Word: saud
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...regime from spreading Islamic revolution following Ayatullah Khomeini's overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Fahd gave the Kingdom's ultra conservative Islamic establishment the green light to promote an ever rigid Wahhabi form of Islam so long as it continued to recognize the legitimacy of the House of Saud as Saudi Arabia's political leadership. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, he worked with the U.S. government to encourage a jihad against the Red Army. During Fahd's reign, the country imposed a stricter dress code for women, continued to ban women from driving and spent billions...
...year era ended in Saudi Arabia Monday when King Fahd bin Abdulaziz al Saud succumbed to his numerous ailments and died in a Riyadh hospital at the age of 84. Fahd effectively took the reins of power in 1975, serving as the de facto ruler under his brother King Khalid and then becoming King himself upon Khalid's death in 1982. Apart from Ibn Saud, the family patriarch who founded the country after conquering Arabian tribes, King Fahd has left a mark on the country-for better or worse-that no other ruler has rivaled...
...there is a behind-the-scenes battle underway for the No. 3 slot, which would position another prince to succeed as King after Abdullah and Sultan die or relinquish the post. An important factor is seniority in the line of succession, which is restricted to the sons of Ibn Saud. But competence and Byzantine family politics also play a part. The current contest pits influential Interior Minister Prince Nayef, who is known for appeasing the Kingdom's hard-line religious figures for the sake of maintaining their political backing for the regime, against a number of other similarly aging princes...
...said is that no one knows. Unlike the Bolsheviks, al-Qaeda does not hand out numbered party-registration cards. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that there are Muslims energized by Iraq--who were not energized by Western colonialism, American imperialism, Hollywood decadence, the Roosevelt-Saud alliance, the Afghan war, Zionism, feminism or other alleged outrages against Islam. They were living contentedly, tending their shoe shop in Riyadh, and all of a sudden they discovered the joys of jihad and the lure of heavenly posthumous sex awaiting them at the other end of a suicide bombing...
...Nowhere are the stakes higher and the risk of chaos greater than in the famously closed kingdom that controls a quarter of the world's known oil reserves and was home to 15 of the 19 Islamist hijackers who launched the attacks of 9/11. Since then, the House of Saud has found itself ever more threatened by extremists bent on seizing power. The regime's surprising answer to save itself: the sight last month of Saudi men in white robes and kaffiyehs leaning into cardboard voting booths to cast ballots...