By Kenan Malik
How ironic ,the leaders of the free world who recently attended the freedom of speech Paris march, even some who missed, are headed to Saudi Arabia with their heads bowed to pay respect to a leader who despised freedom of speech and Western way of life. Oil is thicker than blood. A worth reading article by Kenan Malik. ( F. Sheikh)
The world has lost a revered leader’, claimed US Secretary of John Kerry on the death last week of Saudi King Abdullah, a ‘man of wisdom and vision’, in Kerry’s words. David Cameron praised his ‘commitment to peace’ and ordered flags to be flown at half mast on government buildings. Christine Legarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, even hailed him as a proto-feminist, a ‘strong advocate of women’.
In reality, the man that virtually every Western leader has bent over backwards to praise over the past few days was a vicious tyrant, the absolute ruler of a kingdom that practiced torture and judicial murder, crushed any opposition, flogged and beheaded dissidents, imposed sharia law in the most brutal fashion, and exported jihadism across the world. He governed over a kingdom in which women need the approval of a male relative or guardian to marry, open a bank account, obtain a passport, attend university or to see a doctor, even for serious medical emergencies; a kingdom in which a woman must have a male chaperone any time she leaves home and is forbidden from driving. One would have thought that even the head the IMF should be able to see that this does not amount to ‘strong advocacy for women’.
Apologists for the late King Abdullah claim that he was a ‘reformer’ because he sought to bring about change slowly against the entrenched forces of the clergy and of culture. In fact, both the ‘cultural traditions’ and the ‘traditional’ religious norms of Saudi Arabia have only been established over the past two centuries, created, or appropriated, by the Saud clan, as a means of consolidating and maintaining its power.
https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/how-a-bunch-of-vicious-chancers-became-men-of-wisdom/