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 Hugh Renfro, Poet and Writer Nimah Ismail Nawwab and Howard Norton
October 2003 - Memory Lane Tour
Photograph by
Aramco ExPats
The women we met were teachers, computer specialists, small-business owners,
writers, wives and daughters, and they were usually college graduates.
Today's Saudis are able to watch U.S. television, thanks to their ubiquitous
rooftop satellite dishes. One businessman said, "The question we keep hearing
is, 'Why do they hate us?' The short answer is, 'We don't.' Those of us who know
Americans or who have studied there or conducted business, taken our elderly for
medical care or our children for family vacations love America and admire it.
The United States was the only country where we felt as comfortable and as much
at home as in Saudi Arabia. In fact, we want to ask the question the other way
around: 'Why, suddenly, do you seem to hate us?' "
Samar Fatany is a radio talk show hostess in Jiddah. Over tea and sweets in
her living room she said, "You can't apply collective guilt on a whole nation or
a whole faith because of a few criminals who were involved. It's not fair! I
wish to God that those radical Saudis were not involved, but they didn't
represent either Saudi Arabia or Islam. They were just criminals."
Dr. Khalil al-Gosaibi, Saudi Arabia's minister of planning, talked about his
student days in America. "You invested so much in us. We left a closed society
and came to a free and open society. We felt your influence in every aspect of
our lives, not just educational, but even emotional. Every Sunday when I was a
student at UC Berkeley in the mid-1960s, a local family would host us for a
barbecue.
"Today some 60 to 70 percent of Saudi Arabia's cabinet ministers are
graduates of U.S. universities. Saudi students have been our country's
ambassadors to you and your ambassadors back to us here," he continued. "But the
current difficulties in the relations between our two countries may result in a
generation of young Saudis who no longer bring U.S. educational, social,
political and economic influence back to their country. What will happen 10 or
15 years from now when there are no U.S. grads in the cabinet, when they are no
longer a product of your system and your way of life? It is something both of
our countries need to think about."
A political officer at the U.S. embassy in Riyadh said Saudi travel and study
in the U.S. has dropped 80 percent because of what he called a "visa processing
breakdown."
"We should keep Saudi students coming to the U.S.," he said. "It's very
important to both sides. And it's the best way to bring American ideas to Saudi
Arabia."
Recently The Register-Guard reported a significant drop in the number of
students from Muslim nations enrolling in American universities, mostly because
of the perceived difficulties in the lengthy process of obtaining visas. Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait sent 25 percent fewer students to the United States this year,
while universities in Australia, Canada and Great Britain are stepping up their
recruitment of foreign students.
If some Saudis initially found it almost too painful to believe that men
calling themselves Muslims could actually commit such ungodly atrocities as the
attacks of Sept. 11, reality struck home on May 12, 2003, when terrorist bombs
exploded in a housing compound in Riyadh, killing expatriate families and Saudis
alike. The attack shook the most skeptical and marked a definitive turning point
for the kingdom. The most recent attack will reinforce such changes.
The most striking change I observed was a new openness among both officials
and the public to debate social and political issues that have traditionally
been taboo. Not just in private conversations, but in the pages of the
newspapers, on television and on call-in radio talk shows, a national discussion
is under way.
On our car radio, for example, I heard a young woman talking with the male
host about America's diplomatic role in the Israeli-Palestinian standoff.
Alongside the world news, stock market quotes, sports and the latest Hollywood
gossip in the Arab News and the Saudi Gazette, I read editorials and columns on
the role of women in society, unemployment, poverty, drug addiction, human
rights, the need for Christian-Muslim understanding, and even two op-ed articles
by Israeli peace activists. There is Saudi financing for radio broadcasts from
London (MBC, the Middle East Broadcasting Company) and for Al-Arabiyah satellite
TV (a Saudi counterpart to Al-Jazeera in the Persian Gulf).
"I can say that our highest levels of government are now firmly committed to
change," Ali Naimi, the minister of petroleum and mineral affairs, told us. "We
have undertaken a total review of our educational system and opened up an
on-going public dialogue on religious and social issues."
The U.S. embassy's political officer agreed. "Today in Saudi newspapers you
see many issues that have never before been discussed openly. A human rights
conference was held in Riyadh with 400 men and women participating. In Saudi
Arabia, that's remarkable."
Many Saudi observers identify a population surge as one major source of
problems facing the Kingdom. As Zaki Yamani, the former minister of petroleum,
said to the study group, "Saudi Arabia is facing a serious situation, with more
that half of its population aged 20 or below. Unemployment is very high and the
kingdom will be needing education, new jobs and new housing for 50 percent or
more of the people. As a result, we have to reform economically, politically and
socially. There's no alternative."
Start with education. Government textbooks have already been revised to
eliminate passages that could be interpreted as advocating intolerance. English,
already taught at high school levels, is being introduced at an earlier age.
"Until now there has been a mismatch in what schools teach and the skills and
knowledge that modern industry needs,' said Dr. al-Gosaibi, the minister of
planning. "Saudi Arabia has been unable to absorb its high school graduates,
even though we have eight universities. Now three new universities are in the
pipeline and we also plan to build technical colleges in the fields of health
services and vocational training."
At two cutting-edge private schools we visited, one in Riyadh, one in the
Eastern Province, boys and girls studied together with female teachers from
pre-school through the second grade, before moving to separate classes on
opposite sides of the campus. There were virtually no public schools for boys in
Saudi Arabia until the 1950s. Schools for girls followed in the 1960s, a
relatively short lag in the course of a country's history. In Saudi Arabia today
women make up 52 percent of all university students and in recent years a
published list of the kingdom's top 10 students was so consistently composed of
all women that statisticians began issuing two lists, the top 10 women and the
top 10 men.
Education is a necessary element of economic reform. And economic reform is
vital to the kingdom because of the population explosion. Saudi Arabia's
economic goal is to process more of its raw materials domestically, both to
increase export revenues and to provide much-needed jobs. The government will
reward companies that train Saudis by compensating them for up to 50 percent of
wages paid to trainees.
Saudi Arabia is working to attain membership in the World Trade Organization
by 2004. New financial regulations and judicial reform will encourage and
protect the private sector, which accounts for 46 percent of the gross domestic
product.
At a presentation at the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce, the conference table was
decorated with tiny Saudi and American flags. As we left for our next
appointment the American flags were being replaced by Czech flags in preparation
for a delegation of that country's businessmen. One chamber member said, "We
conduct much of our business in English, but because of the current visa issue
with the U.S. there will be a gap between us and our children's generation. They
will be more attuned to Europe and Japan."
New Saudi laws now permit 100 percent foreign ownership of new projects (Such
ownership was formerly limited to 49.51 percent.). Among foreign investors, the
largest number of new firms (108 so far) involve U.S. interests (worth $4.8
billion) followed by Japan.
Until now, Saudi Arabia's balance of payments with the U.S. is in America's
favor. Twenty percent of the kingdom's imports come from the U.S., followed by
Japan at 16 percent.
A third area of reform is social and political. The government has announced
that it will hold elections for half the seats in 14 municipal councils in about
a year. Regional elections and national elections to the Shoura (the Royal
Advisory Council) will take place within two to three years. One-third of the
seats on the Shoura will be elected, with the remainder continuing to be
appointed by the king. These elections will be the first ever held in the
kingdom - although women don't have the vote yet, neither do men. But women are
speaking out in newspapers and on radio talk shows to be included.
"Yes," Samar Fatany, the radio hostess said. "We do need to address the
status of women, the empowerment of women, putting her in leadership positions,
allowing her to be involved in the decision-making process and all that. That's
what we're working on at the moment. But that doesn't mean that women are
oppressed or abused, you see."
"The wearing of a black abaya or another modest covering when in public
reveals little about the rights, privileges, responsibilities or status of the
woman inside the garment," a female Saudi teacher said. "It's just a question of
custom. To most women here it's no more serious as an issue than the formal
dress code for men at IBM."
Cooperation in the global efforts to defeat terrorism is another area getting
increased attention. In fact, stepped-up domestic investigations by the Interior
Ministry and internal security crackdowns seem to be squeezing extremists enough
to draw heightened terrorist fire, at least in the short run. Our traveling
group saw tight security measures in place at airports, roadblocks, checkpoints,
ministries, embassies, foreign residential compounds and high-profile public
buildings such as international hotels.
The possibility that some charitable contributions from the kingdom may have
inadvertently financed terrorist activities is being tackled with strict new
banking regulations. The issue is complicated by the fact that charity is one of
the five basic tenets of Islam. |