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As a Saudi HNer who has spent his life between Saudi and the US, I hope I can point out a few things here. I understand the point the author is trying to make.
by jalammar 11y ago
As a Saudi HNer who has spent his life between Saudi and the US, I hope I can point out a few things here. I understand the point the author is trying to make. It does, however, come off to me as unnecessarily hostile and overreaching.
- Saudi Arabia has 18 million nationals. The vast majority of which are sunni salafis (the nomenclature preferred to "Wahhabism"). If Wahhabism was driving motivation for ISIS, then ISIS would have been at least 1000 times the size it is now. Which is clearly not the case.
- While ISIS has similar sounding rhetoric to some hardcore Saudi hardliners, it is almost uniformly reviled and regarded by almost everbody in Saudi as an extreme perversion. And not only since they blew up a number of mosques in the country (or since releasing that video of a Saudi ISIS member executing his own cousin who lay begging for mercy in the begining of that fateful video). But their gruesomeness is as repulsive to Saudis as it is to everbody else in the world. And they are seen as one of the biggest obstacles to the ouster of Bashar Al Assad in Syria (who is responsible for a civil war that has killed more than 200,000 people, mostly Sunni).
- The article makes little effort to distinguish between the Saudi people and the Saudi government. It demonizes the saudi populace even though it is at times the first victim of some of the unsavory consequences of the alliance between the monarchy and the "clergy" (a rather inaccurate term since there is no real hierarchy. The closest thing there is a counsel of elder scholars and those are usually selected for being unwaveringly loyal to the government). There is a subtlty to the dynamic of the populace, monarchy, and clergy that few in the west try to understand. I can expand on this later.
- None of this is to deny the existence of an activist, xenophobic, hateful, Quran-thumping segment that is a loud ultra-minority from which Alqaeda and ISIS try to recruit (with Saudi being one of the first places they often like to target). The government have clamped down HARD on the vast majority of this segment ever since the string of terrorist bombings in Riyadh in the early 2000s.
- Like I try to explain Saudi here, I often try to explain the US to people in Saudi. If there's anything you'd like me to clarify about Saudi, AMA.
- DrScump 11y agoCare to speculate on why Saudi Arabia itself isn't accepting Syrian refugees?
- jalammar 11y agoWhat I understand is that Saudi is already home to ~1 million Syrians and the government says they have granted residency visas to 500K more since 2011 -- not as refugees, but as residents. I can't say for certain if they are refusing more refugees or why. But I would guess that the political consequences for such a shift in demographics would be too complicated for the (rather rigid) system of government in Saudi to deal with. Especially with instability in the north and South of Saudi and the complications of the low price of oil. Just a guess, though.
- lotux 11y agoIhis is UNHCR report for end of 2011 http://www.unhcr.org/516286589.html http://www.unhcr.org/516286589.html , I don't see the name of Saudi Arabia in list of popular refugee hosting countries, But I see Iran as one of top to refugee hosting countries, Iran is actually one of top two since many years ago, due to hosting Iraqis and Afghanis, http://www.unhcr.org/516286589.html http://www.unhcr.org/516286589.html , you can see more of stats for other years too
- _nedR 11y agoThis huffpost explains the discrepancy (and how western media organisations choose to ignore the reasons in their self-absorbed vilification and chest-thumping) : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anhvinh-doanvo/europes-crisis-refugees_b_8175924.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anhvinh-doanvo/europes-crisis-... " The UNHCR counts refugees by noting only those "persons recognized as refugees under the 1951 UN Convention/1967 Protocol, the 1969 OAU Convention, in accordance with the UNHCR Statute, persons granted a complementary form of protection and those granted temporary protection." Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE are not parties to any of the UN protocols on refugees, and so through this technicality, they, along with most of their refugees, are excluded from many refugee counting mechanisms." "With Saudi Arabia's non-signatory status, the Syrians residing in Saudi Arabia are classified as "Arab brothers and sisters in distress" instead of refugees covered by UN treaties" "The government itself of Saudi Arabia has stated that it has, over the past five years since the start of the conflict hosted 2.5 million refugees."
- conceit 11y ago> regarded by almost everbody in Saudi as an extreme perversion that's just saying that they are aware of the implications, hence those in agreement might know to be quiet and.