Word: watanic
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Some of the discontent has been unruly. Last year, according to Saudi Arabia's al-Watan newspaper, there were 21 recorded instances - including a number of shootings and stabbings - in which people attacked mutaween. Just four years ago, the government pressured al-Watan to fire its editor after it published articles criticizing the Wahhabi establishment and holding the mutaween accountable for alleged abuses. Nonetheless, others are speaking up, too, and the outcry is intensifying the pressure on King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud to act against the mutaween. A new nongovernmental organization, the National Society for Human Rights, issued...
...group that began four years ago after it launched a series of deadly attacks on expatriate housing complexes, government offices and oil sector facilities. "This is a movement that is trying to overthrow the government and the system," says Jamal Khashoggi, editor of the influential Saudi newspaper Al Watan. "Al-Qaeda is not dead. Part of its strategy is to win in Iraq and make it an Islamic state, from which it would launch a campaign to other countries and create a unified Islamic state. It is very naive. One should not expect it to succeed in modern times...
...that Wahhabism, the puritanical brand of Islam practiced in the kingdom, has any connection to terrorism. Still, some are beginning to acknowledge that Saudi culture has bred an antipathy toward non-Muslims ("infidels" in Muslim parlance) that can lead to violence. After the May 12 attacks, the newspaper al-Watan made just that link in a series of articles and cartoons. That proved to be too much for the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars. After it complained to Prince Abdullah, al-Watan's editor, Jamal Khashoggi, was fired. That, however, has not silenced Turki al-Hamad, a Saudi columnist...
...begun calling it the "Riyadh Spring," so remarkable was the recent willingness of Saudi Arabia's press to challenge the kingdom's powerful religious establishment. Unfortunately, it didn't last. Jamal Khashoggi, the loudest of the critics, was removed last week as editor of the leading Arabic daily Al Watan after he angered conservative Islamic leaders...
Khashoggi, 45, began kicking up controversy in March when Al Watan accused the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice of abusing its powers. Its bearded, zealous cops spend much of their time patrolling streets and shopping malls to make sure that women are veiled, men are kneeling at prayer time and teenagers aren't flirting. Al Watan reported that one of its own reporters had been detained merely for growing his hair too long. Another story alleged that the morals cops had arrested and beaten a woman just for accepting a car ride from...