VZCZCXRO0473
RR RUEHDE RUEHDH RUEHDIR
DE RUEHRH #1532/01 3211435
ZNY SSSSS ZZH
R 171435Z NOV 09
FM AMEMBASSY RIYADH
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 1939
INFO RUEHZM/GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL COLLECTIVE

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 02 RIYADH 001532 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/18/2019 
TAGS: SCUL KPAO KWMN OEXC SA XF ZP ZR
SUBJECT: KAUST--A STANDARD IN THE BATTLE OVER SAUDI VALUES? 
 
REF: A) RIYADH 1278, B) JEDDAH 0342 
Classified By: DCM Susan Ziadeh for reasons 1.4b, d 
 
Summary 
------- 
¶1. (C) In conversations with post contacts in media and cultural 
circles, PAS officers and LES staff are hearing anecdotes of 
increased public dissatisfaction with the reform efforts of King 
Abdullah as exemplified in the international and mixed gender King 
Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), which opened 
in September to great fanfare. At the same time, the head of the 
Riyadh Literary Club told us that he was able to program an 
Embassy-sponsored rhythm and oratory duo before a mixed audience in 
Riyadh recently "because after KAUST, all things are possible." 
(Ironically, PAS Jeddah attempted to program the same duo at KAUST, 
but the request was flatly rejected.)  While it is impossible to tell 
at this point whether these contradictory impressions of KAUST 
represent anything beyond the continuing and often fractious internal 
debate on the cultural and social direction of Saudi Arabia, the 
persistence and provenance of rumors that ordinary Saudis are 
rejecting the progressive reforms of the King in favor of more 
traditional and religious perspectives is worth tracking. End 
Summary. 
 
¶2. (U) Embassy Riyadh and ConGens Dhahran and Jeddah brought the US 
rhythm duo "Teasley and Williams" to Saudi Arabia October 23-29 for 
highly-acclaimed performances in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dhahran. In 
Riyadh, the duo's performance at the Riyadh Literary Club played to 
an unprecedented mixed-gender audience (mixed by Saudi standards--the 
handful of women who attended sat in a screened-off block of seats 
across the aisle from the men.) Nonetheless, the fact that women were 
even invited to a musical performance with men in Riyadh is 
remarkable. In the recent past, the Saudi religious police (or their 
conservative fellow travelers) have regularly disrupted children's 
plays, poetry readings and other artistic and literary events in 
Saudi Arabia even when the organizers had official approval from the 
Ministry of Culture and Information. 
 
¶3.  (C) When asked by emboffs during an equipment check for the duo 
at Riyadh Literary Club why he had decided to risk conservative ire 
by inviting women to the first public performance by a US-Embassy 
sponsored musical duo in Riyadh in over twenty years, club president 
and Shura Council member Dr. Saad al-Bazei told us, "After KAUST, 
everything is possible."  The clear implication of Dr. al-Bazei's 
statement was that the liberalizing message sent by King Abdullah in 
opening a mixed-gender, international university as part of a broader 
effort to counter the influence of religious conservatives was now 
policy, and was being heard loud and clear by all segments of Saudi 
society. 
 
¶4. (C) Surprisingly, the view from KAUST was slightly different.  PAS 
Jeddah attempted to program the same US-Embassy sponsored musical duo 
to perform on campus during a school day.  The university's events 
manager -- an AMCIT -- welcomed the idea and suggested the student 
library as a venue since the university theater was still under 
construction.  During the approval process however, the program was 
thwarted by Dr. Najah Ashry, the Assistant Provost for Student 
Affairs.  The events manager explained that KAUST's administration 
was particularly nervous about any event that could potentially 
promote dancing, in light of a recent youTube video that purportedly 
showed a male Saudi student dancing at the university's cafeteria. 
 
 
¶5. (C/NF) In conversations with post contacts by Emboffs and PAS 
staff, a different perspective from that of Dr. al-Bazei's has 
emerged.  During a meeting last Wednesday, for example, foreign news 
agency personnel in Riyadh told Emboffs that they were tracking the 
possibility that conservatives are steadily regaining influence in 
Saudi society at the expense of King Abdullah's vision.  Citing 
off-the-record conversations with unnamed SAG officials and others, 
the Reuters bureau chief (protect) said he had heard that Sheikh 
Sa'ad Nasser Al-Shithri, the 42-year old Saudi cleric who was 
relieved of his duties on the Council of Senior Scholars on October 4 
after criticizing KAUST, has become something of a hero to less 
affluent Saudi youth, who resent the fact that foreign students are 
studying at KAUST while their own educational opportunities and 
career prospects are limited. The bureau chief also said these 
contacts assert that Sheikh al-Shithri knew well that he would be 
fired for criticizing KAUST, and had planned his challenge to the 
King with other religious conservatives who feel emboldened by an 
alleged alliance between the religious establishment and Minister of 
Interior Naif bin Abdulaziz, who is widely assumed by most Saudis to 
be the likely successor to King Abdullah and the ailing Crown Prince. 
 
 
¶6. (S/NF) Another bureau chief told us that a contact in the Ministry 
of Interior (MOI) told her that religious conservatives have 
regrouped and are pushing back against the progressive agenda of King 
Abdullah. She said in this context that a "well-placed" MOI official 
told her that the World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY)is again 
fostering an ultra-conservative agenda for young Saudis as a 
deliberate counter-point to the King's emphasis on tolerance and 
interfaith dialogue, and that the organization has recently opened 
 
RIYADH 00001532  002 OF 002 
 
 
two chapters in Saudi cities without an official license while the 
MOI turns a blind eye.  (Note: This contact, an expatriate Arab, told 
us that she takes everything she hears from Saudis with a grain of 
salt, as officials often try to use her and other foreign journalists 
to settle internecine rivalries.  We concur with her caution. End 
note.) 
 
¶7. (C/NF) PAS staff have also commented to us on conversations they 
have had with Saudis who are opposed to the King's reformist vision 
as embodied by KAUST.  One of our secretaries reported that a 
moderately-minded Saudi science lecturer at King Saud University told 
her last week that increasing numbers of ordinary Saudis (including 
himself) believe that KAUST is simply an effort by the King to import 
western values and social morays into the country, and that he and 
others he knows are not happy about it. One of our senior cultural 
specialists shared an email chain from a Saudi women's group she 
works with on our programs that featured photographs of young Arab 
co/eds at KAUST clad in western dress dancing with foreign men, and 
posing in wet tops with their arms over Arab and western male 
students as they all sat in a fountain.  Others show young Arab 
female students laughing and socializing with male colleagues over 
dinner. 
 
¶8. (C) While this email--which our staffer said is being passed to an 
ever-widening circle of recipients--had no accompanying commentary 
criticizing KAUST, the photos alone are enough, she said, to 
scandalize most average Saudis, who assume that the young women in 
these photos are Saudi.  Other FSN staff strongly concurred with 
this, and said they are hearing similar anecdotes about KAUST being 
more of a plot to impose western values in violation of Islam than an 
effort to improve scientific study and research in the Kingdom. 
 
¶9.  (C) Comment: Like two continents, the SAG and the religious 
establishment grind against each other in their respective efforts to 
control the country's zeitgeist and institutions of power, and it 
would be a mistake to interpret the latest rift or rattle as evidence 
of a prolonged trend favoring one or the other. That said, the King's 
reforms continue to engender heated subterranean discussion in Saudi 
Arabia, and it could be that average Saudis, fearful of profound 
changes in their cultural and social milieu, are becoming 
increasingly concerned with the direction of reform overall, and are 
tending to back the religious establishment on KAUST and the broader 
questions it raises.  Saudi media, of course, report virtually 
nothing that would intimate any of this debate, and our contacts 
generally hew carefully to the party line on anything relating to the 
King's initiatives. We will, however, continue to listen where we can 
and report as appropriate. End Comment.