Mideast Power Switch

Standard: King's Death Is Chance For Change In Saudi Arabia

(Weekly Standard) 

But as Ali al-Ahmed puts it, "now is the time for proof that Abdullah is a reformer. With the power he has, let him declare freedom for the non-Wahhabi Muslims, especially the Arab Shia minority, grant the right of women to drive cars, cut off financing of the global Wahhabi campaign of religious colonialism and support for terror in Iraq, change the educational curriculum to remove hateful ideology from it, arrest the financiers of al-Qaeda who operate publicly in the kingdom, and permit U.S. and other civil society groups into the country."

While reforms by Abdullah may be slow in coming, other positive developments may emerge from the death of Fahd. The royal family may retire to its tents to debate details of the succession, and in such a situation it is likely that support for radical Islam may be put on hold while the family's internal affairs are attended to.

In addition, aggrieved liberal reformers in Saudi Arabia, who are much more numerous than the kingdom's rulers and their Western shills want to admit, may take the death of Fahd as an opportunity to press their demands.

Westerners should not be gulled by claims that Fahd was a saint, that the kingdom requires stability above all other things, and that Western critics, pluralist Muslims outside the kingdom, and reformers within it should quiet down. Indeed, the opposite is appropriate. With Fahd gone, the way may finally open for a transition to freedom in one of the world's biggest and most influential tyrannies.


Stephen Schwartz is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard.