KAUST--A STANDARD IN THE BATTLE OVER SAUDI VALUES?

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.