Ya 3eeni 3al-dedication but seriously Mona, you need to update this blog more often.

I’m glad this issue is coming to a happy ending, and hope it would push reforms in the legal system – and the kingdom in general – to gain momentum and move faster.

Truth be told, I’m surprised he had the balls to do it. He took some terrible risks in pardoning the woman.

I thought she would be lashed as sentenced and then die in prison, perhaps for trying to “escape”. Now, she still might eventually be “disappeared”, if Joseph Heller will forgive me, but for the moment she is safe. Had journalists not forced the world to see this insanity for what it was she might well have been spirited away to some Hellish place out of sight and out of mind. The backlash was pretty severe, though… even George Bush got in a few licks.

I would regretfully take Mona to task on only one issue… the man Abdullah is a “king”, not a “dictator”. There are some important differences I won’t go into, and also some similarities, but still, the man is the King of Saudi Arabia. Would it be proper to call Queen Elizabeth a dictator? It may be an archaic system of government, but it is in place and as valid as any other. We have to work with it as it is for the present.

I don’t suppose I should to go into such concepts as the divine right of kings in this venue, but I will anyway because then I get to be more “long winded”. Really, though, if God, by whatever name one chooses to call Him didn’t want King Abdullah on the Saudi throne, does anyone imagine he would still be there?

You don’t have to like the king or agree with him all the time, but you should respect him and address him by his proper title. In this case, at least, and for whatever reasons, he did the right thing. We would all do well to support him in this action, even those of us who are not his subjects, for he will need all the support he can muster. And if he gets enough support, he may well continue to do things for the benefit of Saudi society despite the opposition he faces.

Now, I’m not a fan of the Saudi ruling family, but I will say again that the king has balls to stand up to the clerics in his country. He may yet pay a heavy toll some day for opposing the modern day Pharisees, but that is what kings are supposed to do. Its a public trust, with heavy responsibilities, not a popularity contest.

If I may quote Superman from the episode “Warrior Queen”: “As leader you serve the people, they don’t serve you.” Not bad for a fictitious character, I’d say.

King Abdullah, if you are reading this, you should put that quote up above a mirror that you see yourself in every morning just to remind you of your responsibilities. As I see it, though, in this instance, you truly did serve the people well.

So… you did good, King! You behaved in a regal fashion that would have made even Arthur and all his knights proud. Now get out there and continue to do so!

Mona, first, I’m sorry to rake you over the coals, but blacksmiths do that sometimes, and I figure you can take the heat just fine and come out even tougher. I doubt very much that your blog will “die a slow beautiful death”. Your readers, even those who don’t care for me, my country, and my commentary, have exhibited a level of intellect I have seldom seen in other virtual locales.

Fools do not gather such people to their blogs. Keep up the good work.

Mona,

First, thank god for the flight delay at JFK. You probably first tried doing everything else (answer ALL emails, talked to fellow passengers, read some fashion magazine you had), before you were forced to update the blog!

But thank God also for the King’s Decision to pardon that … victim. And thanks to you for not believing me when I say that pressuring dictators does not work

Sometimes shaming a dictator works. In the case of Saudi Arabia, they rely on the West enough to want to preserve that support. In the case of Chavez, not so much. He’s shameless.

However, the fact that Abdullah can not acknowledge that being gang-raped is not a crime and that 200 lashes is punishing the victim demonstrates that Saudi Arabia is a barbaric land. I doubt it can ever be reformed. It would be better to simply destroy it and start over.

I strongly disagree with Frank that any Saudi king is anything but a dictator and deserves our respect. The argument that Abdullah is sanctioned by God or Allah or any other deity is pure unadulterated crap. Likewise, the argument that Abdullah should be respected as much as the Queen of England and is no more a tyrant than she is wildly absurd.

First, the Queen of England holds very little real power, only moral power. She is a figurehead. The Saudi dictator, by contrast, holds absolute power. He can have people executed on his whim. He has no laws binding him. He is the state.

Your argument that the Saudi dictator holds the public trust is ludicrous. This is a Western concept alien to the Saudis, who simply own Arabia and everything and everyone in it. The Saudis are in it for themselves. Saudis, in general, feel no loyalty to anything beyond their blood relatives, certainly none to the state nor unrelated Saudis. Their main concern is looting the country for their own selfish interests.

Saudi Arabia embarked on program in the ’80s to propagate their evil Wahhabi death cult around the world, placing more than $80 billion to back it. The current worldwide campaign of terror is derived from that campaign. In particular, the $500K that financed the Sep 11 attacks came mainly from Saudi Arabia. All of this is part of a covert Saudi foreign policy of religious imperialism, fomenting a war of terror against the non-Muslim world.

It is Abdullah who presides over this colossal jihad which blows innocent people into bloody chunks from New York to Bali. It is Abdullah who delivers the petrodollars to the contemptible Wahhabis so that they can do their worst to the world. This blood is on his head and is the reason why Abdullah deserves our contempt.

Tantor,

I am definitely not a fan of the Saudis… but I would like to think that the Kingdom is not as evil as you portrayed it.

What would you do if you were in the King’s place? … how can you modernize without risking Iraq-like chaos? … What will the Wahabis do if you start introducing western laws, habits, or ways of life to their land?

Camille,

Wishful thinking does not make Saudi Arabia good.

The faulty premise of your question is to assume the Saudi dictator wants to change. However, to accept your question, King Tantor of Saudi Arabia would cut off all funding to the Wahhabis and exterminate their clerics like rats. The Wahhabi death cult is a cancer on mankind that can not be reformed but must be extirpated. That would not only end the jihad the Wahhabis are inflicting upon the world, but it would remove the giant Wahhabi roadblock to progress for ordinary Saudis.

A far-seeing Saudi king would recognize that one day the oil will run out, that the country has no natural resources, and that the only thing that will preserve the nation is its human capital. The Wahhabis are the obstacle to the development of that human capital, to the development of the intelligence and skills that will preserve their current standard of living in a post-petroleum Arabia. While the Wahhabis retain their death grip on the Saudis, they assure a future return of the population to the desert in conditions of appalling poverty and ignorance like their Bedouin grandparents.

But if Wahabis enjoy the support of a significant portion of Saudi society (50%?) … then can you really “exterminate their clerics like rats”?

I prefer a long-term approach… over ten to twenty years perhaps. Gradually limiting Wahabi power .. starting with stopping them from sending money outside the Kingdom to export their ideas.

Carefully sequenced Educational reforms … introduced in a way that does not threaten their existing beliefs and values.

Camille,

The Nazis enjoyed the support of a significant portion of German society. They did not fare well in the war they started.

I prefer a short term approach. Perhaps you would too if Saudis were vaporizing people by the thousands with their religious hate in your country. When Saudis are cutting the throats of stewardesses, killing children flying to Disneyworld, bathing people in flaming jet fuel, and forcing others to jump off skyscrapers, I’d say a go slow approach is not in order.

Saudi beliefs and values deserve no respect. The Wahhabi way is to hate everything non-Wahhabi. The Wahhabis conquered Arabia by annihilating 400,000 non-Wahhabis who lived there and subjugating the rest. I disagree that such an approach should be respected but rather forcefully rejected, especially when it is applied outside Saudi Arabia in an effort to force the world to bow to Mecca.

Respecting Saudi values only feeds their pathology. The better way is to reciprocate their violence ten times over to demonstrate to them the folly of their evil, that their war of terror will not win them any advantage but will bring about their destruction. The sooner we do so, the sooner the Saudis will abandon their jihad.

Tantor, have you ever killed anyone? Even held them at gunpoint? Gazed upon bodies rotting in the sun? Had personal friends killed or driven mad by violence? Loaded a gun and put it to your own head?

Pardon my French, but its not a fucking video game! You can’t push the reset button and start all over again when you are dead with ten thousand foreign troops and five times that many citizens of a kingdom.

I understand that, despite the beliefs of many, applied violence really DOES solve some issues. But to say that exterminating an ethnic or religious group is the proper way to proceed… isn’t that just another kind of jihad? Isn’t jihad what you are condemning?

I really do think we are at war, a religious war, a jihad, if you wish. That said, I don’t think the solution is to kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out. Such an action would have to be done by Westerners because the locals lack either the moral courage or the ability to do it themselves. King Abdulah, even if he would wish to embark upon this kind of action, would be doomed to fail.

Its going to take education, slow reforms, and quite probably a bloody rebellion by the Saudi people themselves. If they aren’t willing to do this, then they deserve to stay slaves to the despots who rule their country… and I don’t mean King Abdulah. Its the Muslim clerics who are the real power behind the repression in the “magic kingdom”, not the Saudi royal family or any other governmental group.

How long would “King Tantor” last before they stormed his palace and cut off his balls with a dull knife? Kings must have better judgment than you seem to display in this forum. They rule only by the willingness of those they rule over. When that willingness is through, so is the king’s rule.

Frank, you make a convincing case why King Tantor will never rule Saudi Arabia. Another dream dashed.

Frank, I work across the freeway from the Pentagon. Several times each week I drive past it, coming down the same path that the suicide jet took when it struck. I see that side of the Pentagon where the jet struck. I know the exact spot. I have never thought that it was a video game.

Resisting the Saudi jihad with force does not make you a jihadi any more than resisting the Nazis with force makes you a Nazi. You make a false moral equivalence between the righteous outrage of Americans targeted by Saudi Arabia and the insane rage of Saudi jihadis who want all infidels converted, subjugated, or dead.

Undoubtedly, education, slow reforms, and a bloody rebellion by the Saudi people themselves might well bring Saudi Arabia into the modern world in a century. I’d be inclined to favor that process if Saudi evil was confined to Arabia. However, when Saudi Arabia is propagating terror around the world, I am loathe to give them the time to reform themselves when the price is American blood and the blood of innocents around the world. Saudis should pay the butcher’s bill for their evil ways, not the world.

If you take the example of Hirohito’s Japan, you can see that a belligerent nation can be transformed into a pacifist nation in a few years with the proper application of overwhelming violence. The Saudis proceed slowly in their reforms because we have granted their Wahhabi terror masters a sanctuary there and place little pressure on them to evolve from their current Neanderthal state. When we return their terror to them ten times over, demonstrating unequivocably to the Saudis that butchering foreigners will lead to their own deaths, I can assure you that the Saudi pacifist reforms will proceed apace. Just like Japan.

Sorry King Tantor… don’t mean to dash your hopes, but I’ve been there. So far as I could see, there wasn’t anything in Saudi Arabia worth ruling over. Lots of sand, lots of oil, and oodles of unruly citizens belonging to different groups all believing that his cause is the only cause and that everyone else should be killed.

Every Arab I have ever met seemed unable to fathom the concept that somebody else might have another opinion about religion and that this was perfectly OK. This includes Arabs who were Christian. In Northern Iraq, I saw a few places where Christians and Muslims were sometimes next door neighbors and were welcome in each other’s homes, but that was the only location I ever saw that. Those people were ethnic Kurds, though. I swear, most people in that part of the world need to be kept in separate cages like roosters!

Ironically, an Arab once told me the only solution to the Middle East… turn it into a radioactive sheet of glass. That way, there would be peace, he pointed out. I thought that a bit extreme.

Truly, I think before my life has passed, I will see us going to war in the Middle East again, eventually to Saudi Arabia, perhaps to back a rebellion. Iran is next, though it will not be as easy as Iraq.

An old joke (short version): An infantry soldier sees a snake, kills the snake, marches on. A ranger sees a snake, kills the snake, eats the snake, marches on. A special forces soldier sees a snake, gets down on his hands and knees to make friends with the snake, gets to know the snake and all about Snakey language and culture, gets invited home to the snake’s hole where he meets the snake’s family and friends. Then he helps the snake’s family and friends to organize and kill all the other snakes.

King Frank, did he exist, would covertly seek aid from the CIA or other groups that “don’t exist”. I and my shadowy allies would then begin to introduce reforms. We would grant exemptions to foreign women, allowing them to drive cars and not be covered. Local women would see this… and if you think a woman cannot cause grief at home for her husband, you haven’t been married long. Feminism is quite possibly the best route to social reform in the magic kingdom.

The Internet would become available to everyone and funding would be cut from the religious police such that they would no longer be able to perform their enforcement missions. In fact, they might be disbanded entirely and the funding put to use developing other economies not based upon oil.

Christians would be welcome to build churches and worship openly, not in secret. Muslims would be allowed to convert to Christianity without any difficulty. There would simply be no government backing of any religious group… they’d all have to fund themselves or perish as an organization.

Gradually, my shadowy friends would “disappear” troublesome Imams and other enemies. My own pet snakes would help them do it. By the time my reign was over, I would be firmly in control and able to pass new reforms like, perhaps, a constitutional monarchy or republic with free democratic elections. At this point, I would tell my pet snakes to turn on their US allies and force them to leave the country, which they would be happy to do as their job would then be over.

Are you reading this, King Abdulah? This is a simplistic version of the correct recipe for reform!

Now, if only the world would be so simple as that….

Alas, I will never be King Frank, and just as well because I would not want his job. King Abdulah can have it with all the nightmares it holds.

He can also have the bloodshed that is ahead for his kingdom. If ever a place was ripe for rebellion, it is the magic kingdom.

King Frank,

It’s not a bad plan you’ve got there. I suppose the hard part is making you king, huh?

Should the day come when rebellion overcomes the Kingdom and blood flows in the streets of Riyadh, you will find me and most Americans parked in front of our TVs with a nice bowl of popcorn, buttered, yelling, “Burn, baby, burn!”

You wouldn’t by any chance have a website telling your overseas stories, wouldja? I’d be interested to read those.

Some of my escapades, such as they are, can be found at http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/projects/geoweb/participants/dutch/gulfwar/gulfindx.htm, but as I operate under a nom de guerre under Mona’s site, I should point out that Frank Timmerman and any other “Franks” listed are not me. In any case, others had much more interesting work than I did.

Yes, I was a soldier once and young, so this seems like ancient history now. I look back at it and wonder sometimes if I was really there or was it all just a dream. Then my shoulder hurts or that skin rash I picked up more than fifteen years ago and counting that won’t go away starts to itch and I know that it wasn’t a dream.

I was lucky, all things considered.

I don’t have a website of my own these days. Just about all the soldiers mentioned are long since retired, only a few still on duty, some heading back soon.

Sorry, bad link. Maybe this one will work.

http://www.prestonm.com/military/gulfwar/432_indx.shtml

Dear Mona Eltahawy, I am so glad to discover your blog. I think Arab Neoliberals need a spokesperson and you are the most eloquent person who can defend and advance the Neoliberal movement in the Arab world. I will be looking forward to your writings. There will be peace in the region only if the Axis of Moderates prevails and if articulate intellectuals such as yourself who personify, with their views, what the Axis of Moderates is all about.

Shamir talks about Arab neoliberals as if they are a good thing, reserving the “khanate” of moderation to those who subscribe to it. Quite a funny man.

Camille,
I know we don’t see eye to eye on some things but do you really think that Western style modernisation is what Arab and predominantly Muslim countries need? We need to have an email discussion or something, have you got my MSN messenger address?

Wassim,

Arab neoliberals ARE a good thing. Well, they are at least better than the alternative, which is a bloody revolution or an eventual war with Western countries.

You don’t always see eye to eye with me any more than you do with Camille or probably Mona. That said, I would say that modernization is not “Western”, unless you are talking about government, and that is by no means Western or even especially modern. We got all our ideas of government from ancient Greece.

That Arab countries need to be modernized in terms of technology, I would hold to be self evident, and from your obvious level of intellect and education, I would guess you would agree. Camels are a fine example of God’s engineering skills, but I wouldn’t especially want to cross a desert on one if I had an air-conditioned Ford Econoline van to do it in.

Modernization in the sense of government and human rights I would hold to be equally self-evident. It isn’t the fourteenth century any longer. The Middle East region cannot be as isolated from the rest of the world as it once was. Ideas cross borders every day now… and they catch on, even when proscribed by an existing belief system or government.

What you (as Arabs) need is the ability to accept that others have other opinions about religion, government, human rights and other subjects. You don’t especially want to hear what I think of Mohamed any more than I want to hear your opinions on Jewish or Christian religious figures. I have neighbors who are various types of Christians, a Hindu, an atheist or two, and a Jewish synagogue down the street from me. Ethnically, they are Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic. They all have different views on many subjects. While I don’t agree in many cases, I get along with them and they have all been in my home as guests.

The citizens of Saudi Arabia, for example, have been isolated for so long and indoctrinated so heavily with a rather heavy-handed form of Islam that they have just about lost the ability to even consider other views. This will ultimately cost them more than they will want to pay.

Now, if you don’t want to hear this from an American, too bad. I have as much right to post my views here as you do… and to be as “long winded” as Camille’s web design parameters will allow. But you don’t have to hear it from me… there are enough Arabs out there saying the same thing.

Modernization, as you call it, is coming, whether the old line Arab culture is ready for it or not.

Wassim,

I agree with Frank’s last comment to a large extent. And from reading your blog and your posts at Creative Syria, I also agree with you to a large extent.

There are many different roads to the same destination… as long as good intentions are the starting point.

In my case, I have some simple and generic beliefs:

1) Religion is great. But it should not be at the core of any political system. Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel can all be much more positive, and less perceived as a threat from the outside if they were not all about their respective religions.

2) Much more can be achieved through charity and goodness than through confrontations and violence. Even the most fanatic extremists (religious or political) can be weakened when moderates (not as in “Arab moderates”) are actively helping and caring about others.

Sounds almost silly, I know .. but I am convinced it works in many, if not all, conflict areas.

Camille,

While I agree that charity and goodness can wear down evil over the long run, violent confrontation is sometimes necessary when evil is acute. Charity and goodness did not shut down Auschwitz, nor does it stop Al Qaeda from making follow on attacks. Brute force did and does. In such cases, pacifism simply facilitates evil.

Religion is the source of all evil. I know enough people, who care two hoots about going to the church or other places of worship.

Look at what Islam has done to the middle east. The Persians had their culture. The Arabs were equally sophisticated. So, were the Hindus in India.

Today, all that the Muslims talk about it is Prayers & Halal meat. Muslims have become obsessed with Islam.

In universities across the US, the Muslims are only talking about how they can retain their Muslim identity.

I think it is a curse.

My thoughts: Serve humanity, serve God. Take care of Mother Earth, serve God.

It is as simple as that. All the religious books can be dumped in the drain.