Introduction
Saudi Arabia is changing. In 2015, King Abdullah (born 1924) died and was succeeded by King Salman, then aged 80. King Salman’s son, Prince Mohamed, immediately became de facto head of the government and was appointed Deputy Crown Prince. Since then:
- Prince Mohamed has been promoted to Crown Prince.
- His government has produced Vision 2030 , an ambitious plan to modernise and diversify the Saudi economy.
- Prince Mohamed has visited Silicon Valley and invited high-tech entrepreneurs to base their enterprises in Saudi Arabia.
- He has arranged with Six Flags, an American company, to open amusement parks through the Kingdom.
- The country’s first museum has opened in Riyadh.
- Women have been allowed to attend some male spectator sports events (in segregated parts of the stadiums).
- Cinemas have begun to open.
- Music concerts have been held.
- The ban on women driving has been lifted.
- There are proposals to designate a recreation zone along the north-west coast within which normal rules on dress and sex segregation will be relaxed.
- The religious police have lost their powers of arrest and have been placed under the control of the interior ministry.
- In 2017, around 320 of the country’s richest people, including some prominent royals, were detained on charges of corruption.
In foreign affairs, Saudi Arabia has become assertive.
- Air and ground forces joined the civil war in Yemen, attempting to restore the Sunni president who had been deposed by the Houthis, a Shiite tribe.
- Saudi Arabia joined USA President Trump in denouncing Iran as the main source of international terrorism.
- Nimir al-Nimir, a popular Shiite sheikh who had called for revolution, was executed on 2 January 2016. This led to mass protests in several cities in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, demonstrations outside Saudi embassies throughout the Middle East, the invasion by protestors of the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and a complete rupture in Saudi–Iran diplomatic relations.
- Saudi Arabia detained the Lebanon prime minister until he resigned from his post while visiting Riyadh. He resumed office after returning to Beirut.
- The Saudi government organised an Arab coalition to fight in Syria, initially against ISIS, then against President Assad’s forces.
- Saudi Arabia joined other Gulf countries in blockading Qatar. The principal demands were that Qatar should close Al Jazeera which had become an alternative source of news throughout the Middle East, and cease supporting ‘terrorism’, meaning the Moslem Brotherhood and other manifestations of political Islam.
- With US support, Saudi Arabia began to organise a coalition of Sunni states (principally Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States, Jordan and Egypt) to resist a perceived threat of Shiite influence in a ‘corridor’ stretching from Iran, through Iraq and Syria as long as President Assad remained in power, and into Lebanon where Hezbollah is one of the best-supported political parties and part of the coalition government. Iran is seen as capable of mobilising Shiite populations in Yemen, Oman, and in Saudi Arabia’s own Eastern Province. The Sunni coalition is intended resist Iranian influence, and to stabilise the Middle East. Its members accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel. The Shiite governments and political parties continue to regard Israel as the ultimate rogue state.
Given its pre-2015 history, this list of changes amounts to a revolution from above. Middle East experts in the rest of the world are excited by these changes. Up to now, the lives of Saudis have been less affected. The changes may be the start of the transformation of Saudi Arabia into a more normal Middle East country. A problem is that few young or older Saudis want their country to become more like Iraq, Syria, Jordan or Egypt. They rather appreciate the ways in which their country has been different.
Saudi Arabia: Recent History
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an Arab Moslem country located in the south-west corner of Asia. It covers most of the Arabian Peninsula and has a strategic geographic location with beaches stretching along the Red Sea in the west and the Arabic/Persian Gulf in the east. The Gulf littoral is shared with the smaller Gulf States. Saudi Arabia’s southern neighbour is Yemen. Its northern neighbours are Jordan and Iraq.
The House of al Saud has been the main ruling dynasty on the Arabian Peninsula since 1744. This was when a charismatic Sunni preacher, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab (1702–1792), inspired the Saudi king with his purified version of Islam thereby (so legend goes) enabling the al Sauds to unite or conquer most other tribes on the peninsula and repel invaders (for a full political history of the Kingdom, see Lacey 2010). The Ottomans formally incorporated all the Middle East into their empire but never controlled more than the Arabian Peninsula’s coastal regions.
The present-day Saudi state was formally created by Britain in 1932. After 1918, Britain and France had taken over from the Turks as the region’s formal administrators. At that time, there was no serious suggestion that independence should await democratisation. Britain passed sovereignty to whoever were regarded as the traditional and de facto rulers. Two states, Saudi Arabia and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, had the names of their rulers in the countries’ official titles. The smaller Gulf States—Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the states that have combined into the United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi, Ajma, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah and Umm al-Quwain)—were handed to their de facto rulers. Yemen was (and still is) a problem. Its situation on the southern coast gave it a location on trade routes that once made it the peninsula’s most prosperous and advanced region, but the Turks, who never controlled more than the coastal area, described Yemen as ‘a country without a lord.’ In 1839, the British captured the port of Aden and managed to negotiate ‘protection and friendship’ agreements with nine separate surrounding tribes. Post-1918 agreements with interior tribes eventually divided the territory into North and South Yemen which were united only in 1990, but the Sana’a-based government has never controlled its entire territory. One division is between Sunni and Shiite tribes, a religious split that occurred close to the birth of Islam. Around two-thirds of Yemen’s population are Sunni. The ruling regime was Sunni until 2014 when the Houthis, a Shiite tribe, seized Sana’a.
In 1932, the al Sauds faced the problem of unifying their huge country. The al Sauds had been the traditional rulers of the Nedj (today’s Central Province) but not the rest of the post-1932 Kingdom. The al Sauds needed to promote a nationwide Saudi identity, and by the 1950s, nation building could be considered accomplished (see Al Rasheed 2013). This was achieved through national newspapers and radio (and subsequently television), a national system of education (for boys) with a national curriculum, and a public dress code that still makes Saudis recognisable the world over. Women are veiled in hijabs or burqas and their bodies are covered by black abayas. Men wear a white thoub and a red-checked kaffiyah as head gear. The state also spread its Wahhabi version of Islam throughout the country’s mosques. This was part of a deliberate attempt to make Saudi Arabia the most pious among all Moslem countries, which seemed appropriate, given its guardianship of Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina.
Most Saudis are Sunnis, but the country has a Shiite minority, 10–15% of the population. They are present throughout the Kingdom but are concentrated in the Eastern province where most oil reserves are also located, and close to Iran, the largest and most powerful Shiite-majority Moslem state. Saudi’s Shiites complain about discrimination. They are excluded from important government posts. There are no Shiite heads of educational institutions. The demands in a petition issued by the Shiite Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr were for equal rights: specifically, equal access to all types of employment, equal treatment in education (preferably in Shiite schools), and equal status for and access to Shiite holy shrines. The regime was unresponsive. Hence, al-Nimr’s call for revolution. Sunnis in Saudi Arabia suspect Shiites of disloyalty. Shiites claim that they are loyal Saudi citizens, that where they live is their homeland, and that they merely want equal rights for their faith (Murphy 2013). Saudi Arabia’s Shiites will protest in the face of what they experience as extreme provocation, like beheading Nimr al-Nimr on 2 January 2016, and the suppression by Saudi troops of Shiite protestors against their Sunni rulers in Bahrain during the Arab Spring in 2011. Shiite protests have been non-violent. Those killed and injured have been victims of violence by Saudi security forces and sentences by law courts.
The al Saudi regime’s hostility to Iran is not due solely to its ‘heretical’ Shiite version of Islam, or rival historical claims to custody of Islam’s holiest sites. Iran’s Shiite Islam gives ultimate political authority to a Grand Ayatollah. The Saudi regime is implacably opposed to all forms of political Islam including Egypt’s Moslem Brotherhood. The al Sauds do not want religious rivals contesting the hereditary monarch’s monopoly of political power. The al Sauds’ other problem with Iran is the democratic features of the latter’s politics—its elected president and Majlis (parliamentary legislative assembly). The al Sauds want their people’s representatives to be available for consultation, not rivals for power.
Saudi Arabia’s rules on sex segregation and its treatment of women were part of the post-1932 nation-building agenda. These rules pre-date the 1970s when, as the population moved into cities, enforcement of the rules was strengthened. In the desert and in villages, the sexes had not been rigidly segregated, and dress codes had followed tribal customs. The fear in the 1970s was that in cities, with their mass populations, traditional family and community controls would weaken, so the state and its agents needed to step in. Women had to remain the pure, protected sex. The protection is primarily through male guardianship. Up to now, women have been able to travel and to work only with permission from their guardians. Until 2018, women were not allowed to drive: this ...