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The King Who Would Be Reformer

Is there a silver lining behind the new Saud?

Aug 29, 2005, Vol. 10, No. 46 • By STEPHEN SCHWARTZ
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ON AUGUST 2, CROWN Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, a man in his early 80s, ascended the throne of Saudi Arabia--and all hopes for reform in the Saudi kingdom began to be put to the test.

For years, Saudi dissidents had speculated that Abdullah alone among the sons of Ibn Saud (1880-1953), founder of the kingdom, understood the dangers to Arabian society represented by Wahhabism, the extreme Islamic sect that Ibn Saud made the state religion. No tyranny lasts forever, and it was inevitable that economic and social development in the peninsula would undermine the alliance, based on intermarriage, of the governing House of Saud and the House of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, responsible for ideology and religion.

Popular opinion had it that one of Abdullah's four wives (out of some 30 he has married over the years) was Syrian, cosmopolitan, and had influenced him to tolerate Islamic and other intellectual unorthodoxy. It was further said that Abdullah encouraged the private practice of Sufism, or Islamic spirituality, and various traditional Islamic customs rigorously suppressed since the Wahhabi takeover in the 1920s. One forbidden observance--common among Muslims from West Africa to Indonesia--is the commemoration of the birthday of Muhammad, which the Wahhabis and Saudis reject on the ground that it resembles the Christian celebration of Jesus' birth.

Late last year when he was still only crown prince, Abdullah lent credence to speculation about his sympathies when he appeared at the funeral of Seyed Mohammad Alawi Al-Maliki, a non-Wahhabi cleric and leading Sufi teacher. Al-Maliki, before his death, had been a prominent victim of Saudi repression; yet Abdullah praised him for his religious and patriotic fervor.

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