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https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-02/saudi-crown-prince-mbs-is-rewriting-history-to-shrink-islamic-past?sref=tp95wk9l
Saudi Ruler Rewrites History to Shrink Islamic Past
A
new national narrative guides a top-down social revolution that’s
opening cultural and economic doors while slamming political and civic
ones.
Few countries have ever undergone the kind of dramatic transformation
underway in Saudi Arabia. In just a few years, Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman has thoroughly upended cultural norms and expectations in the
Kingdom. Now he's rewriting the national narrative,
sidelining the role of Islam and emphasizing Saudi nationalism, history
and the royal family.
Last week the nation celebrated a new holiday, Founding Day. It
identifies 1727 as the origin of Saudi Arabia. That directly challenges
the traditional narrative, celebrated since the country's modern
founding in 1932, that identified 1744 as the foundational
moment.
In 1727, the Al Saud clan captured the Emirate of Diriyah, an exercise
in pure political and military power. The 1744 date, by contrast,
commemorated the alliance between the Al Sauds and the radical
puritanical preacher Muhammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab.
His literalistic and reductive interpretation of Islam, known today as
“Wahhabism,” has effectively been the state religion and was the main
basis for claims of domestic authority and global Islamic leadership.
That's all been rapidly jettisoned under Crown Prince Mohammed and his father, King Salman.
As far back as 2016, the feared religious police were stripped of their
practical authority over the population. And since MBS became crown
prince in 2017, there has been a stunning transformation on women's
rights, gender mixing, public entertainment and the
celebration of pre-Islamic Saudi heritage.
There are many factors at play.
Like many other nations, Saudi Arabia is adopting a nationalistic,
populist Saudi-first narrative that emphasizes domestic concerns over
religious and pan-Islamic issues.
But the centrality of religious authority also needed to go to
facilitate a badly needed transition to a post-energy economy. Saudi
citizens have to be transformed from wards of the state to
wealth-producing citizens. And that can't be done without greater
personal freedom, especially for women now empowered to work, drive and
operate with much more independence.
Saudi Arabia has decided to try to elevate tourism and entertainment
into the second-largest sector of the economy after oil. Part of this is
a drive for domestic tourism, an effort to dissuade Saudis and their
cash from leaving the country every time they
want to enjoy themselves. But it's also a pitch for international
non-religious tourism. There’s even speculation that alcohol could be
legalized in certain places to promote that industry.
To the religious conservatives accustomed to holding sway over social
mores, this is all anathema. But they have been dramatically cut down to
size. And now even their role in the narrative of national identity is
being rapidly obliterated through Founding
Day and the rewriting of Saudi history.
The third reason that religion has to be displaced is that this
remarkable social liberalization and planned economic diversification is
being accompanied by an equally intense political constriction and
repression.
Such transformations, especially when imposed by monarchs of traditional
societies, have often unleashed forces rulers were unable to contain.
Examples of royals who ended up being overthrown in the wake of such
changes include Haile Selassie in Ethiopia in
1974 and the Shah of Iran five years later.
In order to contain and limit the threat of political backlash, King
Salman and MBS have centralized power and ruthlessly cracked down on
dissent.
Saudi Arabia no longer resembles the neo-feudal patronage regime of the
past, and of other Gulf Arab monarchies. Power was traditionally
dispersed within different sectors of the royal family. Now authority
has been concentrated in the hands of the king and
the crown prince and a small group of officials and advisers.
That's been accompanied by waves of political repression that has
included the Ritz-Carlton detentions of wealthy and prominent Saudis,
the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in
Istanbul, the detention and abuse of women's and
human rights activists and an atmosphere of terror, particularly among
elites that prospered under the old order and therefore might be most
resistant to change.
As Saudi political scientist Sultan Alamer notes, the new Saudi
nationalist narrative is more socially inclusive than the old Wahhabi
one, but it's also more politically authoritarian.
That sums up the gamble that MBS is taking: that he can radically
liberalize his country culturally and economically but remain in power
by concentrating power and authority in his own hands. It's among the
most audacious political projects in the world. It’s
also one of the riskiest.
Hussein Ibish, PhD
Senior Resident Scholar
Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW)
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