The Jihadi Who Kept Asking Why

From the Agonist comes a link to an article in the New York Times: The article is fairly long (12 pages) but it's an excellent read and an insight into the rift in Saudi Arabia between the fundamentalist Wahhabists and a growing number of people who are calling for reform. Here is a taste: bq. As many Saudis themselves will tell you, theirs is not a society accustomed to self-reflection. Critical thinking is discouraged. Obedience to the king is the unwritten constitution of the land; as the clerics say, it's God's law. The Saud dynasty and the Wahhabi clerics mutually reinforce each other's authority. It's been that way since the 18th century, when Muhammad Ibn Saud, a tribal ruler in the untamed deserts of central Arabia, struck a bargain with Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, a puritanical religious reformer. They would purge Islam of the idol worshiping that had slipped into Bedouin religious practices, unify the competing tribes and conquer the Arabian peninsula. The Sauds lost and regained power over the centuries, but that religious-political covenant has endured and is the source of today's Saudi system. The royal family rules over politics, security and the economy. The clerics hold sway over things social and cultural while preaching loyalty to the ruler as one of the highest duties of the good Muslim. bq. Under the strains of modernization, unemployment and terrorism, that covenant is beginning to fray. On a recent three-week journey through the kingdom, I heard the word ''reform'' everywhere I went, though no one seemed to agree on exactly what it meant. Much of Saudi society still clings to its conservative ways, fearfully glancing at change as a euphemism for an American cultural invasion. Many of the elderly princes -- the oldest brothers of King Fahd who for more than a quarter century have controlled the Ministries of the Interior and Defense, the National Guard and the Governorships -- are divided about how to change their kingdom to rid it of the extremism that leads to terrorism, without upsetting the powerful Wahhabi clerics who regard reform as apostasy and who legitimize the royal family's power as divine will.