This is the "letter of advice" to the Saudi King that I had posted here because Al-Akhbar did not publish. Arwa has kindly translated it:
"A Letter of
Advice to the Saudi King
By As’ad Abu
Khalil
Translated by
Arwa
Since Arab media
grovel to oil and gas rulers, both presidents and kings – we haven’t yet
forgotten the Qadhafi and Saddam grip on the media in the seventies and
eighties – I thought of addressing advice and guidance to the Saudi king.
Everyone addresses the Saudi king, so I might as well address you too. While
historically Arabs used to give a camel in return for advice, it costs a barrel
or two of oil these days.
I would’ve liked
to address you as servant to the US and the Israeli enemy but I reconsidered. I
thought about it until I remembered that you, king of the House of Saud, who
gained his crown and throne from colonialism, are illiterate and ignorant and
you cannot even pronounce correctly. How could I write to you when you can’t
even read well? How could I write to you when you don’t read at all, and when
you do read you trip and stumble more than once in a single sentence? Even if
you pronounce correctly, you don’t understand what you read. How can I write to
you while you are fixated on TV screens night and day, as Barbara Walters
reported. Of course, to be fair to you, you read the obscene books and magazines
you can get your hands on. This is your true library, “Custodian of the Two
Holy Mosques.” However, you, like the rest of the House of Saud princes, are a
graduates of the “Princes' School,” so you can’t faulted. This Princes' School has
more pornographic movies than books. It’s the alma mater of Fahd, Muqrin,
Nawwaf, yourself and the rest of your vile group. You, monarch of Saudi Arabia,
and your brothers graduated from the Princes' School where your teachers were
unable to teach you, so you’ve spent your time on play and entertainment and a
voracious appetite for pornography. You, sons of Abdulaziz - the founder as you
call him, except that he founded a kingdom of oppression and enslavement, which
has gained the pleasure of the west because he has offered his people’s
resources to the colonizer to seize as it wishes at exorbitant prices
unavailable to poor countries – not one of you has been educated. Your sons and
grandchildren’s education is not much better. Some House of Saud members borrow
poetry, i.e., they buy it with money and regurgitate it as if it was the
product of their own dull intellects.
I thought about
writing to you before recalling that you receive only letters of groveling,
cheap praise and requests for gifts from treasures that you took by force and
with the assistance of the colonizer that selected you for your stupidity and
ignorance, not for your education and astuteness. How can I write to one who is
not used to receiving advice? How can I write to one who is used to receiving
adulation, flattery and empty praise from the Lebanese? I recall how Strida
Gaegae, who pretends she stands for women’s rights, followed you around the
republic palace to introduce herself to you. She was only interested in your
money. And do you have anything besides money? What can you offer besides money
considering you have no wisdom, knowledge, insight or opinion. You receive your
orders from the assistant to the American deputy secretary of state, who goes
to Riyadh where he is received like a hero since he is sent by your American
commander. In his book on his experience in power, George W. Bush wrote about
your decision-making process. He wrote that when you visited his ranch in Texas
you were mildly critical of the American administration for its absolute
support to the Israeli enemy during the second intifada. He drove you in his
car around his ranch and a goose happened to pass in front of the car. You
motioned to Bush to stop and said that the goose is a sign from God and that
you would improve your relationship with the US and forgive Bush’s absolute
support for Israel because you received a sign from God through the goose. You
expect me to write a letter of advice to someone who receives divine signs
through geese indicating solidifying Saudi-American relations? If I had a ranch
I’d send you a goose to address you since you seem to understand geese better
than you understand people, especially since you seem interested in the news of
animals. A few years ago you started a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council
by informing your colleagues about a goat in India that responds to gestures by
moving its head. How can I communicate to one who communicates with goats and
geese? How?
Should I write
to you in the name of Arabism? Why are you associated with Arabism in some
writers’ minds? What’s your connection to Arabism, considering the Arabic
language is as difficult for you as a foreign language? You’re worthless in
Arab history. You’ve used Arabic only for cheap opportunism over the years to
serve the sectarianism that the House of Saud has ignited on behalf of the
American-Israeli alliance with the goal of undermining those who carry arms to
resist the Israeli enemy. You represent Arabs? Your only connection to Arabism
is your marriages to women from various Arab countries. That’s your sole
connection to Arabism. You and your family have fought and aborted all unity
projects in the Arab world. You fought Abdul Nasser on behalf of the US and
Israel because he wanted to spread nationalist ideology (notwithstanding the shortcomings
of the Nasserite nationalist regime). You represent disunity, fragmentation and
disintegration in the Arab world. You’ve always supported separatists in the
Arab populace. To curb Arab unity, you established organizations of religious
cooperation. Your religious projects were simply an opportunity to spread
extremism, fundamentalism and obscurantism and to fight progressive socialist
ideas during the Cold War decades. How can I address you in Arabism when you
funded and armed Arabism’ enemies? You’ve supported royal and separatist wars
in Yemen over the decades and used Israeli weaponry in the Yemen war against
Abdul Nasser and the republicans in the sixties.
Though I’ve
never claimed piety, should I address you in the name of religion though you
represent religion only superficially and adhere to extremist interpretations?
You’ve promoted religion’s worst representations to redeem your violation of
the rules you impose, the piety directives issued by Muhammad bin Abdulwahhab. Should
I address you religiously although you manufacture religious hatred and
sectarianism? How could I address you religiously when your definition of jihad
is defense of American and Israeli interests? How do I address you religiously
when you trade with religion? You secretly perform what you deny the people
publicly and privately. How can I address you religiously when you call on
Israel and the US to rewrite holy texts in the service of American and Israeli
occupation?
Should I address
you in the name of humanity when you represent repression and brutality? You
behead people in public squares, so what do you know of humanity? What do you
know about humanity when you wage wars on the poor on the US’s behalf? Have you
ever seen an American war that you didn’t feed with money, oil and religion?
How can I address those who devote their resources on “grave sins” denied to
your people while you spend fortunes on western royal families? How can I, in
the name of humanity, address those who place women on the level of slaves and
concubines? You’re looking into the possibility of amending the kingdom’s penal
code to permit execution by bullets instead of beheadings, not by driven by
mercy but due to a shortage of sword executioners these days.
Should I address
you, as others have done, out of concern for Lebanon? You’re interested in
Lebanon and the ills that befall it everyday, which are your own design and
execution. You’re concerned for Lebanon, and you’re the same distance away from
all Lebanese as Prince Muqrin said during his warm welcome of Lebanese economic
delegations. Why was your concern absent when the Israeli enemy destroyed the
country while the House of Saud, all of them, supported the aggression and
awaited the elimination of the resistance? Why didn’t you show concern for
Lebanon throughout its years of civil war when the House of Saud funded
fascists militias or Walid Junblat’s militias? How can I address you in the
name of concern for Lebanon when you’re pushing it towards civil war as you’re
doing in Syria, where you’ve funded the Asad regime over the decades more than
the Iranian regime has, and as you did in Yemen and elsewhere in the world like
Nicaragua? How can I address you in the name of concern for the Lebanese people
when you detain the Lebanese community as hostages in the kingdom of repression
and you threaten to expel them if Lebanon doesn’t completely submit to the House
of Saud’s policies towards Israel? In the past you’ve expelled the Yemeni
community because Yemen didn’t support the US war in Iraq in 1990, just as the House
of Sabah in Kuwait expelled the Palestinian community, which had built and
enriched Kuwait, and confiscated its property.
Do I address you
in the name of morality though you have no morality aside imposing a medieval,
reactionary system and you prohibit rituals that don’t align with your
backwards, destructive theology? Which morality, House of Saud? You live in
blatant contradiction with the morality that you impose with the sword. How do
I address you in the name of freedom when you’re hostile to freedom since
taking power? Do I address you in the name of dignity when you, Custodian of
the Two Holy Mosques, receive marching orders from an assistant to the American
deputy secretary of state as he passes in Riyadh? You preach morality while
Saudi princes live and die at gambling tables and at nightclubs in the west and
the brothels of Europe and Las Vegas. Your relationship to Palestine is akin to
your relationship to morality: you’re as far as could be from the former and
the latter. No, I won’t write you and won’t address you for as long as I live.
But I may send you a goose to engage you. Let me remind you that fornication
with the goose is religiously prohibited. You may see in the goose another
divine sign. "
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