At 75, Saudi Arabia split by conservatism, modernity

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Sand, camels, dirt roads, pearl fishermen and Bedouin tribesmen. This was what the present-day Saudi Arabia looked like in 1932 when it was established as a monarchy named after its founder, Abd-al-Aziz Al Saud.

By Samia Hosny

The last 75 years have seen huge changes in the world's largest oil producer, and yet much has stayed the same.

A curious blend of modern externals and a long-ensconced extreme conservative political, social and religious system has emerged.

Boosted by a cushion of economic achievements, the Saudi royal family has often ignored criticism that it combines an ultra-conservative rule drawing its legitimacy from a strict implementation of Wahhabism - a puritanical, austere version of Sunni Islam - and an allegedly lavish, libertine secrete lifestyle.

The Al Saud family, whose members may number over 5,000, has been relying on the country's vast oil wealth, which according to many critics, it considers as its own.

There is no distinction between the family's private and public coffers, charges the London-based Islamist dissident, Saad al-Faqih, who heads the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia.

"Al Saud owns the country and its people," says another opponent, Ali Alyami, the Washington-based, liberal head of the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia.

The kingdom is the world's largest oil producer with a production capacity estimated at 10.5 million barrels of crude oil per day and proven reserves of about 260 billion barrels.

Over the last four years, Saudi GDP has nearly doubled to 350 billion dollars thanks to spiralling oil prices.

With successive oil booms, consumer havens full of the trappings of modern civilization have emerged in Saudi Arabia. As a global consumer city, the Saudi capital, Riyadh, may not seem much different from Singapore, Kuala Lumpur or Dallas.

Riyadh's skyline is dotted with futuristic tower skyscrapers, such as the 302-metre-high Kingdom Centre skyscraper, the 25th highest in the world.

Saudi Arabia's biggest metropolis boasts many shopping malls, housing international stores, such as London's Harvey Nichols. Fast food chains from McDonalds to Fridays stand side by side with Indian and Chinese restaurants.

Rolls Royces, Mercedes Benzes and Ferraris can be seen gliding down the roads more frequently than in many European cities. Though only men are allowed to drive them.

When it comes to "progress," however, the country offers a very distinct version. Its international image is shaped less by its skyscrapers and shops than by public beheadings and the existence of phantom-like creatures covered from head to toe and banned from driving. Called "harem" in Saudi Arabia, they are known as women elsewhere.

The presence of 5,000-odd agents of the moral police, known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, isolates the country even further from the outside world.

"They can arrest and interrogate and detain people for long periods of time. This veracious group has unlimited authority to bully people in the name of prayers, fasting, honour, dress code and total submission to the ruling family," a report by the Washington-based Centre for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia said.

"Secrecy and fear permeate every aspect of the state structure in Saudi Arabia," human rights group Amnesty International noted in a report.

The country allows no political parties, no civil society, no elections, no independent legislature, no trade unions, no Bar Association, no independent judiciary, Amnesty says.

"Torture is endemic; executions, flogging and amputations are imposed and carried out with disregard for the most basic human right," Amnesty International charges.

Some so-called reforms have been recently doled out. They were spurred mainly by outside pressures in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Fifteen of the attacks' perpetrators were Saudis.

The king has allowed an open debate, mainly in the media, of issues, that were taboos in the past, such as AIDS, domestic violence and even persecution of a large workforce coming from poor Asian and Middle Eastern countries.

News stories of torture of domestic helpers from Sri Lanka and India are no longer censored. A partial municipal election was held this year.

Pledges of more reforms are made by the king. But are discredited by his critics. The regime's opponents whether conservative or liberal want to see a dismantling of the extremely conservative religious institution, which legitimizes Al Saud's rule.

"Saudi society has not created anything. It is created by religious institutions, colleges and religious and family conservatism," says al-Yami.

Even some members of the Saudi establishment are alarmed by the rise of a generation of young, Saudi extremists leading the "jihad" in countries like Iraq, Chechnya, and lately in Lebanon's militant camp of Nahr al-Barid.

Khalil Bin Abdallah al-Khalil, a member of the country's consultative Shurah council echoed those fears in a commentary in the Saudi newspaper, al-Sharq al-Awsat.

"Lectures, forums, speeches and religious rulings (fatwas) in mosques, schools, universities and the media create tension, isolation, alienation and despondency. They incite against others," he said.

"They are based on claims made by elites and clerics who isolated themselves from the world and used the logic of cultural particularity and the high religious authority. The result is preparing youths - non-deliberately - to join networks and powers of extremism and terrorism to maintain virtues and identity," al-Khalil said.