Close-up
In Saudi Arabia, balancing act challenged by terrorists

By David B. Ottaway
The Washington Post

AMR NABIL / AP Saudis crowd in front of an official building in the capital Riyadh. Despite the ongoing threat from terrorists, Saudis go on with their daily business.

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most e-mailed articles

Related stories Violence is starting to hit home American contractor slain in ambush BBC OKs armed guards for journalists

But the kingdom's religious leaders were outraged, particularly after a picture appeared in Saudi newspapers the next day showing Olayan without a veil.

The incident highlighted the battle going on inside Saudi Arabia today, where modernists such as Olayan are increasingly challenging the country's ultraconservative Wahhabi Muslim establishment.

Wahhabism preaches strict adherence to the Quran's teachings and to an ascetic life. Its 18th-century founder, Mohammed ibn Abd Wahhab, sought to purge Islam of outside influences and restore its original purity — a creed taken to xenophobic extremes by such modern-day followers as Osama bin Laden and leaders of Afghanistan's Taliban movement.

The most-important pillar supporting the ruling Saud family, the Wahhabis are under siege at a time when the Sauds need them more than ever to bolster their rule against Islamic radicals.

Militant clerics and followers of bin Laden are lambasting the Wahhabi establishment for subservience to what they regard as a corrupt royal family serving secular American interests. Liberal reformers are demanding a major voice in government and significant changes. Women are pressing to break out of the Wahhabi social straitjacket.

Abroad, long-standing concerns over whether the House of Saud can survive are now particularly acute. The kingdom sits on one-quarter of the world's oil reserves and remains a vital source of oil for the United States at a time of rising demand. A recent CIA paper on Middle East developments between now and 2020 warned that it "should not be surprising" to see "a new radical regime" come to power in Saudi Arabia.

Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, the Bush administration has been pressing the royal family to crack down on the largely autonomous Wahhabi establishment, its web of overseas charities and its extremist preaching.

Jolted more recently by multiple bombings and shootouts with terrorists in the capital, Saudi rulers have responded with a two-pronged strategy: First, they have completed a purge of militant preachers — 2,000 to 3,000, out of 50,000 nationwide — who might challenge their authority or inspire a popular revolt. Second, they have mobilized Wahhabi officialdom, from its highest scholars to the lowliest neighborhood imam, to stress moderation and condemn extremism.

The government has also begun pressuring the hard-liners by launching a national dialogue to promote consensus on some reforms they oppose. At stake in this high-risk reform strategy is whether the House of Wahhab will continue to have the credibility and moral authority to underpin the House of Saud.

When King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud founded the present Saudi monarchy in 1932 and based its laws on the Quran, he struck a bargain with the leaders of his army of Wahhabi religious warriors: Affairs of state would be left to the Sauds and affairs of religion to Wahhab's descendants, the Sheik family.
 
The Wahhabi hand stretches deep into the councils of the Saudi royal court and policymaking processes. The grand mufti is a Sheik, as are the ministers of Islamic affairs and justice. Through the Islamic Affairs Ministry, the Wahhabis control a network of 50,000 neighborhood mosques. Through the Justice Ministry, they control every court in the kingdom.

Overseen by the grand mufti, Sheik Abdalaziz bin Abdullah Sheik, the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars issues authoritative religious edicts, or fatwas, and opinions on most issues of the day. The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice enforces the edicts with its 5,000 fierce-looking, bearded mutaween, who patrol all public places.

The family's clerical allies also head the appointed, 120-member consultative Shura Council, most of the country's charities, the newly formed human-rights commission and, until recently, the body in charge of women's education.

Since the early 1960s, the House of Saud and the House of Wahhab have feuded over the extent and pace of change — from the introduction of traffic lights, radio and television to education for women, Western-style banking and the World Trade Organization.

But the Sauds and Sheiks traditionally have joined forces to face down challenges to their joint authority — whether from Wahhabi extremists, liberal reformers or Iranian revolutionaries. The most serious threat came in 1979, when several hundred Wahhabi fanatics seized control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and held off Saudi security forces for several weeks.

Throughout the past decade, dissident Wahhabi clerics have risen up repeatedly to challenge both royal and religious officialdom. Today, bin Laden and his followers have brought their campaign to overthrow the House of Saud to the streets of the capital.

In the past year, the Saudi rulers have turned to the Wahhabi scholars, or ulema, for help crushing Islamic extremists and containing liberal reformers.

"Seeking to overthrow existing legitimate regimes is forbidden," the grand mufti said in a late January sermon as 2 million Muslims gathered for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. "Praise the leaders of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia who are providing us with peace and security."

But many Saudis contend the House of Wahhab's iron grip is slipping with expanded access — partly through the Internet and satellite television — to more-moderate Islamic preachers elsewhere in the Arab world.

Today, the main battlegrounds are the education system and the status of women. In both fields, clerics are furious at what they see as assaults on Wahhabism.

In early January, 160 Islamic scholars, judges and professors issued a statement protesting changes in education, blaming liberals, whom they described as "partisans of infidelity, polytheism and delusion."

Despite the protest, Education Minister Mohammed Ahmed Rasheed has made clear that reform remains the order of the day. Over ulema objections, for example, he ended religious lessons for primary-school students that portray Christians and Jews as infidels to be shunned.

Women now outnumber men among university graduates. Nonetheless, last September, 130 clerics and academics came out against equal rights for women, which they said amounted to copying "infidel" Western women.

Equality between men and women is not possible under Islam, they said. Allowing women to drive would lead to "many evils."