But those sayings of the Prophet (called Hadith), he explained, do not all have equal value as sources of law, and he said he is bound by only a very small number whose reliability, 1,400 years later, is unimpeachable. Soudi often goes out for fancy dinners where she eats three-course meals and drinks gold cocktails Credit: TikTok/@soudiofarabia/. (The projected cost is in the hundreds of billions of dollars, a huge sum even for Saudi Arabia.) Today, we are almost 17. He noted strong non-oil GDP growth, and reeled off statistics about foreign direct investment, Saudi overseas investment, and the share of world trade that passes through Saudi waters. Many secular Arab leaders before him have made the same dark implication: Support everything I do, or I will let slip the dogs of jihad. Adam Sandler is Jewish. But it is pointless to consider policy in a state of childlike fantasy, as if it were possible to conjure some new Saudi monarch by closing your eyes and wishing him into existence. Sheikh Tamims an amazing person, MBS said. That would imply that they had entered the court system and faced charges. Al-Qaeda and ISIS forbid most music and revile the monarchy. Article XI of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that any person is innocent until proven guilty. Saudi Arabia had punished those responsible for the murder, he saidyet comparable atrocities, such as bombings of wedding parties in Afghanistan and the torture of prisoners in Guantnamo Bay, have gone unpunished. Hamdi was sent back to Saudi Arabia on the condition that he renounce his U.S. citizenship (he was born in Louisiana and left as a small child), but the Saudis decided he needed more time in prison and locked him up for eight years in a facility in Dammam, and for another seven in Hair. He will also be the leader of one of Americas closest allies and the source of many of its headaches. That leaves him to determine what is in the interest of the Muslim community. At the outset of both conversations, MBS said he was saddened that the pandemic precluded giving us hugs. In prison, her family says, she was electrocuted, beaten, andthis was just a few months before Khashoggis murderthreatened with being chopped up and thrown in a sewer, never to be found. Abdullah, who took power in 2005, began as a reformer, but much of the momentum of the first half of his reign was lost as he doddered in the second, and the royal treasury was looted. The crown prince defended himself in part by asserting that Khashoggi was not important enough to kill. Before the rise of MBS, every component of this scene would have violated long-standing canons of Saudi morality enforcement. (One notorious alleged thief in the Ritz, a major figure in the Royal Court, was said to have stolen tens of billions of dollars during His Majestys decline.). The most famous Saudi womens-rights activist, Loujain al-Hathloul, campaigned for womens right to drive, and against the Saudi guardianship law, which prevented women from traveling or going out in public without a male relative. It also began after midnight. According to a report in the Daily Star, a woman, identified as Soudi, likes to spend her husband's money as a hobby. That was what this program was doing in reverse: replacing the jihadists savage appetite for an imagined future with an appetite for the real, the now, and the ordinary. Instead, he said without apparent irony, he prefers to watch series that help him escape the reality of his job, such as Game of Thrones. They led me into a tiny room, a factory for the production of perfumes for sale outside the prison, and to another room where they made prayer beads from olive pits. The religious police, known in Arabic as the haya or mutawwiin, would have busted the joint. He was an American-born Saudi member of al-Qaeda named Yaser Esam Hamdi. The couple live in Dubai and Soudi regularly reveals what a day in her life is like, to her 942.1k loyal social media followers.. The process was unconscious and organic, but to an outsider remarkable, as if salt and pepper were shaken out onto a plate, and the grains slowly and perfectly segregated themselves. Now I am in a car! Cultural practices decades or centuries old do not yield suddenly. The Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, which routinely responds to questions regarding the kingdom, has been contacted for comment. It is a problem of balance. Others appear to have succumbed to good old-fashioned intimidation. They laughed, nervously, as if to ask what I was trying to doget them to leave the prison and kill again? By 2019, everyone understood that even if you steal $100, youre going to pay for it. In just a few months, he claims to have recovered $100 billion directly, and says that he will recover much more indirectly, as dividends of deterrence. Would MBS consider pardoning those whod spoken out in favor of women driving and normalization with Qatarboth now the policy of the country? If existing cities resist your orders, just build a new one programmed to do your bidding from the start. MBS batted away my suggestion that this system is antiquated and might be replaced with a constitutional monarchyone where citizens have freestanding rights not granted by a monarch or a demi-monarch. If we were having this interview in 2016, you would say Im making assumptions, he said. A series of things happened that made the Saudis realize they couldnt keep playing the game they had been playing, Philip Zelikow, a State Department official under George W. Bush and the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, told me. Investigators are seeking documents and communications related to Trump's statements of financial condition, valuation of assets on the statements, and records used to prepare the statements, according to the subpoena. He was saying that hed guarantee it would. It was a sort of license to exist: Your iqama identified your Saudi patron, the local national whom you were visiting or working for, and who controlled your fate. The execution of Enghien alerted the most perceptive among them that Napoleon could not be managed or appeased. I told one of MBSs advisers that the religious police had been an international PR problem. When I pulled the door handle, it clunkedthe shop was closed for prayer, just as it would have been if the religious police had been enforcing prayer times. In addition to the due diligence panels reservations, theres also the matter of Affinitys pitch deck, which was recently obtained by The Intercept. They declared that the sun orbited the Earth. In 2020, he was arrested on suspicion of treason. You can see our position five years ago: It was almost 20. Saudi Arabia, MBS explained, is not one monarchy. All thanks to this man! In February this year, Saudi Arabia announced it would host the 2023 Fifa Club World Cup. Even those bigwigs paid obeisance to someone and, eventually, by the transitive property of Saudi deference, to the king himself. After this small talk, he invited me to join him in an auditorium that could have been a lecture hall on a small college campus. Ask any Saudi, anyone at all, whether MBS will be king, a senior Saudi diplomat told me. MBS acknowledged that to outsiders the Ritz operation may have looked thuggish. He assured me that it already did. Jareds track record in government was unprecedented. The duke was young and foolish, and no great threat to Napoleon. Our aim is to keep it and strengthen it. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have called for accountability for Khashoggis murder, as well as the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, due to war between Saudi Arabia and Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. Meet the woman who spends Rs 70 lakh in shopping daily, her husband is Typically, Saudi rulers have sought opinions from clerics, occasionally leaning on them to justify a policy the king has selected in advance. Saudi Arabia is based on pure monarchy, and he, as crown prince, would preserve the system. Only after a short interrogation (What are you doing here? Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. But even the most oppressive of MBSs predecessors, his uncle King Faisal, never presided over an atmosphere like that of the present day, when it is widely believed that you place yourself in danger if you criticize the ruler or pay even a mild compliment to his enemies. He was fighting them avidly, and personally. (Diderot famously wrote that the entrails of the priests would be woven into ropes to strangle kings.) Vision 2030 is real.. The centerpiece of the project will be The Linea 106-mile-long, very skinny urban strip connected by a single bullet train that will travel from end to end in 20 minutes. Former President Donald Trump said that LIV Golf has been worth billions in publicity for Saudi Arabia ahead of the upstart golf league's third tournament, set to be held at Trump's course in Bedminster, New Jersey. Then they got these jobs and were empowered to go and stop the cute girls, break into the parties no one wanted them at, and shut them down. AlHathloul was thrown in prison on terrorism charges in 2018after MBS and his father had announced the imminent end of both policies. MBSs government alleges that al-Jabri stole a massive fortune and is bankrolling efforts to defame the crown prince. "I think the publicity they've gotten is worth billions of dollars. They would not stop until they brought down the House of Saud, seized the countrys estimated 268 billion barrels of oil and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and established a terrorist state. In private conversations with others, MBS has likened Saudi Arabia before the Saud familys conquest in the 18th century to the anarchic wasteland of the Mad Max films. Many of the exiles I spoke with said their best hope now is that the crown prince will mellow, and that elder Saudi wise men will keep him from destroying the country with rash decisions, like the fight with Qatar, or the murder of Khashoggi. An hour later, we turned off at an area called al-Hair and went through a security checkpoint. It wasn't an Adam Sandler movie; it was a movie with Adam Sandler. Then I realized that MBS was not saying that the failure of his plan to remake the kingdom might lead to catastrophe. As I waited outside alone, a small police truck pulled up behind me. His tiny neighbor suddenly transformed from official friend into official villain, and those expressing a kind word toward it disappeared into prison. But even at its most affable, absolute monarchy cannot escape weirdness. He has allowed women to drive and to dress as freely as they can in dens of sin like Dubai and Bahrain. He explained that Islamic law is based on two textual sources: the Quran and the Sunna, or the example of the Prophet Muhammad, gathered in many tens of thousands of fragments from the Prophets life and sayings. Others have suggested Salmans younger brother Ahmed, a well-liked former deputy interior minister, as a throne-worthy alternative to MBS. 1. Neom would lure its investors, I gathered, by creating the ideal regulatory environment, stitched together from best practices elsewhere. (The religious polices official Arabic name dates back hundreds of years, but still sounds Orwellian in English: the Committee for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue.) MBS has completed about three-quarters of the transition from tribal king with theocratic characteristics to plain old secular-nationalist autocrat. and he was supposedly great in it. Such tensions, against the backdrop of the shale-energy revolution, raise the possibility that Saudi Arabia could abandon its US-denominated oil pricing one day, Sarah Miller, an editor at Energy Intelligence, an energy-information firm, wrote in November last year. Some fear that if he keeps getting his way, the modernized Saudi Arabia will oppress in ways the old Saudi Arabia never imagined. No, he said. Salih al-Fawzan, the most senior cleric in the kingdom today, once issued a chillingly anti-American fatwa forbidding all-you-can-eat buffets, because paying for a meal without knowing what youll be eating is akin to gambling. Letting this latter group out would not just mean the end of rock concerts and coed dining. If there are people in Washington who think he will not be, then I cannot help them. It suggested, further, that to feel an adoring reverence or regard toward these places is a kind of heresy and fabrication in religion, an innovation not sanctioned by God that leads to polytheism., Later, I met Mohammad al-Issa, formerly the minister of justice under King Abdullah and now, as secretary-general of the Muslim World League, an all-purpose interfaith emissary for his country. Yes, there are liberals and kumbaya types who have run afoul of state securityand perhaps some could be candidates for a royal pardon. Some of the clerics may have given in because they were convinced by the crown princes legal interpretations. The four clubs have spent lavishly to attract players from around the world, particularly Al-Nassr, which signed star player Cristiano Ronaldo for a reported $200m annually, making him the worlds highest paid athlete. Trump swears he doesnt have the thousands of documents subpoenaed by the New York attorney general, should not be fined $10,000 a day for withholding them. Remembering Sinad OConnors Sublime Music and Righteous Rage, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Probably Wont Be Splitting a Milkshake With Two Straws Any Time Soon. I didnt know what a montage was, he said. Ronaldos signing last season has been followed by a host of stars and coaches including Karim Benzema from Real Madrid, NGolo Kant from Chelsea, Roberto Firmino from Liverpool, and the former Aston Villa manager Steven Gerrard. M ohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, is 36 years old and has led his country for almost five years. Thank you very much for this question, the prince said. I could see shirts, freshly laundered and pressed, with prisoner numbers inked into the collars. I worried about what would happen next. To our astonishment, he added that if he were to send a kill squad, hed choose a more valuable target, and more competent assassins. Its up to him to think about the interests of America. He gave a shrug. Granting women drivers licenses was ultimately a smooth process. as well as other partner offers and accept our, A working group at the Reserve Bank of India, Saudi Arabia and the US reached a historic deal, Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our. Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that Jared Kushner's years of Saudi ass-kissing and murder-excusing had paid off, literally, when the country's sovereign wealth fund gave him . These teachings of the Prophet and the four caliphsthey were amazing. In 2017, he rounded up hundreds of members of his own family and other wealthy Saudis and imprisoned them in Riyadhs Ritz-Carlton hotel on informal charges of corruption. Newsworthy events inside the walls of terrorist prisons tend not to be good. I had a wonderful time. He listed his American friends, who had names like Mike and Emilio. Theyre bragging about networks, theyre using cliches, with no serious investment discussion.. He asked if I thought that would happen. The crown prince has told two people close to him that the Khashoggi incident was the worst thing ever to happen to me, because it could have ruined all of my plans to reform the country. I fretted that I was in one of those movies where an American makes one mistake in a repressive country and ends up rotting in a dungeon, Dowd wrote. Riyadh has almost no public transportation. I said that sounded like he was eliminating rivals. Revealed: Saudi Arabia's $6bn spend on 'sportswashing' Every Saudi patron had his own patron, toosometimes a tribal leader, sometimes a regional one. Josh and Benny Safdie. One lawsuit accused LIV of a campaign to use astronomical sums of money in an effort to use the LIV players and the game of golf to sportswash the recent history of Saudi atrocities and to further the Saudi Public Investment Funds initiatives. We were met by the director of state-security prisons, Muhammad bin Salman al-Sarrah, and what appeared to be a television crew of at least half a dozen men, each bearing a microphone or a camera. A hallmark of traditional Wahhabism is hatred for non-Wahhabi Muslims, whom the Wahhabis view as even worse than unbelievers for perverting the faith. Critics have called LIV Golf an example of "sportswashing" capitalizing on the public's love of sport to help launder the image of Saudi Arabia and act as a distraction from issues like human rights violations. God had struck down the civilization that once lived there, and the place was forever to remain a reminder of his wrath. We drove past the checkpoint and through the gates, into a windswept compound coated in a film of light-brown dust, like tiramisu. Or the haya could flex its authority on its own, either for political reasonstoppling a prince they dislikedor for recreation. In October 2021, the fund invested an estimated $2bn to create LIV golf, a major tournament. As MBS told me, to justify the Ritz operation, Its sometimes a decision between bad and worse.. Anyone who wished to drag down a professional or political rival could scrutinize him for sins, then call the religious police to set up a sting. But if this scene was to be believed, it turned out that terrorists didnt need a learned debate about the will of God. Soudi & Jamal - YouTube Oil & Gas. To remove himself from it would amount to a betrayal of all the monarchies and Saudis beneath him. In the old Saudi Arabia, and even to an extent today, corruption and bureaucracy layered on each other to make an entrepreneurs nightmare. During the months that the Ritz served as a prison, the kingdoms financial regulator was essentially made king pro tempore, to devote the full power of the government to bleeding the vampires dry. But these signs are not meant to preserve the ruins. leaked images showed changes to its away kit, is being investigated by a US Senate committee. Few nations have as many carried costs as Saudi Arabia, and Neom zeroes them out and starts afresh with a plan unburdened by the past. He complained that he had endured injustice, and he evinced a level of victimhood and grandiosity unusual even by the standards of Middle Eastern rulers. But Salman had an inkling that the next king would need a certain grit and fluency with power that cannot be acquired in a seminar or a flight simulator. They were mostly still young, and they yearned for freedom. Trump also deferred from specifically commenting on the criticisms of LIV made by families of 9/11 victims. Complete Wiki Biography of Sanjay Sami, which contains net worth and salary earnings in 2023. No one in Neom mentioned religion at all. Stunning Facts You Need To Know - Biography Net Worth 4. I'm a rich housewife who lives in Dubai - watch me spend - The Sun The other two died of old age. Once, he was ubiquitous, on a never-ending publicity tour to promote his plan to modernize his fathers kingdom. I asked him about the site, and whether Saudi Arabias new tolerancewhich he emphasizes so energetically overseas, with non-Muslimswould apply domestically. The fight between them had been no big deal, a fight between brothers. The relationship is now better than ever in history. The dissenters remain in prison, however, and I do not mean the Ritz-Carlton. His name, Abdullatif Al Asheikh, indicates that he is descended from a long line of stern moralists going back to Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab himself. (An adviser to MBS told me that one alternative his aides had suggested was executing a few prominent corrupt officials.) You want to explode the thinking we have in our brain. We should not try to seek out people and prove charges against them, he said. "A stronger USD would weaken its role as reserve currency," economists at Allianz, an international financial-services firm, wrote in a June 29 report. In 2021, PIF invested in a $550m sponsorship of McLaren Group Ltd, a Bahraini-owned company based in Woking which is a major part of Formula One through its manufacture of racing cars. In 1921, Abdulaziz attended the funeral of the most senior religious scholar in the kingdom. Even MBSs critics concede that he has roused the country from an economic and social slumber. Thats His Majestys power, MBS said.