I think that what I call the Saudi ballast lies behind many of the reactionary regimes that have existed in the Arab world in the XX century. In my opinion, that ballast was what kept in power the two dictators of the Arab world who have already left power –Ben Ali in Tunsia and Mubarak in Egypt-. I also think it is the force that lies behind many of those dictators who are still in power –especially behind some monarchies[1] of the Gulf.
In my opinion, the Saudi ballast has nothing to do with the poisoned dynamics that emerged after the creation of the State of Israel in May 1948 and the five subsequent Arab-Israeli wars. In my opinion, behind the post-1948 dynamics, lie other five forces, which I will not touch upon here. I will analyze those other five forces in five separate stories.
The origin of what I call the Saudi Ballast dates back to 1902. In 1902 Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, follower at that time of the emir of Nayd (one of the minor kingdoms of the Arabian peninsula) started the conquest of the near-by regions, conquering that year Riyadh. The al-Saud family (or Saudi tribe) practiced a very extreme, highly reactionary strand of Sunnism and a very minoritary one at the time (and Sunnism is one of the two main branches of Islam, being shiism the other one). Ibn Saud’s advance[2] was not very spectacular at the beginning and by 1920 he had managed the annexation of Hasa in 1913.
The clashes between European powers (UK and France) started again after the First World War in the post-Ottomanic scenario. The re-emergence of those intra-European clashes allowed for another emerging regional actor to find enough political space to support the emerging Saudi ballast in its conquests. And so Ibn Saud conquered Hail in 1921, Mecca in 1924, Yeddah in 1924 and Asir in 1926. On 10th January 1926 Abd-al Aziz ibn Saud declared himself King of Hijaz and on 27th of January 1927 he proclaimed himself King of Nayd (he simply changed his title of “sultan” or “emir” by that of “king”). The two kingdoms of Nayd and Hijaz united to form the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
With the creation of Saudi Arabia as a State, wahabism (a strand of Islam which was still then a huge minority in terms of religious influence in the Islamic world and very limited in geographic amplitude or extent), became the “State Religion” in Saudi Arabia.
And if Saudi Arabia had been located geographically anywhere else in the Arab World, the fact that Saudi Arabia
Moreover, since 1932, the Saudi regime (as it had included in its conquests the two sacred cities of Mecca and Medina) started playing also the role of “Custodian of the Two Holy Places of Islam”, that is, it became the neuralgic or most important centre of the whole Islamic world. And here it is important to remember that Islam is nowadays the second most important religion in the world in terms of number of subjects: between 1410 and 1570 million people, between 21% and 23% of the world population.
Of the two Sacred Places, the most important was, is and always will be Mecca. And that for an obvious reason: Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam, was born and died in Mecca in 570 and 632, respectively. And precisely because Mohammed was born and died in Mecca, Mecca is the city where Muslims do their peregrination or pilgrimage (“al-hajj”). That is why who controls Mecca is so important in terms of the whole Islamic world.
However, as the Saudis in 1932 had under their control, not one, but both sacred cities of Islam, it was then that the historic cut took place: the Saudi wahabis invented the term “Custodian of the Two Holy Places of Islam” –and they use the Arabic dual form for it, as they refer to two places-.
Until 1924 when the Saudi wahabis occupied Mecca by force, those who controlled Mecca, and therefore Islam, were the successive “Sharif Mecca” (which translated into English would be “the Noble of Mecca”). The title of “Sharif Mecca” fell since the Abasside times on different noble Arab families belonging to the fatimids (967 A.D. to 1101 A.D.), ayyubids (1201 to 1254), mameluks (1254 to 1571) and different Arab nobles under the suzerainty regime –an ottoman regime similar to an autonomy- during the Ottoman Empire (1517 until the Arab revolution of 1916).
The last “Sharif Mecca” under the Ottoman (the same person who regained that position in 1918 after the interregnum of the Arab revolution) was Husein Bin Ali. That same Husein Bin Ali, whom the Sauds expelled from Mecca in 1924, was the last Hachemite to be “Custodian of the Holiest Place of Islam: Mecca”. From that time on, the Hachemite dynasty has been relegated to Jordan and the present King of Jordan is the grand-grandson of the last “Sharif Mecca”.
Since the symbiosis of Saudi-wahabism and Islam took place, any “movement of forces” in the Islamic world has had Saudi Arabia behind it, in its capacity as “Custodian of the Two Holy Places”. The most recent example is the position the Organiztion of the Islamic Conference (OIC) took during an emergency meeting last 8th of March 2011, when it supported a no-fly zone over Lybia.
Behind the Islamic decision on Lybia lies the Saudi-wahabi ballast. And the reason why the Saudis pushed for that decision was in order to deter international attention from the actions that Saudi Arabia wanted to carry out in the Persian Gulf in support of its related monarchs (if the streets, completely subjugated and frightened in those countries, ever dared to stand up to its rights). And that uprising has already started in Bahrein, Country-Island which is physically connected to Saudi Arabia by the “King Fahd Causeway”, whose building process was completed in 1986.
And please allow me to be a little less historicist and a bit more abstract in my conclusion: Nor Nur. “Nor” in Vasc means “who” and “nur” in Arabic means “light”. In my opinion, the Force who is behind what is happening in the Arab world is the Light of the Arabs. And by Light of the Arabs I understand a Force who is trying to clean those holy places of historical lies, historical impersonations, absolutisms, enlightened despotisms, abuses of power, corruption. The Force I am talking about leaves behind both Nobles and Custodians. It is the Force of the plain peoples, the youngsters, the technocrats –or mandarins-, than inhabit a land, but may come from a huge number of countries, because also the Arab world, as New York or Europe, is with every day that passes more and more a melting pot, what we call in Spanish –using a Catalan word- “crisol”, and every day that passes that melting pot grows. Here, there, every where.
The main hurdle is that the extensive surroundings of those Holy Places mean and imply so much for so many religions and ideologies in the world that the prospects look duller with every day that passes. And I can identify six Forces which are working behind the scenes against that Force of Light. The Saudi-wahabbi is, in my opinion, only one out of Six ballasts. The second one I will write about (if I get the time and the opportunity to do so) is the ashkenazi-zionist ballast [and please get me right, it was, as the wahabis, in its origin a minority in the minority, but as the wahabis, it has grown in influence throughout the years].
[1] I put monarchy in cursive, because in my opinion many of the monarchies in the Arab world just respond to the literal meaning of the word, that is the ODE defines “monarchy” as “form of government with a monarch at the head”, but nearly all “monarchies” in the Arab world just ignore the metaphoric meaning of “monarchy” we have in the West and which also implies democracy. And nearly the same applies, in my opinion, to the “Republics” in the Arab world, but as this story focuses on Saudi Arabia, which is a monarchy in the literal meaning of the word, I won’t touch now on the “Republics”, but will touch on them in the next story.
[2] Understanding “advance” –as per OED- as a “move forward in a purposeful way”.
Que sea enhorabuena tu nueva ciber-actividad, y saludos desde Elche.
ResponderEliminar