Collective efforts drive positive change

May 5, 2010
By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Pacific Daily News

Saudi Arabia, the Middle East's largest Arab country, is home to some 28 million people and encompasses Islam's holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. The country is an ally of the United States and the homeland of Osama bin Laden, and of 15 of the 19 terrorists of Sept. 11, 2001.

More than 90 percent of Saudi Arabia's exports derive from oil, which provides some 75 percent of the government's revenues.

This undiversified economy is mirrored in a rigid social structure: Saudi Arabia has the world's most stringent institutionalized gender segregation. Today, reform-minded Saudis are pitched against those fundamentally entrenched in Islamic Sharia.

Change is inevitable, but change involving religious beliefs and traditional customs, such as the Saudi tribal customs upholding gender segregation, is no simple matter.

On April 19, the Christian Science Monitor published an article by Carlyle Murphy, from Riyadh, which catalogues the significant conflict between Saudi forces for change, led by the king, and the institution of the strictly enforced Sharia.

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