Crossroads Arabia

Clash in a Riyadh Mall

John Burgess — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:27:00 +0000

Saudi Gazette reports on the YouTube video of a Saudi woman’s confrontation with religious police in a Riyadh mall. According to the report, the video has also been noticed by the Arabic daily Al-Hayat, which learned that the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice are looking into the matter.

Video of Hai’a staff arguing with girl goes viral

RIYADH – A video of a girl and a member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice arguing over why she had manicured nails has gone viral and ignited a debate over the way commission members should deal with people in public places.

The video, shot by the girl, and uploaded on the popular video-sharing website Youtube, shows a commission member ordering the girl to leave the Hayat Mall in Riyadh on account of her manicured nails. The two become engaged in a heated argument with the girl telling the commission member he has no right to look at her nails.

“You don’t see a strand of hair from other girls while you are showing off your manicure in a public venue… this is my duty to tell you this,” said the commission member to which the girl replied, “Why are you chasing me? The government said no more chasing! Your duty is to advise people… why are you looking at my manicure? I will never leave the mall!”

At one point, the girl sought the help of two of the mall’s security guards.
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[Note: the video link above comes through the MEMRI channel and carries its translation of the exchange. I'm currently unable to find the woman's own YouTube submission. If anyone can point me to it, I'll swap out the link.]

UPDATE: Thanks to reader Saudi Jawa, I’ve replaced the link to now point YouTube. The link was at Ahmed Al-Omran’s Saudi Jeans blog.

Barriers to Saudi Solar Power

John Burgess — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:48:49 +0000

Saudi Arabia has an enormous amount of potential solar energy. Vast areas receive intense sunlight throughout the year, little encumbered by clouds or rain. As a result, the Kingdom is planning on spending over $100 billion to develop this alternative energy source.

But the Kingdom also has a few factors that work against the collection of solar energy, dust being one of the biggest. As it is a desert country, and has been for thousands of years, the sands of its deserts have been ground down, creating huge amounts of dust that is picked up by the slightest breeze. There’s no part of the Kingdom – except, perhaps, in the mountainous Asir – that is not subject to mammoth dust storms.

Heat, too, presents problems, particularly when it comes to efficiency and energy storage. The effectiveness of solar collectors can be reduced as much as 20% due to heat factors alone. And then there’s the matter of energy storage. Energy converted from sunlight needs to be stored until it is needed. That implies batteries of some sort and batteries just don’t do well when they’re kept hot. Battery technology is one of the ‘next horizon’ opportunities for businesses, with new developments coming along, but at a much slower rate than other technologies. For now, they’re a problem. Saudi Gazette runs a piece reporting on the issue:

KSA battles excess heat, dust to build solar power

RIYADH/DAMMAM — Saudi Arabia is getting serious about overcoming the technical and financial hurdles for tapping its other main resource: sunshine.

Thousands of solar power panels have sprung up across Europe over the past few years, thanks to generous subsidies that make the technology an attractive alternative to conventional energy.

Saudi Arabia too, wants to generate much more solar power as it lacks coal or enough natural gas output to meet rapidly rising power demand.

Doing so would allow it to slash the volume of oil it burns in power plants bankrolled by billions of dollars worth of saved oil earnings.

“At world market prices, solar is competitive if you use crude oil to generate electricity,” said Maher Al-Odan, a senior consultant at King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Research (KA-CARE) which was set up to plan Saudi Arabia’s energy mix.

Saudi Arabia has said it wants to become a major solar producer before, but its investments amount to much less than 50 megawatts versus several countries which have added thousands of megawatts a year.

This month, KA-CARE set forth a much more ambitious plan, recommending that the kingdom aim to get more than a third of its peak-load power supply, or about 41 gigawatts (GW), from the sun within two decades at an estimated cost well over $100 billion.
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Saudis Don’t Ban English

John Burgess — Wed, 23 May 2012 09:36:32 +0000

A reader pointed me to a very strange article he’d come across:

Saudi Arabia bans English language.

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:

Kingdom expands English education

English the ‘preferred language for business’

Looking to the Past for Clues to the Future

John Burgess — Mon, 21 May 2012 14:00:34 +0000

Asharq Alawsat runs an interview with Michael Petraglia about the archeological potential of Saudi Arabia. I had the pleasure of hosting Professor Petragli during his 2001 visit to the Kingdom as part of the Fulbright Exchange Program. His study includes not only human habitation patterns in the Middle Paleolithic period, but also how climate change affected them. Using satellite imagery, it’s been determined that vast rivers and lakes were found in Arabia in the prehistoric past. How humans reacted to the frequent wet and dry periods, which are currently in a dry span, may have bearing on how we adapt to the changes we are now experiencing.

Archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia are world-clas
Mohammed Al-Shafey

London, Asharq Al-Awsat – Professor Michael Petraglia is Co-Director of the Centre for Asian Art, Archaeology and Culture and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. He specializes in Palaeolithic archaeology and the evolution of human behavior and cognition. His primary geographic areas of interest are the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian subcontinent and Eastern North America.

Professior Petraglia is currently leading the 5-year long “Paleodeserts Project” (2012-2016) in collaboration with multiple universities and institutions in Saudi Arabia, the UK and Europe, as well as with the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities. The project will study the effects of environmental change in the Arabian Peninsula over the last two million years. In particular, it will focus on how long-term climate change affected early humans and animals who settled or passed through the region, and what responses determined whether they were able to survive.

Asharq Al-Awsat spoke with Professor Petraglia to discuss his current research project. He revealed why the Arabian Peninsula is such an archaeological source of interest, and why there have been so few studies before in this area. Professor Petraglia also outlined his initial findings, as well as the significance of this research with regards to the issue of climate change in general.

The following is the text of the interview:
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Playing Catch-Up

John Burgess — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:50:34 +0000

Development is going on at such a rapid pace in Saudi Arabia that the government has to play catch-up with infrastructure. Two articles in today’s Arab News point to how the government in Jeddah has lagged behind the growth curve.

The first reports on efforts to connect more than 100K homes in the northern part of the city with the municipal sewage grid. Currently, these houses use septic tanks. Septic tanks can be adequate, but cost-cutting builders and the geology of the region make them less than optimal. In fact, they frequently present a major health issue through overflows. But, because there are large gaps in planning and regulation, houses get built before the infrastructure is in place.

Network of sewers to be connected to 132,000 city homes
Jeddah: Badr Al-Qahtani & Naif Al-Turki

The National Water Company (NWC) has started installing sewer lines at homes in Jeddah’s north-central area and said it would finish connecting 132,000 homes to the municipal sewer system by the end of 2015 as scheduled, when the phased operation of the system is set to start.

The company says it will finish installing sewer lines in 25,000 houses this year.

While residents in the city’s north-central area have welcomed the news they hope the projects will be completed on time, so that the current practice of calling the septic tanker to clean up the tanks could be done away with.
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Similarly, the area’s water distribution system has not kept up with development. Many, if not most houses in the Jeddah region have to store water in individual, roof-top water tanks. The homes may have connections to the municipal water system, but private water company trucks drive around, filling the tanks. During periods of water shortage, houses can go without access to drinking water for weeks or months. Sanitary issues with the tanks present another problem.

Now, the municipality is in process of developing storage tanks for entire regions of the city. Direct pipelines from the numerous desalination plants will connect with massive concrete tanks. Exactly how the water is to be distributed from these central tanks, however, is not discussed. It’s likely that distribution will continue to be done by tanker trucks. This is inefficient, but more easily done than tearing up the city to lay water pipes. It’s a solution, but not a really great one, just one that can be done now.

Strategic water storage plan for Jeddah
Jeddah: Arab News

The National Water Company (NWC) has drawn up a strategic water storage project for Jeddah that will store 1.5 million cubic meters. The project will cost about SR 500 million, business daily Al-Eqtisadiah reported yesterday, quoting the director general of the NWC in Jeddah.

According to Abdullah Al-Assaf, the project would be completed within 24 months once the contractor received the land alloted for the purpose. “This is the first phase of an integrated project for storage of about 6 million cubic meters of water in Jeddah at a cost of more than SR 2.2 billion. The entire project will be completed within 3 to 5 years,” he said.
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Fifty Million Shades of Grey

John Burgess — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:34:53 +0000

The case of Ahmed Jizawi (spelled ‘Jizawee’ in this Saudi Gazette article) raises an interesting issue. I’m not writing so much about his arrest for drug trafficking, but about how we, as humans, tend to prefer tidy and clear definitions while in life, most definitions are all but tidy or neat.

Here, we have people, including the Government of Saudi Arabia, alleging that Jizawi was smuggling drugs into the Kingdom. They say they he was caught with 23K tablets of the prescription drug Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication that is popularly used for recreation in the Arab Gulf States – illegally, of course.

Others, however, point out that Jizawi is an important human-rights attorney, working to alleviate prison conditions in Saudi Arabia. His arrest, these claim, is nothing but an expression of Saudi animus toward human rights.

So, which is he? How are we supposed to think or feel about his arrest? Is his arrest a sign of heavy-handed government oppression? Is he a drug smuggler who acts to corrupt societies?

Null-A, or non-Aristotelian logic, suggests that we don’t actually have to make a choice: he can be both at the same time. Jizawi, like all humans, is multidimensional. In addition to being an attorney and an alleged drug-dealer, he’s also male; he’s possibly married; he’s possibly a father; he’s Egyptian; he’s an Arabic-speaker; he likes or dislikes kushari or ful medames. To understand him means that one has to understand, or at least acknowledge, many of his dimensions.

So, what do we know about him? We do know, as a fact, that he’s an attorney. We are learning, though the evidence mentioned in the article, that he also appears to be a drug-trafficker. How do we treat him or think about him, then? I can only conclude that he’s a person with very serious legal problems at the moment, no matter what he may be in other dimensions. He’d hardly be the first person to combine admirable behavior with despicable behavior.

He presents, however, another example of how reductionist thinking, the insistence of seeing all things as black or white, presents its own problems as we try to understand the world around us. We are surrounded by attempts made by governments, media, our friends and families to force us to choose one or the other interpretation of events when in reality they are far more complicated. We have to make the effort to see the complexities of life and hold back on premature judgments.

Huge remittances and telephone calls further expose Al-Jizawee
Muhammad Talib Al-Ahmadi | Okaz/Saudi Gazette

JEDDAH — Egyptian human rights lawyer Al-Jizawee, now under detention in the Kingdom on charges of trying to smuggle 23,380 Xanax narcotic tablets, has been further exposed with the revelation that he received huge sums of money in Egypt through his contact in the Kingdom, sources said Sunday.

Al-Jizawee was arrested at Jeddah airport in March.

Huge remittances to Egypt where Al-Jizawee was the beneficiary were revealed in the investigation dossier completed by Bureau of Investigation and Prosecution (BIP) after several sessions of questioning Al-Jizawee and two other suspects involved in drug trafficking.

The Emirates Pharmaceutical Company which was supplying medicines to Al-Jizawee was found to be nonexistent with its commercial and health registrations forged, the BIP dossier claims.

Investigations, sources said, revealed that the other Egyptian implicated in the case was working as a driver in an investment company in the capital and was not a pharmaceutical technician and an agent of the bogus company as was claimed earlier.
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KAUST Photo

John Burgess — Sun, 20 May 2012 14:29:28 +0000

Named for their mother-of-pearl iridescence, nacreous clouds blanket the sky above Husavik, Iceland in December 2011. These clouds, also known as polar stratospheric clouds, occur high in the atmosphere, 49,000 to 82,000 feet (15,000 to 25,000 meters) up. Thanks to their high altitude, the clouds reflect light from the setting or rising sun before it breaches the horizon, causing their ethereal glow.

Credit: Sigurjon Jonsson, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, distributed under a Creative Commons license by EGU.

http://www.livescience.com/1-image-day.html

[I'm just not finding much to write about today...]

Grand Mosque Expansion

John Burgess — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:29:21 +0000

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has been on the throne for seven years now. Saudi media is pretty busy writing up encomiums for the changes and developments he has pushed. One, particularly noteworthy, has been the expansion of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Arab News reports that the most recent expansions are greater than all expansions before. Ever-increasing numbers of pilgrims seek to take part in the annual Haj, already the greatest annual religious gathering in the world.

Credit for biggest expansion of Haram goes to the king
Jeddah: Badr Al-Qahtani

The biggest expansion of the Grand Mosque in Makkah was carried out during the reign of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah.

In 2011, the Haram’s capacity was raised to accommodate 1.6 million worshippers, one-and-half times more than all the expansions put together in the mosque’s history. This latest expansion cost SR 80 billion and is part of Makkah’s many development projects, including work on the mosque’s central zone and surrounding areas.

Speaking on the seventh anniversary of King Abdullah’s accession to throne, Dr. Muhammad Bin Nasser, vice president of the Presidency of the Two Holy Mosques Affairs, said developing the mosque’s area is an ongoing project.

“Every year the Grand Mosque witnesses more development in the services provided to visitors. This year, the King Abdullah Expansion Project is being carried out.

It includes the latest and most sophisticated electrical and mechanical systems. The expansion is linked to the first Saudi expansion and to the masaa (running area between Safaa and Marwaa) via several bridges. A new system of elevators and escalators is being installed,” he said.
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‘You’ve Come a Long Way’

John Burgess — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:22:20 +0000

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 Coleman

This 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]

Getting from Here to There

John Burgess — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:26:13 +0000

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 Mogahed

Mona 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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