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Saudi Arabia Lifts 35-Year-Old Cinema Ban

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by Aysha Qamar

For the first time in over 35 years, Saudis will soon be able to go to the movie theater. Religious leaders forced the closure of cinemas in the 1980s, claiming they were a threat to Saudi religious identity.

A resolution allowing the Culture Ministry to license commercial cinemas has been passed lifting the ban that has been in place for over three decades.

The kingdom’s culture ministry said, the move to remove the ban was another strand of its “Vision 2030” social and economic reform plan for the country that is being pushed through by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

According to Saudi authorities, Vision 2030 aims to increase Saudi household spending on cultural and entertainment activities from 2.9 percent to 6 percent by 2030. They hope this will create new employment opportunities and provide a greater range of entertainment options while reducing the reliance on oil.

Minister of Culture and Information Awwad bin Saleh Alawwad said, “Opening cinemas will act as a catalyst for economic growth and diversification; by developing the broader cultural sector we will create new employment and training opportunities, as well as enriching the Kingdom’s entertainment options.”

Saudis often visit neighboring countries for vacations and leisure time, the government hopes to create more entertainment and leisure activities to encourage local tourism and increase touristic revenue.

Saudi Arabia is seeing many changes with the new crowned prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who has vowed to destroy “extremist ideologies” and return to “a more moderate Islam.”

From early next year, commercial movie theaters will be granted licenses, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture and Information said in a statement on Monday. It expects the first cinemas to open their doors in March.

The first movie theaters are set to open in March, with plans to have more than 2,000 screens up and running by 2030.

“This marks a watershed moment in the development of the cultural economy in the Kingdom,” Alawwad said.

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Manal Al-Sharif’s ‘Daring to Drive’ Sheds Light on What Life is like for Women in Saudi Arabia

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by Saadia Faruqi

A recent memoir published in the United States has given a fresh look at the living conditions in one of the world’s most repressive nations: Saudi Arabia. Manal al-Sharif, Saudi activist who was jailed for the crime of “driving while female” has written a tell-all book about her life in Saudi Arabia, and she doesn’t shy away from ugly truths such as child abuse, extremism, and governmental injustice.

Manal comes from a poor family, living in the ghettos of Mecca far away from the rich and easy lifestyle of Saudi elites. She describes her living conditions as terrible: small apartments without running water, filthy conditions, and restrictive environment.

“Saudi families, almost universally, reflect a contradictory combination of extreme intimacy and extreme segregation and impenetrable privacy. We sleep in common rooms and travel in and out of each other’s apartments, but we keep our windows covered, and indeed often have windows that face the outside world. In many houses, men and women live on different sides and enter and exit via different doors. We are a culture of peeking, where women peek from behind windows or on the other side of doors to see who might have come to visit.”

Her school is a tool for the regime, teaching subjects like loyalty to the king and checking for signs of modernism, such as a hairband or nail polish, colored shoes or a bracelet. Teachers ruled with strict, authoritarian style no less abusive than her home life.

“When it came to beatings, our schools were no better than our homes. I remember the expression uttered by many parents when they registered their children, which translates literally to: “The skin is for you, and the bone is for us.”

Manal spends many pages describing the oppressive fundamentalist ideology that Muslims in Saudi Arab practice. She talks about the obsession with the niqab, about labeling non-Muslims infidels, about rejecting many things like music and television from their lives. At the age of thirteen, Manal joins the thousands of other Saudi youth as they embrace this extremist ideology promoted by the clerics.

“I know the exact day and event that transformed me at the age of thirteen from a moderately observant Muslim into a radical Islamist. Until that moment, my shift has been a slower, more cumulative process, a series of adaptations and accommodations. But after this particular afternoon, I became almost unrecognizable to my younger self. I became extremely observant, down to the most minor acts; I renounced nearly every small pleasure I had known as a girl; I brutally enforced my new beliefs upon my family. And I can say with certainty that this happened as a direct result of the environment I lived in, from my schooling and education to the radical preachers broadcasting on TV; the cassettes and VHS tapes of their fiery sermons; the books and leaflets that were distributed for free in common gathering places, like the souk, our local market.”

manalThis phase doesn’t last long. When Manal grows older, her extremism fades, and she is frustrated by the lack of freedom women in Saudi Arabia have. She cannot travel without a guardian, she cannot get an identity card or a job or even a decent education because the rules for girls leaving their homes are so strict. Most of all, she cannot drive.

Manal’s activist spirit kicks in, and she joins a driving group on Facebook which encourages Saudi women to drive. Quickly, she becomes the face of the event, interviewed by western journalists in the U.A.E and other nations. But in Saudi Arabia, she was either ignored or scorned.

“It was hard not to feel rattled by the comments, particularly those left by men on our Facebook event page. Over and over, they equated the Women2Drive campaign with women who were loose, sexually compromised, and of weak, immoral character. The comments were menacing, saying very directly that our campaign was designed to corrupt young girls and that we were “betraying Islam.”

When Manal finally drives on the streets, she is arrested, harassed by police and threatened with her life. She finally gains release when her father begs forgiveness of the King and has to pledge never to drive again. She receives punishments from her employer, clerics call her evil and traitorous in their sermons, and her family is harassed. All the while women’s lives in Saudi Arabia remain unchanged.

For readers who are unaware of the dirty side of Saudi society, “Daring to Drive” is an eye-opening account of everything the world has missed. Manal herself is hopeful though.

“The rain begins with a single drop,” she often says.

“Daring to Drive” is available on Amazon.

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The Lessons Muslim Americans Learn from Trump’s Visit to Saudi Arabia

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by Saeed Khan

An American president’s first overseas trip is considered significant because it suggests the trajectory a new administration will assume regarding its foreign policy priorities. If President Trump’s first destination of Saudi Arabia is any indication of that prospect, then many analysts will contend that he did not deviate from that script. Beyond the pageantry, warm exchanges and ear-to-ear grins by leaders from both sides, the Trump visit will be best assessed by the words spoken and perhaps, more importantly, those not uttered.

The US-Saudi relationship is nearly as old as the kingdom itself. Founded in 1932, American oil interests traveled to the new nation the following year and established the California-Arabian Standard Oil Company, better known today as ARAMCO. To fortify the critical importance of the bilateral engagement of the two countries, President Franklin Roosevelt made a secret trip to meet with the Saudi monarch and founder of the Kingdom, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud on February 14, 1945, mere weeks before FDR’s death. Roosevelt had just met with Churchill and Stalin at the Yalta Conference to discuss the impending conclusion of the European theater of World War II and felt compelled to meet his Saudi counterpart on the way home.

The two leaders met aboard a US naval vessel in the middle of the Suez Canal zone to discuss the oil agreements with ARAMCO. The meeting helped “seal the deal” by which the two countries have maintained an eight-decades-long alliance that involves energy security and regional geostrategic coordination.

The tight US-Saudi relationship experienced a shudder in 2011 when the royal family felt betrayed by then President Obama for his reticence during the Arab Spring in Egypt. When the US failed to intervene to save Hosni Mubarak from being deposed, the Saudis perceived this act as a betrayal of a stalwart, loyal ally. If Riyadh contended, the US was willing to abandon a ruler of three decades for the sake of potential democratization. A similar fate could visit Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies in the whirlwind of political change sweeping the region.

As a result, the Saudis welcomed the Trump election victory, given the President’s stated fondness for authoritarian regimes in lieu of democracies for US foreign policy priorities. Their jubilation was on full display as they welcomed Trump to the country.

President Trump’s entourage to Saudi Arabia included more than his family, advisors, and security detail. 50 CEOs of American companies accompanied him to Riyadh to negotiate trade deals. By all measures, it was a highly successful, lucrative trip for them as a total package of $350 billion was affirmed. Part of this, of course, was the $110 billion arms sale to the kingdom. As a side gesture of appreciation for the new American president, the Saudis also pledged $100 million to the “first daughter” Ivanka Trump’s foundation.

While the arms and trade deals were certainly a high priority for the Trump administration in Saudi Arabia, perhaps the more highly anticipated item on the president’s itinerary was his “Islam speech” to a gathering of leaders from majority Muslim countries. The remarks followed the opening welcome of the host, King Salman, who spoke in great length of the alleged threat to the region and global stability posed by Iran. Trump maintained the monarch’s theme by singling out the Persian nation as the root cause of much of the conflicts across the Middle East and reiterating his promise that Iran would never acquire a nuclear weapon.

Absent was any acknowledgment of the P5+1 agreement, brokered by his predecessor, which effectively froze any such aspirations and programs from Tehran. Equally ignored was the fact that a day earlier, Iranians reelected President Hasan Rouhani, a decision seen by many as a repudiation of the hardline conservative segment of the country that had high hopes at seizing power at the ballot box. In fact, the topic of democracy was unsurprisingly off the agenda, given the inevitably allergic reaction to it from most of Trump’s audience, including his hosts, leaders from the Gulf States and Egypt’s General Abdel Fateh Sisi.

During his election campaign and even prior to his overseas trip President Trump had insisted that extremism committed by Muslims be called ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ and he chastised his predecessor and others for their unwillingness to call it such. In Riyadh, Trump did not invoke this rather toxic language, certainly a positive development to be recognized.

There was another glaring omission from his remarks, one that has to be seen as woefully neglectful if not intentional. Speaking to no fewer than 50 Muslim leaders, Trump made no mention of the multi-million strong American Muslim population, their history in the US that predates the country’s independence and their considerable contributions to American society. As a representative of the American people, it was regrettable and demoralizing for American Muslims that they were not considered worthy of representation at a venue where they, not the president, would be the principal bridge and common denominator.

With his Riyadh speech, President Trump crossed the Rubicon by seemingly committing the US to one side of a hyper-sectarian narrative regarding the global Muslim community. Before 1979 and the Iranian Revolution, the US maintained equally close relations with both Saudi Arabia and Iran. Over the past 38 years, that balance has been non-existent, but not for sectarian reasons. Even in light of the current conflicts over Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, American foreign policy has always been framed in geostrategic terms.

Trump’s speech is a marked departure from prior policy and unnecessarily so. While the Middle East today is embroiled in a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the conflict is not a sectarian one, per se, despite it being forced into that language. It is about efforts to dominate and monopolize the Persian Gulf-based upon cultural and economic matters. The Riyadh speech was a perfect platform of the American president to help frame and reset the conflict to more accurate and workable terms. It was perhaps the greatest missed opportunity and consequently, a failure of leadership.