Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

POLITICAL BACKGROUND

1.1a Core Ideology of Saudi Arabia

1.1b Core Ideology of the West

1.2a Strategy of Saudi Arabia

1.2a i. Tradition

1.2a ii. Female shame; Male entitlement

1.2a iii. Dress code

1.2a iv. Religious police

1.2a v. Saudi men reinforce the strategy

1.2a vi. Saudi women reinforce the strategy

1.2a vii. A society of segregation

1.2a viii. Ban on driving

1.2a ix. Language

1.3a x. Social media

1.2a xi. Flyers

1.2a xii. Holy clerics

1.2a xiii. Laws against unlicensed groups, public gatherings, and freedom of speech reduce citizens’ abilities to change the system.

1.2a xiv. Court system

1.2a xv. Funding of Saudi ideology in non-Muslim countries

1.2b Strategy of the West

1.2b i. Media outlets

1.2b ii. NGOs

1.3 Main Interests of Saudi Arabia

1.3 i. Saudi interest to secure good relations with the West

1.3 ii. Saudi interest to retain its legitimacy in the Islamic world

PERCEPTIONS, CONTENT, MESSAGES

2.1 Main Messages from Saudi Arabia

2.2 Main Messages from the West

THE TARGET AUDIENCES

3.1 Supporters of Saudi Ideology

3.1 i. Saudi men

3.1 ii. Saudi women

3.1 iii. Wealthy Saudi women

3.1 iv. Saudi “feminists”

3.1 v. Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa

3.2 Opponents of Saudi Ideology

3.2 i. Western human rights groups and Western media

3.2 ii. Saudi and Muslim feminists

3.3 Uninvolved

PROPAGANDA OPERATION

4.1 Saudi Government

4.2 Saudi Police and Judiciary

4.3 Saudi Funding and Global Export of Wahhabist Ideology

MAIN METHODOLOGIES

5.1 Main Methodologies of Saudi Propaganda

5.1 i. Laws and traditions

5.1 ii. Funding the global export of Wahhabism

5.2 Main Methodologies of Western Propaganda

IMAGES AND SYMBOLS

6.1 Saudi Visual Content

6.2 The West’s Visual Content

6.2 i. The West shows women’s rights violations in Saudi Arabia

6.2 ii. The West shows Saudi women’s resistance to their oppressive system

6.2 iii. The West shows Saudi women who are satisfied with their system or who are optimistic about the small or hypothetical future improvements in their system.

IMPACT ON TARGET AUDIENCES

7.1a Saudi Propaganda’s Impact in Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, and Africa

7.1b Saudi Propaganda’s Impact on the West

7.2a Western Propaganda’s Impact on Saudi Arabia

7.2a i. Internet and social media

7.2a ii. Study abroad opportunities

7.2b The West’s impact on the West regarding Saudi Arabia

SOURCES

INTRODUCTION

Saudi Arabia has been the world’s main export of medieval Wahhabist ideology for half a century (since 1964 when King Faisal embraced the obligation of spreading Islam), and has established Wahhabism and cemented its laws and traditions within its borders two centuries earlier (since 1744 when Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the House of Saud formed an alliance: al-Wahhab for protection of his ideology, and the House of Saud for theocratic legitimacy). Wahhabism has strict puritanical laws that reduce women to second class citizens: head to foot covering of women in public, escorts for women in certain public places, and death by stoning of a woman for adultery. Westernization in Muslim countries removed medieval and unequal punishments from their legal systems, and placed women on equal footing with men. But many Muslim countries retain Islamic legal systems and follow versions of Sharia similar to those in Saudi Arabia. As the birthplace of Islam, Saudi Arabia serves as inspiration for Islamist theocracies around the Middle East and Africa and literalist interpretations of the Quran. Islam’s two main holy sites, Mecca and Medina, are in Saudi Arabia, and 2 million Muslims visit each year on pilgrimage.

Sexual discrimination in Islam is strong. Honor killings occur in several Muslim countries, and even in Muslim communities in the West. Equal treatment of women, economic rights of women, and legal rights of women stem from Western legal systems imposed during colonialization and the post-colonial independence movements, especially in Tunisia, Morocco, Iran, Egypt, and Turkey, but they are fading with the ascension of Islamic movements. These movements differ by country, but they share similar Islamic roots.

Some Islamic feminists argue that the source of gender discrimination in Muslim dominated countries, including Saudi Arabia, is not Islam or the Quran by themselves but a misogynistic interpretation of Islamic texts that resulted from the historical and political context from which these countries developed; that the version of Islam that envelopes the Saudi Arabian legal system is in fact an interpretation imposed by patriarchal religious leaders; and that in reality, the Quran and Hadith promote gender equality (Friedland, 2014; Meerkotter, 2014).

This argument is specious. Misogynistic patterns found in one society may stem from historical or cultural trends peculiar to that society. But misogynistic patterns are found in many Muslim societies, whether Arab (Saudi Arabia), Persian (Iran), or Asian (Pakistan and Afghanistan). These misogynistic attributes are rooted in the Quran and in the early Hadiths.

The effects of Islam on women’s rights are portrayed differently by various groups. Tunisia, for example, has strong women’s rights stemming from its colonial history under French rule and the subsequent rule by Bourguiba and by Ben Ali, both of whom suppressed the Islamist parties. Islamist factions have since strengthened, and we can not say whether Tunisia will remain at least partly Westernized or will revert to the Islamist views elsewhere in the Middle East. But women’s rights in Tunisia stem from Western Europe traditions (pre-World War II France); Islamism in Tunisia is now strong and does not support women’s equality.

Because of the interrelation of Islamist religion with the historical politics and culture of Saudi Arabia, much Western media report that its laws are based not only on Sharia law, but on the sociocultural traditions of the place. When Islam is compared between Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, they see stronger women’s rights in Tunisia despite both legal systems being based on Sharia. They explain that Tunisia’s politics and culture were influenced by regional motives of Islamic law, French civil code, and the conflicting economic and religious motives of Tunisia’s first president Habib Bourguiba who declared Tunisia to be an Islamic state but needed women in the workforce (Bryan, 2012).

However, Tunisia and Turkey are perfect illustrations of Muslim society and cultural change. Tunisia and especially Turkey developed more egalitarian societies by Western influence. Both countries are now moving back into Islamic cultural modes, since the Western influence has declined with the rise of Islamist movements in the Middle East. Turkey has become Islamist; Tunisia has the highest percentage of citizens joining the Islamic state (and a strong and growing Islamist party).

The history of the Muslim countries is complex and often foreign to our culture. Reporting in the mass media is generally designed to sell papers and magazines, not to understand the history and culture. Feminists in the Moslem world cannot say that Islam or the Quran is sexist. Blasphemy is a mortal sin; calling the Quran sexist may lead to death. Feminists in the western world cannot abide the Christian Church’s view of itself as better than other religions, so they are loath to point out the sexism in Islam. Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains in her book, “Heretic,” that non-Muslim Americans champion religious tolerance while ignoring the social injustices embedded within Islam and Islamic texts (Dominus, 2015).

Some Western scholars exonerate Islam from sex discrimination. One New York Times article quotes five experts who say that improper understanding of Islam holds the religion back from a harmonious relationship with the modern world:

1. A Norwegian terrorism expert, Thomas Hegghammer, says, “If there was going to be an Islamic reformation in the 20th century, the Saudis probably prevented it by pumping out literalism.”
2. A Turkish Islamic cleric, Mehmet Gormez, says that Wahhabi teaching was undermining the pluralism, tolerance and openness to science and learning that had long characterized Islam.
3. A professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, says that the additions in Saudi Arabia’s translated Quran were “a complete heresy, with no basis in Islamic tradition.”
4. The US State Department’s first special representative to Muslim communities worldwide, Farah Pandith, says that Saudi influence was destroying tolerant Islamic traditions, and that the United States should “reject free Saudi textbooks and translations that are filled with hate.”
5. The chairman of Islamic studies at American University in Washington, Akbar Ahmed, says that Wahhabism was “a tribal, desert Islam … hugely different from the cosmopolitan Islam of the diverse trading cities like Baghdad and Cairo” (Shane, 2016).

However, The same New York Times article also points out that Saudi Arabia generously funds Middle East Studies departments in the USA and throughout the world - where these experts are coming from: “Saudi funding for professorships and research centers at American universities has deterred criticism and discouraged research on the effects of Saudi Arabian ideology” (Shane, 2016). The experts protect the tenets of Islam by using Saudi Arabia as a scapegoat - even though human and women’s rights suffer from the main Islamist texts, not just Wahhabist ideology.

Other religions often have misogynist elements as well. But Judaism does not try to conquer the world or impose religious teachings on unwilling communities. Secular education of girls now surpasses secular education of boys in almost all Jewish communities. Christianity was once strongly sexist, but it has changed 500 years ago by the Enlightenment and women’s rights are upheld in most of the Christian world. It is illegal in the US, Israel, and other democratic countries for Jews or Christians to carry out the biblical commandment of killing all homosexuals; the same standard does not apply in Islamic theocracies.

While sexism is prevalent in the Quran, Hadith, and other Islamic texts, this paper focuses on Saudi Arabia because it exports its ideology around the globe.

POLITICAL BACKGROUND

(The context in which the state/organization has been operated, including the core of its ideology, defined mission, strategy, and main interests.)

1.1a Core Ideology of Saudi Arabia

Traditional Islamic law (Sharia), based on the Quran and other religious writings such as the Hadith, is central to the national identity of Saudi Arabia and its conservative form of Islam known as Wahhabism (Meerkotter, 2014). Saudi Arabia inspires Sunni Islam worldwide and as the site of Islam’s holy cities (Mecca and Medina, it is the heart of global Islam.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century in 1744, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the House of Saud formed an alliance that elevated the House of Saud to rulers, and Wahhabism to the state ideology (Bryan, 2012). Wahhabist laws are ones which al-Wahhab believed were the values of the early years of Islam in the seventh century when the Prophet Muhammad was said to have lived, including death by stoning of a woman for adultery and the intolerance of those who do not follow the same religion or sect of Islam (Shane, 2016).

The discovery of massive oil reserves in Saudi Arabia gave the Wahhabist establishment an extravagant budget for the export of its ideology and may have stifled the liberalization of sexual roles. Countries need women in the workforce for economic success, but the influx of oil money may have dampened the need, and old legal and social structures remained.

By 1964, King Faisal embraced the obligation of spreading Islam, and the next four decades saw the construction of 1,359 mosques, 210 Islamic centers, 202 colleges, and 2,000 schools in non-Muslim countries alone.

Saudi Arabia’s credibility at the time was huge. The kingdom was the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad, and the land of the religion’s two holiest places, Mecca and Medina. Saudi imams who traveled to other countries to export Wahhabist ideology, wearing traditional Arabic garb, speaking the language of the Quran, and with impressive cash flows, found easy acceptance from other cultures.

In 1979 when the Iranian revolution in Tehran brought to power a radical Shiite government, Saudi Arabia gained a new reason to remain staunch in its ideology. The new Shiite Iranian government was seen to challenge Saudi Arabia, the leader of Sunnism, for leadership of global Islam. Saudi Arabia doubled their efforts to spread Wahhabism around the world.

In the same year, 500 Saudi extremists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca for two weeks, calling Saudi rulers puppets of the West. After the strike, the leading clerics agreed to back the incumbent government only if it cracked down on immodest ways within the kingdom, and agreed to a more aggressive export of Wahhabism abroad.

This is reiterated by National Geographic. Older Saudi women claim that in the 1980s as conservative Islamist movements were taking form around the Middle East, the Saudi government felt its legitimacy threatened, and enlisted religious police who were to impose the most rigid conservative cultures (Gorney, 2016).

At the end of 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to establish a Communist government. Over the next decade, a movement of mujahedeen (a version of Jihadists, or holy warriors battling for Islam) battled the occupiers. During this time, Saudi Arabia and the United States financed the mujahedeen. The United States was fighting against Communism, and Saudi Arabia was fighting for Islamic rule.

After the attacks on September 11, 2001, however, the United States stopped their funding of the anti-Soviet Jihad. Politicians cracked down on Saudi Arabia to remove texts that were hostile to science, modernity, and women’s rights. These ideas meant different things to the West and to Saudi Arabia, however, and despite the sacking and re-education of tens of thousands of imams, medievalism and bigotry remained in texts and teachings - the same texts used by terrorist Islamic groups like ISIS to back their global attacks in the past decade.

1.1b Core Ideology of the West

Western societies promote democracy, free markets, freedom of religion, separation of religion and state, egalitarianism, and science. But the post colonial fear of discrimination against third-world people prevents Western elites from criticizing Moslem religious texts, regardless of their unequal treatment of women.

Mainstream Western media attribute Islamic sexism to historical factors, including Western colonialism, tribal rivalries, and patriarchal histories, while ignoring the influence of the Quran, Hadith, and other main Islamic texts. The New York Times attributes factors such as repressive secular governments in the Middle East, local injustices and divisions, the hijacking of the internet for terrorist propaganda, and American interventions in the Muslim world from the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan to the invasion of Iraq (Shane, 2016) - but does not consider the core Islamic texts that demand this bigotry and sexism. Saudi Arabia has historically been a primary driver of following the Quran literally: a tolerant imam would have to re-interpret the Quran to preach a peaceful religion.

The Western media often seek to downplay the role of Muslim clergy for social injustice. The New York Times quotes a former United States ambassador to Syria and Algeria, Robert S. Ford, who says that “many Saudi and Saudi-trained clerics are quietist, characterized by a devotion to scripture and prayer and a shunning of politics, let alone political violence” (Shane, 2016). The devotion to scripture and prayer is politics, however, as the imams repeat the Quran, Hadith, and other texts that preach bigotry and exclusionism.

The United States and U.S.S.R. supported ideological groups that promoted their political or military goals. They may have encouraged the Mujahedeen and other Jihadist groups in Afghanistan, but they didn’t invent the belief systems. Jihad was also a powerful cultural undercurrent in countries where the United States and U.S.S.R. had little influence.

1.2a Strategy of Saudi Arabia

1.2a i. Tradition

National Geographic asked Saudi women why they cover and segregate themselves, and was met with confusion and a jumble of reasons. Most explanations include tradition: “‘... This is religion. I can’t touch a man who is not my father, my uncle, my brother. That’s why.” In fact, nearly every woman who talked to National Geographic about covering invoked tradition, social pressure, religious devotion, tribal loyalty, and the weight that Saudi culture places upon a woman’s honor and respectability: her probity and fidelity if she is married; her modesty and virginity if she is not (Gorney, 2016).

1.2a ii. Female shame; Male entitlement

What Western rhetoric sees as sexism and victim blaming is fundamental to Wahhabi values. “The conviction that a society’s virtue and vice can be managed by keeping men and women apart - that by nature men are lustful and women seductive, so that being a good Muslim requires constant attention to the perils of close contact - is so foundational in daily life that it reappears, for the mystified visitor, in one explanation after another” (Gorney, 2016). Female shame and male entitlement are found in nearly all forms of Saudi cultural life.

1.2a iii. Dress code

Saudi Arabia’s dress code for women prohibits them from wearing clothes or makeup that “show off their beauty” (The Week, 2016). When in public, Saudi women above puberty must makes sure none of their skin shows. They must wear an abaya, or outer robe, that covers the entire body; a headscarf that covers the head and neck which are not covered by the abaya; and a niqab that covers the entire face. The only part of their bodies that may show are their eyes, in the slit between the abaya and the headscarf. Male religious police patrol the streets and accost and arrest women who do not follow the dress code to their standards. Depending on the religious police on duty, women may be charged for having what the police consider to be too much flesh or makeup, or a bit of hair showing in the slit. Men wear a traditional dress called a thobe or thawb that leaves their faces uncovered.

Women may also not try on clothing when shopping. The Week explains, “the mere thought of a disrobed woman behind a dressing room door is apparently too much for men to handle” (The Week, 2016).

Even in the West, women’s rights activists disagree on equal rights. Is it being feminist to dress and dance provocatively in front of men if it is one’s choice, or is this “choice” a product of a paternalistic society in which women are unable to visualize the actual breadth of choices available to them from within the patriarchal system? How easy is it to voice these concerns without premature victim blaming of women’s choices, and adding to the ubiquity of rape culture? It is difficult to find Saudi women who are against their dress code of the long abaya or headscarf; the feminist discussion begins small, at the level of the niqab, the face cover. But the discussion is deeper than it seems. Some aware Saudi feminists insist that “any modern woman who ‘chooses’ to veil her face does so only under pressure from the oppressive society around her.” However, other self-proclaimed Saudi feminists reply with what seems like an internalization of rape culture and the paternalistic hegemony: “The message we want to give off is ‘respect me, not look at me’” (Gorney, 2016).

1.2a iv. Religious police

The organization that runs the religious police is called the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. They are authorized to advise, berate, and arrest women who do not follow the dress code up to their standards (Gorney, 2016).

1.2a v. Saudi men reinforce the strategy

Men reinforce this attitude of shame. In National Geographic’s step inside the country, it finds that men get uncomfortable when other men stare at their wives. Sami, the husband of Noof, explains, “‘So I’m - “Please, Noof, cover your face” … so that he doesn't look to see my wife’” (Gorney, 2016).

1.2a vi. Saudi women reinforce the strategy

Enforcers of these standards are not only men. They are “mothers, aunts, sisters, female passersby who feel free to chide women they don’t know. ‘Why are you trying to attract men? Cover!’” (Gorney, 2016).

1.2a vii. A society of segregation

Saudi women must have limited interaction with men to whom they are not related. Women are restricted from public places including public transportation, parks, beaches, amusement parks, offices, shops, gyms, and swimming pools, unless they are segregated.

1.2a viii. Ban on driving

There is no official law that bans women from driving, but women are not allowed to own a license - and up until this past year for voting purposes, were not allowed to own any official identification. Saudi clerics argue that female drivers “undermine social values” (The Week, 2016). Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti (most senior cleric) Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin-abdullah al-Sheikh defended the ban on female drivers by victim blaming and perpetuating rape culture rather than on male education, saying it is “a dangerous matter that exposes women to evil” … Men with “weak spirits” and who are “obsessed with women” could cause female drivers harm. He also said that it is important that men know where their women are located at all times (Lewis, 2016).

By restricting female mobility, Saudi Arabia ensures an immediate notice to the authorities when women step out of line.

1.2a ix. Language

Language affects how people view the world. The geographical location and religious history of Saudi Arabia affects its language, which in turn legitimizes the Wahhabist ideals as social norms.

National Geographic writes that the Saudi word dayooth denotes a wimpy “man who is not sufficiently vigilant about his wife and other female relatives whose honor he’s supposed to be guarding” (Gorney, 2016).

The Clarion Project identified a short glossary of terms used in Sharia law that underscore misogynist ideology. Ghairah refers to male sexual honor and jealousy; Hayah to female sexual modesty and shyness. Nushuz is a legal state of disobedience if a wife does not obey her husband. Tamkin is sexual submission of the wife to her husband, which she must perform in exchange for Nafaqa, the woman’s right to be financially supported by her husband (Friedland, 2014).

1.3a x. Social media

Manal al-Sharif’s self-recorded cross-country drive inspired the West and Saudi women alike (amworldtodaypm, 2011). Western media lauded her as inspiration against the ban on female drivers in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi women caught on to Western propaganda. Soon, Saudi women took to social media and cars in defiance of the driving ban, using the hashtag #Women2Drive (aziza124, 2011; Fisher, 2011).

Saudi citizens are prohibited from using social media by many clerics: Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti says that Twitter is the “source of all evil and devastation,” and that its use “promotes evil and harm” (Lewis, 2016).

Saudi citizens face incarceration, lashes, and death for posting items that the government deems pernicious. Bloggers, online commentators, political activists, members of the Shi’a minority, human rights activists, and women’s rights defenders are prosecuted in Saudi Arabia’s terrorism courts.

In 2014, blogger and prisoner of conscience Raif Badawi was flogged, and he is now serving a 10-year prison sentence for “insulting Islam” and violating the cybercrime law through the creation of the Free Saudi Liberal Network website (Amnesty International, 2016).

In 2014, human rights defender Mikhlif bin Daham al-Shammari was convicted for “stirring public opinion by sitting with the Shi’a” and “violating instructions by the rulers by holding a private gathering and tweeting” (Amnesty International, 2016).

1.2a xi. Flyers

Old flyers from the 1980s were found showing the repercussions for women who did not attend to modesty laws. (Fisher, 2011). The flyer shows the repercussions: a knife goring a woman, and an artistic smattering of blood.

A more recent educational flyer from 2005 shows two women on a heaven-to-hell axis, with direct steps on how to act (Fisher, 2011). An “x” mark is portrayed under a woman with an eye slit and a purse who is going to hell, while a “check” mark underscores a completely veiled woman who is going to heaven. Hell is shown as a fireball; heaven is shown as a meadow full of hijabed women.

1.2a xii. Holy clerics

Saudi Arabia’s imams and clerics are religious leaders that citizens look to for moral guidance. Clerics denounce women in sport, female driving, social media, and other abominations of the West. Imams and clerics speak through the Saudi press and are heard loudest in communities, and promote a spiral of silence for those who oppose their views.

Last year, Saudi Arabia proposed hosting an Olympic Games without women. In 2012, important clerics denounced female Saudi athletes at the London Olympics as “prostitutes” (The Week, 2016). While it is legal to shame the athletes, dissenters of clerical counsel may be imprisoned. Security authorities carry out arbitrary arrests and hold detainees without charge or trial. Detainees are frequently denied access to lawyers during interrogation, and pre-trial “confessions” by torture, ill-treatment, or coercion are used as indighting statements in Saudi courts (Amnesty International, 2016).

1.2a xiii. Laws against unlicensed groups, public gatherings, and freedom of speech reduce citizens’ abilities to change the system.

The Saudi government does not permit the existence of political parties, trade unions, or independent human rights groups. All political groups must be licensed, and authorities may arrest, prosecute, and imprison any citizen who sets up or participates in unlicensed organizations. In fact, after a 2011 order by the Ministry of the Interior, all public gatherings, including peaceful demonstrations, are prohibited under Saudi law (Amnesty International, 2016).

Those who wish to criticise women’s rights or human rights under Saudi authority may be legally imprisoned, flogged, and put to death. Western reporters who interview Saudi citizens must understand the line that their interviewees will not cross, and many newspapers report that Saudi citizens are fine with their system.

1.2a xiv. Court system

The Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) is a special court for hearing terrorism-related cases, with some trials resulting in death sentences. Terrorism-related cases in Saudi Arabia include women’s rights defenders, human rights defenders, and prisoners of conscience. Most reported trials in this court are considered unfair by Amnesty International.

A complete list of courts is described under Propaganda Operation.

1.2a xv. Funding of Saudi ideology in non-Muslim countries

Saudi Arabia spends millions of dollars each year funding Middle East Studies departments across the United States, as well as architectural and ideological funding across the world for Islamic organizations, student groups, and Islamic cultural centers. Experts and the educated around the world, including Western media, defend Saudi traditions.

International Wahhabist funding comes from the Saudi government, its royal family, Saudi charities, and Saudi-sponsored organizations (Shane, 2016). Saudi funding to spread its ideology is also covered in Propaganda Operation.

1.2b Strategy of the West

1.2b i. Media outlets

Most Western media has a liberal (left-wing) slant which is ostensibly opposed to the conservative ideology of fundamentalist religious groups. But the West’s commitment to tolerance and freedom of religion leads it to rationalize and legitimize “Saudi feminists” who defend their subjugating traditions.

Criticizing Saudi ideology may be severely punished, so Western journalists cannot easily interview Saudi citizens. When most Saudi women defend their traditions, and those who oppose them ask not to be named, the article reads like the West is too harsh on its Middle Eastern allies.

The Western world is so secularized that the religious ideology of Saudi Arabia is hard to understand. Westerners tend to ignore the vehement propaganda of Muslim-majority countries. Islamic terrorist attacks are deemed “senseless violence” in the West, though these actions are part of Muslim beliefs.

1.2b ii. NGOs

The West also relies on human rights groups and charities to negate substandard treatment of women and minorities around the world. Saudi Arabia has latched onto this strategy, however, and many of its human rights groups in fact support the medieval laws coming from their Wahhabist theology and holy Islamic texts.

1.3 Main Interests of Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has two main interests: (1) to secure good relations with the West and (2) to retain its legitimacy in the Islamic world (Shane, 2016).

1.3 i. Saudi interest to secure good relations with the West

Jihadist violence poses a threat to Saudi Arabia’s relations with the West. Most Islamic terrorist groups, including ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram, use Saudi ideology and texts to support their missions (Zarif, 2016). Saudi Arabia produced 15 of the 19 hijackers of the September 11 attacks; sent more suicide bombers than any other country to Iraq after the 2003 invasion; and has supplied more foreign fighters to ISIS than any other country excluding Tunisia (Shane, 2016). It is no wonder that terror groups latch onto Saudi teachings. The exclusionary Saudi version of Sunni Islam denigrates Jews, Christians, and Muslims of Shi’ite, Sufi, and other traditions. “There’s only so much dehumanizing of the other that you can be exposed to - and exposed to as the word of God - without becoming susceptible to recruitment,” explains David Andrew Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Foundation of the defense of Democracies in Washington, as quoted by The New York Times (Shane, 2016).

And Saudi Arabia’s government and royal family, Saudi charities, or Saudi-sponsored organizations fund these terror groups. Saudi Arabia has sent tens of millions of dollars to Islamic terror groups Hamas and the Taliban, and local organizations within Saudi Arabia have funded Islamic terror groups al-Qaeda and Boko Haram (Lichtblau & Schmitt, 2010; Adisa-Abuja, 2012; Ndukong, 2012).

Recently, however, Saudi Arabia sees Jihadist violence as a menace to their relations with the West. Since the September 11 attacks, the United States had been pressuring Saudi Arabia to remove inciteful texts and imams from their establishment. The Ministry of Islamic Affairs alleges that from 2004 to 2012, 3,500 imams were fired and 20,000 went through retraining (Shane, 2016). Saudi Arabia has also cooperated with the United States in counterterrorism operations. One such Saudi tip foiled a 2010 al-Qaeda plot to blow up two American cargo planes (Shane, 2016).

1.3 ii. Saudi interest to retain its legitimacy in the Islamic world

The main symbolic threat to Saudi Arabia’s Sunni legitimacy in the Islamic world began in 1979 with the Iranian revolution in Tehran that brought to power a radical Shiite government that vies for leadership of global Islam. In driving off this threat, Saudi Arabia depends on the medieval Wahhabi clerical establishment for legitimacy (Shane, 2016).

Despite Saudi Arabia’s alleged efforts in censoring inciteful material since the September 11 attacks, a 2013 study by the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, a State Department contractor, found that much bigoted and violent content in official Saudi textbooks remained (Shane, 2016).

And with the Obama’s recent negotiations that have opened previously sanctioned doors to Iran, the future of Saudi Arabia’s extravagantly funded export of Wahhabism is put into jeopardy with the power of Iran’s Shia leadership rising.

While Saudi Arabia must regain trust with the United States and the West, the kingdom has a conflicting interest in continuing to export its ideology around the world so as to combat Iran as the leader of global Islam (Shane, 2016).

Women’s roles are an important element of Wahhabism and Saudi Arabian ideology. Their roles conflict with other Saudi goals, such as economic development and relations with the West, yet they have taken precedence over these goals. Women’s roles uphold the Wahhabi view, often contradict current Western perspectives, and degrade growth, yet these women’s roles continue to differentiate Saudi Arabia from other countries (though not from other traditional Moslem countries like Afghanistan).

PERCEPTIONS, CONTENT, MESSAGES

(Main perceptions, content, and messages that this state/organization wishes to implant among crowds.)

2.1 Main Messages from Saudi Arabia

The clash of civilizations theory is a continuation of Samuel P. Huntington’s thesis which proposes that globalization is a myth and the world is based on religious and cultural differences. Worldwide media, especially Western media, is predominantly left wing and liberal. The main example for the clash of civilizations theory shows how Qatar invests in Al Jazeera as a tool to promote religious and cultural conflicts - a revolution against the flow of information only from the West to the non-West. This is an information war that parallels the period of the cold war with the “us versus them” mentality, only this time the players are Islam versus Christianity (the West). There are no exchanges of information; there is only rejection (Samuel-Azran, 2016).

One would think that, as an international network similar to CNN, Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English open doors to globalization. In fact, the network closes doors and makes people cling to their existing culture and networks. American networks dropped Al Jazeera America because of a difference in values. Al Jazeera and the West do not accept each other’s perspectives to the degree that not one American network will host Al Jazeera.

The clash of civilizations is a zero sum game where nations are driven by the will to acquire political and economic power rather than the promotion of ethics. France’s ban of the headscarf, and recently the burkini, reflects the clash of civilizations theory as it focuses on religious differences rather than ideological. In fact, the ban was supposed to be universal for religions, as it is technically against all conspicuous religious objects; but Al Jazeera reported it as a clash of civilizations against Muslims.

2.2 Main Messages from the West

The main message from the West is similar. The United States has played “World Police” almost since its creation. The West has supported global partnerships since the second world war, including the European Union and the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and the Olympics and major sports leagues. All nations must submit to global Western rules, or risk sanctions by a host of allies.

With Islamist theocracies taking over more oil-rich countries in Africa and the Middle East, however, and along with the establishment of international Muslim and Saudi human rights groups, medievalist ideology and its funding is changing the dialect of global policing. The United Nations is now held by a majority of Muslim-majority countries, and alliances have shifted. In the same forums where the West have demanded from the world liberalism, tolerance, and equality, these same words are used by Middle East leaders to describe their countries and defend their way of life.

THE TARGET AUDIENCES

(The nature of their target audiences: supporters, opponents, uninvolved (‘objective’).)

3.1 Supporters of Saudi Ideology

3.1 i. Saudi men

Saudi culture elevates the status of men to the hegemony. Just as it is difficult for white people to identify their own entitlement compared to minority groups, it may be difficult for Saudi men to identify their entitlement compared to women. To make it more difficult, equal rights groups in Saudi Arabia are banned and members are imprisoned, tortured, denied access to lawyers, tried unfairly, flogged, and beheaded (Amnesty International, 2016; Human Rights Watch, 2016). For Saudi men, tradition is more important than the economic benefits that women bring to society.

3.1 ii. Saudi women

The enforcers of modesty standards are not only men. “They’re mothers, aunts, sisters, female passerby who feel free to chide women they don’t know. ‘Why are you trying to attract men? Cover!’” (Gorney, 2016).

3.1 iii. Wealthy Saudi women

Historically, it is easier for the wealthy and well connected to change policy. The powerful may use their economic or political leverage to promote demonstrations and hire film crews, and they have more time from financial worry to focus on their goals. Saudi Arabia has a thriving subeconomy of taxis, private drivers, and a recruiting industry that brings in these drivers from abroad, to take care of women’s transportation for those who can afford it (Gorney, 2016). The ban on driving for women in Saudi Arabia hurts poorer and unconnected women the most, as they are stuck in their homes with fewer opportunities and career options. Wealthier women have a greater means to defend the rights of women in Saudi Arabia, but they may have less of a drive to do so with an array of chauffeurs and accessible places and career opportunities at their disposal.

When Saudi women were allowed to vote in 2015, most had trouble acquiring the identification cards to do so. Complaints included difficulties proving identity and residency, as women are not allowed to own property or pay utility bills and must rely on a male relative who is willing to allow her to participate. Another complaint was the limited number of registration centers at the time of the vote. All centers are single sex, with women receiving a third the amount of centers; women without access to a man willing to drive the longer distance - to a registration center that he could not vote in - was difficult (Human Rights Watch, 2015).

Wealthier Saudi women express an interest in driving in the future, but are not hard pressed to urge it to happen. “‘It’s been too politicized,’” says Al-Ahmadi, an affluent Shura-appointed Saudi woman. “‘Do you think we care that we drive? This is not our main goal.’” The main goal, according to her and her friends, are other injustices in the Saudi legal system: the divorce system, the double-standard citizenship rules, the treatment of female workers (Gorney, 2016).

A problem with this mindset is their lower regard for the visibility of driving in their everyday lives. The lost visibility of (a) female drivers behind the wheel and (b) female identity behind their long abayas, their headscarves, and niqabs over their faces, are two of the most important propaganda tactics of the Kingdom because they are a continuous public perpetuation of Wahhabi propaganda by the very citizens that they are attempting to convince. While many Saudi feminists are frustrated by the West’s focus on the driving ban because they feel it ignores the other positives steps that have been made toward equal rights, such as the recent law requiring the shura to be made up of 20% women and the allowance of the female vote in 2015; allowing women to drive would be a big step toward opening other doors of opportunity.

3.1 iv. Saudi “feminists”

Saudi women debate the regulations, including their dress code. National Geographic found, however, that most Saudi feminists debated only the niqab - the tie-on cloth that covers the face. Saudi feminists who debate the entire dress code and other inequalities to Western reporters are few (Gorney, 2016).

Saudi women also use social media to defend their way of life. Photos with fashionable accessories and prettily plated food show their followers “that we’re living a normal life” (Gorney, 2016).

3.1 v. Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa

Most Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa apply Sharia (Islamic law) as their national law, or are fighting to do so. Differences in the interpretation of female modesty vary according to the politics and culture of each location, but most countries look toward Saudi Arabia as inspiration for Islamic practices.

3.2 Opponents of Saudi Ideology

3.2 i. Western human rights groups and Western media

The Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and much of Western media have written reports about Saudi Arabia’s human and women’s rights transgressions.

The European Parliament adopted a resolution that condemns corporal punishment, and urged EU states to “‘reconsider their relationship with Saudi Arabia’” (Human Rights Watch, 2016).

Sweden cancelled its defense cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia this past March after Saudi Arabia blocked Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom from addressing the Arab League when she criticised Saudi human rights abuses (Human Rights Watch, 2016).

3.2 ii. Saudi and Muslim feminists

Saudi journalist Talal Alharbi supports women’s right to drive only to take their children to school or a family member to the hospital, saying “women should accept simple things … this is a wise thing women could do at this stage. Being stubborn won’t support their cause” (The Week, 2016). Saudi citizens who speak out against their government face the death penalty. Alharbi may be sick of the responsibility of driving his female relatives or his children everywhere. Or, Alharbi may support the women’s plight by saying that initiating the request for selfless reasons (to help the patricians in charge) may begin the stage of normalizing driving for Saudi women.

Whatever his intentions, perhaps this is a good idea. If allowed too fast, some Saudi feminists worry, the first women behind the wheel will get harassed by predatory men. A brother of a woman interviewed by National Geographic reportedly said, “‘If I found any lady driving, I would stop her car and force her to get out’” (Gorney, 2016). “Many of the men, not educated,” explains the husband of a law abiding family in Saudi Arabia. “They write this on the social media. ‘We will make you stop driving the cars’” (Gorney, 2016). The path toward equal rights, say Saudi feminists, must be navigated incrementally from within the Kingdom, as its culture is entrenched in traditions of Wahhabism.

There are many areas of sexual inequality in Saudi Arabia. Women’s lack of control in the divorce process lets fathers gain custody of all but very young children. Citizenship rules have a double-standard where gaining citizenship is quick for foreign women who want to marry Saudi men, but almost impossible for foreign men who want to marry Saudi women. Working women receive less pay and longer hours than working men (Gorney, 2016).

Saudi women may care more about other reforms over driving reforms. But the habit of seeing only men behind the wheel is a visible part of the Kingdom’s Wahhabi propaganda mechanism. Women’s rights reforms may arrive quicker if the government did not require visible traditions, like women’s dress code and the driving ban, because this would break the habit of Saudi men and women seeing subjugation as the norm.

But perhaps accidentally, in finding inspiration for feminism and equal rights, Saudi feminists look toward Western ideals. When Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN write reports on Saudi Arabia’s appalling neglect of equal rights, Saudi feminists get inspired - and inspire other Saudi women - which in turn inspires International human rights communities toward their plight. Manal al-Sharif’s filmed drive across Saudi Arabia in 2011 is famous among Saudi women. It became an icon that Saudi women used to visualize themselves driving in the future. The video led to Western focus on Saudi Arabia’s driving ban as the symbol for the Saudi Arabia’s blatant neglect for women’s rights. Western media catapulted the video to international status, and inspired more Saudi women as a result. (Meerkotter, 2014). Saudi women say that it is a certainty that they will be driving sooner or later. They explain that the deceased Abdullah himself urged Saudi women into the workforce through labor reforms, so driving is not far behind: “How can we do a proper job if we must rely on others to get us to work on time?” (Gorney, 2016).

The current administration may not be on board. The deceased King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz’s focus on the kingdom’s economy saw him pushing new education, labor, and voting policies that included women. But he has been succeeded in January 2015 by his brother King Salman bin Abdulaziz, who has done little to actualize many policies of the late King Abdullah regarding women’s rights.

The current rule, however, is no different from Saudi Arabia’s history of rule. The Saudi leadership’s main interests remain in its Wahhabist ideology and relations with the West.

In the age of the internet, these conflicting goals overlap on social media. In 2011, around the time of Manal al-Sharif’s famous Saudi drive, women had posted anti government tweets supporting women’s right to drive (Fisher, 2011). In 2014, the most prominent Sheikh of Saudi Arabia (the Grand Mufti) preached that Twitter was the “source of all evil and devastation,” and that its use “promotes evil and harm” (Lewis, 2016). In promoting Wahhabi propaganda, Saudi Arabia flogs and incarcerates those who use social media to criticize the government. But the censorship becomes self-inflicted: increased smartphone ownership has made Saudi Arabia one of the highest social media markets in the middle east, with the top twitter users being clerics and members of the royal family (BBC, 2015).

While speech is monitored harshly, what may once have been visually rebellious in earlier generations may be considered artistic or harmless nowadays. In this way, Saudi women rebel. They upload pictures of themselves in makeup, showing skin, behind the bars of furniture in the home, and sitting in the driver's seat pretending to drive (Gorney, 2016).

3.3 Uninvolved

The Human Rights Watch reports that the United States does not publicly criticize Saudi human rights violations other than requiring Congressionally-mandated annual reports (Human Rights Watch, 2016).

U.S. shares in the Arabian-American Oil Company (Amarco) from 1944 to 1980, and the United States’ and Saudi Arabia’s joint effort throughout the 1980s to finance the mujahideen against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan are two historical factors owing to little U.S. beratement for Saudi human rights violations before 1990.

After 1990, and especially after the attacks on September 11, 2001, where 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabian, the United States held talks with Saudi leaders to remove hateful ideology from imam teachings and Saudi textbooks. From 2004 to 2012, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs reported that 3,500 imams were fired for refusing to renounce extremist views and that 20,000 went through retraining (Shane, 2016).

The 2013 study of official Saudi textbooks showed that inciteful exclusionism still remained. Seventh graders were being taught to “fight[ing] the infidels to elevate the words of Allah.” Tenth graders learned that Muslims who abandoned Islam were first jailed and then killed. Fourth graders learn that non-Muslims had been “shown the truth but abandoned it, like the Jews,” or had replaced truth with “ignorance and delusion, like the Christians.” Other books taught views hostile to science, modernity, and women’s rights (Shane, 2016).

While the United States has conflicting relations with Saudi Arabia, Obama’s recent Iran Deal is a blow to Saudi-U.S. relations.

At present, the United States remain publicly uninvolved with Saudi Arabia because of conflicting interests: American ideology runs counter to Wahhabism, while its politicians remain interested in Saudi oil.

PROPAGANDA OPERATION

(The structure of their propaganda operation system.)

Saudi ideology is channeled within the country through royal decrees and appointments, the police, and the judiciary. Saudi ideology is channeled without the country through oil-financed funding.

4.1 Saudi Government

There is no separate prime minister or parliament in Saudi Arabia. Absolute control lies with the royal dynasty of al-Saud. Their supremacy is overwhelming. In January 2016 King Salman issued a royal pardon to a large amount of prisoner releases, but excluded the release of any prisoners of conscience held for “crimes related to state security.” In March 2016, the government warned that it would arrest those who criticized its military actions in Yemen. In November 2016, the Ministry of Justice reported that it would sue those who compared Saudi Arabia’s justice system to that operated by ISIS (Amnesty International, 2016).

Saudi men began voting from 2005, and were only allowed to elect officials for municipal council seats - positions of no authority (Gorney, 2016). Saudi women were allowed to vote and stand as candidates in municipal elections for the first time in 2015. The government allowed women to fill up to 20% of municipal seats. The process to register to vote required documents that are illegal for Saudi women to have, and in the end women were elected to 21 of the 2,106 municipal council seats - less than 1% (Amnesty International, 2016). The council women are separated from the men and will not be seen in the judgment process. Saudi women and Western media outlets are optimistic about this progress and see a more egalitarian future despite no signs that Saudi leaders are letting up on its exorbitant funding of Saudi ideology worldwide.

4.2 Saudi Police and Judiciary

Saudi Arabia’s policing and judiciary systems are set up so that government critique is mortal. Saudi Arabia’s religious police, or The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, strictly monitor sex segregation in public and in all workplaces with the exception of hospitals (Manea, 2013). They have the power to detain, berate, and arrest women who they feel do not follow the dress code to their standards.

The Specialized Criminal Court (SCC), otherwise known as the Terrorism Court, is a special court that hears “terrorism-related cases.” The guilty have been beheaded for peaceful criticism of human rights abuses, whether in media interviews, online, or on social media. Many trials in this court result in death sentences (Amnesty International, 2016; Human Rights Watch, 2016).

The Supreme Court holds similar trials, and convicts perpetrators of protest movements or setting up liberal websites for reasons of “insulting religious authorities” (Human Rights Watch, 2016). Defendant activists many times have been under 18 when arrested, and have reported they were tortured into “confessing” (Amnesty International, 2016).

Other courts have sentenced citizens to death over apostasy and blasphemy of the Muslim faith. An appeals court sentenced and fined a man on the grounds of the country’s anti-cybercrime law for using social media to practice homosexuality (Amnesty International, 2016).

Arbitrary arrests and detentions occur frequently as well, where detainees are held without charge or trial for long periods, are interrogated, and are denied access to a lawyer. Even though this practice goes against Saudi Arabia’s Law of Criminal Procedures (and international law), it occurs often (Amnesty International, 2016).

4.3 Saudi Funding and Global Export of Wahhabist Ideology

The Saudi government and royal family have spent tens of billions of dollars exporting Wahhabism to non-Muslim countries since their exploration of trillions of dollars of oil reserves half a century ago in 1938. They have build mosques, cultural centers, schools, and universities in nearly every country with a Muslim population. Funding from Saudi charities and Saudi-sponsored organizations, including the World Muslim League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, and the International Islamic Relief Organization provide “the hardware of impressive edifices and the software of preaching and teaching” around the globe (Shane, 2016).

MAIN METHODOLOGIES

(Main methodologies of their propaganda and/or psychological warfare: rallies, speeches, leaflets, printed media, audio, television, social media, etc.)

5.1 Main Methodologies of Saudi Propaganda

Saudi propaganda is spread mainly through its laws and traditions, and by exorbitant overseas funding.

5.1 i. Laws and traditions

Over two and a half centuries of Wahhabism has established Saudi traditions bereft of women’s rights in almost every area of social, economic, and political life. No laws prohibit domestic violence or violence against women, and if a woman reports a rape she is also punished (Bryan, 2012). Women are sold into marriage. Women require a guardian to set foot outside their house. Women are not permitted to drive. Divorce and child custody favors the men unless the child is an infant (Bryan, 2012; Friedland, 2014; Meerkotter, 2014; Amnesty International, 2016; Gorney, 2016; Human Rights Watch, 2016). Saudi policing and courts back female subjugation, and those who criticise the government are incarcerated, tortured, and beheaded (Amnesty International, 2016). Saudi laws and punishments make it almost impossible for Saudi dissenters to nudge the entrenched ideology, even with Western ideology and social media at their disposal.

This rape victim was supposed to receive 90 lashes for being alone with a man to whom she was not related, but received 200 when it was found that she had gone to the media (Baker, 2007). This is a famous case in international media, but King Abdullah’s royal pardon in response to international criticism did not change the standing law to differentiate between rape and adultery.

5.1 ii. Funding the global export of Wahhabism

Additionally, five decades of Saudi Arabia’s oil-financed proselytizing to hundreds of non-Muslim majority countries has fortified millions of Muslims worldwide with literalist and medieval teachings of the Quran. Global Muslim support of the kingdom’s ideology has increased exponentially, and non-Muslim and Muslim alike are seduced by the promise of a better afterlife than their current life on Earth. Terrorist Islamist groups, including the IS, are brimming with Western recruits because of Saudi funding for Wahhabism.

5.2 Main Methodologies of Western Propaganda

The main methodology of Western propaganda is spread through the internet and social media. While Islamic terrorist groups use the same forums to incite global attacks, and Saudi Arabia uses social media to promote Wahhabism to its citizens, the internet and social media remain the strongest aggregator of Western influence worldwide. Professional media spread through social channels and pirating forums is well made, clear, and holds authority for Westerners and non-Westerners alike. Local independent players have power through social media as seen by the revolutionary eruptions during the Arab Spring: Demonstrators demanded elections - a Western concept - and found support through like-minded locals and Western professional media outlets who picked up their stories. Similarly, Saudi Arabia’s #Women2Drive campaign on social sites was picked up by Western professional media outlets as a sign of Saudi deviance and of desiring Western ideals such as freedom of movement and freedom of expression.

The concept of the internet and social media, where the people are given the power to report and consume, maneuvers Western ideals of egalitarianism and freedom of expression onto a broader global audience. Further, Saudi women who post pictures of themselves in abayas, headscarves, and niqabs make the West more aware of their dress code and second-class status in their own country:

Saudi women who post pictures of themselves without or with less of these coverings, or with makeup, are essentially rebelling against their government:

IMAGES AND SYMBOLS

(Major symbols, stereotypes, and images - and the content they are aimed to present/convey.)

6.1 Saudi Visual Content

The royal dynasty of house Saud enforces the strict traditional laws of Wahhabism. Every day women cover their entire persons and walk in shame of their sex. Saudi citizens see a daily reminder of women’s second class status.

Other daily reminders include only male drivers behind the wheel and segregated lines, shops, clubs, office space, university rooms, and other areas of public life where men and women might mingle. The “men only” signs, “families only” signs, and queue separations are regular symbols of women’s inequalities within the kingdom:

The absence of women at sports clubs and swimming pools is another important symbol of Saudi paternalism.

6.2 The West’s Visual Content

6.2 i. The West shows women’s rights violations in Saudi Arabia

Western media shows how Saudi women are perpetual minors in a system of gender apartheid (Manea, 2013). Women are forbidden from obtaining a passport, marrying, travelling, accessing higher education, undertaking medical procedures, or obtaining a voter's license without the approval of a male guardian (Human Rights Watch, 2016). A 2013 law criminalizing domestic violence is unimplemented in practice, and domestic abuse remains endemic (Amnesty International, 2016).

6.2 ii. The West shows Saudi women’s resistance to their oppressive system

Social media has lowered the threshold on access to government critique. Saudi women’s written posts supporting the #Women2Drive campaign (pictured previously) was reported in Western media along with Manal al-Sharif’s self-recorded drive and other Saudi women’s selfies in support of the campaign. Further images of Saudi women’s resistance are pictured in section 5.2.

6.2 iii. The West shows Saudi women who are satisfied with their system or who are optimistic about the small or hypothetical future improvements in their system.

Western media celebrated Saudi women’s first vote and the election of women running for municipal positions in 2015.

Western media also celebrated the first female Saudi Olympic athletes in the 2012 games, even though most of them trained, studied, or were brought up outside Saudi Arabia. The Saudi athlete pictured below, Sarah Attar, was brought up in California. It is rare for women to access gyms and sports clubs in Saudi Arabia; the female athletes representing Saudi Arabia may be a ploy to appease the international community (Staufenberg, 2016).

A Western reporter from National Geographic attempts a positive angle at Saudi ideology:

Public mingling of unrelated men and women is illegal in Saudi Arabia. Venues are marked by symbolic barriers including walls and signs. Western media is hopeful about small improvements in this system, some of which include private women’s activity classes and segregated women’s education. Because the framework of Saudi education is tailored to reinforce discriminatory gender roles as suitable to what authorities consider “women’s nature and future role as wives and mothers,” Western media finds that a women’s class on economics is modern (Manea, 2013). But sex segregation undermines the quality of education that women receive, including unequal facilities that are poorer in academic opportunities.

Western media quotes Saudi men and women who support gender inequalities even if they have selective gripes. But these men and women are bombarded with centuries of traditions of Saudi propaganda and the threat of mortal punishment for government criticism. Western media reports Saudi propaganda and the West reads it.

Additionally, Western media outlets want to retain access to the kingdom. Western media outlets that push for equal rights, such as Amnesty International, have been banned from entering Saudi Arabia. While media outlets must be judged by the country they come from, as leaders may refuse access to private media organizations at will, the reports of media outlets must also be judged by the countries they enter. Western media outlets’ top priority is to sell, and that involves retaining access to countries and world leaders.

IMPACT ON TARGET AUDIENCES

(An assessment of the propaganda's impact on different target audience.)

7.1a Saudi Propaganda’s Impact in Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, and Africa

With the Sunni majority countries in the Middle East looking toward Saudi Arabia for Islamic theocratic legitimacy and diplomatic and financial support, the kingdom remains stalwart in its Wahhabist laws while attempting to maintain good relations with Western leaders.

This past year, the rupture of sanctions on Shia Iran and its rise in the Western world poses a mortal threat to the Sunni kingdom’s control over global Islam. Saudi Arabia will contract its hold on Wahhabist laws and traditions while doubling its efforts in the global export of its ideology. Women’s rights in the kingdom may stall or regress.

With the United States and EU beginning to back the Shia republic over its own kingdom, Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies look toward Russian, Asian, and Israeli partners. While Western human rights groups will remain on its heels, their tenacity will face Iran. While Iran distributes billions of dollars worth of arms to Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Taliban, Saudi Arabia will continue its export of billions of dollars worth of Wahhabist propaganda that has enabled Islamist terrorist groups such as ISIS, Boko Haram, al Qaeda, and the Taliban to recruit more suicidal martyr hopefuls than any other propaganda machine in history. The efflux of exclusionist propaganda and weapons from Saudi Arabia and Iran will support medieval volatility in the Middle East and harbor no respite for women’s rights.

7.1b Saudi Propaganda’s Impact on the West

Over half a century of billions of dollars of oil-funded Saudi propaganda in the West and around the world have built safe spaces in almost every country to foster an ideology Wahhabism.

The literalist reading of the Quran commands a priority to Allah and promises an afterlife full of virgins who will never defecate or bleed. It elucidates the paternalistic, exclusionary, and inciteful ideals that one must hold to please Allah and reach this afterlife.

To succumb to the complete package is utterly logical. Those who join Islamic terrorist groups become automatic leaders of science and history through knowing what is written in the Quran. Violence against unbelievers is the holiest thing that one can do - the deed that Allah loves the most - and attacking other human beings is no longer shameful. One who has never been an expert in anything could read one book and run around with weapons and become a spiritual ninja leader with a worthy cause. Women to whom one may have always been too shy to talk to and who could once have rejected you are automatic sex slaves in this reality. The worst thing that can happen is the best. Dying in pursuit of Jihad is the ultimate thing that could happen because martyrs receive the highest rewards in the afterlife - the afterlife being the sole purpose of this life.

Saudi ideology used by Islamist terrorist groups like ISIS bring mobs of recruits from the West. The thousands of Saudi-funded Islamic mosques, cultural centers, schools, universities, and other safe havens and proselytization centers around the Western world cultivate generations of children who are taught intolerance of those of a different religion or sect. Living alternatively, such as in Western society, is a slight to Allah and begs retribution.

7.2a Western Propaganda’s Impact on Saudi Arabia

7.2a i. Internet and social media

The main impact of the West on Saudi Arabia is bringing modernity through the internet and social media. It is difficult to visualize an alternative way of life without knowing the options. Before the internet, Saudi women were exposed to the kingdom’s propaganda with no way to view Western media or comment. In recent years, the ubiquity of mobile technology has allowed these things, as well as allowed for independent media production. Unlike in North Korea where citizens are blocked from the internet or from owning smartphones, Saudi women have access to Western ideals. Some sites or types of media may be illegal to access and deemed evil and immoral by top clerics, but they are accessible.

In terrorism courts, Saudi citizens are put to death for criticising the government, whether in blogs, on social media, or by being a member of an organization that espouses human or women’s rights. One way to speak out and circumvent incarceration is through citizen-produced images. Women are not allowed to show skin or wear makeup in public, but they get away with it on anonymous social media. Western media reports this, allowing a global spotlight on Saudi women’s disobedience. This in turn inspires more Saudi women to question and see that others feel similarly. Manal al-Sharif’s famous self-filmed drive across Saudi Arabia was picked up by Western media and rebroadcast to a larger audience, inspiring the #Women2Drive campaign and an overwhelming degree of support from Saudi women.

7.2a ii. Study abroad opportunities

King Abdullah’s education policies before the end of his reign had also exposed Saudi women to Western propaganda. His royal scholarship program for study abroad in 2005 included female students. By 2014, over 35,000 Saudi women were enrolled in foreign graduate or undergraduate programs, half of them in the United States (Gorney, 2016). When they returned, they brought with them an impatience for change.

7.2b The West’s impact on the West regarding Saudi Arabia

Western media reports on poor human rights in Saudi Arabia, but they point the blame to accidents in history and show minor women’s rights developments as a ray of hope. Fingers do not point toward the Quran or other Islamic texts that Wahhabists interpret literally. While a similar pattern of human rights abuses appear in most Muslim-majority countries across the Middle East and Africa, fingers point toward Saudi Arabia instead of at Islamic texts. Critique over the Bible occurs regularly in the West, but critique over the Quran incurs the label of Islamophobia and a threat of mortal retribution. The West is fearful of sparking the anger of violent Islamic extremists, and are silenced by terror. Christians rue denouncing Islamic texts when their own espouse bigotry. The West’s and Western media’s blindness to the cause of Islamist paternalistic cultures and inciteful exclusionism as being fundamental to its texts curtains the visualization of correct solutions. Western leaders who call Islamic terror attacks “senseless violence” close their ears to the reasons the attackers repeat over and over again, that in fact make so much sense in Islamic texts and Wahhabist ideology if the West would only listen.

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