Saudi player’s public haircut spotlights kingdom’s existential dilemmas
By James M. Dorsey
Waleed Abdullah probably didn’t know what was happening to
him when a referee delayed kick-off of a Saudi premier league match to cut the Al
Shabab FC goalkeeper’s hair. In a country that demands conformity, Mr.
Abdullah’s hair-do, involving shaved parts of his hair in a style popular among
youths across the globe, was deemed un-Islamic and by implication subversive –
a threat that needed to be dealt with immediately and demonstratively.
The public humiliation of Mr. Abdullah not only evoked the
disgracing of players who failed to live up to autocratic expectations in
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Moammar Qaddafi’s Libya but also resembled
enforcement of strict dress codes by the Islamic State, the jihadist group from
which Saudi Arabia seeks to differentiate itself.
Al Shabab was only allowed to play after fans, players and
officials watched the referee use scissors to remove a small mohawk at the
front of Mr. Abdullah’s head.
Mr. Abdullah was the first Saudi player to become the victim
of a decision earlier this month by the Saudi Arabian Football Association to
ban the hairstyle popular among players in the kingdom. The association said
the hair-do violated a saying of the Prophet Mohammed that bans Al-Qaza, the
shaving of one part of one’s hair while leaving others unshaven.
The ban could mean that that the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo,
one of the biggest names in global soccer, and others could have their heads
shaven if they were to visit Saudi Arabia for a match.
Mr. Abdullah’s shaving sparked ridicule and anger among
Saudi fans who noted that the kingdom had bigger fish to fry, including changes
to its social contract as a result of financial austerity, budget deficits
because of tumbling oil prices, a stalled war in Yemen, proxy wars with Iran in
Syria and elsewhere, and uncertainty about its relationship with the United
States, the Gulf’s main protector,
“Water bills are unbelievably expensive, government
employment has halted, real estate and financial loans have stopped, and the
government meets to talk about banning Al-Qaza,” said
a critic on Twitter.
“There are stalled projects in Riyadh, financial crises, and
rampant and obvious corruption – and caring for the young people is going after
their hair?” the criic added
Saudi Arabia’s budget deficit ballooned to 15 percent of Gross
Domestic Product (GPD) last year. The government is this year expected to tap
international debt markets as it burns through its currency reserves at a
record pace. To plug the gap, the government has cut subsidies on basics like
fuel, electricity and water.
Those austerity measures alter the kingdom’s social contract
under which the citizenry enjoyed cradle-to-grave welfare in exchange for
surrender of political rights and acceptance of Saudi Arabia’s strict and
puritan Wahhabi interpretation of Islam.
Many Saudis were furious when they last month received their
first unsubsidized water bills involving hikes of up to 3,000 percent. "Have
they changed the type of water they pump to people?
Or have they added
vitamins? My bill has jumped from $8 to $265!" former
football star Faisal Abu Thnain tweeted.
Water and Electricity Minister Abdallah al-Hussein did
little to calm emotions when he suggested that water bills following the
subsidy cut were still less than half
of what an average family spends on mobile telephony.
Saudi Arabia could run
out of groundwater in the next 13 years with daily per capita consumption
of water in Saudi Arabia averaging 380 litres per day compared to a global
average of 160 to 180 litres.
Pricing water at market value to encourage conservation
constitutes sound policy. However, for the kingdom’s ruling Al Saud family, the
problem is that there is ultimately likely to be a cost to the government’s
unilateral rewriting of the social contract, which is one reason why haircuts
suddenly pose a potential threat. That is particularly true for Saudi soccer
players who alongside Islamic scholars and some Al Sauds are the kingdom’s only
celebrities.
While a recent poll concluded that a majority of Arab,
including Saudi youth, believed that at this point the Middle East and North
Africa needed stability rather than democracy, it also showed that a majority
wanted more personal freedom and greater respect for human rights.
Source: Inside the Hearts and Minds of
Arab Youth / 8th Annual Asda’a Burson-Marstellar Annual Arab Youth
Survey
Source: Inside the Hearts and Minds of
Arab Youth / 8th Annual Asda’a Burson-Marstellar Annual Arab Youth
Survey
Equally problematic for the Al Sauds, many of whom may
empathize with views among the youth but see the ruling family’s long-standing
alliance with the kingdom’s ultra-conservative Wahhabi clergy as crucial to its
survival, is the survey’s conclusion that Arab and Saudi youth perceive as an
entitlement the very things the government is eliminating from the social
contract.
Source: Inside the Hearts and Minds of
Arab Youth / 8th Annual Asda’a Burson-Marstellar Annual Arab Youth
Survey
A Chatham House workshop on the social contract in the Gulf,
including Saudi Arabia, noted that “the younger generation of Gulf nationals may
not be able to rely on the state to provide them with jobs, services such as
free education and free healthcare or heavily subsidized fuel and water. Unlike
their parents – but like their grandparents – they will have to pay taxes; and
this development will inevitably change the way younger citizens relate to and
engage with their governments.”
For now, regional instability works in the Al Saud’s favour
as it dampens the willingness of Arab and Saudi youth to risk demands for full
freedom and persuades them to not fundamentally rock the boat. However, as
economic change takes hold, “future generations (may) not (be) feeling
politically beholden to their governments and ruling families in the way their
parents and grandparents might have done,” the Chatham House workshop cautioned.
Mr. Abdullah’s Mohawk had to go because it wittingly or
unwittingly challenged the Al Saud’s social and political control at a time of
flux. In publicly humiliating Mr. Abdullah, the Saudi soccer association moreover
made a mockery of international sports’ insistence that sports and politics are
separate by seeking to close the door, albeit at best temporarily, on the kind
of individuality that comes with inevitable social and political change.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of
Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer blog and a just
published book with the same title.
Comments
Post a Comment