Fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia

After reading “Proxy Battle for a Nation’s Soul,” by Graham Fuller (Commentary, June 27), I wonder why an expert in political affairs would present the Shiite fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia as just another people in search of democracy and egalitarianism. That is hardly the truth.

What the Shiite fundamentalists are after is a duplication of what we see in the repressive government of Iran. Democracy has nothing to do with it. What they want is a repressive, fanatical religious regime, which the Saudi monarchy has not countenanced, and against which they maintain a strong blue line. Woe to the world if they fail.

Despite America’s distaste for any absolute monarchy, we should recognize that the Saudi monarchy, which by its own efforts welded the Arabian Peninsula into a nation, has in a short time delivered a fair degree of progress, egalitarianism and economic benefits to all its citizens, while managing to hold at bay the Khomeini-type religious extremists who have the potential to turn the peninsula into a flash point for World War III.

REBA WILLIAMS

Newport Beach

* “U.S. Women Bear Brunt of Saudi Culture Clash” (June 28) misleads. The article itself concerns the ignorance of American women about the Saudi culture. The American women resent the cultural roles of Saudi women. But the American women are not in America; they are in Saudi Arabia. More to the point, they are acting like colonists in Saudi Arabia when they see the Saudi cultural attitudes as “unfair and oppressive.”

If the American women are bothered by the customs of another people, then those American women should either abide by the customs because they are guests of that country or they should leave.

DON K. PIERSTORFF

Costa Mesa

* William Pfaff’s “Digging Into Another Quagmire” (Commentary, June 28) should be a “must read”--especially in Washington.

As Pfaff notes, every terrorist incident is immediately explained as being motivated and underwritten by a “‘rogue state” (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan--the usual suspects).

These acts of terrorism are not state-sponsored. Think, how many states in the world can ask their young to wrap themselves up with explosives and blow themselves up for their state? These are individual acts. No doubt about it!

As long as we need Arab-Muslim oil, we’d better respect Allah and those individuals who worship him, not just the House of Saud and all the other “houses” that were built of sand by the West some 80 years ago.

JOHN ZACHARIA

Las Vegas