International Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Ambitious Quest to Modernize Saudi Arabia

[Arkain2K]

Prince Mohammed bin Salman Aims to Rebrand Saudi Arabia
by F. Brinley Bruton | Nov 6 2017

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman​

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The declaration reverberated around the world — the power behind the Saudi throne pledged to destroy extremism and return the kingdom to “moderate Islam.”

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's speech last month was part of a sweeping rebrand of a country that for years has exported a severe form of Islam and produced most of the 9/11 attackers as well as al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Driven by the young prince, the reforms are aimed at transforming the way the world sees Saudi Arabia, wean it off of oil and remake the hermetic Gulf kingdom into a hub of international business, finance and technology.

The son of the country's 81-year-old king has embarked on a high wire act to consolidate his power, upending a tradition among the ruling family to keep disagreements private, and enthuse and employ much of Saudi Arabia’s population — 70 percent of whom are under the age of 30.

Over the weekend, an anticorruption body run by Salman detained 11 top princes, four ministers and dozens of former ministers — sending shock waves across the kingdom.

And while Salman, 32, is trying to reshape the way the world sees his country, Saudi Arabia continues to face questions over the treatment of its own people, with dozens of human rights defenders in prison for pushing for reform.

'Too much destruction'

Riyadh's King Abdullah financial district sits on the horizon​

Salman's bet is that reducing Saudi dependence on oil and transforming the economy will fulfill the needs and desires of his young population, outweighing the views of a powerful clerical class long wary of modernization.

And he doesn't have a lot of time — the absolute monarchy urgently needs to create jobs and forestall the sorts of complaints that fed the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings throughout the region.

Ghadi Al Harbi from Medina, home of one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Islam, is one of the young people that Salman needs on his side. And she knows where she stands on the issue of radicalization — the government must crack down.

“We’ve suffered so much and so many innocent people have died for no reason,” said the 19-year-old English student, referring to religious divisions within Saudi society brought on by differing interpretations of Islam.

She said she had seen the effects of extremism firsthand, and knew people who had killed family members they branded infidels.

“If this ideology persists, there will be too much destruction,” Al Harbi said.

An older brother Anwar Al Harbi, 34, sat close by, and he agreed that the government was heading in the right direction in allowing women to drive and opening the economy to the world.

Salman was “talking the talk, walking the walk,” said Anwar Al Harbi, who works with the government's nationwide traffic control system.

He also liked what he heard about the country’s economic plans, particularly a project to build a $500 billion, 10,000-square-mile futuristic business and tech zone dubbed NEOM.

But Saudis are nervous about their futures, too, Anwar Al Harbi added.

“One thing they should be focusing on is the economic element of change. People are scared of the implications when it comes to what is after energy," he said, referring to the country's dependence on oil.

With that, the two Al Harbis touched on the huge risks and opportunities inherent in Salman's sweeping plans to transform the Middle East’s largest economy, and one of the world’s most conservative and insular societies.

Social change

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, meets with British businessman Richard Branson on Oct. 26.​

Salman’s comments on Islam came during a rare public foray at a high-level business and finance conference in Riyadh, underlining the fact that widespread economic changes are going hand-in-hand with sweeping social ones.

"We are returning to what we were before — a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world,” he said on Oct. 24 before some 3,500 delegates from around the world. "We will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas. We will destroy them today.”

While his pronouncements on Islam and radicalization made headlines, business and finance was the order of the day during the three-day Future Investment Initiative conference — dubbed "Davos in the desert.”

Among the panelists were Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde and Larry Fink, the chairman and CEO of the world’s largest asset manager, Blackrock.

“The guest list is a big deal,” said Eugene Rogan, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Oxford University who was in Riyadh at the same time as the conference. “When I look at who came they really were pulling in some of the heavy hitters of the global economy, and if they’re coming to Saudi Arabia it’s because they think they can make a buck here.”

"Transformation" is a mantra that follows Salman around.

During the summit, the country’s public investment program announced plans to invest $1 billion in Richard Branson’s space companies. Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia announced its intention to float a stake in oil giant Saudi Aramco and privatize other state assets to create the world's largest sovereign wealth fund.

A constant during the conference was Salman’s Saudi Vision 2030, under which the country is expected to slash subsidies, boost taxes and cut the public sector. At the same time, the state aims to get many more Saudis into private sector jobs — including women, who have long been underrepresented in the highly gender-segregated society — and reduce its dependence on foreign workers.

Salman, who displaced his older cousin Prince Mohammed bin Nayef as crown prince in June, is on a quest to show the world that Saudi Arabia is not a backward nation hamstrung by a backward beliefs.

Salman — who also runs the kingdom's defense and oil strategies — has spearheaded real change, limiting the powers of the kingdom's religious police, who once were able to walk the streets and impose gender segregation and ensure women were covered from head-to-toe in public.

The changes have been sweeping and unthinkable just a few years ago — young people mix on streets and cafes where music is played and a few women uncover their hair and wear colorful robes.

The crown prince has also lifted a ban on women driving, approved concerts and is expected to reopen movie theaters that have been closed for decades.

Salman’s big plans come with big risks, however, said Rogan, the author of “The Arabs: A History.”

“Don’t forget, you can pronounce that you are going to make big investments, jobs and Saudization, biggest-ever flotations and IPOs and all the stuff that has been promised,” he said. “If you don’t make it happen, or if you launch things that appear ill-judged or don’t deliver, you are raising expectations and, boy, dashed hopes are a big machine for revolutions.”

Big gamble

Nada Mohammad is one of those whose expectations have risen under Salman. The 23-year-old copywriter praised the young prince driving the social and economic reforms, saying the changes were long overdue.

“People are worried about the consequences,” she said on a recent evening as she sat with her sister Mada in Riyadh’s Food Truck Square — one of a number of Western-style eateries that have sprung up in the capital. “The majority of the people are with him, but our culture is conservative.”

Salman's gamble is that the opinions of the young people he’s courting with social and economic changes outweigh the concerns of religious conservatives who have long supported the ruling Al Saud family.

But state-sanctioned conservatives have seen their power weaken.

“When you want to make changes, especially political and constitutional, you always face resistance. So you want to take it step by step,” said Khalid Al-Dakhil, a Saudi author, historian and columnist for pan-Arab newspaper, Al-Hayat.

In September, some 30 clerics, intellectuals and activists were locked up. This "crackdown on dissent," as it was described by human rights defenders, was followed by this weekend's detentions. Many of the princes taken into custody by the Salman-led anticorruption body are reportedly are being held in Riyadh's luxury Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Among those detained was Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the Middle East's richest people, with investments in Twitter, Apple, Citigroup, and the Four Seasons, Fairmont and Movenpick hotel chains.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a research fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, suggested the arrests were designed to further smooth Salman's eventual succession to the throne.

"As a leader who is set to remain in power for decades, Mohammed bin Salman is remaking the kingdom in his own image and signaling a potentially significant move away from the consensual balancing of competing interests that characterized Saudi rule in the past," Ulrichsen said.

Within the country, rights defenders charge that the state is above the law and that dozens of activists are serving long prison sentences for advocating change. Women and minorities are "systematically" discriminated against, according to Human Rights Watch.

As Salman woos the world, he is also having to explain Saudi Arabia's continued support for the two-and-a-half-year involvement in the war in neighboring Yemen — a conflict that has created what the U.N. calls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

But Al-Dakhil, the author and historian, said Salman the reformer was clearly different from those who preceded him.

"Mohammed Bin Salman is a new leader with new vision and new outlook," Al-Dakhil added. "The question is, how far is he willing to go on this path?”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/prince-mohammed-bin-salman-aims-rebrand-saudi-arabia-n817201

 

[Rav1nHunter]

This dude isn't going to last long I hope he does get a chance to steer Saudis out of the stone age but I doubt it.

 

[Fluffernutter]

This dude isn't going to last long I hope he does get a chance to steer Saudis out of the stone age but I doubt it.

My gut tells me that he understands that he must modernize the country both socially and economically or else they will no longer be a power player (especially as we move beyond oil).

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/07/opinions/saudi-prince-enemies-opinion-ghitis/index.html

Wasn't there a stat mentioned just yesterday that 70% of the Saudi population are under 30 years old. At 32, he my not be able to empathize with them, but I am sure he can sympathize with them.

 

[Fluffernutter]

I think the next big test will be at the start of the new year.

In January, the plan is for all of the GCC countries to start a VAT tax. There was synergy before the diplomatic row between Saudi Arabia/UAE and Qatar regarding the tax.

Much of the economy in UAE and Qatar are run by the expat population. Many moved there for jobs due to zero taxes. If taxes are introduced, what will happen to the expat workforce?

The past couple of years have seen an exodus within the western expat population due to the impact low oil prices have had in the region (cut backs in personnel, money didn't go as far as before, cuts in educational/housing benefits, etc.)

I wonder what will happen if Qatar backs out of the planed tax introduction? Will labor move to Doha?

 

[Fluffernutter]

I see that oil is currently at 65 bucks a barrel. It's been a while since it's been that high.

 

[Nooob]

He resigned while he was in Saudi. People (Lebanese forums) are saying he took marching orders from Saudi. The Harriris have been Saudi shills for a long time, from Rafik Harriris time atleast.

He resigned because he feared his life was in danger. He is openly against the Shiite and Hezbollah's dominance in Lebanon and feared he might be assassinated like his father because of his views (like Hariri).

The Saudis have been pouring $$$ on the Lebanese govt so they could remove the Iranian influence in the country but they have failed. To control Lebanon, you need to remove Hezbollah who have the upper hand in the military, politics, economics and this is why the Saudis are pushing for a war.

 

[Deleted member 196663]

Saudi Arabia was always on the path of modernization. It's just assholes looked at Western countries and expected it to be the same overnight. Every country is on a different timeline. A lot of Americans conveniently forget how shit was in our grandparents lifetime.

 

[mcveteran81]

Prince Mohammed bin Salman Aims to Rebrand Saudi Arabia
by F. Brinley Bruton | Nov 6 2017

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman​

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The declaration reverberated around the world — the power behind the Saudi throne pledged to destroy extremism and return the kingdom to “moderate Islam.”

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's speech last month was part of a sweeping rebrand of a country that for years has exported a severe form of Islam and produced most of the 9/11 attackers as well as al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Driven by the young prince, the reforms are aimed at transforming the way the world sees Saudi Arabia, wean it off of oil and remake the hermetic Gulf kingdom into a hub of international business, finance and technology.

The son of the country's 81-year-old king has embarked on a high wire act to consolidate his power, upending a tradition among the ruling family to keep disagreements private, and enthuse and employ much of Saudi Arabia’s population — 70 percent of whom are under the age of 30.

Over the weekend, an anticorruption body run by Salman detained 11 top princes, four ministers and dozens of former ministers — sending shock waves across the kingdom.

And while Salman, 32, is trying to reshape the way the world sees his country, Saudi Arabia continues to face questions over the treatment of its own people, with dozens of human rights defenders in prison for pushing for reform.

'Too much destruction'

Riyadh's King Abdullah financial district sits on the horizon​

Salman's bet is that reducing Saudi dependence on oil and transforming the economy will fulfill the needs and desires of his young population, outweighing the views of a powerful clerical class long wary of modernization.

And he doesn't have a lot of time — the absolute monarchy urgently needs to create jobs and forestall the sorts of complaints that fed the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings throughout the region.

Ghadi Al Harbi from Medina, home of one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Islam, is one of the young people that Salman needs on his side. And she knows where she stands on the issue of radicalization — the government must crack down.

“We’ve suffered so much and so many innocent people have died for no reason,” said the 19-year-old English student, referring to religious divisions within Saudi society brought on by differing interpretations of Islam.

She said she had seen the effects of extremism firsthand, and knew people who had killed family members they branded infidels.

“If this ideology persists, there will be too much destruction,” Al Harbi said.

An older brother Anwar Al Harbi, 34, sat close by, and he agreed that the government was heading in the right direction in allowing women to drive and opening the economy to the world.

Salman was “talking the talk, walking the walk,” said Anwar Al Harbi, who works with the government's nationwide traffic control system.

He also liked what he heard about the country’s economic plans, particularly a project to build a $500 billion, 10,000-square-mile futuristic business and tech zone dubbed NEOM.

But Saudis are nervous about their futures, too, Anwar Al Harbi added.

“One thing they should be focusing on is the economic element of change. People are scared of the implications when it comes to what is after energy," he said, referring to the country's dependence on oil.

With that, the two Al Harbis touched on the huge risks and opportunities inherent in Salman's sweeping plans to transform the Middle East’s largest economy, and one of the world’s most conservative and insular societies.

Social change

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, meets with British businessman Richard Branson on Oct. 26.​

Salman’s comments on Islam came during a rare public foray at a high-level business and finance conference in Riyadh, underlining the fact that widespread economic changes are going hand-in-hand with sweeping social ones.

"We are returning to what we were before — a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world,” he said on Oct. 24 before some 3,500 delegates from around the world. "We will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas. We will destroy them today.”

While his pronouncements on Islam and radicalization made headlines, business and finance was the order of the day during the three-day Future Investment Initiative conference — dubbed "Davos in the desert.”

Among the panelists were Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde and Larry Fink, the chairman and CEO of the world’s largest asset manager, Blackrock.

“The guest list is a big deal,” said Eugene Rogan, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Oxford University who was in Riyadh at the same time as the conference. “When I look at who came they really were pulling in some of the heavy hitters of the global economy, and if they’re coming to Saudi Arabia it’s because they think they can make a buck here.”

"Transformation" is a mantra that follows Salman around.

During the summit, the country’s public investment program announced plans to invest $1 billion in Richard Branson’s space companies. Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia announced its intention to float a stake in oil giant Saudi Aramco and privatize other state assets to create the world's largest sovereign wealth fund.

A constant during the conference was Salman’s Saudi Vision 2030, under which the country is expected to slash subsidies, boost taxes and cut the public sector. At the same time, the state aims to get many more Saudis into private sector jobs — including women, who have long been underrepresented in the highly gender-segregated society — and reduce its dependence on foreign workers.

Salman, who displaced his older cousin Prince Mohammed bin Nayef as crown prince in June, is on a quest to show the world that Saudi Arabia is not a backward nation hamstrung by a backward beliefs.

Salman — who also runs the kingdom's defense and oil strategies — has spearheaded real change, limiting the powers of the kingdom's religious police, who once were able to walk the streets and impose gender segregation and ensure women were covered from head-to-toe in public.

The changes have been sweeping and unthinkable just a few years ago — young people mix on streets and cafes where music is played and a few women uncover their hair and wear colorful robes.

The crown prince has also lifted a ban on women driving, approved concerts and is expected to reopen movie theaters that have been closed for decades.

Salman’s big plans come with big risks, however, said Rogan, the author of “The Arabs: A History.”

“Don’t forget, you can pronounce that you are going to make big investments, jobs and Saudization, biggest-ever flotations and IPOs and all the stuff that has been promised,” he said. “If you don’t make it happen, or if you launch things that appear ill-judged or don’t deliver, you are raising expectations and, boy, dashed hopes are a big machine for revolutions.”

Big gamble

Nada Mohammad is one of those whose expectations have risen under Salman. The 23-year-old copywriter praised the young prince driving the social and economic reforms, saying the changes were long overdue.

“People are worried about the consequences,” she said on a recent evening as she sat with her sister Mada in Riyadh’s Food Truck Square — one of a number of Western-style eateries that have sprung up in the capital. “The majority of the people are with him, but our culture is conservative.”

Salman's gamble is that the opinions of the young people he’s courting with social and economic changes outweigh the concerns of religious conservatives who have long supported the ruling Al Saud family.

But state-sanctioned conservatives have seen their power weaken.

“When you want to make changes, especially political and constitutional, you always face resistance. So you want to take it step by step,” said Khalid Al-Dakhil, a Saudi author, historian and columnist for pan-Arab newspaper, Al-Hayat.

In September, some 30 clerics, intellectuals and activists were locked up. This "crackdown on dissent," as it was described by human rights defenders, was followed by this weekend's detentions. Many of the princes taken into custody by the Salman-led anticorruption body are reportedly are being held in Riyadh's luxury Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Among those detained was Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the Middle East's richest people, with investments in Twitter, Apple, Citigroup, and the Four Seasons, Fairmont and Movenpick hotel chains.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a research fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, suggested the arrests were designed to further smooth Salman's eventual succession to the throne.

"As a leader who is set to remain in power for decades, Mohammed bin Salman is remaking the kingdom in his own image and signaling a potentially significant move away from the consensual balancing of competing interests that characterized Saudi rule in the past," Ulrichsen said.

Within the country, rights defenders charge that the state is above the law and that dozens of activists are serving long prison sentences for advocating change. Women and minorities are "systematically" discriminated against, according to Human Rights Watch.

As Salman woos the world, he is also having to explain Saudi Arabia's continued support for the two-and-a-half-year involvement in the war in neighboring Yemen — a conflict that has created what the U.N. calls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

But Al-Dakhil, the author and historian, said Salman the reformer was clearly different from those who preceded him.

"Mohammed Bin Salman is a new leader with new vision and new outlook," Al-Dakhil added. "The question is, how far is he willing to go on this path?”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/prince-mohammed-bin-salman-aims-rebrand-saudi-arabia-n817201

The reshaping and rise of Babylon. It will be interesting to see in the years to come how what is happening now in Saudi will eventually leak into Iraq and the rest of the gulf nations.

It will also be interesting to see how Israel will shape its relations and strategy to all of this.

 

[Rod1]

Prince Mohammed bin Salman Aims to Rebrand Saudi Arabia
by F. Brinley Bruton | Nov 6 2017

​

​

Are the women on the back without Hijabs?

 

[sangreporsangre]

Hopefully that poster from Saudi Arabia comes back on here and gives us an idea of how people on the street feel about this.

 

[Fronk]

He resigned because he feared his life was in danger. He is openly against the Shiite and Hezbollah's dominance in Lebanon and feared he might be assassinated like his father because of his views (like Hariri).

The Saudis have been pouring $$$ on the Lebanese govt so they could remove the Iranian influence in the country but they have failed. To control Lebanon, you need to remove Hezbollah who have the upper hand in the military, politics, economics and this is why the Saudis are pushing for a war.

Except no one in Lebanon actually knew what the hell he was talking about. There was no uncovered plot to kill him like he stated.
More likely the Saudis made him resign because he has been completely ineffective in his assigned role. A puppet to combat Hezbollah/Iranian influence in Lebanon. He completely failed at this.

 

[Strychnine]

http://forward.com/fast-forward/386...saudi-crown-prince-who-engineered-royal-purg/
Dropping this here.

As my Aunt used to say....

"Something in the milk ain't clean."

 

[Undying Poster]

Hopefully that poster from Saudi Arabia comes back on here and gives us an idea of how people on the street feel about this.

AboFatima? he dropped a Like on my post so he read this thread

 

[sangreporsangre]

AboFatima? he dropped a Like on my post so he read this thread

Not sure the name. Was some random white belt who started a thread like "ask a guy in Saudi Arabia anything".

 

[Fluffernutter]

Oh shit, he got Alwaleed too!!! The Crown Prince ain't fucking around!!!
---

Saudi Arabia Arrests 11 Princes, Including Billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK | NOV. 4, 2017

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the world’s richest men, was reportedly arrested in Saudi Arabia on Saturday​

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-waleed-bin-talal.html

The statement of AlWaleed making his forutne from a $30,000 loan from his dad, mortgaging his home, and his monthly stipend for being a grandson to the country's founder has been tossed around in the past few days.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...he-warren-buffett-of-arabia-built-his-fortune

However, The Economist did an article back in '99 wondering outloud if that story was true.

http://www.economist.com/node/187913

 

[Arkain2K]

Saudi Crown Prince, Asserting Power, Brings Clerics to Heel
By BEN HUBBARD | NOV. 5, 2017

Men entering the Alrajhi Mosque, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for noon prayer.​

BURAIDA, Saudi Arabia — For decades, Saudi Arabia’s religious establishment wielded tremendous power, with bearded enforcers policing public behavior, prominent sheikhs defining right and wrong, and religious associations using the kingdom’s oil wealth to promote their intolerant interpretation of Islam around the world.

Now, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is curbing their power as part of his drive to impose his control on the kingdom and press for a more open brand of Islam.

Before the arrests on Saturday of his fellow royals and former ministers on corruption allegations, Prince Mohammed had stripped the religious police of their arrest powers and expanded the space for women in public life, including promising them the right to drive.

Dozens of hard-line clerics have been detained, while others were designated to speak publicly about respect for other religions, a topic once anathema to the kingdom’s religious apparatus.

If the changes take hold, they could mean a historic reordering of the Saudi state by diminishing the role of hard-line clerics in shaping policy. That shift could reverberate abroad by moderating the exportation of the kingdom’s uncompromising version of Islam, Wahhabism, which has been accused of fueling intolerance and terrorism.

Bringing the religious establishment to heel is also a crucial part of the prince’s efforts to take the traditional levers of Saudi power under his control. The arrests on Saturday appeared to cripple potential rivals within the royal family and send a warning to the business community to toe the line.

Prince Mohammed has taken control of the country’s three main security forces, and now is corralling the powerful religious establishment.

As evidence of that, the kingdom’s chief religious body, the Council of Senior Scholars, endorsed the arrests over the weekend, saying that Islamic law “instructs us to fight corruption and our national interest requires it.”

The 32-year-old crown prince outlined his religious goals at a recent investment conference in Riyadh, saying the kingdom needed a “moderate, balanced Islam that is open to the world and to all religions and all traditions and peoples.”

But such top-down changes will face huge challenges in a deeply conservative society steeped in the idea that Saudi Arabia’s religious strictures set it apart from the rest of the world as a land of unadulterated Islam. Enforcing those changes will also require overhauling the state’s sprawling religious bureaucracy, many of whose employees fear that the kingdom is forsaking its principles.

“For sure, it does not make me comfortable,” a government cleric in Buraida, a conservative city north of Riyadh, said of the new acceptance of gender mixing and music at public events. “Anything that has sin in it, anything that angers the Almighty — it’s a problem.”

The cleric Mohammed Al Eissa, left, head of the Muslim World League, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He has been supportive of the changes initiated by Crown Prince Prince Mohammed bin Salman.​

The government has tried to silence such sentiments by arresting clerics and warning members of the religious police not to speak publicly about the loss of their powers, according to their relatives.

All clerics interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity for fear that they, too, would be arrested for breaking with the government line.

“They did a pre-emptive strike,” one cleric said of the arrests. “All those who thought about saying no to the government got arrested.”

He acknowledged that many conservatives have reservations about the new direction but would go along, in part because Saudi Islam emphasizes obedience to the ruler.

“It’s not like they held a referendum and said, ‘Do you want to go this way or that way?’” he said. “But in the end, people go through the door that you open for them.”

The clerics have long been subservient to the royal family, but their independence has eroded as they became government functionaries and have been forced to accept — and at times sanction — policies they disliked, like the arrival of American troops, whom they considered infidels, during the Gulf War in 1990.

The end of the the Friday noon prayer at the Princess Nouf Mosque in Riyadh.​

“In a sense, Mohammed bin Salman is trying to fight with a religious establishment that is already weakened,” said Stéphane Lacroix, a scholar of political Islam at Sciences Po, the Paris Institute of Political Studies. “Most of the Wahhabi clerics are not happy with what is happening, but preserving the alliance with the monarchy is what matters most. They have much more to lose by protesting.”

The alliance of the clerics and the royal family dates to the founding of the Saudi dynasty in the 1700s. Since then, the royal family governed with guidance from the clerics, who legitimized their rule.

The alliance persisted through the foundation of the modern Saudi state by the crown prince’s grandfather in 1932, giving the kingdom its strict Islamic character. Women shroud their bodies in black gowns, shops close periodically throughout the day for prayer, alcohol is forbidden and grave crimes are punished by beheading.

Public observance of any religion other than Islam is banned, and clerics run the justice system, which hands down harsh punishments like floggings and prison for crimes like disobeying one’s father and apostasy.

Human rights groups say the kingdom’s textbooks still promote intolerance, and conservatives in the education ministry pass their views along to students.

While the prohibition on the mixing of unrelated men and women is starting to change, gender segregation remains the norm.

Two women chat at a restaurant in Riyadh. All restaurants in Saudi Arabia have segregated entrances, one for men to dine alone, and the other for families
​

Crown Prince Mohammed, who rose to prominence after his father became king in 2015, has shown little deference to the traditional religious establishment while spearheading an unprecedented social opening.

When the government took arrest powers away from the religious police last year, many Saudis were so shocked that they suspected it was not real. That change paved the way for new entertainment options, including concerts and dance performances.

In addition to promising women the right to drive next June, the government has named women to high-profile jobs and announced that it would allow them to enter soccer stadiums, another blow to the ban on mixing of the sexes.

In pushing such reforms, Crown Prince Mohammed is betting the kingdom’s large youth population cares more about entertainment and economic opportunities than religious dogma.

Many young Saudis have cheered the new direction, and would love to see the clerics banished from public life. But the changes have shocked conservatives.

“Society in general at this time is very scared,” said another cleric in Buraida. “They feel that the issue is negative. It will push women into society. That is what is in their minds, that it is not right and that it will bring more corruption than benefits.”

Men gather to pray just after sunset, at Al Bujairi square​

Like other clerics, he saw no religious reason to bar women from driving but said he was against changing the status of women in ways that he said violated Islamic law.

“They want her to dance. They want her to go to the cinema. They want her to uncover her face. They want her to show her legs and thighs. That is liberal thought,” he said. “It is a corrupting ideology.”

Still, some find the recent moves encouraging.

“If they have to take serious measures to stamp out the uglier parts of Salafism that permeate Islam around the world, it could be on the whole quite a good thing,” said Cole Bunzel, a fellow in the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.

But a cleric who works in education in Riyadh said he worried that pushing the conservatives too far could drive the most extreme ones underground, where they could be drawn to violence.

Precedents for such blowback dot Saudi history.

In 1979, extremists who accused the royal family of being insufficiently Islamic seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, shocking the Muslim world. Later, Osama bin Laden founded Al Qaeda after breaking with Saudi Arabia over its reliance on Western troops for protection. More recently, thousands of Saudis have joined the Islamic State for similar reasons.

But precedents also exist of clerics adopting changes they initially condemned.

Many fought the introduction of television; now, they have their own satellite channels. Others resisted education for girls; they now send their daughters to school.

One cleric said he had not wanted his wife and daughters to have cellphones at first either, but later changed his mind. The same could happen with driving.

“With time, if society sees that the decision is positive and safe, they will accept it,” he said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/...a-wahhabism-salafism-mohammed-bin-salman.html

 

[KONG-D'SNT-TAP]

That guy looks 46 years old.


Wheres this young guy I'm hearing about

 

[Arkain2K]

Saudi anti-corruption probe 'finds $100bn was embezzled'

Those caught up in the anti-corruption drive are reportedly being held at Riyadh's Ritz-Carlton
​

Saudi Arabia's attorney general says at least $100bn (£76bn) has been misused through systemic corruption and embezzlement in recent decades.

Sheikh Saud al-Mojeb said 201 people were being held for questioning as part of a sweeping anti-corruption drive that began on Saturday night.

He did not name any of them, but they reportedly include senior princes, ministers and influential businessmen.

"The evidence for this wrongdoing is very strong," Sheikh Mojeb said.

He also stressed that normal commercial activity in the kingdom had not been affected by the crackdown, and that only personal bank accounts had been frozen.

Sheikh Saud al-Mojeb said investigations by the newly-formed supreme anti-corruption committee, which is headed by 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, were "progressing very quickly".

He announced that 208 individuals had been called in for questioning so far, and that seven of them had been released without charge.

"The potential scale of corrupt practices which have been uncovered is very large," the attorney general said. "Based on our investigations over the past three years, we estimate that at least $100bn has been misused through systematic corruption and embezzlement over several decades."

Sheikh Mojeb said the committee had a clear legal mandate to move on to the next phase of its investigation and that it had suspended the bank accounts of "persons of interest" on Tuesday.

"There has been a great deal of speculation around the world regarding the identities of the individuals concerned and the details of the charges against them," he added. "In order to ensure that the individuals continue to enjoy the full legal rights afforded to them under Saudi law, we will not be revealing any more personal details at this time."

Among those reportedly detained are the billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal; Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, a son of the late king who was also removed from his post as National Guard chief on Saturday; and his brother Prince Turki bin Abdullah, a former governor of Riyadh province.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-41932490

 

[VivaRevolution]

Prince Mohammed bin Salman Aims to Rebrand Saudi Arabia
by F. Brinley Bruton | Nov 6 2017

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman​

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The declaration reverberated around the world — the power behind the Saudi throne pledged to destroy extremism and return the kingdom to “moderate Islam.”

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's speech last month was part of a sweeping rebrand of a country that for years has exported a severe form of Islam and produced most of the 9/11 attackers as well as al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Driven by the young prince, the reforms are aimed at transforming the way the world sees Saudi Arabia, wean it off of oil and remake the hermetic Gulf kingdom into a hub of international business, finance and technology.

The son of the country's 81-year-old king has embarked on a high wire act to consolidate his power, upending a tradition among the ruling family to keep disagreements private, and enthuse and employ much of Saudi Arabia’s population — 70 percent of whom are under the age of 30.

Over the weekend, an anticorruption body run by Salman detained 11 top princes, four ministers and dozens of former ministers — sending shock waves across the kingdom.

And while Salman, 32, is trying to reshape the way the world sees his country, Saudi Arabia continues to face questions over the treatment of its own people, with dozens of human rights defenders in prison for pushing for reform.

'Too much destruction'

Riyadh's King Abdullah financial district sits on the horizon​

Salman's bet is that reducing Saudi dependence on oil and transforming the economy will fulfill the needs and desires of his young population, outweighing the views of a powerful clerical class long wary of modernization.

And he doesn't have a lot of time — the absolute monarchy urgently needs to create jobs and forestall the sorts of complaints that fed the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings throughout the region.

Ghadi Al Harbi from Medina, home of one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Islam, is one of the young people that Salman needs on his side. And she knows where she stands on the issue of radicalization — the government must crack down.

“We’ve suffered so much and so many innocent people have died for no reason,” said the 19-year-old English student, referring to religious divisions within Saudi society brought on by differing interpretations of Islam.

She said she had seen the effects of extremism firsthand, and knew people who had killed family members they branded infidels.

“If this ideology persists, there will be too much destruction,” Al Harbi said.

An older brother Anwar Al Harbi, 34, sat close by, and he agreed that the government was heading in the right direction in allowing women to drive and opening the economy to the world.

Salman was “talking the talk, walking the walk,” said Anwar Al Harbi, who works with the government's nationwide traffic control system.

He also liked what he heard about the country’s economic plans, particularly a project to build a $500 billion, 10,000-square-mile futuristic business and tech zone dubbed NEOM.

But Saudis are nervous about their futures, too, Anwar Al Harbi added.

“One thing they should be focusing on is the economic element of change. People are scared of the implications when it comes to what is after energy," he said, referring to the country's dependence on oil.

With that, the two Al Harbis touched on the huge risks and opportunities inherent in Salman's sweeping plans to transform the Middle East’s largest economy, and one of the world’s most conservative and insular societies.

Social change

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, meets with British businessman Richard Branson on Oct. 26.​

Salman’s comments on Islam came during a rare public foray at a high-level business and finance conference in Riyadh, underlining the fact that widespread economic changes are going hand-in-hand with sweeping social ones.

"We are returning to what we were before — a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world,” he said on Oct. 24 before some 3,500 delegates from around the world. "We will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas. We will destroy them today.”

While his pronouncements on Islam and radicalization made headlines, business and finance was the order of the day during the three-day Future Investment Initiative conference — dubbed "Davos in the desert.”

Among the panelists were Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde and Larry Fink, the chairman and CEO of the world’s largest asset manager, Blackrock.

“The guest list is a big deal,” said Eugene Rogan, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Oxford University who was in Riyadh at the same time as the conference. “When I look at who came they really were pulling in some of the heavy hitters of the global economy, and if they’re coming to Saudi Arabia it’s because they think they can make a buck here.”

"Transformation" is a mantra that follows Salman around.

During the summit, the country’s public investment program announced plans to invest $1 billion in Richard Branson’s space companies. Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia announced its intention to float a stake in oil giant Saudi Aramco and privatize other state assets to create the world's largest sovereign wealth fund.

A constant during the conference was Salman’s Saudi Vision 2030, under which the country is expected to slash subsidies, boost taxes and cut the public sector. At the same time, the state aims to get many more Saudis into private sector jobs — including women, who have long been underrepresented in the highly gender-segregated society — and reduce its dependence on foreign workers.

Salman, who displaced his older cousin Prince Mohammed bin Nayef as crown prince in June, is on a quest to show the world that Saudi Arabia is not a backward nation hamstrung by a backward beliefs.

Salman — who also runs the kingdom's defense and oil strategies — has spearheaded real change, limiting the powers of the kingdom's religious police, who once were able to walk the streets and impose gender segregation and ensure women were covered from head-to-toe in public.

The changes have been sweeping and unthinkable just a few years ago — young people mix on streets and cafes where music is played and a few women uncover their hair and wear colorful robes.

The crown prince has also lifted a ban on women driving, approved concerts and is expected to reopen movie theaters that have been closed for decades.

Salman’s big plans come with big risks, however, said Rogan, the author of “The Arabs: A History.”

“Don’t forget, you can pronounce that you are going to make big investments, jobs and Saudization, biggest-ever flotations and IPOs and all the stuff that has been promised,” he said. “If you don’t make it happen, or if you launch things that appear ill-judged or don’t deliver, you are raising expectations and, boy, dashed hopes are a big machine for revolutions.”

Big gamble

Nada Mohammad is one of those whose expectations have risen under Salman. The 23-year-old copywriter praised the young prince driving the social and economic reforms, saying the changes were long overdue.

“People are worried about the consequences,” she said on a recent evening as she sat with her sister Mada in Riyadh’s Food Truck Square — one of a number of Western-style eateries that have sprung up in the capital. “The majority of the people are with him, but our culture is conservative.”

Salman's gamble is that the opinions of the young people he’s courting with social and economic changes outweigh the concerns of religious conservatives who have long supported the ruling Al Saud family.

But state-sanctioned conservatives have seen their power weaken.

“When you want to make changes, especially political and constitutional, you always face resistance. So you want to take it step by step,” said Khalid Al-Dakhil, a Saudi author, historian and columnist for pan-Arab newspaper, Al-Hayat.

In September, some 30 clerics, intellectuals and activists were locked up. This "crackdown on dissent," as it was described by human rights defenders, was followed by this weekend's detentions. Many of the princes taken into custody by the Salman-led anticorruption body are reportedly are being held in Riyadh's luxury Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Among those detained was Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the Middle East's richest people, with investments in Twitter, Apple, Citigroup, and the Four Seasons, Fairmont and Movenpick hotel chains.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a research fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, suggested the arrests were designed to further smooth Salman's eventual succession to the throne.

"As a leader who is set to remain in power for decades, Mohammed bin Salman is remaking the kingdom in his own image and signaling a potentially significant move away from the consensual balancing of competing interests that characterized Saudi rule in the past," Ulrichsen said.

Within the country, rights defenders charge that the state is above the law and that dozens of activists are serving long prison sentences for advocating change. Women and minorities are "systematically" discriminated against, according to Human Rights Watch.

As Salman woos the world, he is also having to explain Saudi Arabia's continued support for the two-and-a-half-year involvement in the war in neighboring Yemen — a conflict that has created what the U.N. calls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

But Al-Dakhil, the author and historian, said Salman the reformer was clearly different from those who preceded him.

"Mohammed Bin Salman is a new leader with new vision and new outlook," Al-Dakhil added. "The question is, how far is he willing to go on this path?”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/prince-mohammed-bin-salman-aims-rebrand-saudi-arabia-n817201

Asia times had a different take on this. They said the military is going to remove MBS.

http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/l...er-coup-is-coming-military-is-pissed.3655241/

 

[loyalyolayal]

That guy looks 46 years old.


Wheres this young guy I'm hearing about

Rising Prospect Erick Silva level monarch.