No freedom of religion as far as Wahabis are concerned and a cause for concern in fact!

The story of how the Brits gave the Saudis control of Mecca and Medina reads like a colonial version of Star Wars 1, 2 & 3 with T.E. Lawrence and Churchill as the Jedi. British spy Jack Philby plays the part of Darth Vader.

Via Wiki

Philby secretly began to favour Ibn Saud over Sherif Hussein as "King of the Arabs", a difference with British policy, which was promising support for the Hashemite dynasty in the post-Ottoman world. On return Philby completed the crossing from Riyadh to Jeddah by the "backdoor" route, thus demonstrating Ibn Saud was in control of the Arabian highlands, whereas Sherif Hussein could not guarantee safe passage. Later he was awarded the Royal Geographical Society Founders Gold Medal for the desert journey. Back in Jeddah he met with an embarassed Sherif Hussein.

On 7 November 1918, four days before the Armistice, Britain and France issued the Anglo-French Declaration to the Arabs assuring self-determination. Philby felt the betrayal of this assurance, along with the Balfour Declaration and other diplomatic manouvres broke faith with the promise of a single unified Arab nation in exchange for aligning themselves with the Allies in the war against the Ottoman Turks and Central Powers.

Philby argued that Ibn Saud was a "democrat" guiding his affairs "by mutual counsel" as laid out in the Koran (Surah XLII. 37), in contrast to Lord Curzon's "Hussein policy". British policy on Arab affairs was wracked by rivalries between the Foreign Office and the India Office...

...He worked with T. E. Lawrence for a while, but did not share Lawrence's views on the Hashemites. Here he met his American counterpart, Allen Dulles, who was stationed in Istanbul. At the end of 1922 Philby travelled to London for extensive meetings with all involved in the Palestinian question. They were Winston Churchill, King George, the Prince of Wales, Baron Rothschild, Wickham Steed, and Chaim Weizmann, the head of the Zionist movement.

A leftist view of how Philby, Dulles and Ibn Saud worked with other fascists during WWII

The modern world begins, the authors suggest, at the end of World War I, when British diplomat/adventurers Jack Philby (father of Soviet spy Kim Philby and legendary Arabist) and Lawrence of Arabia endeavour to unify a bunch of warring Bedouin tribes into nationhood, best represented by Saudi Arabia. Aware that black gold (oil) lies underneath the desert sands, Philby gingerly befriends Ibn Saud, and makes him the first Saudi king. But Philby is not solely interested in empire, even his own British one; he is interested in making money, and forges an alliance with an American intelligence agent in charge of Middle Eastern affairs, Allen Dulles. By the 1930s, Ibn Saud and Philby are secret supporters of the Nazi rise to political power in Germany, and bring Dulles, a NYC-based corporate lawyer for Sullivan and Cromwell, in on their scheme. It is a triple game driven by their hatred of Zionism and the Jews, motivated by their obsessive seeking of profits, and designed to completely transform the landscape of the Middle East. Philby and Dulles convince Ibn Saud to allow limited Jewish immigration to Palestine, assuring him that the numbers will never challenge or upset his control. When Jews leave Germany, their assets are confiscated by Hitler, who shares a percentage of these with dummy corporations established by Philby, Dulles, and their allies. Some of this money is used to arm Ibn Saud, and intelligence disclosures to him by Philby enable Ibn Saud to become king of Saudi Arabia over other Arab leaders supported by the British government. This double-dealing by British and American corporations continues throughout World War II, and incredibly is never halted by the Western allies, who would rather that Dulles stay in place andround up German intelligence agents after World War II's end for the upcoming Cold War against a previous ally, the USSR. One of the reasons that Jews are so hated by this clique, which includes Rockefeller's Standard Oil, is that many Jews were supporters of the left, anathema to corporate internationalists."

I've always been a fan of TE Lawrence and, of course, Churchill, and it's good to know that they opposed Philby, Ibn Saud & co. This is a mess that still needs to be cleaned up.

I wrote the following a few months ago before Fahd finished his discorporation. Fahd is dead and Abdullah is now the King. Nothing important has changed.

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Saudi Arabia is not a nation state in the way we think of them in the modern world. It is a family possession. The current nominal ruler, King Fahd is a son of the founder of the dynasty, ibn Sa'ud, who died 50 years ago. At the beginning of the 20th century ibn Sa'ud was a penniless desert bandito. His family had historic claims to the area in eastern Arabia around Riyadh and a historic alliance with the heretical and militant Wah'habi dynasty of imams. Ibn Sa'ud put together a tribal alliance, blessed by the Wah'habi, called the Ikwan. After WWI, he conquer the Hijaz, the western province of Arabia containing Mecca and Medina and displaced the British clients, the Husseini sherifs (See, Lawrence of Arabia), who were in turn rewarded with monarchies in Jordan and Iraq.

Ibn Sa'ud, the ruler of most of Arabia, became the luckiest and richest man in the world, when American engineers found oil in his eastern provinces in the 1930s. When he died in the 1950s, the royal treasury, which was a chest kept in his tent, was stuffed with gold. His children have run the kingdom as their private property ever since.

Here is the important fact. There is no theory of legitimate inheritance of a kingdom in Islam. The first born son of the first wife is not a more legitimate heir to the throne than the seventh son of the seventh concubine. Islamic regimes have developed ways of dealing with this problem. One is that many heirs were designated before the old king died. The Ottomans had the charming and effective custom of having the successor to the throne strangle all other then living male heirs to the throne with a silken bow string upon his succession. It was part of their success. Their decline began when they abandoned it.

In years past, such as when ibn Sa'ud's son and successor, ibn Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, was deposed in 1964 because of his mismanagement and wasteful
spending, the family was able to act on a unified basis. Of course, it was a much smaller and more cohesive entity at that time. It is worth noting that the younger Sa'ud's successor was his brother Faisal, who was, in turn assassinated by one of his nephews.

The current king, Fahd was born in 1922 and is also one of ibn Sa'ud's sons. In 1995, he had a stroke which basically made him a vegetable. Before the stroke he had designated one of his brothers, Abd'allah (born 1923) to be the Crown Prince. After Fahd's stroke, Abd'allah took active control of the kingdom. However, when Fahd named Abd'allah as Crown Prince, he also declared that the crown prince would not automatically succeed to the throne upon the death of the king, but would serve as provisional ruler until he, or another son or grandson of ibn Sa'ud deemed more suitable, was chosen by the family. Reference

When Fahd dies, Abd'allah will continue to rule the kingdom, but his succession will not be assured. He will be challenged by many others. Further, he is 82 years old. The ranks of the sons of ibn Sa'ud have been thinned by the years, but there are hundreds of grandsons and thousands of great-grandsons and great-great grandsons. It is possible that the succession will go smoothly, but it is also possible that there will be a civil war. At this point you should stop reading this and re-read Shakespeare's histories of the War of the Roses.

In Saturday's NYTimes:

"The crown prince himself has appointed a successor, Prince Sultan, who is second deputy prime minister and defense minister. A successor to Prince Sultan as second deputy prime minister would have to be chosen, which could open the way for a younger generation of Saudi royals to rise.

"But Prince Nayef, the interior minister - who like Fahd, Abdullah and Sultan is a son of the kingdom's founder, King Abdel Aziz al-Saud [ibn Sa'ud] - is widely favored for the position, thanks to his success in Saudi Arabia's battle with terrorism in recent years, Mr. Alani and others said."

OTOH, Out of the thousands of male heirs of ibn Sa'ud, there is, no doubt, at least one who is saying to himself: "These senile old men will lead us into ruin. We need strong young leadership to survive the American assault on our world. I am that man."

As I said above, there is no primogeniture in the Islamic world. And history shows that even where there was, disputed successions have happened and have led to civil war.

Like I said, read Shakespeare, not me.

Indeed, it is possible that the civil war has already begun. One hypothesis, that I have entertained, is that some one or more princes, who want the Saudi throne -- which after all is the richest prize in the world -- have used (whether they believe in it or not) the ideology of the Wah'habi imams and the oil money that flows through the kingdom to raise a private army. Their intention was to drive the United States out of Arabia and use their private army to secure the throne. Whether they have further ambitions such as a Pan-Arab or Pan-Muslim state are their own counsel.

In this view, we call the private army Al Qaeda. OBL is, or was until his incineration*, emir (in English, admiral) of this army. One reason the US invaded Iraq was to outflank Al Qaeda. Their counter was a series of attacks in the Kingdom last year. When that failed, Al Qaeda started pumping more money into the Zarqawi operation in Iraq, hoping to win the US election and stop the emergence of a shi'a dominated republic in Iraq.

Al Qaeda has forced the Saudi establishment to take them seriously and to be nicer to US. But even if the Sunnis are suppressed in Iraq, Arabia will remain a powder keg.

*I am skeptical that he is alive.