Free Republic

THE thump of helicopters and the sirens of police convoys will be reverberating around the Red Sea port of Jeddah from tomorrow morning. Private jets will soon be standing wing tip to wing tip at the airport. The house of Saud, the largest and wealthiest royal family in the world, whose members rule the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia and control a quarter of the world’s known oil reserves, is descending on the city in droves. Having buried King Fahd, Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarch since 1982, in an austere ceremony in Riyadh, the royal family are free to travel again....

RIYADH (Reuters) - A Saudi court jailed three prominent reformists on Sunday for up to nine years for trying to sow dissent and challenge the royal family, dealing a blow to tentative reforms in the absolute monarchy. Judges at the Riyadh court, which was ringed by security forces, issued their verdict after a nine-month trial held mainly behind closed doors despite earlier promises of openness. The court sentenced academics Ali al-Dumaini to nine years in jail, Abdullah al-Hamed to seven years and Matruk al-Faleh to six years, lawyers said. All three were arrested in March 2004 after petitioning the kingdom's...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) In a rare open court hearing, three advocates of democratic reform appeared before a judge Monday on charges arising from their criticism of the kingdom's political and religious life. Saudi trials are normally held behind closed doors, but Monday's hearing was attended by about 200 people. The defendants Matrouk al-Faleh, Ali al-Dimeeni and Abdullah al-Hamed are charged with sowing dissent, creating political instability, printing political leaflets and using the media to incite people against the government, according to two political activists who attended. The activists, Abdul Rahman al-Lahem and Ibrahim al-Mugaiteeb, said the three asked the...

Liberal Egyptian intellectual Tarek Heggy, author of Culture, Civilization and Humanity, recently wrote about the need for Muslim moderates to work against Wahhabism: "What needs to be done at this stage is to champion the cause of enlightenment by supporting moderates and promoting the humanistic understanding of Islam.... Efforts in this direction must go hand in hand with a counteroffensive against the rigid, doctrinaire, even bloodthirsty, version of Islam that first appeared among isolated communities separated from the march of civilization by the impenetrable sand dunes of the Arabian Desert." Heggy, who will embark on a speaking tour in...

Note to Abdullah S.:I'm not sure you have really thought through the 12-step recovery program that you and Saudi Arabia must develop to deal with the addicts of terrorism and utopian Wahhabist Islam in your midst. You still focus on their behavior. Concentrate first on the only thing you can truly control and immediately change your behavior.In a speech from your virtual throne, you have offered an amnesty for al Qaeda "militants" who in effect do not yet have blood on their hands. This offer does have behavioral virtues: Your words put a decision in the addicts' hands and acknowledge...

RIYADH, 21 June 2004 — Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd pledged yesterday Saudi Arabia would tailor reforms to its own needs and set out a comprehensive package to foster economic growth. The king’s annual policy address to the Shoura Council recalled a promise of partial municipal elections, but did not set a date for the first ever poll in the country — in principle due to take place later this year. The speech reiterated that Saudi Arabia was introducing the reforms it perceives as adequate — a reference to the government’s view that reform must come from...

For a long time, I believed that what hindered reform in the Kingdom was the mindset of the Saudi male. Over and over again, I told myself that the finger should be pointed at Saudi men, rather than women, for dictating social norms and traditions that prevent women from doing many things they do in most other countries. Last year I met one of the Saudi women who drove in Riyadh in 1990 and she personally told me that she had been rebuked by more Saudi women than men. I still was not quite persuaded. That all changed two weeks...

Does U.S. support for democracy in the Middle East extend to Riyadh?ON FRIDAY, MARCH 19, President Bush reiterated his commitment "to encourage reform and democracy in the greater Middle East as the alternatives to fanaticism, resentment, and terror." Anyone following the American media lately might actually believe that this policy is showing signs of success in Saudi Arabia. In the last six months, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and a host of other papers have carried articles claiming that the Saudi kingdom is liberalizing. On March 18, NPR's All Things Considered added its voice to the pro-Saudi...

Summary: Saudi Arabia is in the throes of a crisis, but its elite is bitterly divided on how to escape it. Crown Prince Abdullah leads a camp of liberal reformers seeking rapprochement with the West, while Prince Nayef, the interior minister, sides with an anti-American Wahhabi religious establishment that has much in common with al Qaeda. Abdullah cuts a higher profile abroad -- but at home Nayef casts a longer and darker shadow. Michael Scott Doran is Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. THE DUAL MONARCHY When...

Some 100 leading Saudi Arabians have signed a petition urging the government to speed up political reform. The document, sent to Crown Prince Abdullah, is said to partly blame Islamic militancy on the lack of popular participation in politics. It is said to repeat calls for an elected parliament, an independent judiciary and equal rights for women. But Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal told reporters on Tuesday that change would take time. A leading reformer, who did not wish to be named, told Reuters news agency that the petition had been signed by academics, Islamic scholars and human rights activists. He...