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In the wake of 9/11, Dr. David Long, a consultant on the Middle East, Islamic politics, and terrorism, was disturbed by the paucity of accurate information being published about Saudi Arabia in the media. According to Long, the US needed a scholarly, yet accessible, study of Saudi culture to correct its overly simplistic understanding of this complex and multifaceted society. Consequently, he wrote a cultural study of Saudi Arabia. In The Culture and Customs of Saudi Arabia, Dr. Long identified a number of significant aspects of Saudi culture including its desert/nomadic past, Islam, language, food, and the familial tribe structure, and he asked the question: Can Saudi culture cope with modernization’s implications?

For much of its existence, Saudi Arabian culture was tribal and influenced by its interaction with the often-harsh conditions of the desert. The tribes provided an important organizational structure to this assortment of desert peoples. After the inception of Islam in the 7th century on Saudi soil and its subsequent acceptance by Arabia’s desert people, Saudi Arabian culture remained largely static until the 20th century.

For the last 70 to 80 years, Saudi Arabia has had to cope with the effects of modernization, which Dr. Long described as being on a collision course with Saudi culture. To illustrate his point, he noted that King Faisal began his reign riding a camel, yet had his own 747 by the end of his life. As Saudi society has embraced modern technology, problems have occurred with the resulting transformation of Saudi culture. For example, modernization brought about improvements in the field of medicine. However, along with this improvement has come a massive increase in population. Currently, the Saudi rentier economy is having trouble supporting its expanding population, resulting in an increasing number of disenfranchised youths.

The problems occur simultaneously with the transformation of Saudi culture, which has traditionally been very closed. Prior to the early 20th century, the Saudis’ only exposure to the outside world came from its two million yearly visitors who came to visit the Muslim holy land on a pilgrimage known as the Hajj. Currently, satellites are beaming channels such as BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera, and Al-‘Arabiya into an increasing number of Saudi homes, exposing them to foreign cultures and ideas. The Bush Administration has demonstrated resistance to the latter two channels, and has sought to build US-owned Arabic language stations. Instead, Dr. Long posited that the US government should accept the current trend and learn to effectively target Saudi audiences to create a dialogue.

In conclusion, Long addressed the question that he posed at the beginning of his talk: can Saudi society, suffused with Islam, cope with the effects of modernization? He admitted that he could not be sure of the end result of the modernization process, but claimed that Saudi Arabia is a work in progress.