Saudi crown prince’s revolution is the real Arab spring

Zev Chafets in The Dawn



WHEN Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia rounded up 500-head of royals and billionaires last weekend and tossed them into luxury confinement, it was more than just a power grab by a young man in a hurry. It was a revolution. But of what kind?

Faisal Abbas, editor of Arab News, the English-language daily that normally speaks for the government, provided an answer of sorts from the Saudi perspective.

“With all due respect to the pundits out there, ‘experts’ analysing Saudi Arabia in previous decades had it too easy,” he wrote on Tuesday. “We need to understand that the days when things took too long to happen — if they happened at all — are forever gone. The exciting part is that thanks to the ambitious reforms being implemented … we are finally living in a country where anything can happen.”

Muhammed, known as MBS, is 32. He looks like a storybook Arabian prince and he talks like a progressive. He says he plans to liberalise and modernise his sclerotic society, expand the civil rights of women, reduce the economic power of the Saudi fossil fuel industry, and loosen the grip of the 5,000-member royal cousins club that has bled the country dry for generations.

Not only that: the prince also promises to transform Saudi Islam into a more tolerant brand of religion that does not fund extremist mosques in the West or underwrite jihadists in the Middle East.

Isn’t this the Arab leader we have been waiting for?

Yet so far, there doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm in world capitals. With the exception of US President Donald Trump, who has tweeted his support, events in Riyadh have elicited mostly silence.

This is understandable. Sometimes bright young Arab revolutionaries turn out to be Anwar Sadat, whose radical vision brought peace between Egypt and Israel. More often, they are tyrannical like Gamal Abdul Nasser or murderous like Osama Bin Laden or hapless like the Egyptian yuppies in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in 2010. Let’s hope the dismal outcomes of that so-called Arab Spring have taught gullible Westerners not to engage in wishful thinking.

Still, you have to admire the boldness of the young prince. He has made enemies of the Saudi aristocracy, its billionaire class and their foreign business partners, who will eventually be looking for revenge. He has also locked up some senior clerics. The Saud family has historically derived its status as the Protector of Makkah from its alliance with the ultra-conservative Wahhabi sect of Islam. The kingdom is full of young disciples who will not take kindly to the silencing of their jihadist preachers. (It’s true, however, that the prince has shown a less enlightened penchant, cracking down on human-rights advocates and academics as well.)
The prince also faces a threat from Iran. This week, President Hassan Rouhani warned that a Saudi alliance with the US and “Zionist regime” of Israel would be a “strategic mistake”. Since the US has been allied with the Saudis for decades, this sounded like a redundant warning.

It was not. Adding “Zionists” to the equation made it a death threat. Open collaboration with Israel by Arab heads of state is life-threatening. In the early 1950s, King Abdullah I of Jordan was assassinated in Jerusalem for allegedly talking peace. In 1981, after signing the deal with Israel, Sadat was shot to death by Islamic extremists at a military parade in Cairo. The next year, Bashir Gemayel, the president-elect of Lebanon, was blown to bits in Beirut, presumably by Syrian agents.

Like MBS, Gemayel was the scion of an aristocratic family, one that publicly allied himself with Israel. The Saudi crown prince is too young to remember Gemayel, but Saad Hariri — who resigned as Lebanese prime minister over the weekend and is currently hiding in Saudi Arabia (or a nearby Gulf state) from Hezbollah assassins — can fill him in on what happens to Arab leaders who get accused of philo-Semitism.

This dynamic, by the way, explains Israel’s silence over MBS’s manoeuvrings. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is delighted by the emergence of a new Arab leader who shares his view of Iran. The last thing Bibi wants to do is get him shot.

Let’s be optimistic. Suppose Prince Mohammed survives hitmen, the wrath of his cousins and the fiery opposition of jihadist clerics — that he rises to the throne and moves to implement his domestic reforms. Granting women equal civil rights, permitting theatres and cinemas to open, tamping down the more inflammatory mosques, diversifying the economy — it is, as Abbas writes, an exciting prospect.

But there remains the question of his wider ambitions. He has made it clear that he considers Iran a mortal enemy. It is equally clear that he wants to lead a Sunni Arab coalition that can take on Tehran and end its regional aggression. This is a worthy goal, but not realistic.

The crown prince is the commander-in-chief of the army. He knows that it is a third-rate fighting force, unable to defeat even Houthi militia bands in Yemen, let alone Iran and its allies. His father and previous kings have been elderly rulers, cautious and focused on self-preservation. The most impressive fighting force in the kingdom is the National Guard, whose main role is guarding the royal family. The Saudi style of warfare has been funding proxy armies, while the US defends its borders.

Will MBS follow prudently in the footsteps of his predecessors? Or will he be seduced by dreams of restoring his family’s ancient warrior tradition and imposing Sunni primacy in the Muslim Middle East? I vote for option No 1.

An energetic, liberalising young king in Saudi Arabia would be a very good thing for the Middle East. He could be an important ally in the international war against terror, and a fine role model for other aspiring Arab revolutionaries. It would be a shame to waste this potential on half-baked military adventures. He needs to bring the Gulf into the modern world, not get bogged down in an Iranian Bay of Pigs.

Far too many Western Muslims speak of freedom as a sin whilst Muslims who have never known real freedom yearn – and die – for human rights

YASMIN ALIBHAI BROWN in The Independent

Sunday 11 January 2015

Ill with flu last week, I watched the events unfolding in Paris with dread, rage and disbelief – feelings that surge every time there is an Islamicist atrocity. To kill so many over line drawings or as an expression of religious zeal? What drives these fanatics? In normal circumstances, I would have been on TV and radio channels providing immediate responses, soundbite explanations. Bedbound, I had time to reflect more deeply on this carnage and the question of freedom: what it means, how precious it is and how fragile. That fundamental human impulse and right has now become one of the most volatile and divisive concepts in the world today.

Yes, we, the fortunate inhabitants of the West, are more free than those who live and die in the South and East, but some of the claims made by our absolutists are hypocritical as well as outlandish. Public discourse is expected to be within the bounds of decency and respect; language matters and the wrong word can incite high emotion.

Internalised caution in normal life is a good thing. Not good is the way the powerful control our right to know or speak. People are prosecuted for thought crimes; the BBC films on the monarchy have allegedly been blocked by the royal family; the Chilcot report on the Iraq war is still withheld and when it is finally released the full truth will be censored. I don’t see Index on Censorship kicking up a fuss about these serious attacks on free expression. State power in Europe and North America overrides the citizen’s right to know or speak. These things are never simply black and white or about them and us.

Things get even more complex when you think about freedom and Muslims. Muslims living in the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan, North Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia or Turkey have no freedom to say what they think about the political system or the faith. Turkey imprisons more journalists than any other nation. Iran is the second-worst country for journalists and bloggers. In Pakistan people are tortured for blasphemy – often false charges trumped up to keep people in line.

Last Friday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Raif Badawi was dragged out of prison in shackles, brought in front of the mosque and flogged 50 times for “insulting Islam”. Imagine the scene: worshippers who had just finished praying to a merciful God then watched the merciless punishment. This will happen every week until he has been lashed a 1,000 times. He will also spend 10 long years in a Saudi prison. His body and mind will thus be shredded. Badawi, an activist, had started a website, the Liberal Saudi Network, and shared some of his perfectly reasonable views. For that he had to be punished so severely that no one would ever try to do the same again.

In Pakistan, Afghanistan, most central Asian states, Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Libya, even “liberated” Iraq, people know they must not say what they think about their rulers or their imams, not even to neighbours or friends. The only choice is to conform and live, keep your boiling thoughts locked in your own head. Imagine the psychological consequences.

When, in 2010, the Arab Spring unexpectedly arrived, Muslims rejoiced, and thought they could at last speak freely and get proper democracies. I was in the Middle East in the most optimistic months. Spring turned to winter and even harsher restrictions were imposed everywhere. Now thousands of Muslims try to flee every day, to get to places where they can earn a living, be safe, most of all be liberated from oppression. Those people on boats who turn up on Europe’s shores want what the brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly had before they blasted it all away.  

Large numbers of Western Muslims are disturbed by the rights and liberties they have inherited and sometimes reject them. Meanwhile Muslims who have never known real freedom yearn for, indeed die to get those same liberties and human rights. That gap between Muslims who have and don’t want and those who crave and can’t have grows bigger all the time. For too many British Muslims, familiarity breeds contempt for freedom. They talk about it not as a priceless entitlement but a peril, out-of-control hedonism and lasciviousness – as a sin. I find that deplorable.

After my book Refusing the Veil came out last year, some female Muslim acquaintances organised a soiree for me to read from it and discuss its contents. These were reasonable, educated women. Here are some of the comments made:

“Why did you have to write this; who gave you permission?”

“Even to think these thoughts is wrong, and you go and publish them? If you were in a Muslim country you would be in jail.”

“If your mother was alive she would have slapped you for writing this.”

When I replied that my mother refused the veil when she was 22, the woman came back: “Then I feel sorry for you. She was the sinner and she made you one too.”

“OK I have not read the book because it will dirty my pure thoughts, but if you are a Muslim, you follow Islamic rules without question. Are you even a Muslim?”

Only two out of 14 women defended my right to write the book. But then said they could never challenge Islamic practices so openly.

What has led to this lethal closing of the Muslim mind? Third-generation Western Muslims are less liberated than were my mother’s generation in the Forties and Fifties. White women who convert are even more rule-bound and obedient. It just shows human history is not a straight road towards enlightenment.

Those of us who value freedom need to understand better what it means. Especially in a world which is both coalescing and splitting apart, where technology has unleashed hope and possibilities as well as limitless hate, where political and religious control is tightening. To seek to be free is a big responsibility. Too big and scary for some people, Western Muslims in particular. This is the debate that needs to open up now within Islam. Will it? No. And that’s our tragedy. 

Egypt: Why I cannot rejoice in Morsi’s downfall

Yasmin Alibhai Brown in The Independent

On Thursday night, I was at an event organised by Islamic Relief, which raises millions of pounds from Muslims to fight global hunger.

Ramadhan starts tomorrow, a month of fasting and giving, a good time for such charities and to reaffirm the best aspects of our faith. But events intervened as always, and instead of tranquillity and goodwill in the room, at many tables people were arguing heatedly about the crisis in Egypt, some supporting the military takeover, others lamenting the quick, callous demolition of a freely elected government.

Three men and a woman were so agitated they almost came to blows. In the toilet one Arab lady was sobbed and said her heart was in pieces. She supported the Muslim Brotherhood because, she told me, her old mother-in-law had been given free medical care by a doctor from the movement. “And now again, the army will torture and kill these good people.” Her fears have been brutally confirmed. By the time I write this, about 50 Morsi supporters have been killed by the army and the leaders of the Brotherhood are in prison or house arrest.

I myself have mixed feelings about the rapid deposal of the Islamic government after only a year in power. The political and moral lines dart about in my head, making crazy patterns, and ethical imperatives seem to be crashing into each other. I unconditionally abhor the deeply conservative, Islamic ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. In Cairo, after the fall of Mubarak, I saw almost no female hair and met some very aggressive men who asked me why I didn’t wear a headscarf. Though most Caireans were still warm and hospitable, they clearly felt under social pressure to conform to and display conspicuous religiosity. This was not the Cairo I had previously visited. Several dejected intellectuals told me the country would soon be like Iran. Morsi’s victory was a blow to them.

His rule, as we know, was pushing the Muslim Brotherhood ideology on to the citizenry; he grabbed control of the courts, manipulated the nascent political reform and rewrote the constitution. Torture, corruption and state thuggery were back and the economy was slowly collapsing. He used democracy but was no democrat. And yet, and yet, I cannot rejoice in Morsi’s downfall, the way his party is now hounded and this abrupt and swift abdication of fundamental democratic principles and practice. Democratic elections won’t always produce the results that true democrats want. That is the price humans pay for this imperfect but most inclusive political arrangement. To expel and exclude a popular Egyptian segment from power is wrong, as wrong as punishing Palestinians for voting in Hamas. The Brotherhood will turn away from the ballot box and Egypt will never be at peace again.

Good Egyptian friends, who have fought long to rid their nation of despotism, are euphoric and support the military coup, which is what it is, though they say it is not. They know their own nation better than I do, of course, and their opinions and feelings matter a good deal more than mine. But still, from a distance, Egypt’s spring seems to be turning dark, losing sight of its ideals, and I am nonplussed and fearful.

I reckon the UK, the US and rest of the world are finding it just as bewildering, though Western leaders preposterously posture and pronounce on the crisis, which they don’t and can’t possibly really understand or interpret. The colonial mindset never really receded; it is alert and ready, routinely invoked in Europe and North America. It may impertinent of me to question the great powers, being, as I am always reminded, an unwanted Muslim immigrant. So read this by Sir Simon Jenkins on our nation’s neo-colonial mentality: “The British craving to set the Muslim world to right is as old as history. It lurks in the genes of British politicians and diplomats, as if the ghost of Lawrence of Arabia still stalked Whitehall.” Only even Lawrence, multilingual, devious and culturally a white Arab, would not presume to summarise or politically interfere with the volatile situation in Egypt today.

How naive we all were when this Spring started with the first amazing fall of an Arab dictator in Tunisia in 2011, followed by uprisings in almost all Middle Eastern and North African Muslim nations. It was a new dawn for those millions who had only ever known oppression. For us spectators, it was the most thrilling show in town, better than any movie. Now Libya, our great “victory”, is divided and bloody; Syria is purgatory with no release in sight as Assad holds on to power, while sectarianism and fanaticism divide the opposition and make them into monsters, some as bad as the regime.

Elsewhere, as in Bahrain, the autocrats who have held on are more ruthless than ever. They are buying bigger and more brutal arms – from us. And the people are cowed, wishing none of this had ever happened, saying better the devils you know than chaos. All the West can and should now do is watch and hope Egypt returns to civilian rule. No other intervention, overt or covert, will help. It’s a mess. Only Egyptians can sort it and make theirs a nation for all its diverse citizens. I trust they will, or how will the world ever believe in progress again?