LEADER 00000cam 2201105Ii 4500
001 ocn811596707
003 OCoLC
008 120925s2013 nyuab b 001 0 eng d
020 9780307473288
020 0307473287
041 eng
082 04 953.8|bH842|222
092 0 953|bengelska
100 1 House, Karen Elliott
245 10 On Saudi Arabia :|bits people, past, religion, fault lines
--and future /|cKaren Elliott House
250 First Vintage books edition
264 1 New York :|bVintage Books, a Division of Random House,
Inc.,|c2013
300 x, 308 pages :|billustrations, map ;|c21 cm
336 text|btxt|2rdacontent
336 still image|bsti|2rdacontent
336 cartographic image|bcri|2rdacontent
337 unmediated|bn|2rdamedia
338 volume|bnc|2rdacarrier
504 Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-289) and
index
505 8 1. Fragile -- 2. Al Saud survival skills -- 3. Islam :
dominant and divided -- 4. The social labyrinth -- 5.
Females and fault lines -- 6. The young and the restless -
- 7. Princes -- 8. Failing grades -- 9. Plans, paralysis,
and poverty -- 10. Outcasts -- 11. And outlaws -- 12.
Succession -- 13. Saudi scenarios -- 14. On pins and
needles -- 15. Endgame
520 From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who has spent the
last thirty years writing about Saudi Arabia--as
diplomatic correspondent, foreign editor, and then
publisher of The Wall Street Journal--an important and
timely book that explores all facets of life in this
shrouded Kingdom: its tribal past, its complicated present,
its precarious future. Through observation, anecdote,
extensive interviews, and analysis Karen Elliot House
navigates the maze in which Saudi citizens find themselves
trapped and reveals the mysterious nation that is the
world's largest exporter of oil, critical to global
stability, and a source of Islamic terrorists. In her
probing and sharp-eyed portrait, we see Saudi Arabia, one
of the last absolute monarchies in the world, considered
to be the final bulwark against revolution in the region,
as threatened by multiple fissures and forces, its levers
of power controlled by a handful of elderly Al Saud
princes with an average age of 77 years and an extended
family of some 7,000 princes. Yet at least 60 percent of
the increasingly restive population they rule is under the
age of 20. The author writes that oil-rich Saudi Arabia
has become a rundown welfare state. The public pays no
taxes; gets free education and health care; and receives
subsidized water, electricity, and energy (a gallon of
gasoline is cheaper in the Kingdom than a bottle of water),
with its petrodollars buying less and less loyalty. House
makes clear that the royal family also uses Islam's
requirement of obedience to Allah and by extension to
earthly rulers to perpetuate Al Saud rule. Behind the
Saudi facade of order and obedience, today's Saudi youth,
frustrated by social conformity, are reaching out to one
another and to a wider world beyond their cloistered
country. Some 50 percent of Saudi youth is on the
Internet; 5.1 million Saudis are on Facebook. To write
this book, the author interviewed most of the key members
of the very private royal family. She writes about King
Abdullah's modest efforts to relax some of the kingdom's
most oppressive social restrictions; women are now allowed
to acquire photo ID cards, finally giving them an identity
independent from their male guardians, and are newly able
to register their own businesses but are still forbidden
to drive and are barred from most jobs. With extraordinary
access to Saudis from key religious leaders and dissident
imams to women at university and impoverished widows, from
government officials and political dissidents to young
successful Saudis and those who chose the path of
terrorism House argues that most Saudis do not want
democracy but seek change nevertheless; they want a
government that provides basic services without subjecting
citizens to the indignity of begging princes for handouts;
a government less corrupt and more transparent in how it
spends hundreds of billions of annual oil revenue; a
kingdom ruled by law, not royal whim. In House's
assessment of Saudi Arabia's future, she compares the
country today to the Soviet Union before Mikhail Gorbachev
arrived with reform policies that proved too little too
late after decades of stagnation under one aged and infirm
Soviet leader after another. She discusses what the next
generation of royal princes might bring and the choices
the kingdom faces: continued economic and social
stultification with growing risk of instability, or an
opening of society to individual initiative and enterprise
with the risk that this, too, undermines the Al Saud hold
on power. A riveting book informed, authoritative,
illuminating about a country that could well be on the
brink, and an in-depth examination of what all this
portends for Saudi Arabia's future, and for our own.--
Publisher's description
600 30 Āl Saʻūd, House of
600 37 Āl Saʻūd, House of.|2fast
650 7 Civilization.|2fast
650 7 Manners and customs.|2fast
650 7 Politiska förhållanden|2sao
650 7 Religion|2sao
651 0 Saudi Arabia|xCivilization
651 0 Saudi Arabia|xPolitics and government
651 0 Saudi Arabia|xSocial life and customs
651 0 Saudi Arabia|xReligion
651 4 Saudiarabien
653 Dawit Isaak-biblioteket
