Saudi reform: speeding ahead towards the 17th century

posted at 10:04 pm on May 7, 2006 by Allahpundit
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The brutality, misogyny, and Wahhabist indoctrination continue, but they’re starting to look at the price tag. If you can’t appeal to their conscience, or if there’s no conscience to appeal to, appeal to their wallet.

Reuters reported this week that the Kingdom will begin issuing non-religious visas to tourists and investors. Worried that there’s nothing fun to do in a country where you can be publicly flogged for drinking beer? Don’t be. Says Prince Sultan, “Nightlife can mean anything … We can provide you a very valuable experience that will hit your soul and your mind and send you home sober.”

They’re also thinking about decriminalizing movie theaters.

Saudi Arabia does produce dramas and soap operas for television, and satellites dishes can pick up movie channels and music videos, though they are not legal. But movie theaters, where the sexes can mingle in the dark, have until now remained out of the question. Last year, a movie theater in Jidda opened briefly to show children’s films, but the vice patrol shuttered it within weeks.

Prince Walid, who commands special power within Saudi Arabia, is betting he can present the vice police with a fait accompli.

“There is nothing in Islam — and I’ve researched this thoroughly — not one iota that says you can’t have movies,” he said. “So what I am doing right now is causing change.”

Imagine watching United 93 at a theater in Riyadh.

It’s not all a goof, though. Post-9/11 disgust at Saudi barbarism appears to have had some genuine salutary consequences for persecuted groups inside the Kingdom. Asharq al-Awsat said Wednesday that an Islamic charity will soon begin providing funds to Saudis incapacitated by AIDS; the same group helped Arab AIDS patients make the hajj last year. And after decades of operating underground, Sufi Muslims are being allowed to observe their faith publicly again. Quote:

“This is one of the blessings of September 11. It put the brakes on the [Wahhabi] practice of takfir, excommunicating everyone who didn’t exactly follow their creed,” said Sayed Habib Adnan, a 33-year-old Sufi teacher. The government “realized that maybe enforcing one religious belief over all others was not such a good idea.”

But note, from the same article: “[M]any Sufis complain that despite outward appearances, Wahhabis continue to destroy shrines in and around their holy places, their salons continue to be raided and their literature is still banned.”

The New Statesman tries to tie it all together in a piece called “Wealth and Terror.” Clearly it’s in the regime’s economic interest (and long-term political interest) to de-jihadify the country. The question is how, after they’ve spent the past 70+ years turning it into the anus of the Wahhabist diaspora. Pulling bomb-making manuals out of local libraries doesn’t help much when the local bookstores are selling Jihad for Dummies. So, says the New Statesman, the regime is adapting its tactics. What do you do when you’re dealing with a cult? You deprogram it:

For two years, in a programme kept secret until a few months ago, psychiatrists and Muslim clerics have been holding sessions at Saudi jails, trying to “turn” some 750 young Saudi men who, the authorities say, espouse a violent jihadi ideology. The young men have been arrested and held without trial under a system that is criticised by human-rights groups, but which may hold the key to overcoming al-Qaeda and similar groups in Saudi Arabia.

“The person has to agree to the programme,” says General Mansur al-Turki, a spokesman for the interior ministry. Neat in his uniform and beret, he epitomises the professional image of policing that the Saudi government is trying to promote. “First a psychiatrist will see if the young man is ready to discuss. Then the cleric starts, because this is a religious problem. Someone who is very knowledgeable about religion must sit and talk to make sure he understands that what he believes is not right.”

MI5 is reportedly interested.

It’s a good start, I guess, but there’s a long, long way to go and not much time to get there. I’ll leave you with these words from a recent memoir of Saudi religious brainwashing posted at apostate headquarters, a.k.a., FaithFreedom.org:

All those school activities made us to live in the distant past—during Muhammad’s time. When I reminisce those fearful school days, I really think we were on a time–travel, retrogress, of course. We were living in the seventh century, not in the current period. Even our teachers used to tell us that the modern time is Taleban and nothing else. Time did not exist except for the Taleban time, which was nothing but the re–emergence of Muhammad’s period, the Islamic Period. This is nothing but the incredible Islamic Time Machine, we must admit.

Tick tock.

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