Suchergebnisse

The 2010 Global Gender Gap Report gave Saudi Arabia a high gender gap index, ranking it 129th out of 134 countries. Saudi women are mobilizing to expose this discrimination. Inspired by the Arab Spring, women activists launched campaigns to be given a role in 2010's municipal elections; they demanded to be allowed to drive; they demanded jobs and fair trials. The Saudi leadership bans all forms of civil activism. However, King Abdullah has sought to convince the West that he is a great gender reformer. Adapted from the source document.

The winds of the "Arab spring" have reached Saudi Arabia, but the Wahhabi kingdom is standing firm. When the events that swept Tunisia and Egypt in early 2011 unfurled upon the island kingdom of Bahrain, a few miles off the coast of the Arabian peninsula, Riyadh reacted instantly by sending in troops and solidly supporting the Bahraini regime, while the powerful Saudi media unanimously described the protest movements in Bahrain as the work of the national enemy, Iran. The same technique was applied in the weeks that followed, this time in Saudi Arabia itself, where discontent towards the royal House of Saud was voiced in various parts of the country. The palace used every means at its disposal to quell the dissent, orchestrating a media campaign and ordering police crackdowns -- while also distributing largesse and enlisting the support of the Sunni clergy. So far, the regime is holding out, but the impending succession to aging King Abdullah's throne is likely to rock the system to its foundations. Adapted from the source document.

In the post-9/11 period, the Saudi state faced mounting pressure to appropriate the rhetoric of reform and introduce a series of reformist measures and promises, although none posed a serious challenge to the rule of the Āl Saʿūd. This involved the opening of the public sphere to quasi-independent civil society associations, limited municipal elections, and a relatively free press. Reform of the royal house, aimed at dealing with possible future problematic succession to the throne, was also part of a general trend. This article deals with state-initiated reforms the objective of which was to modernize authoritarian rule without risking the loss of too much power to the constituency.

The author reviews three books that he characterizes as a product of the contemporary fears that dominate Western thinking about Saudi Arabia. David Commins The Wahhabi Mission & Saudi Arabia (2006) is a sober historical account of the rise of the Wahhaibyya in the eighteenth century, & the potential for generating the discourse of terrorism despite the decline of the groups hegemony. In Saudi Arabia Power, Legitimacy & Survival (2006), Tim Niblock discusses the challenges to the resilience of the Saudi regime as old mechanisms relating ruler to subject change in the context of global dependence on Saudi oil & gas, radical Islam & security in the Gulf. Anthony Cordesman & Nawaf Obaid address the Saudi national security challenges in National Security in Saudi Arabia to argue that the military & paramilitary capabilities of the regime face social & religious obstacles that could backfire if pressured from outside. The three books sketch the historical, religious, political, & security threats facing the Saudi regime in the post-9/11 era, informing the audience about past, current, & future potential threats facing a Kingdom increasingly defended by outsiders as the sick man of the region. References. J. Harwell