Why not Spend on Poverty Stricken Saudis?

Director’s Comment: After praising his family for its service to Islam and its rejection of all non-Islamic governing values, including non-sectarian constitution and rule of law, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naïf announced that his government had donated one billion dollars to the Organization Of Islamic States, OIC, to help poor Muslims. The poor Muslims, who receive funds from Saudi royals, are the most vulnerable to Wahhabi indoctrination and brainwashing. Ironically, Saudi Arabia has many pockets of downtrodden citizens who have no electricity or running water and live in infested shacks. CDHR does not oppose helping poor people, Muslims or not, but it questions the motivation of the Saudi royals for spending money abroad while there are many Saudis who live under the UN poverty line designation. One way to eliminate the root causes of young Saudis' frustration and desperation is to improve their standards of living, as well as their schooling and overall social, political, economic and religious environment. Spending billions abroad on goods that benefit no one at home, and stashing more money than they know how to handle in royals’ bank accounts, are wastes of public wealth. Read More

Religious Cleansing

Director’s Comment: The barbaric kidnapping and murder of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, of the dwindling Christian community in Iraq, may have been carried out by a band of murderers. These violent groups are products of Arab and Muslim institutions, whose transformations should be of more concern to the international community, especially the United States. The nature of the governing institutions and those who run them determine the perceptions, orientations and actions of the Arab populations. The majority of the Arab people has no input in decision-making and is forbidden from questioning those who decide the course everyone is asked to abide by and follow. When the decayed body of Archbishop Rahho, of the Iraqi Christians, was found on March 13, 2008, the fifty-seven autocratic heads of the Organization of Islamic States (OIC) were meeting in Dakar, Senegal. They did not even mention the murder of the fallen Iraqi Christian Archbishop, let alone condemn it.

The focus of Arabs, especially intellectuals, as well as non-Arabs, should be on the root causes of Arab and Muslim frustration, isolation and lack of free expression. Supporting autocratic regimes like the Saudi ruling family, Mubarak of Egypt, and Musharraf of Pakistan, in the hope that these repressive governments will rein in their religious extremists, is the wrong policy to ensue by the US and others. Read More

Victims of Cultural and Judicial Travesty

Director’s Comment: The unending and heart wrenching saga of a married Saudi couple, Mansour and Fatima, and their two children, has been domestically and globally debated and condemned for three years. The legally married and law abiding husband and wife were forced by a Saudi court to divorce because Fatima’s half brothers claimed that her husband, Mansour, was not of a pure tribal Arab blood. The Saudi royal family and its religious zealots do not recognize the rule of codified laws; consequently, judicial verdicts are up to the presiding religious judges to decide. Saudi religious judges are trained only in the austere Saudi-Wahhabi religious institutions. Regardless of the severity of the punishment, the judges’ verdicts are improvised on the spot and depend on the mood the judges are in at the time of judgment. Read More

Summit of Autocratic Unrepresentative Regimes

Director’s Comment: Like all previous summits, the autocratic heads of the 22 Arab states gathered in Damascus, Syria, in March of 2008, and blamed the rest of the world for their failures at home. The intent of Arab summits is to keep their disenfranchised people consumed with external issues, instead of looking at the real problems at home. Divided as ever, the Arab theocrats and autocrats spent their time in Damascus exchanging well-deserved insults and accusing each other of betraying the Arab cause, meaning the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Saudi peace initiative, which was announced in Lebanon on March 28, 2002, was resurrected, but the political chaos in Lebanon was the main issue the conferees were ostensibly supposed to address. Sadly and as expected, the massacre in Darfur, gross violations of human rights in most Arab countries, the marginalization of women, and the plight of minorities in the Arab states did not make it to the agenda.

Intriguingly, the unpredictable Gadhafi of Libya wanted the summiteers to investigate the hanging of Saddam Hussein because he fears what happened to Saddam could happen to the rest of the rest of Arab regimes. Read More

Formalizing a Gender Apartheid-like System

Director’s Comment: According to the Saudi Minister of Justice, Abdullah Al-Asheikh, the Saudi judicial system will hire a number of women to serve as liaisons between the court system and other women who need to submit complaints to the courts. Severe gender segregation in Saudi Arabia is a government policy and there seems to be no end to this most unnatural and destructive government-enforced separation of genders. The question is, why can’t wronged women be allowed to represent themselves in courts or at least deliver their complaints directly to the courts?

While most societies are focusing on widening their workforce by training and empowering their male and female citizens to meet economic and other global challenges, the Saudis are still debating whether or not Saudi women should be considered full and equal citizens. Saudi women who want to work are told that there are no suitable segregated areas for them in the work places. Saudi women can go to colleges in and out of Saudi Arabia, but are denied the rights and opportunities to use their education and skills to help build their lagging society. Read More

Financing Terrorism

Director’s Comment: The US Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, headed by Stuart Levey, has repeated the same argument time and again: The Saudi government is not taking the necessary measures to stop the flow of cash to terrorist groups. The Iraq Commission, headed by former Congressman Hamilton, said the same thing. The problem is not the lack of information and proof that the Saudis finance groups that support terrorism in many parts of the world. The problem is the absence of a coherent and unequivocal American policy that gives the Saudi government and its cohort incentives to think twice before aiding those whose intent is to inflict harm upon others.

The Saudi government and its proxies don’t feel the need or urge to ensure full stoppage of funds to individuals and charities that support extremists. They erroneously feel they are above and beyond reach because of their oil, as well as their religious and financial global influence. Contrary to their argument, the Saudis are capable of cutting off the flow of cash from their country to extremists. They can stop the Hawalah, which is an Islamic system of transferring paperless cash. They can start by focusing on the Al-Rajhi Banking Operation, which operates all over Saudi Arabia and in many Muslim countries, as well as by forbidding incitement by their paid religious clerics. If people inside Saudi Arabia knew that their government was serious and sincere about ending the flow of cash to extremists, they would discontinue it. They know the consequences they could incur in the hands of Interior Minister Naif and his secret police if they go against the government’s desire. Read More

Female Religious Police

Director’s Comment: Creating a female religious police contingency to monitor Saudi women’s behavior, dress code, and movement is ostensibly designed to prevent religious men from mingling with Saudi women. However, some Saudis interpret this as another spying apparatus to make sure the increasingly vocal and restless Saudi women remain under the watchful eyes and control of the government. Other Saudis feel this is part of the government’s reinforcement of the already severe gender segregation in the country.

If female religious police are of the austere Saudi brand of Islam, Wahhabism, and are empowered by the government to play multiple roles and practice the same methods of operation as their religious male counterparts, one can expect another intimidating government agency dedicated to making sure women, like men, are monitored at all times to ensure their obedience and submission to the royal family’s rules and wishes. Given domestic, regional and global crises and instability, the Saudi government should be easing its heavy handed social, political, economic, educational and religious policies, and concentrate instead on developing people, especially the youth. Read More

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