With the popular revolts of the Arab Spring showing no sign of abating, rattled Saudi authorities have disbursed new multibillion-dollar incentives directly to their citizens as a prophylactic strategy. It’s not clear that they need to. Such panic-button tactics undermine decades of work by the Saudi government that is little seen by the outside world. Saudi authorities would do well to regain a perspective best expressed by their own even-keeled citizens.
Dr. Summayah Chabra, my former Saudi colleague, a vascular surgeon and mother of three, believes revolt in Saudi Arabia unlikely, putting it simply: “We have one thing the Egyptians did not: We have hope.”
Hope is a commodity more precious than crude. Programs initiated by King Abdullah over the last fifteen years, especially investments in health and science, have increased post-graduate education, created jobs, and expanded the roles available to women. These programs are founded on zakaat, one of the five pillars of Islam, the obligatory charity required of all Muslims of means. Abdullah’s programs are thus doubly invested — with cash and with spiritual capital.
Certainly, much remains distasteful about present-day life in Saudi Arabia: Women remain legal minors restricted in their independent movement, men and women lack the vote, and the ban on public expression is absolute. I experienced these restrictions personally while living and practicing medicine in the Kingdom. Less well-known is how some Saudis are successfully reforming their system while tackling these very challenges. In the tradition of early Islam, this reform is emerging from women.
My colleague, Dr. Maha Al Muneef, is a case in point. Muneef founded the National Family Safety Program, the first Saudi initiative to protect victims of domestic violence and child abuse, which received some funding from the king. Gathering her abayya around her diminutive figure, she entered police stations, emergency rooms and courthouses to teach Saudi men about the identification of battered women and broken children. In under a decade, she has founded 33 shelters where distressed Saudi nationals can seek safety, and she has launched two hotlines, one each for women and children in distress.
The king personally supports her work. Underlining his vision for Saudi women, and in defiance of some clerics ’ fundamentally un-Islamic misogyny, in 2010 the king inaugurated the first council of Saudi women invested with political authority. Muneef was among these pioneers.
Muneef has accomplished her goals via the thoroughly democratic qualities of agility and persistence, plus sheer politicking. Yet her origins and sources of support remain deeply Saudi. Like most Saudis I know, she has a leonine mother and a feminist father. Today, her soft-spoken, powerfully feminist Saudi husband lauds her work and attends their youngest while she is busy on her missions.
These are not the actions of discontented, oppressed Saudi men, or of desolate Saudi mothers who cannot envision a better future for their progeny. This is a hopeful nation, one where families are both invested in, and realizing, their better future.
Unquestionably, Saudi Arabia remains distinct from the surrounding turbulence, even as Saudi pockets of discontent come into focus. Protests in the city of Qatif and the capital Riyadh were indeed landmark events for public dissent. Yet these small protests weren’t calling for a change of government.
So, why are the Saudis different? Contrary to the popular view in the West, Saudis are largely satisfied, enormously proud of their heritage and, most critically, optimistic about their future.
Central to their optimism is their maverick monarch and the progress he has wrought, beginning years before his enthronement. Prising away the Promethean grip of ultra-orthodoxy, talon by talon, he has begun to free his people, by investing, for example, in the co-ed King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, and by placing women in the workplace despite objections from clergy.
Unlike his regional peers, Abdullah is no dictator — he is a de facto reformer.
So don’t the Saudis want democracy? Don’t Saudi women want to ditch their veils and drive their cars? I’ll let Saudis like Chabra and Muneef speak for themselves on that issue. But we can agree they want progress, innovation and a future, all of which are already arriving in the Kingdom in advance of and independent of democracy. Women like Muneef may not be in positions of power, but they certainly are driving the Saudi future.
Arab revolt hasn’t swept across Saudi Arabia, nor will it, because Saudi Arabia is already on the move. Critics dismiss Saudi advances as slow and insignificant, but to insiders, the progress is nothing short of exponential.
Fueled by the king’s advancing age, his personal sense of urgency and his awareness of his role in his country’s history, his is a high-octane reform. At a time when the highly combustible Middle East is poised to detonate, Abdullah’s formula is simple. Long-term reinvestment of the Saudi gross domestic product for the benefit of his people translates into something money can’t buy: hope. And that’s what Saudi Arabia, unlike her neighbors, has been stockpiling by the barrel.
Dr. Qanta Ahmed is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the author of "In the Land of Invisible Women," about her experience working in Saudi Arabia. She is a participant in The OpEd Project.
Dr. Summayah Chabra, my former Saudi colleague, a vascular surgeon and mother of three, believes revolt in Saudi Arabia unlikely, putting it simply: “We have one thing the Egyptians did not: We have hope.”
Hope is a commodity more precious than crude. Programs initiated by King Abdullah over the last fifteen years, especially investments in health and science, have increased post-graduate education, created jobs, and expanded the roles available to women. These programs are founded on zakaat, one of the five pillars of Islam, the obligatory charity required of all Muslims of means. Abdullah’s programs are thus doubly invested — with cash and with spiritual capital.
Certainly, much remains distasteful about present-day life in Saudi Arabia: Women remain legal minors restricted in their independent movement, men and women lack the vote, and the ban on public expression is absolute. I experienced these restrictions personally while living and practicing medicine in the Kingdom. Less well-known is how some Saudis are successfully reforming their system while tackling these very challenges. In the tradition of early Islam, this reform is emerging from women.
My colleague, Dr. Maha Al Muneef, is a case in point. Muneef founded the National Family Safety Program, the first Saudi initiative to protect victims of domestic violence and child abuse, which received some funding from the king. Gathering her abayya around her diminutive figure, she entered police stations, emergency rooms and courthouses to teach Saudi men about the identification of battered women and broken children. In under a decade, she has founded 33 shelters where distressed Saudi nationals can seek safety, and she has launched two hotlines, one each for women and children in distress.
The king personally supports her work. Underlining his vision for Saudi women, and in defiance of some clerics ’ fundamentally un-Islamic misogyny, in 2010 the king inaugurated the first council of Saudi women invested with political authority. Muneef was among these pioneers.
Muneef has accomplished her goals via the thoroughly democratic qualities of agility and persistence, plus sheer politicking. Yet her origins and sources of support remain deeply Saudi. Like most Saudis I know, she has a leonine mother and a feminist father. Today, her soft-spoken, powerfully feminist Saudi husband lauds her work and attends their youngest while she is busy on her missions.
These are not the actions of discontented, oppressed Saudi men, or of desolate Saudi mothers who cannot envision a better future for their progeny. This is a hopeful nation, one where families are both invested in, and realizing, their better future.
Unquestionably, Saudi Arabia remains distinct from the surrounding turbulence, even as Saudi pockets of discontent come into focus. Protests in the city of Qatif and the capital Riyadh were indeed landmark events for public dissent. Yet these small protests weren’t calling for a change of government.
So, why are the Saudis different? Contrary to the popular view in the West, Saudis are largely satisfied, enormously proud of their heritage and, most critically, optimistic about their future.
Central to their optimism is their maverick monarch and the progress he has wrought, beginning years before his enthronement. Prising away the Promethean grip of ultra-orthodoxy, talon by talon, he has begun to free his people, by investing, for example, in the co-ed King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, and by placing women in the workplace despite objections from clergy.
Unlike his regional peers, Abdullah is no dictator — he is a de facto reformer.
So don’t the Saudis want democracy? Don’t Saudi women want to ditch their veils and drive their cars? I’ll let Saudis like Chabra and Muneef speak for themselves on that issue. But we can agree they want progress, innovation and a future, all of which are already arriving in the Kingdom in advance of and independent of democracy. Women like Muneef may not be in positions of power, but they certainly are driving the Saudi future.
Arab revolt hasn’t swept across Saudi Arabia, nor will it, because Saudi Arabia is already on the move. Critics dismiss Saudi advances as slow and insignificant, but to insiders, the progress is nothing short of exponential.
Fueled by the king’s advancing age, his personal sense of urgency and his awareness of his role in his country’s history, his is a high-octane reform. At a time when the highly combustible Middle East is poised to detonate, Abdullah’s formula is simple. Long-term reinvestment of the Saudi gross domestic product for the benefit of his people translates into something money can’t buy: hope. And that’s what Saudi Arabia, unlike her neighbors, has been stockpiling by the barrel.
Dr. Qanta Ahmed is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the author of "In the Land of Invisible Women," about her experience working in Saudi Arabia. She is a participant in The OpEd Project.
