Saudi reigns
The Saudis are in the global saddle
The kingdom rides the rest of the world like a horse
The lively debate over Saudi Arabia that began in the US after 9/11 has largely been absent from Britain; and then there was the quashing last year of the Serious Fraud Office probe of corruption in arms deals with the kingdom, with £43 billion as an estimate of the monies involved.
Saudi Arabia is a land of beheadings. It is symbolised by the ‘neck-cutter’ or execution blade favoured by the late Ibn Saud, father of Abdullah. The curved, heavy sword is reproduced on the Saudi national flag and escutcheon. The country is infamous for atrocities against women, including female genital mutilation, another tribal habit absorbed into Saudi culture and treated as a sacred custom. Saudi Arabia continues its merciless persecution of non-Wahhabi Muslims as well as denial of the religious rights of non-Muslims. It practises lawlessness in the name of order, and it is the main global centre for export of radical Islamist ideology. Yet oil blackmail — obliviousness to which is aided and abetted by the foreign energy industry — leaves Westerners disoriented when the Saudi question is brought up.
The perverse relationship between the Saudi monarchy and the West is unique in history. No other tyranny has been granted such ample exemptions from modern canons of human rights, financial transparency, and simple respect for other states and peoples. Critics of Islam decry the past practice of Muslim rulers in exacting a tax, the jizya, from their non-Muslim subjects. But in the world today, it appears the Saudis are in the global saddle, with the rest of humanity serving as their horses and camels, and that the equivalent of the jizya tax levied at the petrol pump exceeds by far that paid under the Islamic empires.
Britain, no less than the US, has every right to press for more rapid reform in the kingdom, especially when its leaders meet with King Abdullah. Making Saudi Arabia a country worthy of international respect does not require war, nor loss of resources, nor anything other than conscience on the part of Western — and Muslim — leaders.
Stephen Schwartz is executive director and Irfan Al-Alawi is international director of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism (islamicpluralism.eu).
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