imports from Mexico were down 13% over the decade, but Mexico moved into the Number 2 position due to Saudi Arabia’s sharp drop. Countries that were in the Top 15 in 2001 that failed to make the Top 15 in 2011 were Norway (#8 in 2001), the U.K. (#10), Gabon (#12), Argentina (#14), and Trinidad and Tobago (#15). Replacing them in the Top 15 were Algeria, Brazil, Russia, and Cameroon.
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The American journal Foreign Policy runs a surprisingly speculative – and, I believe, not very well informed – article on stability in Saudi Arabia. Simon Henderson, from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an organization with strong affinities toward Israeli policies, offers a lot of ideas about what might happen in the Kingdom following the death of the current king. Sure, his predictions are possible, but he make so many offhand remarks that he loses credibility.
There’s no doubt the the sons of the country’s founder and hitherto the only ones to become kings, are an aging group. Inevitably, there will be none of them left to succeed to the throne. When that happens (I think it likely within ten years), there will be a generational change. It’s probable, too, that members of the Al-Saud family are discussing succession within the family, but no one has a slightest clue who they might choose. I’m very confident that this is because none of them have made any decisions. They will wait until making a choice approaches necessity. I don’t think this makes the country any less stable than a country that changes leadership every four or eight years. No one knows who will be the next President of the US, or even when. It could happen as a result of this year’s elections or those four years from now. That’s hardly a cause for panic or even much concern.
Saudi Arabia has had six kings. The five successions have all occurred smoothly and promptly. The legacy of the Second Saudi State (1824–1891) shines brightly within the ruling family. They know that intra-family dissension leads to bad things and will work hard to ensure it doesn’t happen again. The arguments and consensus building may be opaque to foreign analysts, but that doesn’t mean they don’t happen.
The Man Who Would Be King
Saudi Arabia’s ruling clique is dying off. It may be up to the new defense minister to guide the kingdom through a turbulent Middle East
Simon HendersonThe senior members of the Saudi royal family are looking increasingly frail, and the buzz in the Gulf is that there will be not just one, but two, changes in the kingdom’s leadership during the course of the next year. Although there is no fixed succession plan if that comes to pass, the newly minted defense minister, Prince Salman, looks well-placed to ascend to the throne.
The evidence suggests that Saudi Arabia’s current ruling clique is on its last legs. This week, the 89 year-old King Abdullah presided over the usual meeting of the council of ministers from the vantage point of his own palace in Riyadh rather than travelling to the council building. Propped in his chair, a cushion supporting his back, he looked as uncomfortable personally as he probably was politically with the state of the Arab world. It grieves him that Syria, a country with which he has family ties, is in such bloody turmoil, and it infuriates him that Washington does not share his view of the danger of Iran.
Within a day or so, the Saudi heir to the throne, the 79 year-old Crown Prince Nayef, is due to return home after more than a month away from the kingdom. He initially went to Morocco on “vacation,” but within a week traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, for “routine” medical tests, before flying to Algeria. Such an itinerary — and an absence of photographs of him since leaving Cleveland — has raised speculation that he is unwell. In recent months, he has added a stick to his wardrobe and regained a steroidal puffiness, renewing speculation that cancer, probably leukemia, has returned after an apparent respite of several years.
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While international media lament and draw broad conclusions from the events in Toulouse, an event that happened in southern California is proving to be less of a ‘lesson’. Here, an Iraqi-born woman, living in the US since the 1990s, was found murdered in her home. A note calling her a ‘terrorist’ was found near her body. Her husband, ironically enough, had worked for the US Army as a consultant on Iraqi life.
The particulars of the hatred behind the murders in the US and in France may differ. The root beneath them does not: hatred based on misinformation, fed and groomed by others who thrive on it.
El Cajon police ask public’s help to solve Iraqi woman’s beating death
Shaima Alawadi, 32, may have been the victim of a hate crime, police say. According to relatives, a note found near her body said ‘go back to your own country’ and called her a terrorist.
Tony Perry, Los Angeles TimesReporting from San Diego—
El Cajon police are asking for the public’s help in its investigation into the fatal beating of an Iraqi immigrant and have not ruled out the possibility that Shaima Alawadi was the victim of a hate crime.“We’re investigating all aspects of this crime,” Lt. Mark Coit said Sunday. “The minute you rule out a possible motive, you start to get tunnel vision. As of now, we have not ruled out any of the motives for why people kill people.”
Near the body of the 32-year-old Alawadi, police found what has been described as a threatening note. Police have declined to release the text, but relatives and friends say the handwritten note warned Alawadi to “go back to your own country” and labeled her a terrorist.
The family told police they had received a similarly threatening note several days earlier but considered it a prank by teenagers.
Alawadi was found unconscious Wednesday morning in the dining room of the family’s home by her 17-year-old daughter. She was taken to a hospital, where she was diagnosed as brain-dead. Her family decided on Saturday to discontinue life support.
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Asharq Alawsat runs an Associated Press story on the California murder.
With oil selling on the international markets at around $107/bbl, Saudi Arabia has announced that it will increase production to drive prices lower. It seems to have had an effect, with prices dropping a few dollars/barrel.
Kingdom vows measures to bring down oil prices
ARAB NEWSSaudi Arabia announced yesterday it would work individually and in coordination with the GCC countries and other producers to ensure an adequate oil supply to bring down prices to reasonable levels that could accelerate global economic recovery.
The Council of Ministers, chaired by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, took the landmark decision after realizing the negative impact of rising oil prices on the world economy, especially on the economies of developing countries.
The Cabinet meeting reiterated Saudi Arabia’s efforts to stabilize the international oil market as it was the largest oil producer and exporter in the world enjoying surplus production capacity and maintaining good relations with other countries.
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A foreign exchange firm notes, too, that the US Dollar has gained strength over the past few days and that this is also a factor in lower oil prices. Both, of course, can be true at the same time.