Monday, February 16, 2009
Saudi Arabia creeps into the 16th century
Saudi Arabia's 84 year-old King Abdullah is nudging, or maybe just tweaking, a smidge of modernity into his country's religious and social order:
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia weakened the hold of Islamic hard-liners Saturday by appointing the first woman to a ministerial post and dismissing a leading fundamentalist cleric and the head of the nation's powerful religious police.
The surprising government reshuffle indicated that the 84-year-old monarch was frustrated with the pace of reform in a kingdom uneasily balanced between moderates and ultra-conservatives. By broadening the voices of modern Islamic thinkers, King Abdullah apparently is trying to refashion the religious establishment at a time the country faces the global financial crisis and renewed threats from Al Qaeda militants.
One must always encourage progress, so let's deliver one cheer to the good king. That said, substantive monarchy is such an inherently illegitimate form of government it is difficult to imagine how this plays out over the long term. Even if the kleptocrats in the royal family were to have their own change of heart, the House of Saud is unlikely to liberalize its country's traditional Islam sufficiently to permit popular sovereignty.
MORE: An excerpt from Stratfor's write-up on the shake-up in The Kingdom:
But the changes affecting social and religious norms carry with them, to a certain degree, a risk of backlash — particularly given that the kingdom only recently began an anti-extremism and de-radicalization campaign to combat Islamist terrorism. Since this project will be a work in progress for the foreseeable future, the ultraconservative elements within the kingdom — especially those in the religious establishment — are bound to be unhappy.
Long resistant to change, Saudi’s ultraconservative elements are not going to accept the direction in which the country is headed. Thus, they might become more open to the criticism from al Qaeda and other radical Islamist tendencies that the Saudi leadership is now openly tampering with the religious character of the country rendering it a secular state in order to please the West. Consequently, the possibility of conflict within the world’s largest producer of oil remains large — and this would come at a bad time, given the external threat in the form an emergent Iran and its Arab Shia allies.
Therefore, these cultural and leadership changes designed to move Saudi Arabia toward a relatively more liberal society at a time of transition could lead to unrest within the country.
Then again, a supply disruption with oil at $35/bbl is a lot easier to handle than at $140. All the more reason, though, to figure out how to grow our economy with less oil rather than more.
5 Comments:
By 
, at
Mon Feb 16, 08:55:00 AM:
You're so passe and Bushite, with this silly belief in popular government.
By , at
Mon Feb 16, 11:40:00 AM:
Popular sovereignty in Saudia Arabia would probably mean electing a government even more oppressive and reactionary than the one that's already there. It's awfully hard to assume otherwise when governments in the secular modern West are themselves finding it easier simply to submit to the will of Allah (see Great Britain, et al.) as they move towards a comfortable accommodation with Sharia.
The West needs to tend to its own house first.
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Mon Feb 16, 03:50:00 PM:
"That said, substantive monarchy is such an inherently illegitimate form of government it is difficult to imagine how this plays out over the long term."
Not in Islam. In traditional Islam, any ruling authority which tries to rule according to God's laws is legitimate. When it comes to government, order is valued over justice.
The Saudis get a bad rap. The monarchy is way more reasonable and friendly to our interests than the populace is. One of their kings was assassinated in the 70s because he... allowed television broadcasts.
If there were democratic elections in Saudi Arabia tomorrow, we'd end up with another Hamas situation.
By , at
Mon Feb 16, 08:12:00 PM:
If there were democratic elections in Saudi Arabia tomorrow, we'd end up with another Hamas situation.
Likely so, yet the transition from autocracy in Iraq might suggest consensual rule and Islam may still co-exist with a rough secular classicism of which we in the West would largely approve.
By Viking Kaj, at
Mon Feb 16, 08:59:00 PM:
DF is correct. We can blame the 9/11 attacks on the 2/3's of the Saudi Royal House that is anti Western and provided most of the funding. Not to mention most of the attackers.
Apart from ca. 1000 pro-western Saudis at the top of the Royal Family and some more in the military, they are generally speaking not our friends. And the Saudis at the top have a difficult balancing act to stay there. Osama didn't make this stuff up out of thin air, it was in the ground water over there.
