Former Wall Street Journal publisher Karen Elliott House stood in front of a Princeton area business luncheon Thursday wearing an orange outfit in the color of her alma mater, the University of
By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Former Wall Street Journal publisher Karen Elliott House stood in front of a Princeton area business luncheon Thursday wearing an orange outfit in the color of her alma mater, the University of Texas.
It’s far different clothing than the long black robe or abia she had to wear living overseas in Saudi Arabia, a place dominated by Islam and where she lived working on her recent book about the country, “On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines — and Future.”
Ms. House, a Pulitzer Prize winner, told a Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce audience that the Middle Eastern country is “the strangest place you’ll probably never see.” It was a place she got to know as a journalist.
She explained that her interest, what she termed a “fascination,” in the country began more than 30 years ago as the diplomatic correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, the paper she would lead in 2002. She had the opportunity to visit and to talk to government officials about geo-political issues such as oil, the major driver of the economy.
After retiring from the Journal as its publisher in 2006, she said what interested her was trying to understand the country. The journey took her to see as much of Saudi Arabia as she could, where 80 percent of the population live in three cities.
She said the three pillars of stability in the country — the religious establishment, the Al-Saud royal family and oil — have “cracks in them.
”Saudi Arabia is not so much a nation as a collection of tribes with a flag,” she said at the Princeton Marriott.
Ms. House found that the country has a divided society, by region, religious sect and gender. She said the society is “dominated by religion in which men obey Allah and women obey men.”
Despite living in a rigid nation bound by rules, Saudis are much more aware of what is going on in their country thanks to the Internet and satellite TV. That’s a marked change from how Ms. House once found things.
”When I started going there in 1978, there were basically no foreign TV and the Saudi TV had a channel that showed prayer all day long and a newscast at night,” she said.
Access to information has given Saudis a chance to see what Ms. House termed a “big gap” between the way religion is preached and the way it is practiced.
”Increasingly, Saudis see the religious establishment as doing the will of King Abdullah, not of Allah,” she said. “And this is eroding the credibility of the religious establishment and with it the credibility of the Al-Saud.”
As an example, she cited how men and women mix at a university that the king built, although such mixing is a no-no in the eyes of the religious establishment.
She said Saudi Arabia — led by a royal family that suppresses free speech and abuses human rights — spreads radical Islam.
”It teaches Muslims to despise and seek to destroy those who don’t adhere to the strict Wahhabi Islamic philosophy of the kingdom that, I hasten to add, does not only view Christians and Jews as unacceptable but Muslims themselves who do not adhere to this philosophy.”
Today, 60 percent of the Saudi population is less than 20 years old. Most young Saudis are unemployed, while 90 percent of the private-sector employees are foreigners.
”By and large, young Saudis are not interested in working in the jobs for which they’re qualified and they’re not qualified for the jobs they’re willing to take,” she said.