Saudi Arabia between the Commission for the Promotion of Attributes and the Entertainment Authority

Last week, the Saudi Entertainment Authority organized a fashion show for the Lebanese fashion designer, Elie Saab, on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of his career, as part of the Riyadh Season models activity, and giving his -in musical concerts with the presence and participation of several international and Arab stars led by the American singer Jennifer Lopez and her Canadian colleague Celine Dion. This is part of a long series of arts events supported by the Entertainment Authority, which is active in enhancing the Kingdom’s position as an attractive global destination for arts of all kinds, by hosting the stars most prominent art in the Arab and international fields.

The ceremony started a wide controversy in the virtual space, regarding the great transformation that the Kingdom has seen in recent years at all levels, reaching the level of total transformation, which, in some issues, has reached the stage of a broad structural revolution against the constant that has governed the Saudi outlook for decades, and against the deeply rooted social culture, and in accordance with the mental image that the Kingdom is on established in its regional environment over the last decades, as a stronghold of the Salafi-Wahhabi movement, and its special supporter, a defender of his extremist views, which was not limited to living inside, but the Kingdom sought with all its might to spread them and make them the main feature and the most popular model in the Islamic world.

The Saudi state was based on a religious and political alliance based on sharing influence and giving religious legitimacy to political movements. The Wahhabi/Salafi component represented one of the fundamental indicators of the state’s legitimacy at home and abroad over, and the most obvious publication. The main role of the official Saudi religious institution, or all of it, was from the Council of Senior Scholars and the Commission for the Promotion of Virtues and Western Prevention, in the religious and social scenes of the country.

A systematic process to completely change the content of Saudi “soft power” by replacing entertainment with the old Wahhabi tradition.

Over the past decades, Saudi Arabia has represented the religious and cultural hub and main supporter of the Wahhabi/Salafist movement. throughout the Islamic world, and has spent large sums of money on Salafist preachers of the highest rank The Niqab, who led the wave of the “Islamic Awakening” from the seventies, with the rise of Saudi Arabia’s star in the region, said that he represented only the “remaining faction,” and he saw in Saudi Arabia the “ideal” Their legal ideas appeared in a way that mixed The jurisprudential and social, and without to make a difference between the legal rule and the current social practice, which differs from one society to another, and from one time to another Their ideas were an attempt at arbitrary “Saudization” in their their societies without taking into account the contexts, temporal and spatial. Their view of Saudi Arabia was largely similar to the view of the communists on the Soviet Union before it collapsed. It cast a shadow on the minds of many generations, influencing legal ideas that go against the times and carrying the spirit of rebellion, as well as being immersed in paper battles without soldiers, which brought the late sheikhs out of the graves of tradition and the caves of history.

Here, it is necessary to highlight an important communication between the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, with the Washington Post newspaper in March 2018, in which he said that the spread of Wahhabi thought in his country dates back to the time of ‘Cold War. , when countries associated with Saudi Arabia asked to use their money to prevent the progress of the Soviet Union In the countries of the Islamic world. When asked about Saudi’s role in spreading Wahhabism, which some complain is the cause of global terrorism, Bin Salman explained that Saudi investment in schools and mosques around the world is linked to time of the Cold War, adding that successive Saudi governments “lost the course and now we want to get back on track.” Bin Salman told the newspaper that it’s a big effort to to convince the religious establishment in Saudi Arabia that the restrictions imposed on women are not part of Islamic teachings, alliances within the institution increase day by day,” according to the newspaper.

The remarkable historical paradox that is worth considering is the shift of the center of gravity in the Saudi perspective, from the Commission for the Promotion of Western Profit and Prevention and the end of its main role, which was at the forefront in “old” Saudi Arabia, after the Commission to be placed under a process of almost complete transfer from the Saudi point of view, accompanied by a process of extensive reduction The scope of his old position, to the “new” Saudi Arabian Entertainment Authority, which is coming to play an important role in marketing the Kingdom’s new trends, in the regional and international perspectives, with a systematic process of extensive change in the content of “soft power,” Saudi by replacing the old Wahhabi tradition with entertainment, so that the former becomes a special authorized representative of soft power in the “new” Saudi. Arabia.

The main dilemma is trying to reconcile the comprehensive changes that Saudi Arabia is witnessing and the far-reaching consequences and consequences that follow.

This fast, extended process, which seeks to entertain and attract the attention of Western powers that have long accused Saudi Arabia of being a source of terrorism, appears to be coming the superficial way, with a lot of haste, focusing on it a lot. to reform the elements of the old formula on which the relationship between the state and the profession was based, and to dismantle it. It was often described as extremist, with continuous efforts to reform the legal and legal foundations on which the Salafi / Wahhabi part itself was based.

This comes in a way that reflects the old way of working, and to a point that reaches a complete mental break with the roots of the old tradition, without taking into account the consequences of these broad measures , and their potential impact on Saudi society, which spans generations. living in a state similar to panic and schizophrenia, with stages and stages of change that would create a state of conflict between the supporters of the old way of working and the supporters of the new transformation, against the calm which is visible on the surface, which may create a climate that is conducive to the spread of opposing views. And radicalism, which has a long history in Saudi Arabia, and which still has supporters within the Kingdom, and all this also comes at a difficult historical time that the region is going through, full of dangers.

Regardless of the level of agreement or disagreement, and the level of acceptance or rejection of the new movements of the Kingdom, the great dilemma remains in trying to complete the changes that Saudi Arabia sees and reconciles the wide-ranging consequences and consequences that follow, and the solid pillars on which the Saudi state was founded, which controlled the spheres of religious-political interaction, and represented main source a legitimacy at home and abroad.