Talal, party of one

Prince Talal has recently been bumped from the Royal family's "Family Council" in favor of Prince Salman , the current governor of Riyadh. The reasons given for his removal are sketchy... "that he's always abroad anyway", and that "his ideas do not suit Saudi arabia". In response, the eve- liberal "Red Prince" is now trying to form a political party with a reform-minded agenda.

Two points of note:

1. This latest development is key step in moving Salman yet another step closer to the throne.

The dynamics of the family council are interesting enough in themselves to merit a post in itself, but the family council is a rather shadowy deal for people not directly involved in its business. Suffice to say that the 18 members of the family council is the final word on inter-saud disputes, division of power amongst the families, and most importantly: succession. It was the family council's decision to finally depose of king Saud when he proved inept to the point of near-disaster in the early 60s.

And as the Saud family grows ever larger and larger, and as we approach he time when it is no longer apparent who of the remaining older brothers will succeed, the importance of the family council grows more and more. The most likely candidates are: Prince Naif, long time minister of Interior (i. internal security), Prince Salman, and fast rising among the ranks Prince Muqrin recently appointed head of national intelligence. This jockeying for position, as well as the princes' respective healths will continue to play an increasing role in the future of Saudi's succession.


2. Talal's "party" is doomed... unfortunately. I don't doubt the sincerity of his will, but the notion of another prince heading up a political party of reform is laughable. Y He's already alienated himself from the family (let's not forget the Free Princes fiasco) where one could argue that he was in the position to make the most change. And I'd be hard-pressed to think of a single political prisoner who'd answer Talal's almost pathetic invitation to join his party.

It's too bad. Because if it's one thing the Saudi liberal movement (if it can be called a movement) needs, it's organization. Over the last few years, I have been continually surprised by the NUMBER of secular saudis. But all are either silent, opting to keep their heads down and avoid trouble; or else working alone or within small pockets, fighting their battles separately. The lack the organizational mobilization that made the Sahw'a movement so powerful in the 80s. The prince indeed has the time and the money to give an over-arching structure to the liberal effort. The catch-22 of the matter remains hat his wealth and status are what delegitimizes him in the eyes of his political peers.

Bad Moon Rising

Every year, the national hysteria over when is the first day Ramadan gets just a little more frustrating. Every the powers that be here in Saudi Arabia, instead of coming to some sort of agreement on when to start the lunar month, continue to keep us hanging over just what day Ramdan begins. Just to keep us on our toes... in case you start to think we just might not need them

Each year the same people say the same things over and over again. Liberals (and astronomers) want a tabular calculation to determine the start of Ramadan. And conservative religious authorities (mutawwa's) insist on the new crescent being sighted with the "naked eye", usually in the form of a testimony of some random beduin who claims to have seen it. No new information is ever discussed in the annual debate. there HASN'T been any new information for centuries. Humans have been able to accurately predict the birth of each new moon for the next 500 years for centuries. And each year. the two sides continue to talk over each other.

So why are the religious authorities so keen to keep us in the stone-age? It’s all about fear and power. The mutawwa’s fear that they’ll be purposeless. In Saudi Arabia, and in the last 30 years especially, nobody would even scratch his ass, so to speak, without asking the mutawwas if that’s OK. It’s an awesome political power, the power of religion, much more powerful than anything the Royal family could hope to achieve. It’s a power these mutawwas have over the people and they’re not too keen on relinquishing control. Between astronomy and eye-witness, there’s no question about which way would be more practical, more accurate, and much more indicative of a civilized society. But it’s not a question of logic, is it? It’s a question of keeping “religious issues” in the realm of religious people instead of turning it over to rational thinking and science where they very much more rightly belong. Because when every issue is a religious one, their importance is paramount. But if every issue they deal with would be turned over to science and logic, where would their power be? In fact, I’m of the opinion that their purposelessness is absolute, for even in the matters that really are of the theological nature, why do would you need a third man between yourself and god? Does anybody really need an army of clergymen to tell them how to pray?

Remembering 9-11

So my first post in my blog about Saudi Arabia isn't really going to be about Saudi Arabia. But I think i'm well-justified if I talk about the anniversary of 9-11 today. It's hard to believe it's been 6 years. Six years since that afternoon we stayed glued to CNN.

Every American I've met since then, has told me that they remember exactly where they were when they learned of the attacks. And though emotionally, it impacted me much less than any american, I certainly remember exactly where I was: Having lunch while arguing with my brother about what to watch on TV. He wanted to see the news, I wanted to watch a M*A*S*H rerun. I guess it's lucky that he won the argument, because as soon as we switched to a news channel we saw smoke pouring out of the North Tower and knew something was up.

i have a friend who said that every american of this generation will remember where they were when they learned of 9/11, much like every american in the generation before that remembers where they were when they found out President Kennedy had been assassinated. I think she's probably about Americans, but I think Saudis relate to 9/11 in different way. If I had to guess, I'd say that not many Saudi remember where they were that fateful day. Yes, I'm sure that most Saudis today realize that we live in a post-9/11 world, and that everything that happens on the world stage today is colored by 9/11. But whereas 9/11 was a cataclysmic event for Americans, one that clearly cleaved their lives into a safe care-free pre-9-11 and a tense post-9-11 world, for us Saudis it's not the actual events on 9-11 that changed our lives. It was the aftermath. And only in retrospect to do we realize just how MUCH that one say has effected the history of the area.

I don't think I realized just how much the world was going to change when I first saw the twin towers come crashing down. By the time I went to school the next day though, I fully realized how big a deal this was. I will never forget the response of one of my schoolmates when I brought it up: "What? Those two buildings that fell down?" I still remember how utterly shocked I was by that ... probably more shocked than by the attacks themselves. The utter casualness in her tone were not so much a sign of heartlessness but of complete ignorance. True we were only 13 years old, but how a person could be so sheltered and wrapped up in their own cocoon as to not realize that the world's biggest terrorist attack has just occurred is still to me mindboggling. I wonder if she now remembers when it was that she first heard of the 9-11 attacks.

Greetings from Saudi

Greetings from the land of sand, sea, oil, and camels...
But more importantly, the land of people. Saudis to be exact.

Most people seem to think that we are a strange strange people, and well frankly, I'm one of them. Yet having grown up here all my life, the strangeness seems almost natural to me. Whether or not it's normal to live in a perpetual state of frustration I don't know. But I've decided to take that frustration with the Kingdom and turn it into something useful: this blog.

I just need a place to share my many rants on the place I call home... My family has long since stopped listening.