Seif
09-06-05, 11:30
Reformers in Saudi Arabia: Seeking Rights, Paying a Price
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: June 9, 2005
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The Saudi writer Turki al-Hamad wants to shake the younger generation attracted by militant Islam. His new novel, a thinly disguised sketch of four Sept. 11 hijackers, seeks to warn those weighing suicide missions.
"Put your luggage aside and think," reads the opening page to the book, called "The Winds of Paradise" and just released in Arabic.
"I wrote the latest book just to say that the problem is not from outside, the problem is from ourselves - if we don't change ourselves, nothing will change," Mr. Hamad said over coffee in the green marbled lobby of a hotel near Dammam, the city along the Persian Gulf where he lives. His earlier books challenging sexual and political mores remain banned.
After Sept. 11, 2001, the push toward reform in the Middle East gained momentum with the recognition in some quarters that stifling political and economic conditions helped spawn extremism. Reform advocates like Mr. Hamad live under threat but have also gained some space to air grievances.
Hence, Mr. Hamad writes novels to try to jolt young Saudis into re-examining their own society. Fawaziah B. al-Bakr, a woman and a college professor, agitates for women to question their assigned roles. Hassan al-Maleky, a theologian, argues that no one sect - like the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia - holds a monopoly on interpreting Islam.
They are the first to say that meaningful change remains a distant prospect because the institutions opposing such change are so powerful. And because there is no real forum to even discuss change, the process of creating open, freer societies is more the sum of individuals chipping away at the traditional order, rather than any organized movement or national discussion.
The three barely know each other, and their lack of contact is emblematic of Saudi Arabia, which ranks among the most closed Arab countries.
Here and elsewhere, Arab reformers tend to be isolated dissidents, sometimes labeled heretics, much like those persecuted under Soviet totalitarianism.
Even those who pursue the mildest forms of protest are slapped with long prison sentences. The right to assemble does not exist, political parties are banned along with nongovernment organizations, and the ruling princes constantly tell editors what they can print. Local television is almost all clerics, all the time.
The many Islamic theological institutions that maintain the rule of the Saud princes determine the parameters of any public debate.
They evaluate everything through the prism of the Wahhabi teachings unique to Saudi Arabia, vehemently rejecting any alternative.
For many reformists, the lack of free speech grates most; obtaining it is a far higher priority than elections or other formal ingredients of Western democracy.
"Sometimes I don't want elections here, I want public freedoms and public rights," says Mr. Hamad, echoing a statement heard from reformers across the kingdom and indeed across the Arab world. "Give me those things and everything else will come automatically."
But that must be endorsed by the ruling Saud tribe. The eruption of terrorist bombings in downtown Riyadh and elsewhere starting in May 2003 forced them to recognize that Islamic extremism was not some foreign problem.
It is far from clear, however, just how committed the growing number of princes are to altering a system that, ever since the founding monarch put the clan's name on the kingdom in 1932, has given them total control over the world's richest oil resources.
"The will is there but there is hesitation because Saudi Arabia's Islam is based on a certain kind of Islam," Mr. Hamad says. "If you meddle with that culture, you are meddling with the legitimacy of the system. It is a problem that needs to be solved, and it can't be solved behind closed doors."
A Lesson About Sin
The resistance to change became abundantly clear to Mrs. Bakr, an associate professor of education at King Saud University in Riyadh, at a workshop she taught for supervisors on new ways to evaluate teacher performance.
When it was over, one of the more enthusiastic participants handed her an envelope. Inside was a fatwa, or religious ruling, from a local cleric admonishing Mrs. Bakr that her plucked eyebrows were a sin.
"Religion has been made so superficial," Mrs. Bakr says, echoing a common frustration among educated Saudis.
The mind-set that reduces every tiny detail of life to whether it conforms to Wahhabi teaching has prevented Saudi Arabia from using its oil wealth to become one of the richest, most developed countries on earth, many Saudi reformers say.
Reformists believe that the problem starts from the earliest years in school, because the Ministry of Education has set its goal as promoting the glory and proud heritage of Islamic civilization, which began here.
But the reality is that elementary school lessons, particularly the 60 percent of classroom time devoted to religion, have zero application in the modern world, Mrs. Bakr says. She reels off a long, random list.
Fourth graders are taught how to clean themselves in the Islamically acceptable manner after relieving themselves in the desert. The telephone is described as a modern innovation.
At a middle school's traffic safety day recently, one talk focused on the risk of being tortured in the grave if you died in a traffic accident while living contrary to God's commandments.
"Why waste time on these trivial things? I don't get it," she said, in her Riyadh home with her husband or teenage son always present, so no one could accuse her of welcoming an unrelated man into her house alone. "Teach the students how to think, give them a scientific project, teach them skills."
She and others like her are lobbying to have all religious lessons consolidated into one subject, Islamic studies, that would afford students more time for other learning.
A few years ago, religious fundamentalists were so influential in the university that she would not have dared raise such questions, Mrs. Bakr notes.
Major limitations on pushing for change still remain. Not least, male professors bar their female colleagues from attending department meetings because Islam dictates that men should hear a woman's voice only when absolutely necessary, lest they become aroused.
Mrs. Bakr says she wanted to rebel against certain Saudi ways of doing things from her earliest years - when men in her neighborhood yelled at her for playing in the streets, or when her teachers hit her with short bamboo prods because her abaya, or cloak, was askew.
As an adolescent, she made a precocious debut as a newspaper columnist while still in high school, railing against the way women lack rights in the kingdom. But any open rebellion is just about impossible, as Mrs. Bakr learned the hard way.
In November 1990, she had just returned with her doctorate from the University of London and was appointed to the faculty at King Saud University. She held the post for all of two days when she joined a group of 47 women protesting the ban on women driving by getting behind the wheel for just 15 minutes. The ensuing outcry from religious fundamentalists pushed her out of a job for 18 months, until King Fahd reinstated the women.
Despite the passage of 15 years, the protest still resonates. She has been denied promotions or the chance to serve on government committees. The enduring price made that demonstration practically the first and last of its kind.
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: June 9, 2005
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The Saudi writer Turki al-Hamad wants to shake the younger generation attracted by militant Islam. His new novel, a thinly disguised sketch of four Sept. 11 hijackers, seeks to warn those weighing suicide missions.
"Put your luggage aside and think," reads the opening page to the book, called "The Winds of Paradise" and just released in Arabic.
"I wrote the latest book just to say that the problem is not from outside, the problem is from ourselves - if we don't change ourselves, nothing will change," Mr. Hamad said over coffee in the green marbled lobby of a hotel near Dammam, the city along the Persian Gulf where he lives. His earlier books challenging sexual and political mores remain banned.
After Sept. 11, 2001, the push toward reform in the Middle East gained momentum with the recognition in some quarters that stifling political and economic conditions helped spawn extremism. Reform advocates like Mr. Hamad live under threat but have also gained some space to air grievances.
Hence, Mr. Hamad writes novels to try to jolt young Saudis into re-examining their own society. Fawaziah B. al-Bakr, a woman and a college professor, agitates for women to question their assigned roles. Hassan al-Maleky, a theologian, argues that no one sect - like the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia - holds a monopoly on interpreting Islam.
They are the first to say that meaningful change remains a distant prospect because the institutions opposing such change are so powerful. And because there is no real forum to even discuss change, the process of creating open, freer societies is more the sum of individuals chipping away at the traditional order, rather than any organized movement or national discussion.
The three barely know each other, and their lack of contact is emblematic of Saudi Arabia, which ranks among the most closed Arab countries.
Here and elsewhere, Arab reformers tend to be isolated dissidents, sometimes labeled heretics, much like those persecuted under Soviet totalitarianism.
Even those who pursue the mildest forms of protest are slapped with long prison sentences. The right to assemble does not exist, political parties are banned along with nongovernment organizations, and the ruling princes constantly tell editors what they can print. Local television is almost all clerics, all the time.
The many Islamic theological institutions that maintain the rule of the Saud princes determine the parameters of any public debate.
They evaluate everything through the prism of the Wahhabi teachings unique to Saudi Arabia, vehemently rejecting any alternative.
For many reformists, the lack of free speech grates most; obtaining it is a far higher priority than elections or other formal ingredients of Western democracy.
"Sometimes I don't want elections here, I want public freedoms and public rights," says Mr. Hamad, echoing a statement heard from reformers across the kingdom and indeed across the Arab world. "Give me those things and everything else will come automatically."
But that must be endorsed by the ruling Saud tribe. The eruption of terrorist bombings in downtown Riyadh and elsewhere starting in May 2003 forced them to recognize that Islamic extremism was not some foreign problem.
It is far from clear, however, just how committed the growing number of princes are to altering a system that, ever since the founding monarch put the clan's name on the kingdom in 1932, has given them total control over the world's richest oil resources.
"The will is there but there is hesitation because Saudi Arabia's Islam is based on a certain kind of Islam," Mr. Hamad says. "If you meddle with that culture, you are meddling with the legitimacy of the system. It is a problem that needs to be solved, and it can't be solved behind closed doors."
A Lesson About Sin
The resistance to change became abundantly clear to Mrs. Bakr, an associate professor of education at King Saud University in Riyadh, at a workshop she taught for supervisors on new ways to evaluate teacher performance.
When it was over, one of the more enthusiastic participants handed her an envelope. Inside was a fatwa, or religious ruling, from a local cleric admonishing Mrs. Bakr that her plucked eyebrows were a sin.
"Religion has been made so superficial," Mrs. Bakr says, echoing a common frustration among educated Saudis.
The mind-set that reduces every tiny detail of life to whether it conforms to Wahhabi teaching has prevented Saudi Arabia from using its oil wealth to become one of the richest, most developed countries on earth, many Saudi reformers say.
Reformists believe that the problem starts from the earliest years in school, because the Ministry of Education has set its goal as promoting the glory and proud heritage of Islamic civilization, which began here.
But the reality is that elementary school lessons, particularly the 60 percent of classroom time devoted to religion, have zero application in the modern world, Mrs. Bakr says. She reels off a long, random list.
Fourth graders are taught how to clean themselves in the Islamically acceptable manner after relieving themselves in the desert. The telephone is described as a modern innovation.
At a middle school's traffic safety day recently, one talk focused on the risk of being tortured in the grave if you died in a traffic accident while living contrary to God's commandments.
"Why waste time on these trivial things? I don't get it," she said, in her Riyadh home with her husband or teenage son always present, so no one could accuse her of welcoming an unrelated man into her house alone. "Teach the students how to think, give them a scientific project, teach them skills."
She and others like her are lobbying to have all religious lessons consolidated into one subject, Islamic studies, that would afford students more time for other learning.
A few years ago, religious fundamentalists were so influential in the university that she would not have dared raise such questions, Mrs. Bakr notes.
Major limitations on pushing for change still remain. Not least, male professors bar their female colleagues from attending department meetings because Islam dictates that men should hear a woman's voice only when absolutely necessary, lest they become aroused.
Mrs. Bakr says she wanted to rebel against certain Saudi ways of doing things from her earliest years - when men in her neighborhood yelled at her for playing in the streets, or when her teachers hit her with short bamboo prods because her abaya, or cloak, was askew.
As an adolescent, she made a precocious debut as a newspaper columnist while still in high school, railing against the way women lack rights in the kingdom. But any open rebellion is just about impossible, as Mrs. Bakr learned the hard way.
In November 1990, she had just returned with her doctorate from the University of London and was appointed to the faculty at King Saud University. She held the post for all of two days when she joined a group of 47 women protesting the ban on women driving by getting behind the wheel for just 15 minutes. The ensuing outcry from religious fundamentalists pushed her out of a job for 18 months, until King Fahd reinstated the women.
Despite the passage of 15 years, the protest still resonates. She has been denied promotions or the chance to serve on government committees. The enduring price made that demonstration practically the first and last of its kind.