Need for speed to reform Saudi Arabia
King Abdullah tries to modernise the religious-run judiciary to attract investment
November 29, 2009
By Henry Meyer and Glen Carey
"What's the hurry?" he asked as he sipped a coffee in a Starbucks in Riyadh, wearing a traditional white Arabic robe and sunglasses. "What are the benefits?"
King Abdullah sees the need for speed in changing his country. He is creating secular universities, including a co-educational graduate school, and pushing for more science and technology in education.
The king needs a well-trained workforce to diversify the world's largest oil exporter from energy and create jobs for Saudi Arabia's youth, more than 25 percent of whom are unemployed.
Failing to raise the fortunes of the almost 40 percent of the population would make the Islamic state even more susceptible to extremism, said Simon Henderson, an expert on the Gulf monarchies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Stability of world oil supplies depends on Saudi Arabia, a key US ally.
Losing opportunities
A backlash by clerics, led in public by Sheikh Saad Bin Naser al-Shatri, is slowing those efforts, though the king dismissed al-Shatri from the country's top religious body last month.
"We're missing a lot of opportunities because of religious opposition," said Jamal Khashoggi, the editor of al-Watan newspaper in Jeddah. It is owned by Prince Khaled al-Faisal, the governor of the province. "The conservatives are fighting back."
Al-Shatri publicly criticised the country's first co-educational university in September. This followed the last-minute cancellation in July of a Jeddah film festival that had run annually since 2006. The Arab News said a cancellation order was issued by local authorities, citing festival organisers.
Under a pact between the ruling al-Saud family and the Sunni Muslim hierarchy, dating back to 1744, Saudi Arabia maintains an austere brand of Islam in return for clerics' acceptance of the crown, according to official history. The Wahhabi religious establishment controls the courts and dominates the education system. Prince Turki al-Faisal, whose father, King Faisal, introduced female education in the early 1960s and deployed soldiers to protect girls attending school, said there was similar opposition now.
"Any reform agenda will face resistance but that has not disrupted King Abdullah," said Turki, a former ambassador to the US and UK and intelligence chief from 1977 to 2001.
Loosened laws
To lure foreign academics and international students to his King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, known as KAUST, the Saudi monarch relaxed the rules.
Women don't have to wear the abaya, a black robe that covers all but the face, and are allowed to drive in the fenced-off campus 80 kilometres north of Jeddah.
"This is something I never expected to see in my lifetime in Saudi Arabia," said Hommood al Rowais, a student in a black baseball cap, blue shorts and a T-shirt, who is the son of a Saudi diplomat in Washington.
Abdullah is building four industrial cities, including the King Abdullah Economic City near KAUST. The government says it will create 1 million new jobs by 2020 in a country whose population is now 28 million.
The aim is to build energy-related industries, such as plastics, petrochemicals, aluminum and steel.
Saudi Arabia depends on oil exports for 90 percent of its revenue.
Saudi Arabia could increase manufacturing's share of the economy from 11 percent to 16 percent within the next decade, according to John Sfakianakis, the chief economist at Banque Saudi Fransi in Riyadh, the capital.
Elementary schools devote 31 percent of their time to religion and 20 percent to math and science, according to a report by Booz Allen Hamilton, a Virginia- based consulting firm.
Steadily building
The king faces difficulties too as he tries to modernise the religious-run judiciary to create a favourable environment for business and foreign investment.
In 2007, Abdullah said Saudi Arabia would reform the legal system by establishing a supreme court and commercial and labour courts.
The future judges who can bring the system more in line with international norms are "now studying in school" said Bandar bin Mohammed al-Aiban, the president of the government-run Saudi Human Rights Commission. "This will take a long time."
Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz became the first deputy prime minister, the third most powerful position in the country, in March. He is more wary of provoking clerical opposition than Abdullah, said Khashoggi.
The head of the religious police, Abdelaziz al-Humayyin, ordered stepped-up patrols in July. The police enforce separation of unmarried males and females and a ban on alcohol, and require Muslims to respect prayer times.
Just days after the Saudi monarch presided over a September 23 inauguration ceremony for KAUST, in which he called it a "beacon of tolerance", al-Shatri said in a television interview that mixed-gender classes were "evil".
Suwaiyel, the banker, said he thinks women would drive some day in Saudi Arabia, though not for 10 or 15 years.
Granting them the right earlier "would cause a lot of friction", he said.
"I believe Saudi Arabia is going to change but at its own pace," said Suwaiyel. - Bloomberg
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