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Notes on Saudi Arabia
- durnygbur 4y ago> Prohibitions on degenerate Western practices [...] most advertisements This one thing might compensate all others.
- bell-cot 4y agoIf you threw in an efficiently-run jihad against the spammers, I'd be sorely tempted. /s
- causi 4y agoFour years ago, despite possessing a per capita wealth level comparable to Western Europe How long are we going to pretend that native citizens are the only people that count in countries where half the population is foreign slave-labor?
- nikanj 4y agoAs long as our society is built on fossil energy bought from the slave owners
- olalonde 4y agoSaudi Arabia abolished slavery in 1962...
- csunbird 4y agoIn law, yes. In practice, your destiny is between the lips of your “sponsor”. They can demand anything from you, like monthly payments, to keep sponsoring you. Basically, the foreigners have no power and the system extremely heavily favors Saudis over everyone else.
- olalonde 4y agoAre foreigners free to leave their "sponsor"?
- pavlov 4y agoTo leave the country, you need an exit visa which requires the consent of your employer or sponsor. So, no. Personally I would never take the risk of taking employment in an autocratic country that requires an exit visa. They could pay me annual seven figures, but it makes no difference because they'd be able to extract whatever they want from me as a condition of departure. Imagine being held in a cell at the Riyadh airport until you wire them all the money in your foreign bank accounts. Nothing at all stops them from doing that. If you don't believe this could happen to Western expats, read this story about KPMG employees in Saudi Arabia: https://www.ft.com/content/45f2eda8-9219-4aa5-9434-277d74ea175b https://www.ft.com/content/45f2eda8-9219-4aa5-9434-277d74ea1... 'Several former employees suspected they were under some form of surveillance by KPMG Saudi Arabia while working in the kingdom. One says he was followed by a car whenever he left his compound while exit negotiations were ongoing. He says he had safety concerns “every day” during this period “and any time I stepped out of the security of the compound”. 'Another former employee only agreed to speak to the FT from a hotel landline while travelling in Europe in case their mobile phone was being monitored. “As you know we are being watched in Saudi,” the person said. 'A third former employee says that when he finally left Saudi Arabia for good, he deliberately took a circuitous route via Bahrain so as to avoid being tracked or blocked from leaving by the firm or its government contacts. He compared the behaviour of KPMG Saudi Arabia’s leadership and the fear it instils in employees to the John Grisham novel The Firm, a thriller in which a lawyer becomes entangled in a corporate plot. “I was in fear for my own safety,” he says. “I would not have taken my young family to the Middle East had I known. [That fear] just should not exist today.”
- wwtrv 4y agoStill though, most of those people come to the gulf countries voluntarily. Not that it justifies the abuse, however I presume they are still escaping an environment that's not much better. Or at least the meager allows them to escape it to some degree. What else would expect that new people keep coming to those states? So it seems a bit better than slavery, more like wage slavery many immigrants to North America faced during the 19th century. Of course the migrants workers in Saudi Arabia and gulf states are certainly aware that they will never will be integrated into the local society unlike the European immigrants.
- dhruval 4y agoWow 1962 seems ridiculously late, for abolishing slavery. But it checks out.
- _xnmw 4y agoAll civilizations from Ancient Egypt to Western Europe were built on slave labour. Ever heard of colonialism? Where do you think your Nike shoes and Apple iPhones and Starbucks coffee are produced? You think Westerners don't live off the labours of Asians and Africans on dirt poor wages?
- wwtrv 4y agoWhile you're right to a degree this relationship is still beneficial to those laborers in Asia at least to some level. Due to western investment their living conditions generally have improved quite significantly to what it was in the past. Just look at China now and 30-40 years ago. Especially when you compare it to countries which didn't become manufacturing hubs like India and some other others in the region (and especially Africa).
- yunohn 4y ago> this relationship is still beneficial to those laborers in Asia at least I can’t take any opinion about Western saviours seriously. Western currencies are over valued and propped up by colonial structures and theft. Western societies exist off the back of outsourced labor - nearly equivalent to slavery, but sure let’s act like it’s /way/ better, since they’re not “owned” anymore.
- matkoniecz 4y ago> Western societies exist off the back of outsourced labor - nearly equivalent to slavery, but sure let’s act like it’s /way/ better, since they’re not “owned” anymore. conflating this two is absurd (my current freelancing contract is also outsourced labor, allowing me to earn about 5 times average wage or 15 times minimum wage and is not slavery in any way) some of outsourced labor is bad, but not because it is outsourced labor
- yunohn 4y agoMost outsourced labor is bad, all /manual/ labor is bad - it’s outsourced because the non-west are seen as grunt slaves. Please don’t be disingenuous - I’m not talking about IT desk jobs and you know that.
- unmole 4y agoPopulation and per-capita income figures typically include non-citizens too.
- yannis 4y agoExcellent article for anyone wishing to understand this part of the world.
- hotdamnson 4y agoIt's worth noting that the actual Saudis make up only 62% of the country population(according to wikipedia). The rest are mostly semi-slaves / slaves from Indian subcontinent / south east Asia. It's not as extreme as cases of Oman or UAE but still noticeable.
- _trampeltier 4y agoAlso how much males vs females. I think it is one of the countrys with the most man per women. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Saudi_Arabia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Saudi_Arabia
- veqq 4y ago
- thunkshift1 4y agoCan you clarify? By semi-slaves do you mean immigrants like the US has?
- aliswe 4y agoThis was trash. 6 daily prayers? really? hanbalites cant eat watermelon? mixing up saud with abdulazeez? (the big portrait) Edit: for the record, i love reading the likes of these articles, even contrarian ones, but these egregious errors are scandalous and totally remove the credibility, totally. Shame because it as really interesting at times!
- dandare 4y agoThis is Saudi Arabia https://www.c-span.org/video/?188377-1/confessions-innocent-man-torture-survival-saudi-prison https://www.c-span.org/video/?188377-1/confessions-innocent-...
- bushbaba 4y agoAs is this. https://www.memri.org/countries/saudi-arabia https://www.memri.org/countries/saudi-arabia But Saudi seems to be progressing. In one generation it’ll likely be a totally different story.
- barry-cotter 4y agoIn one generation their oil will be worth far, far less than now and all countries which have their economies based on nothing else will collapse. SA’s exports are more than 75% hydrocarbons and derivatives. 57% is crude oil, unrefined[1]. Given that Saudis do little productive work now, mostly working in government sinecures or set asides in companies where foreigners do the actual work there’s little reason to believe they could deal with a massive drop in export value. https://oec.world/en/profile/country/sau?subnationalFlowSelector=flow0 https://oec.world/en/profile/country/sau?subnationalFlowSele...
- dendriti 4y agoIt's hard to take this author seriously when he makes a big error in the first sentence (non-Muslims are allowed to enter Medina). Additionally, the population of Saudi is not anywhere near 100% Muslim.
- langitbiru 4y agoIt's correct. You can visit Medina as a non-muslim. But some parts of the city is off limit to non-muslims. It's Mecca that's totally off limit to non-muslims. https://www.inclined2travel.com/post/medina-non-muslim https://www.inclined2travel.com/post/medina-non-muslim
- tmdh 4y agoHere is what I will say about Saudi Arabia as I lived there for 18 years from my birth as a non-Saudi: Most non-Saudis have a job at a company. Most of my friends' fathers had large businesses of various types. And almost all the people who have jobs have fair wages. I felt so safe living there, going out to the beach with my family at 2 am is no worry at all. Most of the people in Saudi Arabia are very friendly. I know I'll get downvoted, but as a Muslim, this is the best place to live. Muslims want the Sharia law and all the other Islamic stuffs including hijab, prayers and what not.
- bitcharmer 4y ago> Most of my friends' fathers had large businesses of various types. And almost all the people who have jobs have fair wages I don't think you grew up in reality that the majority of population face. Your experience is vastly different from the common folk. > Muslims want the Sharia law and all the other Islamic stuffs including hijab It's a shame you don't respect women's choices about that (ask Iranians living under Islamic regime) and generally support oppressive system but I guess this is in everyone's conscience.
- stavros 4y ago> Your experience is vastly different from the common folk. Have you grown up in the reality that the majority of the population faces? If not, it's a bit presumptuous to be telling someone who has grown up there that you know better than them what their country is like.
- matkoniecz 4y ago> If not, it's a bit presumptuous to be telling someone who has grown up there that you know better than them what their country is like. If someone has decent evidence of situation then it is not. I have never lived in USSR but I have enough knowledge to dismiss some misleading claims, even if they are coming from people who lived there.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jurnalanas 4y ago> I wanted to go to Mecca and Medina, but as a non-Muslim, it’s haram. No, it's not. You can even go inside any mosque if you wear the proper clothes, as how Muslims pray.
- syliconadder 4y agoUm.. no? > "Mecca is the holiest city in Islam where the pilgrimage or Hajj to Mecca is celebrated. This destination is only for Muslim tourists. At the entrance, there are several checkpoints where they will check that the visitor is a Muslim, and non-Muslims will be redirected to a highway that surrounds the city. Pilgrims must prove they are Muslim and women must be accompanied by a Mahram, also known as a male guardian." A non-Muslim can visit Medina but the main mosque is off limits.
- matkoniecz 4y agohttps://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Christian_Bypass.jpg https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Christian_Bypass.jp... road sign with muslim-only lanes leading toward Mecca.
- khoobid_shoma 4y agoAxiom: Human rights + Oil price = 0
- ReptileMan 4y agoNorway?
- anonyme-honteux 4y agoUnpopular* opinion: actually theocracy sucks * Not
- bell-cot 4y agoTheocracy really isn't the problem. Check the history books for how well atheist ideological authoritarian regimes worked out in Stalin's U.S.S.R., North Korea, etc., etc. (Or Churchill's famous quote on how poor a form of government democracy is, for that matter.) Unfortunately, humans are far too obsessed with talking about gods & religions to pay much attention to the things that really matter.
- wwtrv 4y agoWell Churchill did have some authoritarian tendencies and believed it might be the optimal form of government in countries 'inferior' to Britain.
- anonyme-honteux 4y agoWahabism is an ideology. Saudi Arabia sucks because the owner of the country (yes the coutnry is owned by a family) made it a state ideology. Atheism is not an ideology, it's an absence of one. You can be atheist and anything, including a huge arsehole like Stalin, or including the exact contrary of that. Irony of history is that young Stalin enrolled in the Orthodox Spiritual Seminary in Tiflis and apparently was very good at that, writing poetry and everything. But obviously being power hungry, he couldn't stay there.
- bell-cot 4y ago> Atheism is not an ideology... [Quip: But if you compare the social behaviors of the loudest self-professed atheists and the comparable theists...] I was thinking that Marxism-Leninism was the Official Ideology of the U.S.S.R. under Stalin. Atheism was merely one of M-Lism's (many) points of doctrine - probably buried a fair number of slides down in the PowerPoint deck.
- rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 4y agoWhat a great read, thanks for sharing!
- anonyme-honteux 4y agoIt's one of the craziest self defeating decision that the US and to a lesser extinct Europe decided to pick a side between the two horrible oil financed theocracies - Iran and Saudi Arabia - instead of simply playing one against the other depending on our self interests. That makes us complicit for no good reason in things like the Yemen war.
- SkyMarshal 4y agoI'm sure the US and Britain were trying to do something like that, what with the 1953 coupe and all. It just didn't go as planned when the Iranians overthrew the Shah 26 years later and installed their own theocracy.
- sofixa 4y agoTo be fair, Iran was a very close American and British ally, until the chosen dictator (installed by a CIA/MI6 sponsored coup) went too far, a bunch of other things happened and it all went up in flames of a leftwing/islamic revolution. Both were extremely anti-West, naturally. So the West didn't "choose", Iran chose for them.
- anonyme-honteux 4y agoYou're right but Iran doesn't need to be pro West for a balance of terror strategy to be workable. Iran needs only to hate the US and Europe less than it hates Saudi Arabia, which I believe is the case .
- curiousgal 4y agoSaudi Arabia and most of the Gulf nations are a geopolitical extension of the US. So it is always funny to me when Americans criticize these countries and consider them to be the worst. I mean that is absolutely true but if you want to change things you need to tell your leaders to stop supporting those countries. Not to mention that Europe is also making bank selling them weapons. So yeah, the people criticize but the leaders support so it's all pointless in my view.
- paulryanrogers 4y agoHypocrisy and corruption are bad. Giving up only reinforces them.
- bell-cot 4y agoAs the article kinda mentions in passing, it is sad but interesting to see the standards by which Americans seem to judge Saudi Arabia. Vs. Afghanistan, DR Congo (Zaire), Haiti, Lebanon, Myanmar, Nigeria, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Vatican City, Venezuela, ... It's almost as if those Americans were far more interested in cheaply staking out their "I'm ideologically superior" status, in their own little social contexts, than they were in the lives and futures of hundreds of millions of people in far-away places, who the Americans know ~nothing about...
- paulryanrogers 4y ago> [...] lives and futures of hundreds of millions of people in far-away places, who the Americans know ~nothing about... Care to enlighten them here? Or must a person have lived somewhere before being critical of anything about the place or its laws?
- matkoniecz 4y ago> Vatican City really?
- andyjohnson0 4y agoThat was unexpectedly fascinating. Thank you for posting it.
- mun01 4y agoI think westerners just love to say "Sharia law" without any understanding what that actually means, as a Saudi who followed closely our recent reforms, Saudi Arabia is moving in a big way from Sharia law to a more western/international common/civil law, where's the Sharia law only remains in marriages/inheritance and many parts of that are being reformed and codified under the new legal status law.
- hasdha 4y agoGreat! I'll come in the spring and show my face as a woman. I'm sure it'll be acceptable to have a face by spring, right?
- Zoon 4y agoA woman can indeed uncover her face and hair in public. It’s not prohibited.
- mun01 4y agonot everything is great as everywhere, but I think because the rate of change in Saudi Arabia is so fast, we're barely keep up with the changes while the outsiders still stuck in the era before 2015. simple searches on Youtube for "riyadh boulevard" & "mdlbeast" will easily show how ignorant this comment is.
- _hao 4y agoOne of the very few articles shared on HN that I actually read in full! Great piece!
- hasdha 4y ago>Most Westerners could witness the change with their own eyes in 2019 when Saudi Arabia began issuing tourist visas for the first time. The internet is a big place and most people lurking around aren't "westerners". Most people aren't arabs nor Westeners. We are also interested in Saudia Arabia and also find their extreme gender segregation shocking. I also see this when they talk about, say, democracy in China. "We Westeners have democracy so that's why we oppose China". Am I being too sensitive? Maybe, but it makes me feel excluded and makes me think that a bit percentage of Westeners think it's them vs the topic at hand (whether it be Saudi Arabia, China, etc).
- avar 4y agoThe author isn't dismissing your existence as a non-westerner. They're describing how a foreign culture looks to someone who's a westerner.
- hasdha 4y agoI'm not saying the author does that. My point is that too many articles do the West vs country at hand. You can, of course, write from the perspective of South Carolina vs Saudi Arabia and make all your comparisons that way, but I think authors could sometimes take a broader perspective, since the internet is, after all, international. Maybe more importantly, I take issue with the identification of concepts we like (democracy, human rights, etc) with being Western.
- ak_111 4y agoHe gets quite a lot wrong about Wahhabism (which I am not a fan of). To his credit he does mention he didn't bother going deep into trying to understand it, and his research is very superficial relying on all the well-known debunked cliches about it. First there are 5 prayers a day not 6. Also the official doctrine of SA’s head imams is not that the earth is flat and doesn't rotate. On the earth is flat this has been widely mis-reported and debunked, see (https://www.reddit.com/r/islam/comments/2hc96u/shaykh_abd_alaziz_ibn_baz_never_issued_a_fatwa/ https://www.reddit.com/r/islam/comments/2hc96u/shaykh_abd_al...) On the earth not rotating he links to a random cleric not an official position. This is no different from citing any of the random nutty clerics in the US who every once in a while make absurd scientific claims (including Ben Carson) and then projecting it as an official position of the entire evangelical movement. An easier way to debunk the above is to note that newtonian mechanic and astronomy are taught in the Saudi curriculum in a way that is virtually identical to any western curriculum. I think it is true that Wahhabism is one of the least progressive and anti-science mainstream modern islamic movements, but not to the extent that the author presents. A better illustration of Wahhabism's anti-science stance is its semi-hostile position on darwinism, but this is true to many mainstream movements in abrahamic religions (including christian and jewish movements). It is also amusing to note that Wahhabism has a more progressive stance on abortion than most mainstream American christians.
- erenyeager 4y agoWow, this was interesting to read, especially about your own experiences. But I am astonished about the inaccuracies of the religion section. It is almost like the author misunderstands fundamental concepts and distorts them through what I can only term as a "western" lens. For example, you characterized the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence as "liberal" and the Hanbali school as "conservative". This is a completely inappropriate characterization of these schools and it makes a major mistake in equating them on spectrum of liberal to conservative (politically). They are orthogonal concepts. As a brief explanation, in Islamic law (Shari'a), within the Sunni tradition of Islam there are 4 major schools of thought with regards to deriving rulings (these are called schools of fiqh, jurisprudence). All of these schools of thought accept each other as valid Islamically. They are named after the founders of the schools of thoughts, who all use the scripture (the Holy Quran), and the tradition of the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم peace be upon him and his companions. These schools differ in their application of methods to derive the sources of shari'a. For example, the Hanafi school is known to more heavily use Qiyas, or a type of legal reasoning by analogy, to derive rulings. Other sources of Shari'a come from what is known as 'urf, or custom of a particular locality. To show why characterizing Hanafi as liberal and Hanbali as conservative is laughably incorrect. For example, many Hanafi faqeehs (experts in Hanafi fiqh) will consider the only seafood allowed to eat is fish. On the other hand, the Hanbali school considers fish, shrimp, crab, other seafood, etc. to be permissible to eat. So to characterize one as liberal and the other as conservative, in general, is incomprehensible. Next, you did not give the context of the rise of what you term Wahhabism [itself a term considered offensive to use as a pejorative by those on whom this term is applied: because al-Wahhab "the supreme bestower" is one of the names (attributes) used to describe God (Allah). Thus, to use a name of God as an epithet is considered offensive.] The rise of the movement of Abd al-Wahhab stems from the context of Arabia and Muslim practices at the time. At that time, Sufiism was the more officially influential "strain" of Islam, having been embraced by the Ottomans to an extent, and many people in this movement went to the extremes of grave worshiping, visiting shrines, and even praying to the dead for intercession. These are all practices that are outside the mainstream of Islam, but are described as having become more widespread in even Arabia and the Levant (Bilad ash-Shaam). It is in this context that Abd al-Wahhab's movement arises as a reaction. And it is a mistake to talk about Abd al-Wahhab's movement without mentioning the eminent Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah who lived in the time of the Mongol invasions. But I digress for brevity. Next, to talk about Saudi Arabia's modern history without mentioning the movements among the religious scholars is not giving proper context. For example, you did not mention the Sahwa (awakening) [1] movement among scholars, nor did you give the context of the Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwaan Al-Muslimoon) and the Arab Spring, which is important to current Saudi religious clerics' attitudes towards dissent, democratization, etc. And it shapes how the Saudi government responds to these movements and those who went beyond the lines they set for them (for example the imprisonment of Salman Al-Awdah). Next, you mentioned the claim by a cleric of geocentricity. But you are also misunderstanding the position of clerics with regards to fields they are qualified to speak about and the realm of their opinions. In their opinions they are not expert in, they can be incorrect just as an expert in history may not have authority to speak on physics. Actually you can find clips of the clerics deferring judgement of scientific facts to scientists; the authority the cleric speaks with is the evidence he brings from scripture and tradition. If a cleric says the Sun orbits the Earth, but new information comes to him, he can accept that as the realm of scientists while also upholding his own understanding from the evidences. --- Also, I was hoping you would have a bigger section on foreign workers, because it is not simply "wage-slave" and "Saudi prince" in terms of the class structure of society. There is a rich parallel network of foreign nationals that operates under, around, and throughout the Saudi Arabian society. Anyone who has begun speaking to one of the foreign laborers in their native tongue will understand the concept of favors and advice given to one's own people. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahwa_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahwa_movement For a medium-length but interesting introduction to Islamic scholarship: http://www.chriscaras.com/usul-fiqh/ijtihad/knowledge-scholarship/ http://www.chriscaras.com/usul-fiqh/ijtihad/knowledge-schola...
- amai 4y agoSaudi Arabia is the perfect example that a lot of trade and economic exchange with a country will just stabilize a regime and not lead to more freedom and democratization.
- BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 4y agoMBS reminds me of Thami el Glaoui in Gavin Maxwell's Lords of the Atlas in that he destituted many of his relatives. But el Glaoui was much more astute than MBS. MBS' grandfather was known for his magnanimity as well as being astute.
- ispo 4y ago"though surprisingly not all board members." reads as naive in this otherwise excellent piece, and shows what board membership is: corruption, revolving doors, and a bilateral way to influence stakeholders. "Rundell’s take is that the Saudi state is, always has been, and always will be anti-terrorist because the ultimate goals of the monarchy are stability, stability, and stability" yet another naivitè, or rather an inability to think outside the box.
- ispo 4y ago"I’m pretty sure inhabitants will drink their own [processed] urine" this is a totally normal thing across world regions and a sign of civilization, why such funky immature stance?