New Generation Tugs at Saudi Arabia’s Veil, but Change Is Slow

Wednesday night in Riyadh’s glitziest mall is special. The Islamic weekend is beginning, and young men in jeans or white robes and women swaddled in black cloaks throng its three floors, not to shop but to hook up--the Saudi way.

With the religious police on hand to enforce a ban on mixing, the young people have to let their eyes do the talking. A date begins when a woman’s look invites a man to discreetly throw a jotted-down cell phone number and e-mail address at her feet. Next step: to stand at opposite corners of the mall, watching each other and whispering through cell phones.

The dating game at the Faisaliya Mall may not look like the seed of revolution. But the rigidly ruled kingdom does not take easily to uncontrolled change, viewing it as a threat to peace, order and its Islamic credentials. And already the hard-liners see a political downside to those cell phones and e-mails.

This fall, confronted with a ban on demonstrations against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, young Saudis spread the word on the Internet and urged a boycott of U.S. products to protest America’s support for Israel.

Several small demonstrations were reported, including at least one by women. According to Saudi sources, the demonstrators were hauled to police stations, questioned, scolded and released.

A stable Saudi Arabia matters hugely, not just to the Middle East but to the West, which needs its oil. For America, the relationship is even deeper.

Thousands of Americans derive their livelihood from the billions of dollars’ worth of goods exported to the kingdom every year, from SUVs, breakfast cereal and designer clothes to tanks and warplanes.

The mall, like the Internet and cable television, affords exposure to a world previous Saudi generations experienced only abroad.

Omar, 23, knows that his life in Saudi Arabia is “not normal.”

“Many things are missing; everything in the air is tense, and you always feel you’re doing something wrong,” he said, slumped in a deep chair in a coffee shop in the capital. “That’s terrible, especially when I know I can live a better life.”

Like the other young people interviewed, he agreed to talk provided his surname be withheld.

For this muscular young businessman with black, wavy hair, a better life includes “normal access to girls.” He’s tired of phone and e-mail dating--and the Muttawa, religious police, hauling unmarried couples out of cars or restaurants to a police station to be picked up by their parents.

The Muttawa have the power to stop people on the street and ask what they’re doing. One day, they saw Omar and his friends handling a video camera. Thinking the young men had been filming veiled women on the street, they snatched the tape and ripped it apart.

“We can’t stay like this forever,” Omar said. “We can’t be spinning alone in one direction while the world is spinning the other way.”

Tarek, 18, a student, also wants his society to open up.

He once hung out of a car window waving the flag of a winning soccer team and was yelled at by the Muttawa.

Saudi Arabia’s young and restless are turning to Internet chat rooms to discuss why women are forbidden to drive in the kingdom and why the sexes are segregated.

Realizing it cannot stop the tide, the government has encouraged cyber-savvy conservatives to monitor the discussions and post the official spin.

A Saudi woman says she used a man’s name to post a message in English on a Saudi Web site defending a woman’s right to drive. The next day she found this response: “Thank God not many people can read such trivialities because they’re written in English.” A couple of days later, she said, her text was posted in Arabic, obviously translated by a supporter.

Some Saudis wonder how long the government can ignore all of this, and they are calling for a moderate Islam that can accommodate Western ideas without compromising itself.

“The future of all Muslim countries is in Islam, and there’s no way we can develop and improve our lives by imitating the West,” said Ibrahim al-Quayd, a psychologist and president of Dar al-Marifa for Human Development. “But at the same time, we have to establish life on a moderate, reasonable, rational way.”

The government may be paying attention--at least to the numbers. Of Saudi Arabia’s 15 million citizens, 43% are younger than 14. The population is growing at more than 3% a year, but the real gross national product registered 1.6% in 1998. The new generation will need jobs and expects the standard of living their parents had two decades ago, when oil fetched well more than $30 a barrel. And the state cannot afford to let them down.

Under an unwritten pact governing the oil-rich days, the government would feed, educate and give medical coverage to the people; in return, the people would leave the ruling family alone and not ask for power. But then prices of oil, which supplies 75% of Saudi Arabia’s income, started to fall--to as low as $10 a barrel in 1999, according to the U.S. Energy Department. There were reports of schools asking students to bring their own desks to overcrowded classrooms and of hospitals being unable to pay for medicine. That gave an impetus to promises by Saudi leaders to open up the economy--a drive headed by Crown Prince Abdullah, who has run the country since King Fahd suffered a stroke in 1995.

No one is sure how far the reforms can go in the face of social and religious restrictions. But one thing is certain: The oil-and-welfare party is over. Even though oil prices are up again, they no longer are enough.

“The days of unimaginable wealth in Saudi Arabia . . . are just gone. It’s a much more normal country now,” said Brad Bourland, chief economist at the Saudi American Bank.

And that’s evident everywhere in the capital.

With unemployment estimated at 14%, Saudi men have begun working as taxi drivers, hotel receptionists and security guards, jobs that traditionally went to Pakistani and Filipino immigrants.

They are discovering the concept of the double-income family as women, now 5% of the work force, become teachers and doctors and even breach such male bastions as business and journalism.

The government has adopted a range of measures to boost foreign investment, including allowing foreign companies to own land and businesses, to encourage tourism and to curb the spending excesses rife among the ruling family’s 7,000 princes. But many of these changes require risky adjustments to modernity, and the pace is slowed by constant tensions between reformers and religious authorities.

Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam. Its constitution consists of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, and its accompanying traditions. So all legislation must conform to the sharia, or Islamic law. And that doesn’t always mesh with modern business practice.

For instance, to meet the World Trade Organization standards of a level playing field for business, Saudi Arabia must open its financial services. But what about insurance? Islam bans it as an attempt to circumvent God’s will. Or taxation? Foreign companies have to pay as much as 30% in taxes, while Saudi firms pay only a zakat, a 2.5% Islamic assessment based on net wealth, not income.

Businesses, from supermarkets to Fuddruckers, have to close five times a day for prayers or contend with the religious police. Men caught on the streets during prayer times can expect a few days in jail if they run afoul of the Muttawa.

Bourland believes that despite the baby steps and the hurdles, Saudi Arabia has crossed a threshold.

“For 30 years, Saudi Arabia only accepted the outside world on Saudi Arabia’s terms: Workers came here under very strict conditions, and companies came here as contractors with a contract to do a project for a number of years and leave,” he said. “Now, with all the reforms that are inviting businesses in to come and operate independently, with the Internet, with the TV, Saudi Arabia is now saying they’d like the world to come in on the world’s terms.”

The kingdom is showing signs of loosening up, but the changes are subtle.

Christmas decorations, considered blasphemous, have appeared in stores, including cards designed in Saudi Arabia showing a reindeer rubbing noses with a camel.

Newspapers and television stations are reporting news they ignored before, knowing Saudis will get it anyway from satellite TV broadcasts.

Al-Quayd, the psychologist, believes that like it or not, change is coming. “The old generation is now inspiring Saudi Arabia to open up; how about the generation of 2000 and beyond?” he said. “We don’t know what they are going to do. They are looking for a better world for them. I hope we can provide this world for them.”