Indeed, Saudi Arabia is the country where Sharia law is truly and meticulously applied, the only other being perhaps Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. In Iran, considered the stronghold of Islamic traditions with its relentless and bloody struggle over women’s veiling, women are nonetheless the majority in schools and universities, and elections are held, albeit limited to candidates approved by the Supreme Leader. How can Saudi Arabia be seen as open to the future?
However, on closer inspection, delving into the cultural fabric that we Westerners struggle to understand, perhaps Renzi was right.
Saudi Arabia is a regime that defines itself as Wahhabi: let’s understand who these people are. The movement traces back to Muhammed Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-92). He was educated in Mecca and Medina with a rigorous interpretation of Islamic law (Shari'ah) derived from the Quran and Hadiths. He opposed a popular Islam infused with magic and local traditions, rigidly condemned iconography, the intercession of figures considered saints, particularly the worship of tombs, and any religious innovation postdating Quranic preaching. His program was thus presented as a complete return to the origins.
The fundamental concept is the distinction between "Salaf" (origins) and "Bida" (innovation) relative to the times of Muhammad: the former accepted absolutely, the latter rejected and qualified as "shirk" (polytheism) or "kufr" (paganism). The term "salaf" has a meaning corresponding to "evangelical" in the Christian world. Specifically, the movement was a fierce enemy of the Shiites, considered a blasphemous degeneration of Islam, a rivalry that explains much of the recent history of the Middle East.
It cannot be described as a "traditionalist" movement; its essential point is the fight against traditions. Nor can it be considered nationalist because it aims to combat all nationalisms: the rules of Islam must not be tailored to any specific national reality; they apply universally and always, from the arid deserts of Arabia to European university campuses. The vision is strictly internationalist. Allah makes no distinctions between nations; the cause of Islam is not the cause of a particular people but the cause of all humanity. There is no difference between blacks and whites, between Orientals and Westerners. The only difference is between "muslim" (believers) and "kafir" (non-believers).
In the mid-18th century, Arabia was dominated by a series of warring tribes. Al-Wahhab then forged an alliance with Emir Muhammad ibn Saud, of the large 'Anaza tribal confederation. This alliance enabled the conquest of the holy places, Mecca and Medina, where, according to the movement's dictates, the monuments of Khadija (Muhammad's wife), Abu Bakr (the first caliph), and Ali (the fourth caliph) were destroyed, and the rich fabrics adorning the Prophet's tomb were removed. The movement was later combated by the Turkish Empire and Muhammad Ali, the Khedive of Egypt, who defeated and suppressed them bloodily, as both followed traditions of tolerance (even towards Christians). Wahhabism, however, did not disappear and persisted among the Bedouin tribes of the desert.
Two hundred years later, during World War I, the Bedouin tribes, supported by the famous Lawrence of Arabia, led a revolt, and the current Saudi dynasty (from Muhammad ibn Saud, the first emir supporter of Al-Wahhab) took the throne with significant British support. This explains the strict and uncompromising adherence to Sharia in the country and the relentless rivalry with Shiite extremism in Iran.
However, the discovery of oil has given the Arabian Peninsula countries unexpected wealth and power. All that is grand and spectacular in the Arab world is found in the oil countries. This has also meant that the ruling classes could have contacts with the West, go on vacation in the West, and even study at American universities. Moreover, political developments have led to an indispensable alliance with the USA.
At this point, Wahhabi society tends to split. One part is well represented by Osama bin Laden, the son of a very wealthy family, who knew the West well and was disgusted by it, seeing it as a place of evil, corruption, and disbelief. Bin Laden thus supported the Afghan mujahideen guerrillas, accepting American financial aid only instrumentally, to become their main enemy after the 9/11 attacks. Another part of society, increasingly growing, maintains its faith and traditions but does not see the West only as evil but as a world with other principles and resources that can offer many solutions, particularly in the technical-scientific field.
The Middle East is permeated by the idea that all the evil, backwardness, and poverty afflicting it are solely the fault of Westerners, their greed, and thus the only solution is the fight against them, the infidels. The Palestinian issue is not just a territorial dispute over a small and secondary territory but a metaphysical struggle of good against evil that, despite infinite defeats, can only end with the triumph of the believers when God wills (Insh’allah).
Now it seems that in Arabia, the idea is gaining ground that a messianic war against the West is neither necessary nor useful, but rather to imitate the West without abandoning its religious principles. So, if in '73 Saudi Arabia proclaimed the oil embargo against the West, guilty of helping Israel in the Yom Kippur War, in more recent times the Abraham Accords have been gaining ground: the idea that Israel was not a small Satan serving the great Satan, but just a small state that could be recognized.
If this trend ever prevails in the Middle East, it will open up to the future and progress as the Far East has done, maintaining its traditional cultures intact. After all, even the Catholic Church of the First Vatican Council condemned democracy and freedom in the Syllabus but later became a staunch and convinced champion of democracy.
We should not, however, identify progress and the future solely with our European parameters and seek to impose them on all other peoples. Every people can progress and embrace modernity in a way consistent with their own culture and traditions, and this can also happen in the Arab world as it has happened in the Far East, as it happened for Rome when it encountered Hellenic civilization. Everything can change over time, and cultures evolve sometimes in unpredictable ways: the peaceful Scandinavians are descendants of the terrible Viking pirates.