Interesting news from Saudi Arabia...

[onager]

Saudi Arabia’s most powerful royal reportedly thinks women should be allowed to drive

...In a long profile by Bloomberg’s Peter Waldman, deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, the most powerful man in Saudi Arabia...hinted at changes to come for women as part of a plan to restructure the country’s economy and modernize its culture.

“We believe women have rights in Islam that they’ve yet to obtain,” the 31-year-old prince said...

Saudi women were granted the right to vote, and be elected to office, for the first time ever, in a Dec. 2015 municipal election. Eighteen female representatives were elected.

On Apr. 13, Saudi Arabia also moved to reduce the power of its Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, its “religious police” infamous for abuses. Under the new regulations, the committee won’t be allowed to arrest people, nor “restrain them, chase them, request their documents, confirm their identities, or follow them.”

http://qz.com/668574/saudi-arabias-most-powerful-royal-reportedly-thinks-women-should-be-allowed-to-drive/?utm_source=YPL

The news about cracking down on the Religious Police is almost as shocking as letting women drive. If they can't arrest, restrain, chase, request documents etc., they won't have very much to do.

When I was over there, they generally didn't bother foreigners too much. Unless they saw a Western couple obviously out on a date. Then they would "request documents" to see if you both had the same last name and were married. If not, the couple could be arrested and deported.

If I were advising Prince Salman right now, I'd tell him to hire plenty of extra security. Religious leaders tend to get really cranky when their undeserved perks and privileges are challenged or changed.

[progressoid]

1. "Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice"

I can imagine a few different denominations here in the good old USofA who would love to have such a committee.

[Warpy]

3. Oh, we've had them

Check out the Hays Office.

[progressoid]

4. Ah yes, the good old days.

This is what we need to make America Great Again! Put the wimins and the coloreds in their place. And have sex with one foot on the floor.

[Warpy]

2. I've met some of the younger generation

and they were mostly educated in Europe and the US. I'm not a bit surprised they say this stuff. Whether they'll actually do it is something else.

Women are especially angry at not being able to drive. As soon as they leave the country on vacation, they're behind the wheel. At home, they need to cajole some man off the couch if they're out of milk.

[trotsky]

5. These are quite remarkable changes.

Any idea what's prompting them?

[onager]

6. Desperation? Echoes of the Arab Spring?

Being an ignorant kwaji*, I can only guess.

(*Arabic for "foreigner" or "enemy." Usually both.)

Argh! Sorry for all the edits. I keep trying to make things more clear and failing. But since they only use a few names in Saudi Arabia, I thought it might be helpful to describe the cast of characters a little.

The prince being quoted here is Mohammed bin-Salman. He's Crown Prince, meaning the eldest son of the current king, King Salman. ("bin" in Arabic means "son of." And since Arabic is gendered, the female equivalent is "bint," "daughter of.&quot

King Salman is one of the "Sudairi Seven" - the seven sons born to the favorite wife of Saudi Arabia's founder, King Abdul-Aziz bin Saud. The Sudairi Seven have run Saudi Arabia since Abdul-Aziz died in 1953 and their offspring will probably run it indefinitely, barring a revolution or something similar.

The Magic Kingdom is currently being hammered by falling oil prices and demographics. The royal family currently includes about 4,000 princes, many of them corrupt slackers and party-boys.

Mohammed bin Salman's father, King Salman, often had the unenviable job of mediating the squabbles between all those useless princes.

One interesting thing Salman did when he became king - he shit-canned "Bandar Bush." i.e., Prince Bandar bin Sultan, former Saudi ambassador to the U.S. and notorious Bu$h brown-noser. At the time Bandar was on the Kingdom's Security Council.

Besides all these social changes, Prince Mohammed is talking major economic changes.

Here's an interesting interview with him on Al-Arabiya. He doesn't seem afraid of change, that's for sure. It will be interesting to see if he lives up to his promises:

Turki Al-Dakhil: In your statements, Your Highness Prince Mohammed, you reiterated that governmental support, be it in water, electricity or oil derivatives, benefit rich people who are not supposed to benefit from it. Don't you fear that this rich category will be angered by this policy?

Prince Mohammed: I will apply it to myself, and those who fail to accept are free to clash with people in the streets.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/media/inside-the-newsroom/2016/04/25/Full-Transcript-of-Prince-Mohammed-bin-Salman-s-Al-Arabiya-interview.html

[trotsky]

7. Damn I love your posts, onager.

I've learned more about the Middle East & Arabian peninsula from you than I did in my Middle Eastern studies class.

Sounds like Prince Mohammed has some good ideas. I hope they succeed.

[onager]

8. That must have been a terrible class...

Thanks for the huge compliment! I get most of this stuff from Google, though I do have to go look at a real book sometimes.

re Prince Mohammed bin-Salman: I should probably be realistic and note that reformers in Saudi Arabia often come to unhappy ends.

e.g., King Faisal in the 1960s-70s was known as a modernizer and reformer. He started the first schools for females. Though the fundamentalist religious leaders kicked up such a fuss, he put them in charge of the curriculum.

That was mild compared to the uproar when he brought TV to Saudi Arabia in 1963.

In 1966, shortly after the TV station went on the air, religious fundamentalists in the Saudi Army attacked it. They saw it as the work of the Devil, despite Faisal's assurances that it would be strictly Islamic.

The leader of that attack was Prince Khaled bin Musaid - King Faisal's nephew. To his credit, when Faisal learned that he allegedly said: "No one in this country is above the law." Prince Khaled was killed in the battle to re-take the TV station.

In 1975, King Faisal was assassinated by Prince Faisal bin Musaid - another nephew, and the brother of the dead Prince Khaled. Up until that time, Faisal bin Musaid had lived in San Francisco and was a famous partier/doper. Evidently he had a conversion to Muslim fundamentalism at some point.

[RussBLib]

9. not pretty

Modernizing Islam is already ugly and it's likely to get a lot weirder. Talk about your male privilege, sheesh!