Today we're going to spend a little time with Alhamedi, a Saudi, and his blog, The Religious Policeman. Tthe reference is to the Muttawa, the country's religious police, who enforce an austere form of Islam and, as our blogger puts it, "ensure that everything remains as it was in the Middle Ages.") I'm not sure if Alhamedi is the only Saudi blogger, but he's the only one I've run across so far (thanks to a link from Healing Iraq). He doesn't provide personal information about himself, and I'm not certain that he's blogging from within the "Magic Kingdom," but if not he certainly has a grip on what's happening there. Either way, you'll find out more here about Saudi Arabia than anywhere in the mainstream press.
And let's recall that there are a number of reasons we should be concerned about what happens in Saudi Arabia, among them:
-- Its oil reserves, which remain the world's largest, at about 25 percent of the total (though there's some dispute about this) and are vital to the survival of our gas-guzzler culture.
-- President Bush's "deep personal ties" to the Saudi royal family.
-- The close links of some prominent Saudis to terrorist organizations, particularly Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.
-- Bin Laden and his allies' terrorist campaign to destabilize the Saudi royal family.
I haven't been able to read all the posts at The Religious Policeman yet, but they're written with sardonic humor and an eye for detail that make a truly foreign culture comprehensible.
Here are a couple that caught my eye:
The phone revolution
"When the Saudi people finally rise up in revolt and throw out the House of Saud, it won't be for democratic reform, and it won't be for an islamic republic. It'll be about mobile phones."
Specifically camera phones, which are illegal in the kingdom but are quickly becoming the standard everywhere.
Two more get the chop
Dark humor about about public beheadings:
"The thing we should face up to as Saudis is that Public Executions are 'showbiz.' So we should do them properly. If we were the USA, with their “by invitation only” executions, we could afford to be low-key about the whole thing. But we’re not ashamed of having ours in public, so let’s do it with style."
The calm before the storm?
A short post anticipating the most recent al-Qaida bombings in Riyadh.
There are some very interesting insights here about a country in whose fate, for better or worse, we have a vested interest.
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