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| The Kingdom Breaks Through the (Smoke) Screen | |
 by Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, October 21, 2007
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(Welcome, Stumblers!)
The Kingdom, still playing in major movie houses, may be the most important recent contribution to the public discussion of U.S.-Saudi relations. Surprisingly and even hearteningly for those who follow developments in the desert monarchy, the film begins with the “W” word – Wahhabi – referring to the ultrafundamentalist Sunni Muslim sect that provides ideological support for the Riyadh regime.
American media, guided by academic Middle East Studies experts, have assiduously evaded discussion of Wahhabism, its murderous career over the past 250 years of Islamic history, and its complicity in incitement, recruitment, and financing of terrorism in Iraq today. Western journalists, academics, and politicians have even chimed in with Saudi claims that Wahhabism does not exist – only Isla
m, or “Salafism,” an abuse of the Islamic vocabulary. Wahhabis call themselves “Salafis” for the same reason Stalinists called themselves “progressives;” because when they are open about their affiliations and goals, they are repudiated.
The Kingdom is directed by Peter Berg, better known as an actor, with co-production by cinema genius Michael Mann (my favorite of Mann’s earlier films is the 1995 classic Heat, with Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, followed by Collateral in 2004.) Jamie Foxx, who costarred in Collateral, is the lead in The Kingdom, as an FBI agent who, by means best described as “direct action,” takes over investigation of a terrorist bombing at a compound for Westerners on Saudi territory.
The picture has flaws – some of its Arabic translations are inaccurate. It is more than a bit difficult to imagine an American investigative team charging through Wahhabiland in such an energetic fashion. But The Kingdom has all the basic facts about the Saudi environment right, beginning with its references to Wahhabism. It correctly identifies the Saudi website alsaha.com as a major jihadist communications outlet that uses up-to-date technology to support the terrorist offensive. And most important, it includes an oleaginous American diplomat (Jeremy Piven) as reluctant to offend the Saudi authorities, and the armed bodies of men protecting the Saudi order as mainly ambivalent about extremism, when not sympathetic to it.
The Kingdom is a classic action epic, about which it is superfluous to analyze plot and characterization. Bombs blast away and guns go off, blood splashes in all directions, Foxx is tough and resourceful, a female FBI special agent played by Jennifer Garner is almost as tough, and an apparently Jewish special agent (Jason Bateman), is briefly kidnapped and threatened with beheading in front of a jihadist videocam.
But even with its improbabilities and other shortcomings, right now The Kingdom has almost the character of a documentary reportage rather than a dramatic film. Last week, a few days after seeing it, I attended a Capitol Hill press conference on the Saudi state held by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) – and had the sense I was walking into a scene left out of the movie.
On Monday, October 22, a new anti-Wahhabi coalition of American Muslims (www.al-baqee.org) will hold a demonstration at the Royal Saudi Embassy in Washington, protesting against Wahhabi terrorism in Iraq, and condemning the support for such atrocities originating south of the Iraqi-Saudi border. I am scheduled to speak at the rally, and plan to end my remarks by exhorting all present to see The Kingdom and urge others to do the same. Non-Muslims can hardly imagine the liberating effect of the seeing the truth about Wahhabism on the big screen.
I would close with my only caveat about the film: its ending proposes, Hollywood-style, moral equivalence between the combatants on both sides of the terror war. But no parallel, much less an attitude of neutrality in the conflict with the Wahhabis, is acceptable. America seeks to protect innocent people and has become a powerful ally of those who advocate pluralism in Islam; Wahhabis murder and lie without restraint. The main Wahhabi lie is the claim that Riyadh, the Wahhabi capital, and the rest of Saudi territory, aside from the Hejaz region of west Arabia including the cities of Mecca and Medina, are holy Islamic territory. Riyadh and the Wahhabi hinterland of Najd are not and never were sacred to Muslims; Najd was cursed by the Prophet Muhammad himself as a source of “earthquakes, conflicts, and the horns of Satan.”
For non-Muslims who will not easily contend with the learning curve required to understand the much-evoked “battle for the soul of Islam,” as well as for Muslims thirsty for truth about the crisis in the global umma, The Kingdom is a welcome relief from polite dissimulation about Saudi Arabia.
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ALSO IN JEWCY
Ali Eteraz on Saudi Arabia:
Other Shvitz bloggers on Saudi Arabia:
- Challenging the Religious Police
- Jihadi Jonestown
- Fun with Pig and Ape
- Abdallah Will Be Joining Us Shortly, As Soon As He's Done Executing His Prisoner.
Stephen Suleyman Schwartz has covered the Saudi peninsula before in "The Walter Duranty of Saudi Arabia."
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Stephen Schwartz is the Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington, DC and author of the bestselling The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role In Terrorism (Doubleday). He was born in 1948, and More... |
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frankenjew20817
I felt a cathartic, even
I felt a cathartic, even exhilarating, thrill watching FBI agents blast away the jihadis and their agents. It looked perfectly justified. I thought, Amen, to the words "when I find the people who did this, I don't even care to ask one question." Like Foxx's character, I understood.
Dhimmi Carter
This movie is racist because
This movie is racist because it makes the Saudis look bad. They arent. They are the leading donors to the Carter Center. They should make a movie about Israel demonstrating the fact that it is the major cause of war on the planet. The so-called slaughters in Darfur and the Sudan are childs play compared to the Israeli threat to cut off power in Gaza. Already the price of Viagra has tripled in Gaza City, and this is punishment because Viagra is an essential micronutrient.
God
Ban
Ban all religion, and reduce Israel to ashes (including a few other states) - then there might actually be peace.
Gregory C.
I'll ignore the provocative
I'll ignore the provocative quote from the presumptious imbecile calling himself "God" along with whatever-the-hell the previous poster had to say.
I think The Kingdom, for an action film in particular, did a great job of conveying the repressive and alien features of the Saudi world, and also in avoiding the frequent Hollywood need to generalize portrayals of terrorists and fanatics, avoiding giving them specifc cultural attributes, etc. Even many Gulf Arabs see the Saudis and their political order as particularly disturbed, so I've found it amusing when so many American academics, businessmen, and filmakers gloss over the obvious...
Anonymous
'They are the leading
'They are the leading donors to the X X' didn't the mafia in the US use the same cover to seem legitimate?
cyberchip
My Kingdom, My Kingdom for a Horse
“The Kingdom” (the movie) portrays the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) with as much realism as Tombstone, AZ depicts the modern American West. The fact that it was filmed in Phoenix, LA and Washington DC might account for some of this.
It’s a great action film…..and if that’s what you like (I do), you’ll have a ball. If you’re looking for some insight into the realities of KSA, you won’t find it here.
Just for starters, “American compounds” housing dozens of Americans and their families, have long since ceased to exist (since at least 1985). Even in their heyday, the only truly “American” compound of any size was the ARAMCO (Arabian American Oil Company….now officially known as SAUDI ARAMCO) compound in Dhahran in the Eastern Province.
Although the place is still open for business, at least 90% of current employees are other than American and other than Western (although a little known secret is that the important “strings” are still pulled from Houston).
Wahhabism has had a bad press. By this I mean that the Western media has condemned it for the wrong reasons. It has also misrepresented its true status within the Kingdom.
The fact is the Wahhabi movement continues to exist at the pleasure of the royal family. Were the royals ever to be really threatened in any way by the religious “right”, they would be exterminated within days if not hours. And everyone knows it.
The royals portray the Wahhabis as a powerful element within the Kingdom with which they must deal. But this is simply not true. This illusion was created and is kept alive as a ruse to baffle and confuse the West. That the Wahhabis have any more strength or influence in the Kingdom than, say, the LAPD has in Los Angeles, is a gross exaggeration of the reality.
The myth of a powerful Wahhabi movement at “odds” with modernization and “sharing’ political power in the Kingdom with the royals is just that – a myth. I grant that this was the case in the early days of the Kingdom, but it hasn’t been the case for a long time now.
It’s all “lip service”, smoke and mirrors now.
Were Osama Bin Laden ever to come to power in the Kingdom (a laughable proposition), he would do away not only with the royals but would also hunt down and dispose of every single Wahhabi he could find.
Another myth about the Kingdom is that it is fabulously wealthy. This is pure fantasy although I admit it depends on how you define “wealth”. That there are wealthy Saudi families and individuals can’t be denied…..but there are wealthy Bolivian families and individuals too. (The Patinios – the Tin Kings - for one). Name any tin-horn country in any continent and you’ll find rich people there (don’t forget Imelda Marcos’s 2000 pairs of shoes).
In fact, the “Kingdom” is simply another 3d world country with not much of a future, I’m afraid. That there are billions of dollars in oil revenue entering the country almost daily is true, but what is also true is that most of it is used up almost immediately to pay for all the conveniences of modern life. Since hardly a single item is actually produced or manufactured in the Kingdom, that means that all that “wealth” leaves the Kingdom almost as soon as it’s deposited in banks.
If the wealth of a country is defined as the “cash” that is flowing in and out, then I guess KSA is a wealthy country. But this is a very narrow and unsatisfying definition of wealth in my estimation. If a broader definition of wealth is used, KSA is actually an embarrassingly poor country.
And so on. This is the reality (or a small part of it), none of which is even hinted at in the movie. Just so you know.
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