Thursday, October 05, 2006
A Saudi dares to dream
Ahmed Al-Omran is a young Saudi who writes the English-languish blog Saudi Jeans. His hunger for change in the kingdom is palpable.
Patriotism is complicated in Saudi Arabia. Islamists opposed the celebration of Saudi National Day (think the Fourth of July) because it might have been seen to elevate the nation above Allah, but King Abdullah seems to have overruled them. Still, the waiving of flags out of nationalism is not entirely, er, kosher in Saudi Arabia:
It was around 11 pm, and we were stuck in the congested Olaya St. Next to us, there were a few young men waving Saudi flags cheerfully inside their car. Few minutes later, a police car appeared and blocked off the road of the flag wavers. They forced them to break out of the stream to a side street. I followed them, partly out of curiosity, but mainly to get rid of the tension of driving very slowly in a crowded street. There they were, the officer was questioning the boys, while I was trying to imagine what kind of conversation they were having. "These boys are struggling to express their patriotism," I told my friend...
Arab nationalism in one form or another has long been the great "near enemy" of Islamism. Nationalism as a political idea has been discredited in most Arab countries, but in Saudi Arabia it is novel. Will the flag emerge as a countervailing force against Islamism in Saudi Arabia, as it has elsewhere?
King Abdullah is clearly trying to let some of the pressure out of Saudi society without at the same time strengthening the Islamists. Let's hope he succeeds before he dies -- at 82, he has to know that his time is short. Perhaps looming mortality will motivate him to move with more speed, rather than less. There is risk in that, too.
Ahmed, for his part, sees hope in the coffee shops:
Looking forward to the future, I wonder: do we dare to dream? I, for one, do. I dare. And I don't have only one dream; I have many dreams actually: I want to live to see the day when this country becomes a real democracy with a fully elected parliament; when freedom of expression is guaranteed to all, and no one is afraid to speak his mind no more; when women have their full rights and stand on equal foot with men. This was to name a few. Call me a dreamer. Maybe I am. I know one thing for sure, however: change is coming. This country is changing, not as quickly as I wish maybe, but it is changing nevertheless. Probably I'm just a young lad who can't wait for this to happen, but who can blame me? If it wasn't for the young to push change then who would?
My friend and I went to Java Cafe on King Abdul Aziz Rd., and on the other side of the road, we could see the building of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. He was amazed by how big and stylish this coffeehouse was. "Revolution is coming to Saudi Arabia," my friend said. I was startled by the word revolution. The increase and popularity of coffee shops means that people want to talk, he explained, and this is how the French Revolution was started, one cup of coffee at a time. It was getting late, so I dropped my friend at the hotel. Meanwhile, my head was turning between the ideas of revolution and my mentioned above dreams.
A friend of mine who does a lot of business at a high level in Saudi Arabia says we need Abdullah to live five more years so that he can get enough done, and that if he doesn't we could be in a heap of trouble. Why? Because Crown Prince Sultan and his family, next in line, show no sign of being nearly so reformist or supportive of the United States (there is an interesting, if superficial, analysis of Saudi royal politics here). The conventional wisdom, therefore, is that if reform is to come from above, rather than from below or abroad, it will happen during King Abdullah's reign. The United States, the rest of the oil-slurping world, and Ahmed Al-Omran had all better hope that it does.
1 Comments:
By 
Kinuachdrach, at
Thu Oct 05, 11:46:00 PM:
The late Robert O. Anderson of Atlantic Richfield fame -- a man who clearly knew the international oil industry -- once commented that it would be a bad day for the West when Crown Prince Abdullah took the throne. Anderson had good reason for believing that Abdullah was much more of a fundamentalist than then King Fahd. Same Abdullah who is now seen as the good guy.
It may be that becoming King of Saudi Arabia concentrates the mind wonderfully.
