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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Saudi Arabia
Index
The successful forging of the different tribes of the Arabian
Peninsula into a coherent nation during the first half of the
twentieth century must be credited to Abd al Aziz and the House
of Saud. If there were one singular element in Saudi society that
explained the relative stability during the first sixty years of
the kingdom, it was the allegiance that had been exhibited by a
preponderant segment of the population to the Al Saud. Internal
order and the continued existence of the monarchy, however, did
not come automatically to the country simply because of the
leadership and charisma of Abd al Aziz. Of great significance
during his reign was the establishment of the country's basic
security forces and a code of behavior intended to instill fear
and respect for the law and obedience to it.
With its tasks of preventing intertribal warfare and
protecting the House of Saud from any possible threat, the
national guard has been the primary agency for upholding the
security of the government. The loyalty of the guard has,
however, been more than blind allegiance to the person of the
king. In 1964, when the kingdom was in trouble under King Saud,
the guard supported Faisal and the Al Saud in deposing the
monarch, acting as an instrument in a controlled process of
succession. Under its commander, Abd Allah, one of the powerful
princes in the kingdom, the national guard remained an important
factor in national stability in 1992. It was, however,
increasingly being supplanted by more modern agencies of control
under the Ministry of Interior that had the king's full brother,
Amir Nayif, at its head and another full brother, Amir Ahmad ibn
Abd al Aziz, as the deputy minister.
Traditionally, the allegiance of the people has been to the
tribe and to the extended family
(see
Diversity and Social Stratification;
Cultural Homogeneity Values
, ch. 2). One of Abd
al Aziz's truly significant accomplishments was to implant the
concept of allegiance to the House of Saud and by extension to
the government and the judicial system. Also important was the
recognition by the Saudis of their ethnic identity as an Arab
people and their religious identity with Wahhabi Islam. Each
aspect of a person's day-to-day conduct could be categorized as
being within the bounds of acceptable behavior or outside those
bounds, with no distinction between the secular and the religious
spheres. Few Saudis chose to live outside the law, and their
basic attitudes supported an orderly society.
In theory, all persons, including the king and foreigners,
were equal before the law and subject to both the sharia and law
by decree. In practice, however, members of the royal family and
other leaders have rarely been brought to public trial. Cases
involving foreigners have often been handled outside the court
system, frequently by deportation.
Data as of December 1992
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