http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/03/africa/03saudi.php?page=1
King Abdullah, 84, appears sincere in his desire to bring more moderation, but he has opponents within the royal family. (Saudi Press Agency, via Reuters) NEWS ANALYSIS For Saudi liberals, a ripple of hope in a sea of tradition By Robert F. Worth Published: March 3, 2009 RIYADH, Saudi Arabia: Ever since King Abdullah announced a sweeping cabinet reshuffle two weeks ago, Saudi liberals have been in a rare holiday mood. Many have hailed the changes - including the replacement of some major conservative figures and the appointment of the first female deputy minister - as a "mini-revolution" and proof that the king is at last willing to tame this country's hard-line religious establishment. But there is a larger, more conservative constituency here, and its members tend to dismiss those liberal hopes as fantasies. "These are merely dreams and wishes for things that will not happen," said Sheik Sulayman al-Daweesh, a prominent conservative cleric who is a staunch defender of this country's feared religious police. The reformers, he added, "would like to weaken Saudi Arabia's Islamic identity, and they will not succeed." Who is right? It may be too early to say. But even with all the political will in the world, King Abdullah's cabinet shake-up - his first prominent attempt to rein in the power of the conservatives since he assumed the throne in 2005 - will not succeed quickly or easily. Saudi Arabia's judiciary and vast educational establishment are mostly populated by men much closer in outlook to Daweesh than to the small liberal elite. And while the king appears to be sincere in his desire to bring more moderation and openness, he is 84 years old and has opponents within the royal family. Some of King Abdullah's new ministers have already disappointed the liberals, who hope the changes will be the first steps toward modernizing the legal system and moderating the religious influence in the schools. After a newspaper published a photograph of Noura al-Fayez, the new deputy education minister, wearing a head scarf but with her face uncovered, she complained bitterly that she had not approved its release and would never allow herself to be seen in public that way. Advocates of change concede that the scale and difficulty of the task are daunting, and that the steps may come too late for the current generation of people under 25, who make up 60 percent of the population. Unemployment is high - especially among the young - and the schools continue to nourish the same culture of extremism and xenophobia that helped spawn the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Saudi analysts say. "The Ministry of Education has been kidnapped by extremists for decades," said Mshari al-Zaydi, a journalist and political analyst. "I don't think we'll see any real change there for 15 or 20 years." Still, the reformers have some reasons for optimism. King Abdullah fired some major conservative figures who had been obstacles to change, including the chief of the religious police and the country's senior judge. He installed people in influential positions who are known for their loyalty to him, including the new education minister, Prince Faisal bin Abdullah, the king's nephew and son-in-law. In another landmark change, the king installed more moderate and diverse members in an important committee, the Council of Senior Ulema, that is influential in determining how judges can interpret Islamic law. A broad effort is under way to discipline and modernize the legal system, in which judges are now unrestrained by anything but their own, usually severe, interpretation of Islamic law. "The king's message is that he is bringing new blood - legal, not religious," said Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, a reformist lawyer who has been jailed for his advocacy. "I am very optimistic." More generally, the reform agenda has drawn momentum from King Abdullah's personal popularity and a growing public dissatisfaction with radical religious figures. The radicals had seemed to pose a real challenge to the royal family after a group of them mounted a deadly attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979. Caught off balance, the kingdom's rulers tried to outflank their Islamist opponents by imposing an even more draconian code of public morals. The radicals' popularity began to wane in 2003, when a series of brutal terrorist attacks here killed Saudis as well as foreigners. At the same time, public anger at the intolerance of the cane-wielding religious police has grown, fueled by a younger generation that is more exposed to the outside world. "The sacred image of these people was destroyed," said Awadh Badi, a scholar at the King Faisal Center in Riyadh, the capital. "Before, even the state couldn't touch them." King Abdullah began popularizing the language of reform as regent during the reign of his predecessor, King Fahd, who was incapacitated by a stroke in 1996. Pressure was rising both from internal critics and from the United States, where the Saudi role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - in which 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudi - brought new attention to some of the hatred routinely preached in schools. Textbooks portrayed Jews and Christians as enemies, declared that the crusades never ended and treated the famed anti-Semitic forgery "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" as historical fact. Some changes have been made. But the problem goes well beyond textbooks. Saudi Arabia has 25,000 public schools that educate more than 90 percent of all students, run by deeply conservative Islamists who have successfully thwarted changes in the past. Some refuse to teach materials they view as insufficiently Islamic, or even to allow the singing of the Saudi national anthem - a requirement in public schools - for the same reason. To many Saudis, the issue of extremism is less important than the fact that the schools are not providing enough math and science or the broader view of the world that their children need as the country struggles to diversify its economy and oil prices fall. "Seventy-five percent of what my 13-year-old daughter studies is religion," said Fawziah al-Bakr, a professor of education at King Saud University. "We are all in favor of religion, but we don't have to make all our children into clerics." Even if King Abdullah succeeds, it would not necessarily advance democracy. In a sense, domesticating a threatening religious establishment would merely continue the Saud family's march to absolute power. In fact, one change seems to have been shunted aside. The landmark municipal council elections of 2005 were to be followed by a second round this year, in which women were to be allowed to vote. Those appear to have been forgotten, at least for now, with no public mention of any further preparations. But many reformers scarcely seem to care. "Without changing the cultural infrastructure here, there is no point in elections or anything of the kind," said one ardently reformist member of Saudi Arabia's appointed Shura Council, which advises the king, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "The extremists here are well organized, but the liberals are not organized at all. They don't have channels of communication with the people." Muhammad al-Milfy contributed reporting. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
