Afraid of life
The only difference between Saudi Islam and that of the ultra-hardline Afghan Taliban is the opulence and private self-indulgence of the al-Sauds. The Saudis are the Taliban, in luxury. Veiled Kingdom (p.168).
General surveys and analysis, broadly-based information: these are needed to understand the context of events. But it is very good to supplement these with personal witnesses, works than can give you the texture of everyday life. I was inspired to buy Veiled Kingdom by Sophie Masson’s review in Quadrant. It has indeed proved very useful in understanding Saudi society and the broad flow of events in the Middle East.
The book is written by Carmen bin Ladin, Osama bin Laden’s sister-in-law: a half Iranian, half Swiss woman raised in Switzerland. Carmen went to the US to study in the early 1970s, fell in love with Yeslam bin Ladin, married him and went to live in Saudi Arabia. We live in such a constant, warm cultural bath of low-level, or not so low-level, anti-Americanism that it is refreshing to be reminded of how liberating being in the US can be for people of other cultures, something Carmen conveys well.
But it is the rendering of the texture of Saudi life that is most striking. The bin Laden family is probably the most powerful in Saudi Arabia after the al-Sauds themselves - the bin Laden Organisation is the only one allowed to build in Mecca, the largest corporation and the most powerful merchant clan in the Kingdom. So Carmen lived a life of wealth and privilege, not least because (within the confines of their living quarters) her husband Yeslam, for many years, treated her as a genuine partner.
Yet her life, as a woman, was one of incredible restriction. Explaining to a (male) cleaner how to use a mop was a gross violation of religious etiquette. Osama bin Laden’s wife attempts to give water to dehydrating baby at a family picnic through a spoon because bottles are "un-Islamic". This is a society where, Carmen observed, it seemed to be impossible to be too religious. Carmen describes is a society terrified of life. (All the religions of the people of the Book have a strong strain of fear of life. In contemporary Islam, it has spawned a genuine death cult.)
mishymoocow observed recently that in medieval and post-medieval Europe, powerful women were often put in a category on their own: they were somehow not in the category of ‘woman’. There is a difference between the public story a society tells about itself, whether its present or its past, and the actual society. The former is more or less bound to be much more simple than the latter. Saudi Arabia attempts to rigidly enforce its (very simple) public story. The result is a horrible society: of submissive, frustrated, manipulative women and dominating, stunted, manipulative men. People fascinated, repelled and ignorant of the West.
It sounds strange, almost offensive, to say so but one of the strengths of Carmen’s tale is that she makes it clear the men are, in many ways, as damaged by their relentless dominance of the society as the women are by their relentless subordination. This damage is reflected in the very sad tale of the emotional collapse of Yeslam, unable to reconcile his burgeoning role and wealth in Saudi society with being married to a woman whose heritage (including the Iranian one) and character made her nothing like a typical Saudi wife. Their marriage collapses, and she and her three daughters live in Switzerland. As, ironically, does Yeslam, yet remaining a very Saudi man. The legal battles are bitter and vicious: she is afraid to go to any country with strong legal ties to the Kingdom because she believes Yeslam has charged her with adultery, and the penalty (for a women) for adultery is death.
Carmen picks 1979 as the crucial year of change. First, the example and fear of the Iranian revolution lead to a frightened reversion to rigid, brutal imposition of the simple public story, crushing the small steps of change within the Kingdom. Second was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as the early Saudi decision to fund the anti-Soviet resistance created the armed, motivated network that became the jihadis. With the deeply religious Osama as an organiser and hero. (About two-thirds of the funding of the Afghan resistance came from Saudi Arabia and other Arabs.)
Saudi Arabia is a society brutally in love with a vision of the past and full of people with wealth and power determined to impose that vision of the past anywhere they can. At least with the Nazis, Hitler was only really interested in "Aryans", however murderously disastrous that was for local non-Aryans. In the service of Allah, there is no limit. Germany was a much more powerful state than the Veiled Kingdom. But modern technology offers up all sorts of possibilities for asymmetric warfare. The path to September 11 is very clear in this book: and nothing has yet changed about the wellsprings of that action. Until they do, the Twin Towers may well only be a taste of things to come. (The funnelling of jihadis into Iraq to be killed by Coalition forces has its uses, but the example of a, hopefully, democratic Iraq will, at best, take time to have any effect.)
ADDENDA. Received an email which makes an excellent point: wanna know something REALLY sad???
Islam has lived through all this before, in the 11thC. Hassan, the first Old Man Of The Mountains, lived to be 90, and saw all his Ismaili friends desert him, his castle besieged and all his works crumble. And why??? Because he too embraced terror in an age where it was considered too repulsive even for Franks to embrace.
General surveys and analysis, broadly-based information: these are needed to understand the context of events. But it is very good to supplement these with personal witnesses, works than can give you the texture of everyday life. I was inspired to buy Veiled Kingdom by Sophie Masson’s review in Quadrant. It has indeed proved very useful in understanding Saudi society and the broad flow of events in the Middle East.
The book is written by Carmen bin Ladin, Osama bin Laden’s sister-in-law: a half Iranian, half Swiss woman raised in Switzerland. Carmen went to the US to study in the early 1970s, fell in love with Yeslam bin Ladin, married him and went to live in Saudi Arabia. We live in such a constant, warm cultural bath of low-level, or not so low-level, anti-Americanism that it is refreshing to be reminded of how liberating being in the US can be for people of other cultures, something Carmen conveys well.
But it is the rendering of the texture of Saudi life that is most striking. The bin Laden family is probably the most powerful in Saudi Arabia after the al-Sauds themselves - the bin Laden Organisation is the only one allowed to build in Mecca, the largest corporation and the most powerful merchant clan in the Kingdom. So Carmen lived a life of wealth and privilege, not least because (within the confines of their living quarters) her husband Yeslam, for many years, treated her as a genuine partner.
Yet her life, as a woman, was one of incredible restriction. Explaining to a (male) cleaner how to use a mop was a gross violation of religious etiquette. Osama bin Laden’s wife attempts to give water to dehydrating baby at a family picnic through a spoon because bottles are "un-Islamic". This is a society where, Carmen observed, it seemed to be impossible to be too religious. Carmen describes is a society terrified of life. (All the religions of the people of the Book have a strong strain of fear of life. In contemporary Islam, it has spawned a genuine death cult.)
mishymoocow observed recently that in medieval and post-medieval Europe, powerful women were often put in a category on their own: they were somehow not in the category of ‘woman’. There is a difference between the public story a society tells about itself, whether its present or its past, and the actual society. The former is more or less bound to be much more simple than the latter. Saudi Arabia attempts to rigidly enforce its (very simple) public story. The result is a horrible society: of submissive, frustrated, manipulative women and dominating, stunted, manipulative men. People fascinated, repelled and ignorant of the West.
It sounds strange, almost offensive, to say so but one of the strengths of Carmen’s tale is that she makes it clear the men are, in many ways, as damaged by their relentless dominance of the society as the women are by their relentless subordination. This damage is reflected in the very sad tale of the emotional collapse of Yeslam, unable to reconcile his burgeoning role and wealth in Saudi society with being married to a woman whose heritage (including the Iranian one) and character made her nothing like a typical Saudi wife. Their marriage collapses, and she and her three daughters live in Switzerland. As, ironically, does Yeslam, yet remaining a very Saudi man. The legal battles are bitter and vicious: she is afraid to go to any country with strong legal ties to the Kingdom because she believes Yeslam has charged her with adultery, and the penalty (for a women) for adultery is death.
Carmen picks 1979 as the crucial year of change. First, the example and fear of the Iranian revolution lead to a frightened reversion to rigid, brutal imposition of the simple public story, crushing the small steps of change within the Kingdom. Second was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as the early Saudi decision to fund the anti-Soviet resistance created the armed, motivated network that became the jihadis. With the deeply religious Osama as an organiser and hero. (About two-thirds of the funding of the Afghan resistance came from Saudi Arabia and other Arabs.)
Saudi Arabia is a society brutally in love with a vision of the past and full of people with wealth and power determined to impose that vision of the past anywhere they can. At least with the Nazis, Hitler was only really interested in "Aryans", however murderously disastrous that was for local non-Aryans. In the service of Allah, there is no limit. Germany was a much more powerful state than the Veiled Kingdom. But modern technology offers up all sorts of possibilities for asymmetric warfare. The path to September 11 is very clear in this book: and nothing has yet changed about the wellsprings of that action. Until they do, the Twin Towers may well only be a taste of things to come. (The funnelling of jihadis into Iraq to be killed by Coalition forces has its uses, but the example of a, hopefully, democratic Iraq will, at best, take time to have any effect.)
ADDENDA. Received an email which makes an excellent point: wanna know something REALLY sad???
Islam has lived through all this before, in the 11thC. Hassan, the first Old Man Of The Mountains, lived to be 90, and saw all his Ismaili friends desert him, his castle besieged and all his works crumble. And why??? Because he too embraced terror in an age where it was considered too repulsive even for Franks to embrace.