SAUDI ARABIA MUST ALTER ITS CULTURE OF FANATICISM

  Artículo de Sulaiman Al Hattlan en “The International Herald Tribune” del 16.05.2003

Homegrown terrorists

RIYADH On Monday night, Riyadh didn't sleep. Phone lines were jammed and streets were crowded. The news was devastating. Three suicide bombings at housing complexes for Westerners had killed more than 25 and wounded nearly 200, some of them Saudi.

Only days earlier, Saudi officials had described Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda as "weak and nonexistent." But on Monday night, Saudis were asking, "Is Osama behind these attacks?"

Even if it turns out that Al Qaeda wasn't directly responsible for these bombings, its influence is to blame for an atmosphere that has allowed such horrible deeds. Though few would publicly admit it, Saudis have become hostages of the backward agenda of a small minority of bin Laden supporters who in effect have hijacked our society.

Progressive voices have been silenced. The oppression of women means half the population is kept behind locked doors. The religious police harass us in public, and even in our homes. A civil cold war is raging, one we have long pretended doesn't exist.

Some here still won't acknowledge that their fellow Saudis were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, pinning blame instead on the CIA or Zionists.

But what happened in Riyadh on Monday must wake us up to the reality that fanatics live among us. Suicide bombers are attacking Muslims, too. And fanatical religious leaders have called for the deaths of Saudi liberal intellectuals.

It is time to stop blaming the outside world for the deadly fanaticism in Saudi Arabia, as some Saudis have done in saying that the Sept. 11 attackers had been brainwashed elsewhere.

As Mansour Nogidan, a former religious fanatic who has become fundamentalism's strongest Saudi intellectual critic, wrote in a Saudi newspaper last Sunday, Saudi Arabia suffers from a homemade brand of fanaticism propagated by members of the conservative Wahhabi school of Islam.

Hamza Muzini, a prominent Saudi professor, recently wrote that his son is being taught the culture of death at school. After his article appeared, Muzini received death threats from Saudi fundamentalists.

Because of the dominance of Wahhabism, Saudi society has been exposed to only one school of thought, one that teaches hatred of Jews, Christians and certain Muslims, like Shiites and liberal and moderate Sunnis. But we Saudis must acknowledge that our real enemy is religious fanaticism.

We have to stop talking about the need for reform and actually start it, particularly in education. Otherwise, what happened here Monday night could be the beginning of a war that leads to the Talibanization of our society.

On the streets of Riyadh on Wednesday, I saw thousands of angry Saudis. I am angry too. What our extremists exported is coming back to hit us, dreadfully, at home. This Saudi anger could be a sign that our society soon might be able to start looking at itself.

The writer, a columnist for the Saudi daily Al Watan, is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard.