CAIRO—Jamal Khashoggi, editor-in-chief of the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan and longtime irritant of crotchety Saudi clerics, resigned his post May 16, ostensibly “to focus on his personal projects.” Some observers suspect, though, that Khashoggi’s withdrawal was forced.
Khashoggi tendered his parting papers after Al-Watan came under fire for an article questioning the often unbendingly conservative nature of Saudi Islam. Khashoggi will remain on the paper’s editorial board, according to the BBC—perhaps a small plum for vacating his post quietly.
Al-Watan is Saudi Arabia’s leading daily newspaper and one of the more progressive outlets in the country. Like many dailies in the kingdom, though, Al-Watan is owned by a Saudi royal, Prince Khalid al-Faisal, and the paper’s offices were erected on land donated by another prince. Like all other Saudi news outlets, Al-Watan is regularly subjected to merciless government oversight.
Khashoggi was removed from the same newspaper in 2003 for running a cartoon picturing a suicide bomber whose waist-lining sticks of dynamite were each labeled with the word “FATWA”—religious orders Saudi clerics demand of their followers, and which are occasionally violent.
He was reappointed as editor in 2007, only to be called onto the clerical carpet last week for questioning Salafism, unflinching literalism which enforces a seventh-century-style application of Islamic texts, according to veteran New York Times Mideast correspondent Neil MacFarquhar. The catalytic article in Khashoggi’s case defended the practice of visiting shrines and graves of revered Muslims, according to Agence France Presse, which Salafis vehemently oppose as a form of idol worship.
Speculations that Khashoggi was again fired abound in Arab newspapers, not at all an unreasonable assumption—not only because Khashoggi’s been pinkslipped before, but also because Saudi Arabia hasn’t exactly cultivated a reputation as a country that lets newsmakers frolic in free will.
Organizations like Freedom House, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders usually save some of their gloomiest language for describing Saudi Arabia’s journalistic environment. Reporters Without Borders brands Saudi Arabia one of the world’s “enemies of the Internet,” noting that the regime installs hidden cameras in Internet cafes, hounds dissident bloggers, and has blocked around 400,000 Web sites not to its liking. (Interesting aside: Saudi Arabia has used software called SmartFilter to keep information from its subjects, a product produced under American company McAfee, and formerly under Secure Computing).
While Saudi Arabia is a hot nightmare for candid communicators, the climate suffocating the kingdom’s speech is not all the doing of the regime or privileged Saudi religious leaders. BBC’s Arabic podcast recently profiled a group of lay volunteers calling itself “Saudi Flaggers,” conservative Saudis that scour YouTube for “offensive” content they subsequently petition YouTube administrators to remove. Saudi Flaggers’ Web site says in Arabic, “YouTube is a success story; don’t corrupt it, Arabs.” Outspoken Saudi journalists don’t just have the government to worry about; conservative citizens call for their careers, too.
Saudi Arabia’s religious police also features patrolling volunteers who harass and punish civilians for such hell-summoning acts as reading a newspaper during prayer time, or kissing one’s husband in public. The religious police force, whose nickname in Arabic is literally “volunteer” but whose official title is The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, is likely thrilled that Khashoggi surrendered his post.
Unlike Saudi Flaggers or those who donate their free hours to force religion on their neighbors, it’s unlikely that Jamal Khashoggi volunteered to relinquish his editorship to the delight of petulant Saudi clerics. But in the end it doesn’t matter whether Khashoggi was forced out, for the result is the same: The voice of another outspoken Saudi thinker has been de-amplified.
This topic is very interesting actually, and i agree it does need a lot more research around it. However, it is disappointing to read this another-biased article that builds most of its claims upon weak assumptions in order to be another article that portrays the most evil possible image of Saudi Arabian government or its religion.
The author made a mistake when he attempted to translate the name of what he called 'religious police force'; the name in Arabic is moTawwi' [T is pronounced like a hard english t] which translates best to 'the person who makes [others] obedient'. This is uniquely different from motaTawwi', which means a volunteer. The two words come from two different roots, aTa'a (to obey) and taTawwa'a (to volunteer), respectively.
Those ethics police, if I may call them, are not governmental figures that are either supported or respected by the government. They are in fact banned from approaching malls, restaurants and cafés owned by Saudi princes. After very basic inspection, one comes to realize that the Saudi government is actually not as religious or as promoting religion as what western media tries to show.
The ethics policemen are not given any authority of "harassment" or "punishment" upon citizens, rather they can only "advice" or "report." Their job is not to harass women who kiss their husbands as claimed, but mainly to report drugs, prostitution, homosexuality, witchcraft and magic practised in public on one hand and advice those who publicly commit acts explicitly prohibited by Islam on the other, such as smoking, playing music loudly or, most importantly, publicly abandoning prayer, i.e. when it's prayer time, the rule says: go pray or go home, because maybe to you, reading that newspaper at that moment is an act of choice, but to most others who live in that country, it's a sign of disrespect to a call to prayer that ought to be respected and answered.
A final note, I find it very difficult to believe that a very daring writer like Mr. Khashoggi who doesn't fear to criticize the Saudi government openly neither the way it practises the Religion, would hide his true intention of resignation. When he was removed in 2003, he made a big deal about it and most western press heard his complaints.
Maybe it is time he realized that he'd been fighting the wrong enemy all the way; that he should have focused more during his career on:
* criticizing the ever-unending corruption among the royal family;
* investigating the suspicious strong US-backing of Saudi regime as a primary alliance in the Middle East (despite the US broadcasted message about Saudi Arabia as an 'extremist' country),
* reporting on the millions of US dollars spent by Saudi princes regularly on gambling, prostitution, smuggling or launching more obscene music channels while the infrastructure of several Saudi cities remains completely destroyed after floods attacked several parts of the country earlier this year.
Mr. Khashoggi, and other liberal Saudi writers need to realize that they should not waste their career lives attacking the underpaid, truly sidelined ethics police as well as other sincere young volunteers who try to protect their people from falling into the global puddle of immorality, in a critical time as their country races to record highest rates of drug and alcohol abuse among teenagers in the Middle East. After all, this is the least they could do to implement an explicit fundamental law in Islam stated in authentic report of the messenger "Verily, You shall order each other to do good and prohibit each other from committing vice, or God shall almost send a punishment upon you. Then, you shall pray to Him [to save you], and you shall not be answered."
Majed Jarrar
Student Senator - Press Board Chairperson
The American University in Cairo
#1 Posted by Majed Jarrar, CJR on Thu 27 May 2010 at 07:30 PM
yes sure I can see how the west are trying to give bad image about Islam , and how islam is backward and forcing people to pray or obey !
they thought this is against personal privacy, against human rights, in fact its helping human to find their right path in this crazy world, world without moral, is like hell.
youth spent their life discovering the right and the wrong, in the west they can go and take drugs, make sex, do what ever they want, its individual option, but this is not the option of muslim youth, they supposed to have moral / values /rules, which keep them protected from diseases or wasting their health and money on wrong choices like drug, alcohol, prostitution , etc...
what is the wrong with good people with moral and values?
are they backward?
who said that the western life -style is the only right one?
this is really stupid and biased,
western media !
**a muslim mother **
#2 Posted by Faiza Alaraji / Iraq, CJR on Fri 28 May 2010 at 02:02 AM
So the "liberal" editor-in-chief of a Saudi newspaper resigned and there are doubts that he was forced.
That was the only peace of "useful" information; the rest is a combination of hearsay, oversimplification, bad research and conjecture.
I would like to live in a world without journalists, TV or MBA holders!
#3 Posted by Walid, CJR on Fri 28 May 2010 at 07:22 AM