On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines - and Future (20 page)

Abdul Aziz is a man of average height and build, but his rimless glasses give him a bookish appearance, and his stiff demeanor conveys a sense of pride in being an Al Saud prince. His English, learned in the kingdom, is fluent, and his incisive speech reflects a mind honed to precision by mastery of arcane details of jurisprudence and yet stretched to include context by exposure to the study of sociology. Regardless of the topic, the prince answers at length, providing both perspective and detail in a dignified, lecturing tone, as if addressing a class, not an individual alongside him. There is a formality about everything he does or says that makes it impossible to visualize him relaxed in front of a television screen doing something as frivolous as cheering for a football team—and certainly not an American one.

His mind is on serious issues like the future of Islam, not just in Saudi Arabia but throughout the Middle East. The whole region has been in decline for four hundred years, he says, but it is now beginning to turn around. “
Over the next thirty to fifty years,” he says, “Islam will challenge democracy as a way to live and practice human rights.” The change that results in the region, he says, “won’t be democracy with an upgrade but a different system,” which he can’t yet articulate but is confident will emerge. Even after the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, the prince insists democracy will not prevail. “Whoever wins from the revolution in Egypt,” he asserts, “it won’t be the young people who demonstrated in the streets for democracy.” Elections as practiced in the West, he insists, are not permissible under Islam, which forbids promising something you don’t have or praising oneself. Certainly, adhering to those two restrictions would shut down most U.S. political campaigns.

The professorial prince makes a point of needing nothing from the West. On a recent business trip to Geneva, Paris, and London, his first trip abroad in a decade, Europe offered nothing he wanted—other than books—that wasn’t available at home. “I came home with ninety percent of my money,” he says, “and only two boxes of books, not the ten or twelve I anticipated buying.”

This is doubtless a commentary both on the prince’s modest desires and on the rapid rise of Saudi consumerism. Major Saudi cities now offer all manner of modern consumer products not available a couple of decades ago. Indeed, about all that isn’t available in Saudi Arabia these days is entertainment, alcohol, and books that the government considers subversive—meaning most political and religious titles, including the Bible, and almost all books on Saudi Arabia.

Like so many royal princes, Abdul Aziz holds no government position. But he isn’t completely without influence, as he teaches young judges judicial governance at the Higher Institute for Judiciary Studies.
The kingdom is undertaking a $2 billion overhaul of its judicial system to nearly double the number of judges over a five-year period, to create specialization among judges, and thus to produce a legal system more compatible with international obligations on Saudi Arabia as a member of the World Trade Organization since 2005. (Judicial governance is the study of the laws of religion as they apply to the judiciary.)

In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the kingdom has been under pressure to revise its education curriculum to eliminate condemnation of Christians and Jews and also to downplay religious education in favor of knowledge that helps the flood of young Saudis emerging from high schools adapt to a global economy and secure jobs in Saudi Arabia.
But Prince Abdul Aziz argues that more, not less, religious education is needed.

“If you say terrorism is bad, you must
show
the terrorist in Islamic law why that is so,” he insists. “Ignorance doesn’t help anything. In the eighties the government said, ‘Don’t talk about jihad, stay out of politics.’ Now the government says, ‘Stay out of religion.’ But you must teach Islamic law and religion even more now. Everyone is fighting for the hearts and minds of the young. But they have their own minds. So we have two choices: let them all develop their own religion, or teach them the right religion so when they encounter ideas on the Internet, they can assess them correctly.” His conclusion:
“The only way to combat extremist ideas of religion is for government to teach the right religion.” The right religion, of course, is Salafi, or the pure Islam of the so-called rightly guided caliphs, who led Islam immediately after the Prophet’s death fourteen hundred years ago.

That, however, is easier said than done when young Saudis actively using the Internet can select from a range of religious scholars’ views at the touch of a keypad. “Yes, the young search the Web,” he acknowledges, “so the religious leaders can’t wait in a classroom for young people to come and ask them questions. They have to get their views out there. This is the role of government—to support a way of life and put it out there for people to adopt. To be correct, you have to be legal. To be legal, you have to be Islamic. To be Islamic will mean you have to be conservative.” And that’s that.

Beyond a nimble mind, Abdul Aziz exhibits an intriguing devotion to conservative tradition shared by few other third-generation princes I have met. He seems to enjoy the anachronistic family traditions and is happy to share them. He recounts how a cousin a few days older than he encouraged Prince Abdul Aziz to enter a room first. Abdul Aziz’s father, witnessing this break with tradition, quickly corrected the younger men. “
I am only fifteen days older than my brother, Ahmed, and I enter in front of him,” Prince Sattam told his son. In other words, stick with tradition. Abdul Aziz says his father, Prince Sattam, governor of Riyadh since 2011, kissed the hand of his older half-brother, Prince Salman, who preceeded him in that post, each time the two met during the forty years Prince Sattam served as Prince Salman’s deputy governor. Similarly, at formal occasions, Prince Sattam understands that his nephew, Prince Saud al Faisal, the kingdom’s foreign minister, sits above him because Saud is older. Tradition means predictability, and predictability means that everyone royal or otherwise knows his or her place in society.

The Al Saud’s place is to rule, and the people owe them their loyalty. Asked if the populace obeys out of loyalty or necessity, the prince responds with an Islamic juridical
answer: “If the ruler is ruling by Islam, even if he got there illegally, he must be obeyed.”

King Abdul Aziz conquered Saudi Arabia riding a camel. Nearly fifty years later, in 1985, his grandson Prince Sultan bin Salman rode into space aboard the U.S. space shuttle
Discovery
, becoming the first Saudi, the first Arab, the first Muslim, and the first prince to travel in space.

This rapid transition from camel to spacecraft illustrates the breathtaking pace of modernization in Saudi Arabia.
When Prince Sultan was born in 1956, Riyadh was a poor town of eighty thousand inhabitants. Today the city, governed for nearly fifty years by his father, Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, is a sprawling metropolis of 5 million people with traffic jams, two towering skyscrapers, shopping malls, spas, health clubs, and of course, those Western icons, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Dunkin’ Donuts.

Prince Sultan is the eldest son of a father widely seen as a future king of Saudi Arabia if only because, at seventy-four years of age and in relatively good health, he is expected to outlive his older full brother, Crown Prince Nayef, who is ailing. Prince Sultan, who, having circled the earth, came home to found and lead a Saudi commission on tourism, is a charming, gregarious man thoroughly at ease with Western people and modern ways. And thanks to his role in promoting tourism, he is one of the few Saudis who knows his own country, since most Saudis prefer to stay close to home in their prescribed places inside the Saudi labyrinth or, if they venture out, to travel abroad, where they can take a break from the rigid social and cultural confinement of their country.

Prince Sultan, fifty-six, is seen inside Saudi Arabia as one of the stars of the generation of grandsons. Tall and lanky, he has retained the fitness he achieved as a fighter pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force that led to his selection as an astronaut.
Some twenty-five years after his historic flight, the prince sits in the large earth-toned living room of his walled compound in Riyadh, remembering the past and outlining the future he seeks for Saudi Arabia. At the time of his selection by NASA as a payload engineer aboard
Discovery
, the kingdom was in the grip of a wave of conservatism, led by its senior religious authority, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz, a blind religious scholar who believed the earth was flat because that was how it felt under his feet. When Americans landed on the moon in 1969, Sheikh Bin Baz had issued a fatwa entitled “On the Possibility of Going into Orbit,” warning Muslims that they must not believe what infidels said without proof. “
We cannot believe anyone who comes and says, ‘I was on the moon’ without offering solid scientific evidence,” he wrote.

Prince Sultan recalls going to see the sheikh for, among other things, advice on fasting during the holy month of Ramadan when he would be in space. The elderly sheikh advised the young prince that he could forgo the fast while in space and make up those days later back on earth. But Prince Sultan decided to fast and pray in space at the required intervals by keeping his watch set to the time in Florida, location of
Discovery
’s launch.
Given the speed and frequency with which his space capsule would orbit the earth, he recalls telling the sheikh, “I am seeing sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets daily, so is Ramadan over for me in two days?” The religious cleric enjoyed the joke.

Praying was more problematic than fasting. Prostrating in the direction of Mecca proved doubly vexing. The space capsule moved so fast that no sooner could Mecca be located than it was already behind the capsule. Moreover, kneeling in a weightless atmosphere was impossible. So the prince made an accommodation to reality: “I prayed strapped in my seat.”

Upon his return, he paid a visit to Sheikh Bin Baz to thank him for his advice on fasting and prayer. The prince says the cleric grilled him about what he saw, and Prince Sultan described the round earth below. “
He didn’t ask about the shape of the earth,” recalls the prince. “I think he already knew by that time that the world is round.”

Some twenty-five years later, the prince says the trip into space changed him forever. He recounts what he had said in a speech a few months earlier: “
On the first day in space, we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day, we all pointed to our continents. By the fifth day, we were only aware of one earth.”

Back on this earth, however, things move slowly. The prince’s task of developing a tourism industry is hampered by a host of challenges. Most foreigners can’t get even get an entry visa, and those who can aren’t allowed to visit the kingdom’s two primary attractions, the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, unless they are Muslim. In every city, foreigners risk harassment by the omnipresent religious police, unless they adhere to the strict dress and conduct codes imposed by the conservative religious establishment. On top of all that, young Saudis whom the prince hopes to help with new jobs don’t want to work in a service industry like tourism. Being the eldest son of a powerful senior prince who may well one day be king hasn’t yet helped Prince Sultan overcome any of these obstacles.

Like many grandsons of the founder, Prince Sultan is Western-educated and open-minded but unable to significantly change the conservative, closed-minded habits of the majority of Saudis, especially his powerful, elderly uncles. He insists that the new generation will be different because they are more aware of the world and more comfortable in it; and that terrorism, an export of the kingdom, is a diminishing phenomenon. “
There is no doubt that in the struggle we all are living today against terrorism, we as humans will win. Yes, technology is being used for terrorism now. But at the end of the day, the new generation will use technology to know each other, and they will be comfortable with each other all around the world.” He points to his five-year-old daughter, noting, “She is much more adaptable than I was at her age.”

Indeed, Hala is a self-confident little girl, steeped in both Saudi etiquette and American culture. She bounces into the room wearing pajamas and white fluffy slippers. Immediately,
she holds out her hand and touches her cheek to mine several times in a traditional Saudi greeting. “
Do you want to know the names of my shoes?” she asks. Without pausing, she answers, “This one is Bugs and this one is Bunny.” Sliding down the couch to escape the reach of her father, she continues her chatter. “I’m not four anymore. I’m five—almost six. When I was three or four, I was very shy, but now that I’m five and a half I make friends easily.” Her father hugs her and dispatches her to bed.

“
We can’t continue to live in Saudi Arabia and feel alive only somewhere else,” he says, observing that Saudis go abroad to relax rather than spend vacation time in their country. “People need to be able to live in their country and have fun, to love it and enjoy it.” That Saudi Arabia, however, still seems a space voyage away.

Prince Turki al Faisal is not only one of the most recognizable royal princes in the West but also one of the most respected. A grandson of the founder, he is also a son of the late King Faisal, admired by Saudis for his austere lifestyle and his role in launching the process of modernization in the kingdom. King Faisal is probably best known in the West, however, for imposing a crippling oil embargo in the wake of the October 1973 Middle East war and creating long gas lines in the United States.

Prince Turki, sixty-seven, shares the famous Faisal family face—a hawkish, unsmiling visage—so familiar to Saudis, who see photos of the late king hanging in every public building and frequent news photos of his three prominent sons: Prince Khalid, governor of Mecca; Prince Saud, the foreign minister; and Prince Turki, retired from a long career of public service.
Turki served as director of intelligence for twenty-four years, followed by appointments as ambassador to Great Britain and then the United States.
The prince now is chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and
Islamic Studies, founded in 1983 to promote expanded dialogue among Muslims, Christians, and Jews.