OdishaLIVE Bureau
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, is on a path to reform the old traditions and laws of the land by introducing changes that attempt to counter the dogmatic and quaint laws of the country. Aided by the support of his father King Salman, the crown prince seems to have found little objection to his proposals though some of his supporters were detained during protest. The gulf country is bracing for some huge changes as the crown prince announces his Vision 2030.
The crown prince is steering the gulf country across new horizon by introducing rule changes such as holding music concerts, film screenings and women being allowed to drive on streets. The prince was recently in news for vowing a return to “moderate Islam.” He also suggested that the previous generation had turned the country down a problematic path and that it is time to let go of such regressive practices.
Speaking about his Vision 2030, at a conference in a luxury Saudi Arabia hotel, he remarked “We only want to go back to what we were, moderate Islam that is open to the world, open to all religions. We will not waste 30 years of our lives in dealing with fanatic ideas and we will abolish them today.”
Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman is in favour of opening movies and musical concerts to the general public and he is also credited as the force behind the King’s decision to allow women drivers to drive cars from 2018 onwards. The crown prince further wants to be independent of the petrodollars coming the country’s way and aims to attract investors by calling for a judicious Islam and attracting global audience.
Prince Mohammed further plans to build a Six Flags theme park and a semi-autonomous Red Sea tourist destination where the strict rules on women’s dress would be unlikely to apply. Also, Females have greater access to sports, the powers of the orthodox religious police have been shortened and restrictions on gender isolation are being eased under his guardianship.
His decision to do so is seen as a futuristic move because half of Saudi Arabia’s 20 million population is below the age of 25, and numerous young Saudis will be entering the workforce in the coming decade. Hence the government is urgently trying to create more jobs and remedy the grievances that sparked uprisings in other Arab countries where unemployment is rising and citizens have little stake in policy making.
However, one must not confuse the prince’s oration skills with overnight transparency in governance as his promotion of Vision 2030does not mean that Saudi Arabia is moving toward greater liberalism, democracy, pluralism or freedom of speech as the monarchy still does not grant licenses to non-Muslim houses of worship and also curbs on Shia Muslim citizens.
Lastly, the biggest challenge for prince Muhammad Bin Salman is that he is engaging a Saudi public that is inherently religious and conservative. So, he still needs public support from the state’s top clerics in order to position his reforms as Islamic and religiously permissible and these are the same clerics who vouch for the discriminatory practises. Yet the silver lining is that in the monarchy, the king is the final authority on most matters and the public has been accepting the changes.
