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SPEAKING FREELY
Saudis caught in a
vicious cycle
By Amir Butler
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here if
you are interested in contributing.
With Australia conspicuously committed to
both the "war on terror" and the occupation of
Iraq, the threat of terrorism is always in the
background. It has, thankfully, always remained
just that: a threat. However, on a recent visit to
Saudi Arabia, I entered a society where terrorism
has gone beyond merely a threat to become a
reality with which every citizen and resident
must, in some way, contend.
On the evening
of December 29, 2004, terrorists attacked the
Interior Ministry in Riyadh with car bombs. I had
been eating dinner at the time, with some Saudi
friends; one of whom was the imam of a mosque
adjacent to the ministry building. Witnessing the
flood of phone calls he received from family and
friends, anxious to confirm he had not been harmed
in the blast, it became apparent that, regardless
of what might be commonly believed in the West,
Saudi society is and continues to be a victim of
terrorism.
The effects of the nation's
struggle with domestic terrorism are visible
everywhere. At times, Riyadh looks like a city
under siege. There are regular checkpoints
established along the city's freeways; tanks and
armed vehicles sit outside government offices and
"at risk" buildings; and even a trip to a popular
city shopping center requires one's car to be
searched extensively for bombs.
To
untrained Western eyes, there may appear little
visible difference between the fundamentalism of
the Saudi population and the extremism of the
terrorists. After all, both dress the same,
practice similarly austere interpretations of
Islam, and are concerned about similar issues,
such as social justice and American intervention
in the Muslim world.
However, it takes
only a brief visit to a Saudi city and some
conversations with a small sample of the Saudi
population to see that such simplistic reasoning
is far removed from reality. Without exception,
the Saudi people - regardless of their
religiousness - are repulsed by the horror that
has visited their cities and consider it anathema
to the faith on which they were raised and by
which they live.
Despite that,
Saudi-bashing has emerged as a popular
post-September 11 sport. The electronic and print
media are littered with self-styled "Middle
Eastern analysts" pontificating on the cause of
Saudi Arabia's problem with terrorism and its
alleged role as the financial and intellectual
epicenter of Islamic extremism. Although the
arguments may differ in their detail, the blame is
almost always leveled against the country's
religious establishment, its system of Islamic
education, and the role of Islam in Saudi culture.
Such analysis is fundamentally insincere.
It begins with the intended culprit of
fundamentalist Islam or "Wahhabism" firmly in
mind, and then seeks to cobble together arguments
to indict it - regardless of how detached from
reality those arguments might be.
For
instance, they argue that the Saudi education
system is, in part, to blame for both the domestic
terrorism and September 11; the entire system must
be radically reworked in order to reduce the
threat of future terrorism. Although millions of
Saudis passed through this same system and studied
these same texts without succumbing to terrorism
or extreme anti-Western sentiment, reformists
argue that the religious content of these
textbooks must be radically diluted.
However, when contemporary textbooks are
considerably less conservative in their outlook
than the textbooks of 30 or 40 years ago, and the
problem of anti-Western terrorism is a relatively
recent phenomena, it is difficult to see the
casual connection between the two.
Likewise, the kingdom's Islamic scholars
have been cast as the handmaidens of terror;
portrayed as a coterie of rabidly anti-Western
zealots whose stranglehold on the country is
responsible for every social and political ill.
Such criticism is disingenuous as it ignores the
fact that these same scholars were issuing edicts
directed against al-Qaeda and terrorism in
general, years before September 11. Such critics
should remember that the people most capable of
confronting religious extremism are these same
scholars who argue using terms of reference that
the extremists themselves accept.
There is
a symbiotic relationship between the extremists
and Saudi Arabia's domestic and international
hecklers. Each gain made by the secularists in
promoting their "reforms" in Saudi society feeds
popular dissatisfaction and recruits more to
extremism and terrorism; each terrorist attack is
then cited by the secularists as a justification
for further "reforms"; with further change
begetting further terrorism.
Domestic
terrorism will not end until this vicious cycle is
broken. It requires Saudi Arabia to continue its
dialogue with its extremist minority, defusing
their arguments and aggressively pursuing those
who graduate to terrorism; but it also requires
the West to realize that trying to force its own
vision of change on Saudi Arabia isn't the
solution, but is part of the problem.
Amir Butler is a writer based in
Melbourne, Australia.
(Copyright Amir
Butler)
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to
have their say. Please click here if
you are interested in contributing. |
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