The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a land wedged in multiple paradoxes. As the only modern-day nation named after a ruling family (the Aal-Saud), the resource-rich nation upholds itself as a beacon and a representative voice for the world’s Muslims. Despite such grand pretensions however, its role in the region has come under close scrutiny in the last two decades, and further still after the Arab Spring. Due to geographic size, religious symbolism and its natural wealth, the Kingdom has acted as the ‘Big Brother’ of the Arabian Peninsula for much of the last century. Alongside the traditional powerhouses of Egypt and Syria, ownership of the Arab position has invariably been claimed by Saudi Arabia. With the passage of more than seventy years since its formal founding, one cannot but help question the role that the Kingdom has played, its foreign policy priorities and how these affect the political destiny of Muslims around the world. SACRED SYMBOLISM With its borders closely approximating the traditional land of Hejaz, the Gulf state is steeped in religious symbolism. Across its sands and shifting dunes walked the great prophets of God. The father of the monotheistic religions, Abraham came upon this land with his wife Hegira and infant-child Ishmael. Many centuries later, the Almighty in his limitless wisdom chose from Ishmael’s bloodline the seal of the prophets and the most perfect amongst his creation, Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him and his household). In and around the holy cities of Makka and Medina, the greatest epics of early Islam were written and there God revealed his final message of guidance for humankind. As a result of all these iconic associations to the land, the modern-day kingdom holds a special place in the hearts of Muslims all around the globe. Year on year, millions of Muslims throng to the holy sites surrounding the Kaaba, the House of God, to perform the rites of the Hajj following in the footsteps of Abraham – the friend of God. Aside to this overwhelming symbolism – one that quite understandably blurs a Muslim’s first impression of the land – there is the ‘fact’ of a nation state existing in modernity; a political entity that has established a particular social contract with its own citizens, and that acts in line with a certain rationale on the regional and global stage. THE KINGDOM AND ITS LASTING TIES TO WAHHABISM Founded in 1932, the current Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy named after the family of Saud – descendants of Muhammad ibn Saud. The current Saudi state is, in reality, the ruling family’s third attempt at power. The first Saudi state (1744-1818) and the second state (1824-1891) met their end at the hands of the Ottomans and a vicious, self-destructive spell of infighting respectively. Throughout these three phases however, the Aal-Saud’s allegiance to Wahhabi ideology has remained unswerving. As an ideology, Wahhabism has historically provided a legitimizing function to the rule of the ruling family. In Bowen’s History of Saudi Arabia, the author notes that this ideology “was one of the foundations for the eventual rise to power of the dynasty”. Hamid Algar’s acclaimed essay (Wahhabism: A Critical Essay) touches on some of the theological premises and distinctive aspects that set apart this ideology. The piece also briefly surveys some of the heinous crimes committed by this Saudi-Wahhabi alliance, including the ransacking of the shrines of Karbala in the 19th century and the destruction of the Jannatul Baqee’ in Medina in 1925. It must be stated that the Saudi monarchy continues to systematically destroy landmarks of Islamic heritage right up to the present under inspiration of this warped ideology; a pattern that has been closely followed by its proxies outside the Kingdom. In modern times, the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran marked a new juncture in the Kingdom’s proselytization of Wahhabism. Leading specialist on the Kingdom’s politics and foreign policy, Professor Mai Yamani notes that the forceful Wahhabist agenda was principally aimed at serving as a counter-balance to the revolutionary example of Iran. This project was often undertaken with tacit approval from the United States, and at times under its direct order. As the patron sponsor of this hostile and intolerant outlook, Saudi Arabia embarked on exporting Wahhabism to as-far-and-wide-as Pakistan, the Far East and parts of Africa. The toll that this has had on radicalization, intolerance and religious violence in these locations cannot be overstated. Over the last few years, the noticeable presence of militant Salafist groups in Iraq, the wider Levant and North Africa has been blamed on the Kingdom, which has been motivated by its ambition to wrestle control of the region’s changes. GEOPOLITICS: OIL, SUPERPOWERS & THE FATE OF PALESTINE Ever since the dramatic first moments after the discovery of oil in Iran followed by the Persian Gulf region, the natural resource has become an intensely coveted political commodity. The enormous oil reserves under the sands of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia formed the backdrop of an intense rivalry between a waning superpower, Great Britain and the emerging hegemon, the United States of America in the lead up to the Second World War. Such was the importance of the kingdom’s oil riches that US President Roosevelt declared in 1943: ‘the defence of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defence of the United States’. This diplomatic closeness has brought together the United States and the Saudi Kingdom since those early beginnings. For political analysts, the relationship between the US and its Saudi ally can be summarised in a simple equation: oil for security. Or in other words, as long as Washington enjoys access to Saudi oil reserves, the security of the Aal-Saud dynasty is ensured by its ally. In fact the global oil price shocks of the 1970s and express US outrage at some of the political positions of the Kingdom were followed by a situation in which the relationship between the two parties became inseparably entrenched. In his famous book, Petrodollar Warfare, author Willam Clarke observes that the Nixon-administration’s move to force Saudi Arabia to price its oil in US dollars formed the basis “for the second phase of the American Century”. Admittedly, this is a contribution that cannot be glossed over lightly. As a consequence of this overt dependency on the United States, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has quite rightly come to be known as a lackey of empire. The most damaging outcomes of this reality are two-fold: i) Firstly, the absence of an independent foreign policy of arguably the leading Arab state invariably exposes the region as a whole to imperial control. Furthermore, a united position by Muslim-majority nations in defence of key issues that affect them (e.g. Palestine) is rendered close to impossible. ii) Secondly, as an important tool in the hands of the superpower the Kingdom holds immense potential to poison relations between Muslim nations and foster divisions. This is further amplified by the hostile nature of its formal Wahhabi ideology and the religious symbolism enjoyed by the monarchy in its self-adopted designation as ‘Custodian of the two Holy Mosques’. Given the above factors, it is interesting to note that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the third largest per-capita buyer of military equipment – eclipsed only by the United States and the Zionist state. Yet despite this strange sense of national budgeting, there has been virtual pin-drop silence by the Kingdom on the most sensitive and lingering political issue for Muslims: Palestine. Contrast the reaction of the decision-makers in Riyadh to the peaceful protests in Bahrain, due to which the Kingdom promptly sent entire brigades and slithering columns of state-of-the-art military vehicles across the King Fahd Causeway on the one hand, and the deafening silence on Palestine that has lasted more than 60 years. Or perhaps the dispatching of thousands of so-called ‘freedom fighters’ to neighboring Syria all the while proclaiming that the Assad government’s atrocities left no room for dialogue on the one hand, and its repeated insistence on the need for peaceful talks with the Zionist state based on the Arab Peace Initiative tabled by King Abdullah in the Arab League Summit of 2002. To Muslims across the world, the double-standards approach by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is increasingly palpable. Furthermore, its vocal promotion of an intolerant Wahhabist mentality whose sole objective is to fuel the flames chaos in the region – from the Levant to Iraq, has stifled the words of even its most ardent supporters in various Muslim quarters. In more recent years, the systematic drive to promote sectarianism by the Kingdom has further emphasized the interlocked nature of its interests with those of the imperial powers led by the United States and its biggest ally, the Zionist state. At its heart, the divisive sectarian rhetoric is motivated by politics and not religious interpretation. Until recently, the ‘Sunni’ resistant movement Hamas was viewed by the Saudis as an Iranian surrogate due to its resistance-priority. It is clear that with this ‘politico-sectarian’ agenda and its almost complete dependence on the global superpower – the prime exploiter of natural resources from Muslim nations and the purveyor of the biggest misfortunes and sufferings to beset Middle East in the last decade, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is fundamentally incapable of acting in the greater interests of either its own people or Muslims around the globe. To the contrary, if history is the selected yardstick, it could be well argued that the rule of Aal-Saud has been the largest single-curse to have befallen the Muslim Ummah in recent memory.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 02:27:19 +0000
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