Shilling for the Saudis

Reuters has a puff piece that pretends to be reporting about the “liberalization” of Saudi Arabian cities. Let’s take a look.

The Saudi government has a project to develop at least four “economic cities” where many expect the religious establishment will be kept at a distance from social life, the workplace and education.

Women will be able to drive in them and there may even be cinema houses.

There are already some spaces in the country of 25 million people where the religious police — charged with maintaining “public morals” — are nowhere to be seen.

Premise one: Saudis (and by extension, foreign nationals) will be able to live normal, mostly-Sharia-free lives in at least four places.
Premise two: Women will be able to drive.
Premise three: There may be movie theaters. (Hoo-boy, the Saudis are going to join the twentieth century!)
Premise four: Areas already exist where the religious police “are nowhere to be seen”.

Now let’s take apart these premises, using the rest of the Reuters piece.

Jeddah carries the slogan “Jeddah is different” and Riyadh residents spend summer holidays in the Red Sea city, where local women with uncovered faces swan through shopping malls or sit in late-night shisha-pipe dens.

“Uncovered faces” is not exactly able to drive, work, and relax in public without fear of the religious police beating them and hauling them off to jail. And we discover that the zealots are chomping at the bit to take down these dens of iniquity.

Islamists constantly fulminate against the situation in Jeddah as if it was Sodom and Gomorrah.

The religious police generally also avoid the diplomatic district in Riyadh and Dhahran in the Eastern Province that houses Aramco.

Residents of the Eastern Province say the vice squad generally also leaves the city of Khobar alone, but has a strong presence in the neighbouring city of Dammam.

Please note the words in bold. If the religious police “generally” avoid areas, that means that there is a presence, and that they are not “nowhere to be seen.” So these women are at risk of being arrested pretty much at any time.

Premises one, two, and four have all been disproven by the very words in the rest of the Reuters article. As for premise three, again, well, gee, movie theaters. That’s so 1900.

Way to shill for the Saudis, though. Yes, that liberalization of Saudi Arabia continues apace. How long before the new, and highly touted coed university is attacked by either terrorists or the religious police?