Professor Madawi Al Rasheed

Political activism in Saudi Arabia manifests itself in the form of petitions. These are sent to the King and other senior members of the royal family, and in the absence of independent and legal forums, these petitions attract media attention and are an important means by which the political atmosphere can be tested.

The country was struck by a wave of petitions during and after the Gulf War in the early 1990s. There followed the arrest of signatories – who at that time were mainly Islamists – and the imposition of great restrictions on freedom of speech. Then, in March 1992, the government introduced new cosmetic reforms – the Basic Law of Government, the Law of the Provinces, and the Law of the Consultative Council – which were presented as great steps towards change in the Kingdom.

After 11 September 2001 several petitions circulated in the country. Some were handed to the leadership, while others were released to the press. These petitions fell into three categories. First were those that were a response to regional Arab concerns, and which were meant to reflect Saudi support for these concerns. Specifically Sharon’s ‘violation’ of the al-Aqsa Mosque, the second Palestinian Intifada, and the American War on Iraq all prompted groups of Saudi intellectuals, activists and professionals to release petitions to express solidarity with Palestinians and Iraqis.

The second set of petitions demanded rights for religious minorities and women. Both the Shia of the Eastern Province and the small Ismaili community of Najran issued their own petitions requesting greater recognition and tolerance by the Sunni majority. They did so by invoking the notions of religious freedom, partnership and citizenship. Women also demanded a greater recognition, visibility and participation.

However, it was the third set of petitions that was the most important. These were in the form of five lengthy documents. Together, they demanded the general reform of the Saudi political system and called for the separation of powers, political participation and a constitutional monarchy.

Although several hundreds signed the petitions, a core group of Islamist and liberal intellectuals and professionals were behind these letters. The government swiftly imprisoned members of this core group. They were not released until August 2005, immediately after Abdullah became King.

Despite their release these signatories, now known as the constitutional reformers, are banned from travel and from having contact with the media. Since their release none of these reformers has travelled abroad or appeared in the print or broadcast media. This ban also applies to several known reformers who had been involved in the petitions at an early phase.
By 2005, it seemed that Saudi constitutional reformers had moved from petition writing to silence.

Deafening silence

While it is difficult to assess the process of negotiation or co-option that went on behind the scenes, or to know whether the reformers managed to strike a deal with the government, it is clear that in this particular case no news is bad news.

Why is this so?

The Saudi regime underestimates the significance of the reformers. It is these people who can be the new ideologues of what I call the fourth Saudi state.

In Saudi mythology, historians propagate the legend that there are three glorious Saudi states. The first was initiated by Muhammad ibn Saud and the reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab In 1818 this state collapsed under the weight of outside pressure exerted mainly by Muhammad Ali of Egypt who claimed to be acting on behalf of the Ottoman Sultan.

The second state was a weak revival of the same idea. It was in turn destroyed in 1891 as a result of both internal strife between various Saudi princes and regional pressure from other rising powers in Arabia.

The third state is that of today. It was declared in 1932 after Ibn Saud extended his family’s hegemony over Arabia under the pretext of ‘Islamising’ the population. British involvement in creating the contemporary state is denied in official historical narratives.

In the 21st Century this state is an enigma – not only in the context of the wider world but also in its regional Arab and Gulf context. It is neither an Islamic state nor a secular configuration. It selectively applies some visible Islamic rulings, for example through the enforcement of Islamic punishment such as public beheadings, stoning and lashings.

But the same state supersedes this law in most other fields where it applies the so-called nithams – the man-made legal rules pertaining to commerce, media and other areas.

Meanwhile the rulings of its Islamic courts are issued, though only to find they are overruled by the princes. Moreover, in most internal legal matters relating to the cases of political prisoners, for example, it seems that the Ministry of Interior is the ultimate judge: its role was so obvious in the imprisonment of the reformers in 2004.

The Saudi state is thus neither modern nor traditional. It is neither secular nor pious. It is neither a ‘bedouin desert democracy’ nor a ‘theocratic polity’ nor a totalitarian dictatorship. The Saudi state is a post modern pastiche in which several princes compete and co-operate and in which politics is dependent upon the subjective whims of such princes who are at the centre of patronage networks that in recent years have spread across the globe.

While on the one hand the politics remains personal, on the other Saudi society is polarised along religious, regional, ideological, tribal and sectarian divides. The princes and the media glorify ‘national belonging’ while the population celebrates narrow primordial identities.

Whatever noise is made about a national identity, people are constantly constructing and reconstructing such primordial identities, and endowing them with political and social significance. Hijazis today claim that they have a separate regional identity, while Shi’ites and Ismailis press for political, economic and religious rights on the basis of being ‘suppressed religious minorities’.

Similarly, the Kingdom’s tribes constantly invoke a glorious heritage to claim their distinct place on the geo-political map of Saudi Arabia, while modernist, traditional and Ikhwani Salafis fight battles – not only among themselves but also with the ‘westernised’ liberals whose members aspire to the social rather than political aspects of liberalism. In the meantime the so-called liberals adopt their narrow definition of liberalism and remain silent over the main political aspects of liberal thought and practise.

Rewarding acquiescence

In response to both outside pressure and internal petitions, the government proved that it responds well to calls for social and religious reform especially that which does not question its political credentials and monopoly over the decision making process.
Similarly, it responds favourably to invocations of communal and primordial identities, while at the same time sponsoring writers who call for transforming Saudis from ‘subjects’ to ‘citizens’.

Since 1993 the state has rewards the Shia for moving from revolutionary rhetoric to acquiescence – but with not attempt to curb derogatory fatwas and publications demonising them.

The state glorifies tribal belonging and rewards groups – both symbolically and materially – on the basis of their tribal origins and the degree of their historical or current personal loyalty to this or that prince. Meanwhile, it suppresses any political claims on the basis of tribal identity. While on the one hand the regime celebrates the authenticity of tribal culture – for example the Bedouin heritage represented by camels, saddles and coffee pots – it marginalises the tribes when it comes to political representation.

Similarly, the state suppresses Islamists who question its alleged Islamic credentials but rewards those who glorify its services to Islam and Muslims. It claims to have renewed ‘religious discourse’ – a cliché after 11 September 2001 – even while archaic and outdated religious institutions, judiciary and bureaucracies remain untouched and well funded.

The judiciary is one obvious example. The state gives relative freedoms to liberals who voice their views in the local media and question religious dogma. When they are taken to court for blasphemy charges it makes sure they do not serve prison sentences. Equally, it constantly glorifies its role as the protector of morality and the guardian of public piety by banning books deemed by the majority of Saudis as sexually explicit, religiously blasphemous or morally bankrupt, while then offering protection to those Saudi authors who write such books.

‘Generals without soldiers’

The now silenced Saudi reformers promised to inject fresh blood into the current pastiche and to rescue it from implosion. Left to its own devices this third Saudi state may end in total disintegration.

The reformers provided a solution, if only a half-baked one, to the current enigmatic state. The solutions they had in mind could have solved the problem of the state’s archaic and personalised foundation. Their vision articulated a state of institutions, national elections and greater freedoms to both the individual and civil society forums within the parameters defined in the Islamic tradition. The reformers did not dare mention ‘political parties’ although they hinted at the benefit of independent non-governmental social and humanitarian organisations.

The political reform they envisaged promised to slow the pace of disintegration. Today, they are silenced.

But as striking is that the reformers remain ‘generals without soldiers’. It seems that their reform programme does not resonate with mainstream Saudi society. It definitely did not make an impression on the royal circle, at least among the main senior princes.

What seems clear is that the reformers lack a wide social base, perhaps because they were recruited from a small circle of educated professionals and intellectuals. The idea of a constitutional monarchy is alien to the silent majority, who remain spectators and consumers rather than makers of news. Some Saudis doubt whether a constitutional monarchy can be anchored in an Islamic tradition. For these people, anything other than the Quran as a constitution would be blasphemous and a deviation from the true path of Islam.

For others, the reforms that were called for would mark an end to the personalised privileges and relations they had enjoyed and which they had nourished with individual members of the ruling royal elite.
Yet for a substantial section of society the idea of political change is one to which they are oblivious. This explains why no political activism supporting the reformers or demanding their release from prison was noticeable. Reformers were taken out of their lecture halls, picked up at airports, or arrested in their offices without a word of protest from their own students, colleagues or acquaintances. Only external Arab, Gulf and international pressure groups publicised their plight. The silent majority of Saudis remained indifferent, while some of their own early supporters and co-signatories even came to distance themselves from the imprisoned reformers and their programme.

The fourth state

Using a mixture of the liberal and Islamist jargon, the constitutional reformers provided the intellectual foundation of a fourth Saudi state based on a range of new, if cosmetic reforms. They called for the liberalisation of authoritarian rule rather than genuine democracy. They called for the trappings of democracy – in the form of partial elections without political parties and freedom of expression or assembly, and for the creation of easily co-opted civil society institutions and human right organisations. Perhaps most revealing, the reformers pledged allegiance to the royal family as a symbol of unity.

But the same symbol rejected them and punished them for what was regarded a daring move.

Previously the Saudi regime relied on Wahhabi ideologues to establish its legitimacy. In the 21st Century the Saudi government derives legitimacy from the prosperity of the economy and the petrodollar. The regime now relies on money to cement the bond between King and subjects.