Friday, May 03, 2013

My letter of advise to the Saudi King

This is the "letter of advice" to the Saudi King that I had posted here because Al-Akhbar did not publish.  Arwa has kindly translated it:

"A Letter of Advice to the Saudi King
By As’ad Abu Khalil
Translated by Arwa

Since Arab media grovel to oil and gas rulers, both presidents and kings – we haven’t yet forgotten the Qadhafi and Saddam grip on the media in the seventies and eighties – I thought of addressing advice and guidance to the Saudi king. Everyone addresses the Saudi king, so I might as well address you too. While historically Arabs used to give a camel in return for advice, it costs a barrel or two of oil these days.

I would’ve liked to address you as servant to the US and the Israeli enemy but I reconsidered. I thought about it until I remembered that you, king of the House of Saud, who gained his crown and throne from colonialism, are illiterate and ignorant and you cannot even pronounce correctly. How could I write to you when you can’t even read well? How could I write to you when you don’t read at all, and when you do read you trip and stumble more than once in a single sentence? Even if you pronounce correctly, you don’t understand what you read. How can I write to you while you are fixated on TV screens night and day, as Barbara Walters reported. Of course, to be fair to you, you read the obscene books and magazines you can get your hands on. This is your true library, “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.” However, you, like the rest of the House of Saud princes, are a graduates of the “Princes' School,” so you can’t faulted. This Princes' School has more pornographic movies than books. It’s the alma mater of Fahd, Muqrin, Nawwaf, yourself and the rest of your vile group. You, monarch of Saudi Arabia, and your brothers graduated from the Princes' School where your teachers were unable to teach you, so you’ve spent your time on play and entertainment and a voracious appetite for pornography. You, sons of Abdulaziz - the founder as you call him, except that he founded a kingdom of oppression and enslavement, which has gained the pleasure of the west because he has offered his people’s resources to the colonizer to seize as it wishes at exorbitant prices unavailable to poor countries – not one of you has been educated. Your sons and grandchildren’s education is not much better. Some House of Saud members borrow poetry, i.e., they buy it with money and regurgitate it as if it was the product of their own dull intellects.

I thought about writing to you before recalling that you receive only letters of groveling, cheap praise and requests for gifts from treasures that you took by force and with the assistance of the colonizer that selected you for your stupidity and ignorance, not for your education and astuteness. How can I write to one who is not used to receiving advice? How can I write to one who is used to receiving adulation, flattery and empty praise from the Lebanese? I recall how Strida Gaegae, who pretends she stands for women’s rights, followed you around the republic palace to introduce herself to you. She was only interested in your money. And do you have anything besides money? What can you offer besides money considering you have no wisdom, knowledge, insight or opinion. You receive your orders from the assistant to the American deputy secretary of state, who goes to Riyadh where he is received like a hero since he is sent by your American commander. In his book on his experience in power, George W. Bush wrote about your decision-making process. He wrote that when you visited his ranch in Texas you were mildly critical of the American administration for its absolute support to the Israeli enemy during the second intifada. He drove you in his car around his ranch and a goose happened to pass in front of the car. You motioned to Bush to stop and said that the goose is a sign from God and that you would improve your relationship with the US and forgive Bush’s absolute support for Israel because you received a sign from God through the goose. You expect me to write a letter of advice to someone who receives divine signs through geese indicating solidifying Saudi-American relations? If I had a ranch I’d send you a goose to address you since you seem to understand geese better than you understand people, especially since you seem interested in the news of animals. A few years ago you started a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council by informing your colleagues about a goat in India that responds to gestures by moving its head. How can I communicate to one who communicates with goats and geese? How?

Should I write to you in the name of Arabism? Why are you associated with Arabism in some writers’ minds? What’s your connection to Arabism, considering the Arabic language is as difficult for you as a foreign language? You’re worthless in Arab history. You’ve used Arabic only for cheap opportunism over the years to serve the sectarianism that the House of Saud has ignited on behalf of the American-Israeli alliance with the goal of undermining those who carry arms to resist the Israeli enemy. You represent Arabs? Your only connection to Arabism is your marriages to women from various Arab countries. That’s your sole connection to Arabism. You and your family have fought and aborted all unity projects in the Arab world. You fought Abdul Nasser on behalf of the US and Israel because he wanted to spread nationalist ideology (notwithstanding the shortcomings of the Nasserite nationalist regime). You represent disunity, fragmentation and disintegration in the Arab world. You’ve always supported separatists in the Arab populace. To curb Arab unity, you established organizations of religious cooperation. Your religious projects were simply an opportunity to spread extremism, fundamentalism and obscurantism and to fight progressive socialist ideas during the Cold War decades. How can I address you in Arabism when you funded and armed Arabism’ enemies? You’ve supported royal and separatist wars in Yemen over the decades and used Israeli weaponry in the Yemen war against Abdul Nasser and the republicans in the sixties.

Though I’ve never claimed piety, should I address you in the name of religion though you represent religion only superficially and adhere to extremist interpretations? You’ve promoted religion’s worst representations to redeem your violation of the rules you impose, the piety directives issued by Muhammad bin Abdulwahhab. Should I address you religiously although you manufacture religious hatred and sectarianism? How could I address you religiously when your definition of jihad is defense of American and Israeli interests? How do I address you religiously when you trade with religion? You secretly perform what you deny the people publicly and privately. How can I address you religiously when you call on Israel and the US to rewrite holy texts in the service of American and Israeli occupation?

Should I address you in the name of humanity when you represent repression and brutality? You behead people in public squares, so what do you know of humanity? What do you know about humanity when you wage wars on the poor on the US’s behalf? Have you ever seen an American war that you didn’t feed with money, oil and religion? How can I address those who devote their resources on “grave sins” denied to your people while you spend fortunes on western royal families? How can I, in the name of humanity, address those who place women on the level of slaves and concubines? You’re looking into the possibility of amending the kingdom’s penal code to permit execution by bullets instead of beheadings, not by driven by mercy but due to a shortage of sword executioners these days.

Should I address you, as others have done, out of concern for Lebanon? You’re interested in Lebanon and the ills that befall it everyday, which are your own design and execution. You’re concerned for Lebanon, and you’re the same distance away from all Lebanese as Prince Muqrin said during his warm welcome of Lebanese economic delegations. Why was your concern absent when the Israeli enemy destroyed the country while the House of Saud, all of them, supported the aggression and awaited the elimination of the resistance? Why didn’t you show concern for Lebanon throughout its years of civil war when the House of Saud funded fascists militias or Walid Junblat’s militias? How can I address you in the name of concern for Lebanon when you’re pushing it towards civil war as you’re doing in Syria, where you’ve funded the Asad regime over the decades more than the Iranian regime has, and as you did in Yemen and elsewhere in the world like Nicaragua? How can I address you in the name of concern for the Lebanese people when you detain the Lebanese community as hostages in the kingdom of repression and you threaten to expel them if Lebanon doesn’t completely submit to the House of Saud’s policies towards Israel? In the past you’ve expelled the Yemeni community because Yemen didn’t support the US war in Iraq in 1990, just as the House of Sabah in Kuwait expelled the Palestinian community, which had built and enriched Kuwait, and confiscated its property.

Do I address you in the name of morality though you have no morality aside imposing a medieval, reactionary system and you prohibit rituals that don’t align with your backwards, destructive theology? Which morality, House of Saud? You live in blatant contradiction with the morality that you impose with the sword. How do I address you in the name of freedom when you’re hostile to freedom since taking power? Do I address you in the name of dignity when you, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, receive marching orders from an assistant to the American deputy secretary of state as he passes in Riyadh? You preach morality while Saudi princes live and die at gambling tables and at nightclubs in the west and the brothels of Europe and Las Vegas. Your relationship to Palestine is akin to your relationship to morality: you’re as far as could be from the former and the latter. No, I won’t write you and won’t address you for as long as I live. But I may send you a goose to engage you. Let me remind you that fornication with the goose is religiously prohibited. You may see in the goose another divine sign. "