The Saudi people’s trauma stems from one strategic volte face by Ãlè Saud: the ruling dynasty first supported religious militancy, as in Afghanistan, and then backtracked. This tore apart society and unhinged the relationship between the political and the religious. Other factors also militated against the evolution of a just and egalitarian society. The glut of oil money meant not only prosperity but also a painful transition at a maddening pace from camel to jumbo jet. The country today, says Karen Elliott House, the author of On Saudi Arabia, is not a nation-state but a collection of tribes and regions “that coexist in mutual fear and suspicion.”

The book dwells at length on the highs and lows of the interaction between the monarchy and the religious lobby, with the people being the consequential victims. Often the kings surrendered to the religious establishment and put the clock back. But whenever they had a chance they were quick to strike back. After the 2003 terrorist bombings, 2,000 of the kingdom’s 70,000 mosque imams were sacked, and all mosques were ordered to have Friday sermons cleared in advance.

The reforms suffered a setback twice. The first was the failed siege of the Grand Mosque in Makkah in November 1979 by anti-Saudi Salafists angered by the splendour in which the princes lived, the little freedom granted to women, and the close alliance with America. As pillars of Saudi rule shook, the king had no choice but to appease the ulema and back pedal on reforms to seek their support against reactionary radicals. The second halt to reforms came after the 2003 terrorist strike. This not only froze the liberalisation process, it undid some essential reforms undertaken during the 30 years of reign by two monarchs (Khalid and Fahd, 1975-2005).

A seasoned journalist for the Wall Street Journal, House has decades of experience with the kingdom, has lived with a Saudi family, met a cross-section of society and interviewed dozens of leading Saudi princes to clinch this one-liner about Saudi Arabia: “men must obey Allah, and women must obey men.” This ‘principle’ has been taken to barbaric extremes in clear violations of Islamic values. For instance, in Makkah in 2002, when schoolgirls tried to flee a fire, the religious police pushed them back into the blaze because they didn’t have their abayas on. Fourteen girls were burnt to death.

To highlight the contrast between Islamic principles and Saudi practices, House begins most of the chapters with a Hadith, and quotes Saudi women who ask why they cannot drive cars when in the times of the Prophet (PBUH) they rode horses and camels and took part in battles.King Abdullah on the whole gets favourable comments from the author because of his keenness to push reforms, especially for women. Following the nationwide uproar over the fire tragedy, Abdullah transferred the control of girls’ schools to the education ministry from the religious authority, allowed women anchors on TV without veil and abaya and named a woman as deputy education minister. Women can now check into a hotel and rent an apartment without a male guardian. The king also increased the number of foreign scholarships for students to 100,000 in 2011, reversing the earlier trend which saw scholarships go down from 10,000 in 1984 to 5,000 by 1990. The kingdom now spends a larger section of its GDP on education than does America. Today there is a co-ed university, and 60 per cent of university graduates are women. In Aramco city, which is a world unto itself, women work and mix freely with men, drive cars and live in dormitories.

Yet there is no move toward democratic reform. Civil liberties do not exist, there is no constitution, municipal elections scheduled for 2009 were postponed, and all the 150 members of the consultative body are nominated. However, what House calls “revolutionary” is the stirring among the frustrated youth, who are “questioning and confronting authority” unlike their predecessors. The distribution of wealth is unequal, the rate of unemployment among the educated youth is high, and large sections of Saudi society languish in poverty — despite subsidised electricity and free education and healthcare.

What, however, holds the kingdom together is the clarity in Saudi domestic and foreign policy. It has one principle: the royal family’s survival. As the Arab Spring rocked the Middle East, the government distributed $130bn among sections of society unhappy or potentially unhappy.

No wonder that despite a rising and angry middle-class with access to the internet and social media, the kingdom has avoided “major upheavals.” The Sauds, says House, do not believe in “sham elections” (like Muslim dictators who win referenda by 99 per cent votes). Instead, they believe they have an “asset more powerful than the ballot box: they have Allah.” Yet the stability they have given to the state in the name of Allah is phony.

House, who besides being a journalist is a scholar, having taught at Harvard University, speculates on Saudi Arabia’s future after the present generation bows out, leaving succession to Ibne Saud’s grandsons. What then? Will the third generation succeed in holding the kingdom together? She raises a crucial question: Can the Ãlè Saud regime reform in time to save itself? Or will Saudi Arabia suffer the USSR’s fate after one aging Politburo member replaced another? The way out, she suggests, could be for the royal family to choose by consensus a third-generation crown prince who should have the energy and the courage to implement crucial social and political reforms to create a system that will hold government accountable to the people for its policies.

Despite the objectivity that characterises the book, some remarks leave the reader wondering. What is “cunning and duplicity”? How do you define statesmanship? If Sykes and Picot double-cross the Hashemites, it is diplomatic brilliance; if an Arab leader pursues these policies to unite warring tribes, does he become cunning and duplicitous? It is like good, old Western media — Palestinians are “intransigent”; good boys Israelis are “tough”. House shocks her readers when she says cunning and duplicity are traits “admired in Saudi Arabia”. Are there any nations in the world which admire cardinal sins? Do the British people “admire” cunning and duplicity because Arthur James Balfour, 1st earl of Balfour of Whittingehame, Viscount Traprain, KG, OM, PC, DL, excelled in these qualities? An odd remark here and there does not dilute the book’s scholarly character.

The reviewer is a Dawn staffer

On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines — and Future
(CURRENT AFFAIRS)
By Karen Elliott House
Vintage Books, US
ISBN 978-0307-47328-8
308pp.