]]>KAUST solar powered desalination prototype plant
nearing commercial stageKing Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is committed to four globally significant areas of research: energy, food, water, and the environment. In line with this commitment, University scientists are looking to utilize Saudi Arabia’s year-round solar radiation to provide another element essential to all life: potable water.
Professor Kim Choon Ng and his team at the University’s Water Desalination and Reuse Center (WDRC) are working to introduce solar-powered water desalination technology in Saudi Arabia. He is a visiting professor in the WDRC from the National University of Singapore (NUS).
The technology is adapted from his adsorption desalination (AD) project at NUS, where he has a prototype water plant built for cooling applications such as air conditioning.
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I’m not sure that the fight against modernization of any form is a struggle over power. I know that that’s a preferred dialectic, but I think it wrongly excludes the fact that for many people, change—any change—is psychologically scary. Saudi society is conservative, it likes its traditions. It tends to fear the unknown, not an unusual response in a culture that managed just fine for nearly 1,500 years with little significant change. Its xenophobic traits developed when intellectual challenges were largely avoided by simply banning them and casting them out of the area. Excepting Mecca and Madinah—sites of pilgrimage by many foreigners—and the coastal cities of Jeddah and Dammam—cities that owed their existence to international trade—most of what was to become the Kingdom was largely cut off from any intercourse with ‘the other’. Fixed ways and fixed mindset developed and were appreciated for their identity-confirming uniqueness.
Ms Fatany does not seem to recognize, though, that there are Saudis who would be very willing to have most, if not all ‘modernizations’ repealed and the country set back to the way it was in the 7th C. CE. They would give up telephones and television, perhaps even printed books, if doing so would permit them to live a life of simplicity and to avoid the complexities and confusion that change engenders.
I do not doubt for a minute that there are those who do analyze change with a view that concerns their loss or gain in power. I think resistance to change i more fundamentally based in fear of the unknown.
Whatever the cause, it is the case that the Saudi government, through several strong kings, has forced change upon society. Radio, TV, cameras, cell phones, the Internet… all have had to face protest—sometimes violent—from those who do not want change. King Faisal was assassinated by a relative whose brother was killed in an anti-TV riot. Even the formation of King Abdullah University for Science & Technology (KAUST), which had many ‘innovations’ received strong opposition from conservatives.
Fatany points to the reforms enacted by King Abdullah, as she should. He is the current manifestation of the Saudi government pushing its citizens in directions they need to go, whether they like it or not. The future of the country will depend on change. He is unable, however, to effect all the changes necessary because he must deal with those who, in their hearts, cannot see any good resulting from change.
]]>Extremists need a dose of reality
Samar Fatany — ARAB NEWSWe can’t be a global leader and medieval backwater at the same time
The Saudi leadership has pushed for modernizing the country since the 1950s. However, what slows progress always is the religious extremists who resist any change in the traditional lifestyle.
Innovations always would be initially resisted and labeled as “Bidaa,” meaning an un-Islamic practice, before finally being accepted by society. For example, the introduction of photography, and television were met with great resistance before they were accepted or tolerated in the 1960s. They perceive any change as a threat that would undermine their authority and control. Their ideology still remains the same — intolerant of any change.
The resistance to modernize Saudi Arabia by the religious scholars during the early rule of King Faisal was far greater than it is today, yet he continued to modernize the country and defied the fundamentalists without compromising Islamic values and principles.
King Faisal had several major encounters with the extremists including introducing education for women and girls, establishing the first television station, lifting the ban on music and songs and introducing pension and social insurance programs.
In 1964 King Faisal launched the first television station. The TV station was met with even stronger condemnation to the extent that there was an armed attack on the station.
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]]>KAU and German researchers to study Red Sea marine life
NAIF MASRAHIJEDDAH: The College of Marine Science at King Abdul Aziz University here will launch the first scientific trip to the Red Sea Tuesday in cooperation with the Leibniz Marine Institute of Germany’s Kiel University on the famous ship Poseidon. The researchers will collect data and samples for further study.
The joint scientific team will spend 22 days covering 120 kilometers of the Jeddah coast.
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Both sides of the case, the prosecutor and the defendants, are appealing the verdicts. The prosecutor believes they were too lenient and that the acquittals of some were in error. The defendants believe they are not guilty.
]]>Six involved in judicial corruption cases
get a total of 25 years in jail
ADNAN AL-SHABRAWIJEDDAH: The Administrative Court acquitted a judge, two notaries public and three others of corruption charges in the Thuwal land scam and sentenced six others to jail terms ranging between three and five years here Saturday, a judicial source told Okaz/Saudi Gazette.
The court issued its verdict with penalties totaling 25 years in prison for those found guilty of bribery, forgery, abuse of power, and illegally making money from government jobs, the source said.
The prosecutor general in the Bureau of Investigation and Prosecution said all the sentences were too light and that the acquittals were incorrect, according to the source.
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]]>TV channel distances itself from controversial preacher
RIYADH: The Al-Bidaya television channel has distanced itself from the views of the controversial preacher Yousuf Al-Ahmed, who attacked the Kingdom’s educational programs.
In a recent program aired by the television channel, the former professor of Islamic jurisprudence at the Imam Mohammad bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh strongly criticized the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology which opened last year and the King Abdullah Foreign Scholarship Program, which sends Saudi students abroad for higher studies.
In a statement published in Al-Watan daily on Thursday, director general of Al-Bidaya Abdul Aziz Al-Oraifi said the channel did not condone Al-Ahmed’s views.
“Those are his personal views and baseless,” he said.
Al-Oraifi also affirmed his channel’s support for all developmental and social projects in the Kingdom.
“The policy of the channel is social enlightenment. In light of the criticisms made by Sheikh Yousuf Al-Ahmed and his video clips online, it is apparent that he has betrayed and exploited the trust of the TV anchors who hosted the show,” he added.
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What’s interesting is that when he was offered the opportunity to have the new university named after him, King Abdullah demurred, instead choosing the name of Princess Noura, beloved sister of the country’s founder King Abdulaziz. Histories, the ones that don’t make it into Saudi textbooks, relay that Abdulaziz relied on his sister for sound council and took great pride in her. He even went so far as to transgress a social taboo and referred to her in public by her name. Contemporary, educated, young Saudis still have problems in uttering the names of the women in their families in public.
One would never know it from published materials, but there is an alternative history in Saudi Arabia, one that demonstrates the power of Saudi women within families. The history is hidden by Saudis because of a culture that schizophrenically blends honor and shame toward women, hiding them from public view. It’s hidden by non-Saudis because of the stereotype of oppressed women. Saudi women are ‘oppressed’ in many regards from a Western viewpoint and some certainly do suffer from oppression at the hands of conservative and tribal practices. But within families, many Saudi women exert a surprising level of power.
Also noteworthy, the article says that 66% of Saudi university students are women.
Noura University, a landmark dedicated to a beloved aunt
SAEED AL-KHOTANI | ARAB NEWSRIYADH: Round-the-clock construction work has been taking place near King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh for the last few months.
On a 94-square kilometer-site, the new campus of the Princess Noura bint Abdul Rahman University is being built. It will be one of the largest higher education institutions for women in the world.
It is really hard for anyone not to notice the scaffolding, cranes, loaded trucks and intense activity at the site.
The workers were meant to have met a 2010 deadline, but this has now been pushed back to sometime next year.
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The women at Noura University might have cause to celebrate, those at Umm Al-Qura University in Mecca are not quite so happy. Saudi Gazette/Okaz report that crowding at that university’s facilities is getting unacceptable. Dorm rooms built for four students’ occupancy will soon see nine packed into the rooms, at least on a temporary basis. The women also complain that their protests to university officials results in a ‘shut up and accept it’ rebuke, with threats of ‘serious action’ if they don’t shut up.
]]>9 students per room at Umm Al-Qura women’s hostel
Hatim Al-MasoudiMAKKAH – Over 70 female students are up in arms over a decision by the Umm Al-Qura University hostel authorities to increase the number of students from four to nine in a room of five square meters.
The decision has been taken because the university wants to accommodate medical students at the University’s Hostel in the Al-Nozha District situated in the center of the city.
The Housing Deanship has threatened to punish any student who fails to comply with the decision, the students said.
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Saudi cleric backs gender segregation with fatwa
RIYADH (Reuters) – A prominent Saudi cleric has issued an edict calling for opponents of the kingdom’s strict segregation of men and women to be put to death if they refuse to abandon their ideas.
Shaikh Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak said in a fatwa the mixing of genders at the workplace or in education “as advocated by modernisers” is prohibited because it allows “sight of what is forbidden, and forbidden talk between men and women”.
“All of this leads to whatever ensues,” he said in the text of the fatwa published on his website (albarrak.islamlight.net).
“Whoever allows this mixing … allows forbidden things, and whoever allows them is an infidel and this means defection from Islam … Either he retracts or he must be killed … because he disavows and does not observe the Sharia,” Barrak said.
“Anyone who accepts that his daughter, sister or wife works with men or attend mixed-gender schooling cares little about his honour and this is a type of pimping,” Barrak said.
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Saudi Gazette carries an article—two, actually—that appear to be trying to put the sheikh’s comments into some sort of context less incendiary than the obvious:
‘Death fatwa’ result of ‘natural differences’
JEDDAH – “Extreme fatwas have come to the fore once again, but this time they’ve been met with condemnation in religious and cultural circles”.
So began a report in Al-Watan Arabic daily on Wednesday following the publication of a fatwa the previous day by Sheikh Abdulrahman Bin Nasser Al-Barrak on his official website deeming lawful the killing of anyone permitting “ikhtilat” – mixing of the sexes – in the workplace or in a place of education.
Al-Watan said that “observers were surprised to see the fatwa issued in his name, in which he says: ‘anyone permitting ikhtilat – or ikhtilat that leads to forbidden things – is permitting these forbidden things, and anyone who permits them is a kafir (unbeliever), making him an apostate, and he should be ‘tried’ and if he doesn’t retract his words then it is a duty to kill him”.
Sheikh Abdullah Al-Turaiqi, a professor at the Higher Institute of the Judiciary, however, told Al-Watan that the fatwa represented an “extremist view” and was an “error”, given that Sheikh Al-Barrak is “well-regarded” in Shariah circles.
According to Sheikh Al-Turaiqi, “differences of opinion between academics over the meaning of ‘ikhtilat’, some of them extremist and others tolerant, is only natural”.
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To my eye, this seems to be an attempt to shield the sheikh from his own words. It is clear that Sheikh al-Barrak has had an illustrious career and is respected by religious scholars. It also seems clear to me that Sheikh al-Barrak is losing his grip. He is elderly and retired from his position as a professor at Imam Mohammed bin Saud university, a faculty not noted for its love of liberality. The article does make clear, however, that al-Barrak was speaking on his own, outside the official route the Ulema prefer for issuing fatawa. Thus, it should be ignored.
So, his peers are not going to cut him off at the knees. Instead, they’re just going to push him into the closet and hope everyone forgets his indiscretions.
Unlike Sheikh Sa’ad Al-Shethri, sacked from his position on the Board of Senior Ulema for a similar fatwa, al-Barrak has no official position from which he can be removed. At most, his government pension could be pulled, but that’d be deemed unduly harsh.
Saudi Gazette also runs a brief piece that provides a fuller expression of the sheikh’s thinking:
Al-Barrak’s fatwa also said…
“Ikhtilat (mixing of the sexes) in places of work or education – which is what the modernists want – is haram, because it involves looking incorrectly at a member of the opposite sex which is haram, adorning and displaying one’s beauty, which is haram, women uncovering the face which is haram, being with unrelated members of the opposite sex in seclusion which is haram, and talk of a haram nature between men and women, all of which is a channel leading to other things.”
“The modernists who want this sort of ikhtilat are disposed to the kaafir lifestyle of the West, have Westernized mindsets, and want to Westernize the Ummah. They want people to be led by desires.”
The paper adds a short listing of recent fatawa calling for the death of particular sinners:
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Yesterday, Arab News reported on what King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) is working on, a solar-powered desalination plant.
KACST starts initiative to tap solar energy
M. Ghazanfar Ali Khan I Arab NewsRIYADH: Saudi Arabia is now looking to enter the world of solar energy with the launch of the first of a three-stage solar power initiative.
In the first phase, the Saudi government and its agencies, in cooperation with the Riyadh-based King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), has begun building a desalination plant using solar power. The plant will have a capacity of 10 megawatts and a reverse osmosis plant that utilizes developed technologies in the field of solar energy.
“The solar energy scheme will reduce the cost of producing desalinated water and of generating power for use in the Kingdom, an oil-dependent nation which has also launched a national energy efficiency program,” said Prince Turki bin Saud bin Muhammad, KACST vice president. He said there was a need to promote solar energy projects in the Kingdom and the Gulf as these nations are planning and executing huge industrial, residential and manufacturing projects.
A total of nine desalination projects in Saudi Arabia alone that will be implemented at a cost of billions of riyals within a few years are currently either under study or under construction, according to a report from the state-owned Saline Water Conservation Corporation (SWCC), a major participant in the solar energy initiative. Moreover, the Saudi government’s goal is to add 30 gigawatts of generating capacity to its electricity grid by 2010, said a KACST official.
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Today’s Saudi Gazette reports on a lecture held at King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST) that the country could capture more than enough solar energy to supply its own power needs, primarily electrical. This, the speaker said, would take pressure off oil production, allowing it to become more diversified and rationalized.
All of this is true, I think. Oil has many more uses than simply burning it to produce electricity, the form of energy with the highest demand in the Kingdom at present. There will be, for the foreseeable future, need for petrochemicals.
]]>Lecture at kaust
Saudi Gazette reportTHUWAL – The solar thermal sources in Saudi Arabia could be used to produce enough electric energy for the whole world. This was asserted in a recent lecture at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Kaust) by Dr. Ahmed Ghoneim, a Kaust researcher, Professor of the Ronald C. Crane Mechanical Engineering Program and President of “Energy in the Twenty-First Century” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.
In the lecture, entitled “Energy in the twenty-first century”, Dr. Ghoneim said, “increases in oil and gas prices, global warming and increased carbon emissions are three factors which lead us to think of working to diversify energy sources and to search for new sources of non-oil and gas characterized to be more durable, and less harmful to nature. This, of course, is without giving up working, at the same time, to promote the efficiency of existing sources.
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]]>View from Mt. Doud: Saudi Arabia says offensive
against Yemen rebels overSaudi Arabia took a group of reporters to what had recently been a raging front line with the Shiite Houthi rebels of Yemen. The Kingdom’s defense minister said the Houthi’s have been repelled from Saudi Arabia and that they are now an “internal problem” for Yemen.
Caryle MurphyKhouba, Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia’s deputy defense minister Wednesday rejected Yemeni rebel claims that they had voluntarily withdrawn from Saudi territory, saying they had “been forced out” by the Saudi military.
Prince Khaled bin Sultan said the border area had been “cleansed” of Yemeni rebel positions, but that snipers continued to infiltrate and attack Saudi troops.
The prince’s remarks were the first official Saudi response to a statement Monday from the Yemeni rebel leader saying that his forces had withdrawn from Saudi territory and were offering a cease-fire in the almost three-month-old conflict.
Prince Khaled spoke to reporters after reviewing a parade formation of several hundred Saudi infantry, paratroopers and artillerymen in a dusty, open field several miles from the Yemen-Saudi border near the town of Kouba in the southern province of Jizan.
Earlier, journalists were driven to the top of Mt. Doud, a peak about a mile from the border that was seized by the rebels in mid-November and retaken by the Saudis a week ago, according to a senior Saudi military officer.
Exploding mortars and occasional gunshots could be heard in the distance along the border, and Saudi military officers said that was fighting between Yemeni forces and the rebels, known as Houthis.
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That the rumor took hold is a telling fact, I think. It demonstrates that many Saudis find it believable that the promoting of ‘mixing’ in public areas should be punished. Speaking of King Abdullah University of Science & Technology, Al-Ghamdi publicly stated that those who thought social mixing of the sexes in public was criminal under Shariah law were simply mistaken. He pointed out that men and women have mixed for business purposes since the days of the Prophet. Ahadith that ostensibly banned such mixing, he said, were of weak isnad. If this takes hold, it should lighten the workload of many of the religious police who spend (waste) their time running around looking for transgressors.
I’m glad the rumor proved false. The cultural ban, cloaked falsely in religion, exacts a tremendous price on both individuals and the state. It’s certainly time to get rid of it.
Hai’a spokesman: Al-Ghamdi rumors completely untrue
RIYADH – Sheikh Ahmed Al-Ghamdi, head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (the Hai’a) in Makkah, has not been dismissed from his post, contrary to rumors circulating over the past three days.
Sheikh Al-Ghamdi’s controversial comments on the subject of gender segregation in an interview with Okaz, reproduced by Saudi Gazette last Friday, led to the speculation, speculation which was exacerbated by the reported appearance in Al-Ghamdi’s office of the Hai’a chief for Taif, Abdulrahman Al-Juhani, purportedly to replace him.
The national spokesman for the Hai’a, however, spoke to Al-Watan newspaper on Wednesday to put the issue to bed.
“What has been going around are just rumors and bear not the slightest truth,” spokesman Abdul Mohsen Al-Qaffari told Al-Watan. “The Hai’a presidency has made no move related to the head of its branch in Makkah.”
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On the topic of KAUST, Arab News reports that the admission window for the 2010 academic year has now opened. More information is available at the KAUST website.
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