The charred schoolbooks are in Arabic. The shattered chandelier is the shimmering-glass variety favored by middle-class Saudi couples...

JEDDAH - One humid evening last Ramadan in the lush garden of a villa belonging to one of Jeddah's oldest merchant families, something once unheard of happened.

Saudi Arabia is itself presenting a façade to the world. The Saudi government claims that it is fully combating terrorism, but it is historically linked to a brand of Islam that promotes violence and intolerance toward the West. Until the Saud family makes a firm commitment to divorce itself from this radical ideology, Saudi Arabia will continue to be a hotbed of terrorist activity.

JEDDAH, 3 February 2004 - Saudi Arabia yesterday called for a global fight against terrorism led by the United Nations and said no country should provide shelter to terrorists.

YET ANOTHER tragedy befell the Islamic haj pilgrimage...

MENA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's rulers vowed Monday not to deviate "an inch" from Islamic sharia law, in an apparent effort to placate critics of the conservative kingdom's cautious reforms.

Al-Qaeda’s global jihad against America thus draws its power from a thousand dirty little civil wars conflicts, that is to say, that have almost nothing to do with the United States. These are the deepest roots of anti-Western terror. They are also the hardest for Washington to address.

Although the bulk of Saudi Arabia’s crude exports have gone to the US in the past, increasingly the Gulf producers have been looking eastward to the burgeoning energy market there. Asia, and particularly China, is the fastest growing market. China, which became a net importer in 1993, has been breaking into oil sectors around the world to ensure supply for its rapidly expanding economy.

We should look for the weak links in the chain of American accusations against Saudi Arabia in order to support those unjustly attacked. And we should do this by undermining their legal bases. We should force American courts to make public what it says is “secret evidence” that Attorney General John Ashcroft relies upon in making his accusations. Once we can do that, the American public will be at pains to believe evidence of this kind, drawn mostly from cheap Arab magazines, and on the strength

Several developments have contributed to the rise of anti-Americanism in Saudi Arabia since the end of the Cold War, including the steady growth of American influences on Saudi society and mores and the decline of common external threats. There were also a series of events that highlighted or symbolized two realities in conflict with the Kingdom's self-concept as the hub of Islam: dependence on the United States for external security, and American cultural influence. These events include the Per

Citing Islamic law, Saudu Arabia bans sale of a popular baby doll. Many call the ban ridiculous.

The Saudi royal family is the main sponsor of this sewer of hate, by nurturing and financing a radical vision of Islam which uses Jew-hatred and the hatred of Western values to destroy the rational minds of the young. When your enemies are the “sons of monkeys and pigs,” as the Saudis and their friends in Gaza, Jerusalem, Cairo and Damascus preach every Friday, it becomes much easier to murder them. Oh, and by the way: in the minds of these preachers of hate, we are all Jews, so there is no esca

These days, there appears to be serious internal controversy in Saudi Arabia over the degree to which al Qaeda has managed to infiltrate the kingdom.

Despite the Saudi government's claim that it has "reformed" several thousand imams, sermons and statements by the kingdom's religious leadership remain deeply radical.

The Saudi rulers want us to believe they are our friends, and that terrorist rule is the only alternative to their rule. Yet they still subsidize the global Wahhabi offensive.

There comes a time in the history of every oppressive state when the need for change is suddenly and widely understood to be imperative. Inevitably, an incident occurs that illuminates the government's misrule and undermines the legitimacy of the regime.

Doran believes that the oil-rich Saudi state has become a "fragmented entity" in which Crown Prince Abdullah and his half-brother, Prince Nayef, the interior minister, are locked in a "visibly tense" struggle for supremacy.

She married Yeslam bin Ladin, son of one of Saudi Arabia's richest men. She has now chronicled her Saudi life in "Inside the Kingdom," a book...

“In the framework of our plan to assassinate the infidel imams and the soldiers of tyranny, we announce that we are responsible for the explosion, after we verified the crimes committed by this apostate against the mujahideen,” it added.

Therefore, the House of Saud finds itself split between two antagonistic forces. On the one hand, it desires to keep the US as an ally, and certainly not as an enemy. In order to do this, it must crack down on the militancy brewing within Saudi society. On the other hand, by tightening the leash on militant groups within Saudi society - both physically and financially - Riyadh makes itself a target for these groups, thus risking domestic stability.

No one expects sudden change in a country where religious diktat intervenes in every detail of life. But some officials now acknowledge that religious dogma, which instills bigotry and hatred of the West, has helped create a militancy which led to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Statements emanating from Saudi authorities about their neutralizing an al-Qaeda cell, which was allegedly planning to carry out a terrorist strike against hajj pilgrims, and about the car bomb explosion at a Riyadh housing complex on November 9, which killed 17 foreign workers, all Sunni Muslims, do not provide a complete answer to understanding what has been happening in Saudi Arabia.

A number of militants were arrested, all of them Shi'ites suspected of links with underground Saudi militant movements campaigning against the monarchy, including the little-known al-Iqwan and Saudi Hezbollah. Shi'ites are thought to be a majority in the east, where, as it happens, most of the country's oil lies.

Public practice of other religions is prohibited. Since the Saudi family is Sunni "Wahhabi,"...

In the same manner that the socialist Arab paradigm was discredited in the late 1960s, I think the Islamist paradigm - using religion in order to justify violence