If we talk about the Middle East we immediately think of the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy or the war in Syria. In the Middle Eastern area, however, there are other phenomena that are right to consider. The main one is the rapid evolution taking place in Saudi Arabia, which extends the experiments already started in Dubai or Qatar on a larger scale. That area between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea is, in fact, a gigantic development site, attracting a boom in investments and foreign companies, including Italian ones. And it welcomes new flows of entrepreneurs, tourists, students and researchers. But what's behind it?
Federico Rampini tells us about it in his latest essay entitled "The new Arab empire" (Solferino, 2024, Euro 18, pp. 272. Also Ebook), starting from a surprising factor for us Westerners: one of the keys to Arabia's current momentum Saudi is the ongoing secularization, which reduces the powers of the Islamic clergy, liberalizes customs and improves women's rights. This does not mean that Arabia has become the paradise of democracy. It remains an authoritarian regime (on which the guard must remain high) but it wants to relaunch its global role, mindful of what was the golden age of its civilization. And it seems to emerge from anti-Israeli victimhood by breaking the chain of hatred towards the West (and its financing) which has led to the spread of Jihad and fanatical violence. In short, as Rampini writes in the book: «We must hold back before embracing Manichaean worldviews, crusades that pit the forces of Good and Evil. Arabia deserves to be studied rather than exorcised."
Why does this great country deserve our utmost and impartial attention?
«In Italy, when we talk about Arabia, I hear the answer: it is the country of oil and human rights abuses such as the murder of Khashoggi. With these two stereotypes the discussion is closed. Mistake. On oil, the Saudis have a more realistic vision than our environmentalists: they want to decarbonize but they know that we will need fossil energy for a long time to come. Among other reasons, there is no other way to produce fertilizers, without which agricultural production would collapse and half of humanity would starve. However, Saudi is a big investor in solar, wind, hydrogen energy. As for human rights, it remains an authoritarian and despotic regime but it has decisively improved the rights of half of its population: women."
